This article provides a new onomastic study of the non-Egyptian names inscribed on writing board BM EA5647, which we redate to Amenhotep II’s reign. Among the four school exercises recorded on this tablet, one on the recto appears to be a practice in writing complex foreign names, specifically the seven “names of Crete.” Somewhat curiously, analyses of these names have thus far focused more on presumed linguistic links with the Near Eastern (Akkadian and West Semitic) and Anatolian (Hurrian and Cilician) worlds, rather than with Aegean onomastics. Therefore, we explore the possibility of potential correspondences with Linear B and Ancient Greek names. Among several possibilities, we have found in particular: Exantheus (e-ka-sa-te-u), Eusorus (e-sa-ro), Nasios (na-si-jo), Axius (e-ka-sa), Eudemus (e-u-da-mo), Panaretos (pa-na-re-ta) and Lysis (ru-si). On the verso, the short wine accounting from the Memphite harbor Haynefer mentions also two Aegean beneficiaries, Leonnatus (*re-wo-ni-te-u) and Didyme (di-du-me), and it may be evidence of the development of a wine trade between Egypt and Crete in Late Minoan II times. We argue that this document is the earliest written evidence of Greek names in history, one or two decades before the first Linear B archive deposits at Knossos.
Egypt; Amenhotep II; Crete; Late Minoan II; hieratic tablet; anthroponymy; Linear B onomastics; Ancient Greek names; Memphis; Knossos; Kommos; wine trade
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