February 28, 2013 22:39

Professeur Marcel OTTE

Service de Préhistoire

Université de Liège

7, place du XX août, bât. A1

4000 Liège BELGIQUE

Dear Prof. Otte,

After more than two years of laborious silence since our last correspondance, I would like to say a heartfelt “hello” to you and to inform you of one of my recent findings.

I thought it might be interesting for you in terms of paleographic interpretations and your valuable opinion on such a plausibility shall be appreciated.

The case is related to the Greek words arch, archi (beginning); arcaikh, archaic as in arcaiologikh, archaeology. This word I had rendered a long time ago in our ancient Orkhun script (tamgas) as arka (ancient / antique / past / back {in times} / {ages left} behind) + biligi (knowledge / science) in Turkish. A vague similarity in form with the Greek script (archai ~ arka and ology ~ biligi) seems to point to a much older and common source of ancestry. This outcome I published in my website [Fig. 1].

Sometime later, I started to ponder why similar syllables in such words as arkhon, arkheion (high official, state quarters & archive places); arcaggeloς, archangelos; arcus (bow, arch, vault); hierarkhis & anarkhia (hierarchy & anarchy); architect & architecture had meanings of highness, precedence and orderliness, rather than referencing to any sense in time past, or in antiquity. What could their common denominator be?

It was then that my past experience in graphic design came to my rescue. In our Turkish language the word arka, in addition to its metaphoric notation of past times, means one’s back, rear, hind, equivalent to dors-, dors/um –i and dorsal in Latin.

So, it took only to visualize a sign or a symbol to evocate this complex of ideas which altogether consists of the time bygone, a master builder and his work with bows, arches or vaults [Fig. 2].    

After all, an arc-en-ciel or a rain-bow is the highest and the most perfect device of the Good Old God’s aestethics and architecture in Nature, is it not?

My best personal regards,
Doğan Türker