The Ancient Minoans: Keftiu were Mande Speakers

Every since Arthur Evans discovered the Hieroglyphic and Linear A writing of Crete there has been a search for the authors of this writing.

Some Grecian traditions indicate that Libyans (called Garamante) formerly lived on Crete. This suggest that some of the Eteocretans may have spoken one of the ancient languages of Libya.


A major group from Libya that settled Crete were the Garamante. Robert Graves in (Vol.1, pp.33-35) maintains that the Garamante who originally lived in the Fezzan fused with the inhabitants of the Upper Niger region of West Africa.

This theory is interesting because the chariot routes from the Fezzan terminated at the Niger river. In addition, the Cretan term for king "Minos", agrees with the MandeManding word for ruler "Mansa". Both these terms share consonantal agreement : M N S.

The name Garamante, illustrates affinity to Mande morphology and grammar. The Mande language is a member of the Niger-Congo group of languages. The name for the Manding tribe called "Mande", means Ma 'mother, and nde 'children', can be interpreted as "Children of Ma", or "Mothers children " (descent among this group is matrilineal) . The word Garamante,can be broken down into Malinke-Bambara into the following monosyllabic words Ga 'hearth', arid, hot'; Mante/Mande , the name of the Mande speaking tribes. This means that the term: Garamante, can be interpreted as "Mande of the Arid lands" or "Arid lands of the children of Ma". This last term is quite interesting because by the time the Greeks and Romans learned about the Garamante, the Fezzan was becoming increasingly arid.



Keftiu


The Egyptians called the Cretans Keftiu. There is agreement between the Keftiu names recorded by Egyptian scribes (T.E. Peet, "The Egyptian writing board BM5647 bearing Keftiu names". In , (ed.) by S Casson (Oxford, 1927, 90-99)), and Manding names.



Keftiu
The root kef-, in Keftiu, probably is Ke'be, the name of a Manding clan , plus the locative suffix {i-} used to give the affirmative sense, plus the plural suffix for names {u-}, and the {-te} suffixial element used to denote place names, nationalities and to form words.

On the Egyptian writing board there are eight Keftiu names. These names agree with Manding names:

Keftiu....... Manding

sh h.r........ Sye

Nsy ..........Nsye

'ksh .........Nkyi

Pnrt Pe,..... Beni (name for twins)

'dm ..........Demba

Rs............. Rsa

This analogy between Keftiu and Manding names is startling.

In conclusion, the evidence of similarity between Keftiu names and names from the Manding languages appear to support Graves view that the Eteocretans, who early settled Crete may have spoken a language similar to the Mande people who live near the Niger. Conseqently, there is every possibility that the Linear A script used by the Keftiu, which is analogous to the Libyco Berber writing used by the Proto-Mande .This is further support to Cambell-Dunn' s hypothesis that the Minoans spoke a Niger-Congo language.