A Tale of Two Sphinxes: Proof that the Potaissa Sphinx is Authentic and Other Aegean Influences on Early Hungarian Inscriptions

Abstract

Vinereanu (2024) accepts the Hungarian language decipherment of a Greek lettered inscription found on the pedestal of a sphinx statue from the Roman Dacian town of Potaissa but argues that the sphinx is a 19th century forgery drawing by Count Kemény. This paper shows that the Potaissa sphinx is authentic because:

a. Several authors testified that they saw the Potaissa sphinx as a physical object themselves and that it was in the possession of Count Kemény before the 1848-1849 revolutionwhen the sphinx was stolen.

b. The forgery accusation is based on the misattribution of a piece of the Potaissa sphinx to another sphinx artifact by Jerney in 1848. When the misattribution is rectified, all of Jerney’s forgery arguments are defeated.

c. Previous scholarship falsely accused Count Kemény of forgery in other cases too.

Vinereanu also challenges the long-term continuity of the Hungarian language in the Black Sea area based on the belief that the first Hungarian language speakers arrived in the Carpathian Basin at the end of the 9th century. This paper supports linguistic continuity by:

a. Presenting seven other Hungarian language inscriptions from the Carpathian Basin from the 3rd to the 7th centuries written in the Carian alphabet.

b. Identifying a set of Pre-Greek and Hungarian cognate words with regular sound changes.

c. Showing that the regular sound changes apply between the Hungarians’ self-name and Ovid’s and Ptolemy’s references to Hungarian speaking groups near the Black Sea in the first centuries.