DCML digest #1054

[Don Rosa]

From: "M.J. Prior" <M.J.Prior at let.rug.nl>
>>>>But maybe Gilles has copied this spelling from
Don Rosa's "Treasury of Croesus", in which "Syrse", "Kroesos" en
"Midos" are spelled the wrong way. There's another 'Greek' word on the wall
that
doesn't make any sense to me. It's a bit of a pity that Rosa, for all his
research, let slip this little mistake
into his story.

I've addressed this matter several times in the past, and I'll do so again.
There are two points, of which the second is the most important.
A) I obtained the ancient Greek spelling I used for Croesus in my story from
a photo in a book of an ancient vase depicting Croesus with his name written
on it. When I was accused of an error, it was 6-12 months after I'd finished
the story and far too late to find the research data or hunt down which of
the many, many reference books I'd used. Maybe the name was written on the
ancient vase by a Greek who couldn't spell well? Maybe the ancient Greeks
know better than we do today as to how they should spell their own words in
their own language? Maybe it was a Lydian vase? But, none of this matters
because:
2) I WAS WRITING (or pretending to write) LYDIAN, NOT GREEK! Remember the
early scene in the Duckburg museum where it is expressly stated that nobody
had ever been able to read that writing on the column barrels because it
WASN'T Greek! I worked on that story with the head of the Greek Antiquities
department at the University of Minnesota, who had been an old prof of mine
in college in Kentucky (in one of my history electives on the way to my
engineering degree). He and I previously created a comic strip in the sprit
of "Asterix" based on Trojan War times called "Phalanx"... back around
1971... but anyway...
The writing on the columns in my Temple of Artemis and on the mural in my
Treasury of Croesus, was in LYDIAN, not GREEK. Both of those structures were
built in Lydia by Lydians for Lydians. The Prof assured me that Lydian is a
totally LOST language. The only thing that is known of it is that it
employed the Greek alphabet, the same way that, say, Spanish is written in
the same letters/characters as Italian even though they are two different
languages with different spellings. The spellings the Prof gave me may well
have been his expert opinion on how he guessed the names might have been
spelled differently in Lydian, or perhaps he simply purposely changed them
slightly just so it would *not* be the same as Greek. It's been many years
since I was in touch with my old friend, so I can use this for an excuse and
give him a call and ask him (thanks for that!). But whatever the case, no
one can conclusively say those names are spelled wrong in my story since
they are not supposed to be written in Greek.
If there are any ancient Lydians on this ML, let's hear from you...