3. 23v48 All of which goes to show, I think, that _, _ and _ , what- ever their correct vocalization, may cover a wide variety of grammatical functions, and yet need not in any given instance be flexional forms at all. Other consonants that come into the running for _ are, it seems to me, n- or _-. Tentatively, I'd interpret the -_ -_-_ -_-_ series as -t. -tiia -ti_. But I'm not certain whether we should as- sume that a final consonant was written with an -e vowel , as in Cypriot, or with an -o ( as _ might indicate if it equals XXXX -1.) But it's probably dangerous to argue from Etruscan analogies here, because it's likely that a lot of actually-pro- nounced final and interconsonantal vowels have been eliminated in time by a strong stress accent. The reduplication of some final letters is interesting, especially _-_ : I wonder whether it really represents a double sound, and might not rather be a way of indicating some peculia- rity of pronunciation (? nasalisation - compare Cypriot's ina- bility to write n before a consonant). I feel that one of the common Minoan name-endings should represent an -athos /-anthos variation, possibly tacked on rather loosely, but I can't suggest which one it should be. The reduplication of _-_ seems to be an argument against it being a pure vowel. On the other hand the sign _ seems well suited to it. Incidentally, Sir John lent me Hrozny's articles, and I see that he also reads _ as ma , with the meaning "and" (as I hinted very unsurely in my last letter) but in the suffixed position and not in the initial, which he regards as a determinative. But the rest of his stuff is so off the beam that his unexpected agreement turns me against the idea. If _-_-_ and _-_ have an adverbial or conjuctive use (Hrozny reads mapa "further, also" for the latter) they could equally well be ita- and ipa for Etruscan words of analogous function. _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ look to me like real case-endings. If _ is si , then the group could be (a) the genitive or dative of 2 singular or plural nouns, (b) a noun and an adjective. Here the meaning "and" for _- might be arguable, though if _ is a vowel, and the second word a plural adjective (cf Etruscan: clenara_i nacnvaia_i "of or to his dear sons") , some form of the Etruscan pronoun e_t- might be more the sort of thing: i _. te ia _i ?? Of course _, might still mean "and" without necessarily having to equal ma. I see that Pugliese-Caratelli refers in his biblio- graphy to Bertoldi's surmise of the existence of a "mediterranean" plural in -ar(a), which I'd guessed myself to exist in the word _kapa , and possibly in others of the same series: _ _ _apa etc. Perhaps this plural ending is to be considered more applicable to things occurring in pairs,sets or groups than the possible plural ending -ia. The name for Crete (I suppose it is Crete now, and not Arzawa) may be a case of a plural word varying between both endings, Kaftar(a) giving rise to the Semitic forms, Kaft(a)ia to the Egyptian.