Stela of Demokleides 330 BCE

From: 2024 National Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum

https://www.nationalgallery.gr/en/art-topics/the-stele-of-demokleides-and-nikerioros-lytrass-the-dirge-of-psara/

Background

(November 29, 2024) The stela was discovered in 1881 in the Athenian port city of Piraeus. It was not a part of a modern archaeological excavation so its date is based on art and letter styles. The text style is standard Hellenistic Greek.

This is a melancholy image on a funerary stele, possibly only partly completed. The image a warrior coming back from battle sitting on the bow of a trireme. His shield and helmet are behind him. He seems to be contemplating the source of the war which from the text appears to be a drought. For some reason the fertility fluids flowing through the life network are not getting through to trigger life form manifestations from Yahu/Yahweh.

The text is Druid Akkadian which by then was the Latin of the ancient world being an old text used mainly for religiously themed and governmental texts. The text reads:

Pressure the pusher (Hu). Constraints are making ineffective the life-channels of the Reed-Mat (life network).
Pressure the fertility-fluids of Hu to change Yahu/Yahweh.

Photo from Getty Images. Letter assignments by Olmsted. https://www.gettyimages.de/detail/nachrichtenfoto/funerary-stele-of-demokleides-hoplite-killed-in-the-nachrichtenfoto/142930447

Translation

(November 29, 2024)

Translation of Lines 1 and 2 in Akkadian (Med Text 68)

(read left to right. Capital letters on object. Small letters are inferred Inner vowels. Verbs are italic bold. Dual use letters are E/H, I/Y, U/W, and '/A in which vowel appears at beginning of words except for Yahu which is keeping its traditional Hebrew transliteration
Letter Chart: Sea People's Letter Chart

DaḪu Ma'u. KaLu E IDu ḪiṢu : (Med 68.1)
DaḪu Mu Ḫu TaRu Ya'u (Med 68.2)

In English

Pressure the pusher (Hu). Constraints are making ineffective the life-channels of the Reed-mat (life network).
Pressure the fertility-fluids of Hu to change Yahu/Yahweh.

Previously Attempted Greek "Translation"

The traditional translation is:

Demokleides,
son of Demetrios.

Problems

Names are not translations in themselves because they can cluster almost any set of arbitrary letters.
The word "son" (Greek huios) does not appear between the names

The assumption that the text is Greek changes the letter ayin /'/ to an /o/. The Akkadian letter het (Ḫ) is assumed to be a part of the dual-use letter he (H or E) despite that letter also being written as an E in the text.