# KI-RE-TA₂ (Kirēta / Kret) > Kret (eponym of Crete) A Linear A word in the Linear A Lexicon. The reading is a proposal and carries its tier. - Reading: Kirēta / Kret - Confidence: Probable. Fits the word’s contexts and has a close external comparison, without an independent control. - Root: [\*karVt-]() 'to cut, cut off; make a covenant' - Kind: Personal name - Language: Semitic - Signs: KI (ki) · RE (re) · TA₂ (ta₂) - Rank: #28 of the top 100 ## Compared forms - Ugaritic: krt Kirta, king of bt ḫbr and hero of KTU 1.14–1.16; krt ṯʿ 'Kirta the Hero' (KTU 1.15 II 8; DULAT 453) - Hebrew: כָּרַת *kārat* — kārat (כָּרַת) 'to cut', wəhikrattî ʾet-kərētîm 'and I will cut off the Kerethites' (Ezek 25:16); negeb hakkərētî 'the Negeb of the Kerethite' (1 Sam 30:14) - Akkadian: *karātu* — karātu 'to cut off' (CAD K 215); Ki-ir-ta, a king of Mitanni and a man of Alalakh (Niedorf 2008, 489) - Linear B: ke-re-te-u Krētheus, a man's name (PY Ea 59; Ventris and Chadwick 1956, 420), set beside krt by DULAT 453 ## Attestations - [HT 129](): KI-RE-TA₂ GRA 33 𐝆𐝁 — Kret (name or eponym), recipient heading - [HT 85b](): KI-RE-TA₂ 1 — Crete or Cretan ## Commentary HT 85b and HT 129 (GORILA): Kret, the eponym of Crete, as in the Ugaritic Epic of Kret (KTU 1.14–16). The word uses TA₂ (AB 66), where the gentilic KI-RE-TA-NA has plain TA (AB 59); RE alternates with RI in KI-RI-TA₂. √k-r-t 'to cut, make a covenant' has plain PS *t in every branch: Akk. karātu, Ug. krt with t, which Ugaritic keeps apart from ṯ, and Heb. כָּרַת with taw, where PS *ṯ would give š. TA₂ then marks either a Cretan pronunciation of the island's own name, interdental, aspirated or palatal, which foreign scribes fitted to plain t, or a substrate place name with a non-dental stop, later heard as √k-r-t. Ug. krt is /kirta/, the protagonist Kirta, and lkrt /li-kirta/ 'belonging to the story of Kirta'; Huehnergard rejects the vocalization 'keret' as non-Ugaritic, and BH kərētī 'Kerethite' differs in its vowels (Huehnergard 2012, 60, 68). Kret here is the consonantal name krt; Linear A Kirēta shares the i of /kirta/. Ki-ir-ta is a Bronze Age name: Kirta, an early king of Mitanni, on his son's seal (Šu-ut-tar-na DUMU Ki-ir-ta LUGAL Ma-i-ta-ni), and Kirta son of Belata at Alalakh (Niedorf 2008, 489; ATmB 31.1–2, 353.3). ## Same root - [KI-RE-TA-NA]() (Kretan) - [KI-RI-TA₂]() (Kirīta) ## In the onomasticon - [KI-RE-TA₂](): Personal name, Semitic ## References - Reading: Gordon 1966; Niedorf 2008; DULAT; Ventris and Chadwick 1956 - KTU: Dietrich, Manfried; Loretz, Oswald; Sanmartín, Joaquín (2013), Die keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani und anderen Orten / The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places (KTU³). Ugarit-Verlag, Münster (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 360/1); ISBN 978-3-86835-014-2 - Gordon, Cyrus H. (1966), Evidence for the Minoan Language. Ventnor Publishers,68 - Huehnergard, John (2012), An Introduction to Ugaritic. Hendrickson - Ventris, M. & Chadwick, J. (1956), Documents in Mycenaean Greek: Three Hundred Selected Tablets from Knossos, Pylos and Mycenae with Commentary and Vocabulary. Cambridge University Press - CAD K: Oriental Institute (A. Leo Oppenheim and Erica Reiner, eds.) (1971), The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, vol. 8, K. The Oriental Institute, Chicago; J. J. Augustin, Glückstadt - DULAT: del Olmo Lete, Gregorio; Sanmartín, Joaquín (2015), A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition. Brill, Leiden/Boston (Handbook of Oriental Studies 1/112); Third Revised Edition, tr. and ed. Wilfred G.E. Watson; 2 parts - Niedorf, Christian (2008), Die mittelbabylonischen Rechtsurkunden aus Alalaḫ (Schicht IV). Ugarit-Verlag, Münster (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 352) --- Page: https://linear-a.ai/lexicon/KI-RE-TA~E2~82~82/ Licence: CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Cite as: di Mino, Tom. 2026. Linear A Lexicon. Plasma AI. https://linear-a.ai/. Data: kaphtor, commit add28e94.