# RU-SA (Rusa)

> personal name; compare Egyptian rw-sȝ, one of the 'names of Crete' on BM EA 5647; rival Egyptian Rs 'he who is awake'

A Linear A word in the Linear A Lexicon. The reading is a proposal and carries its tier.

- Reading: Rusa
- Confidence: Speculative. A proposed reading on a word too rare to test. Most occur only once.
- Kind: Personal name
- Language: Aegean, Aegean substrate
- Signs: RU (ru) · SA (sa)

## Compared forms

- Egyptian: rw-sȝ, the seventh of the 'names of Crete' on the writing board BM EA 5647, r. I 7 (Dautais and Gabolde 2025, 14–15); rs '(he) who is awake', late 12th–18th Dynasty (PNM v6, personal_names_id 142607501; Ranke I, 226.18; II, 303.1)

## Attestations

- [HT 96a](<https://linear-a.ai/texts/HT96a/index.md>): RU-SA 4 — recipient; personal name

## Commentary

HT 96a .3 RU-SA 4, whole and undotted, after SI-MI-TA GRA 5 and before *323-*317 1, with no logogram of its own (GORILA I 157). Rusa: the writing board BM EA 5647 heads seven 'names of Crete' (jr.t rn.w n[y.w] kftjw), and the seventh, rw-sȝ (r. I 7), is ru-sa sign for sign (Dautais and Gabolde 2025, 9, 14–15, table 2). Rivals: Greek Lysis, Linear B ru-si, as the editors take rw-sȝ; a short Egyptian name, rw-zA (Louvre E 5608), as Schneider takes it (ibid., 14 nn. 87–88); Egyptian Rs '(he) who is awake' (Ranke I, 226.18; II, 303.1), 59 attestations, late 12th to 18th Dynasty (Ilin-Tomich 2025), which Vercoutter reads on the board, Rs (Ru-sa), 'vraisemblablement égyptien' (Vercoutter 1956, 45, 48). Linear B has ru-si at Knossos (KN Ak 634) and ru-si-qe on KN L 588.1, the tablet with di-du-me on .3, which the board's {d-j}-d-ȝ-d-ȝ-m and DU-DA-MA match (DMic II s.v. ru-si). Two signs; one attestation.

## In the onomasticon

- [RU-SA](<https://linear-a.ai/names/RU-SA/index.md>): Personal name, Aegean substrate

## References

- Reading: di Mino; GORILA I; Dautais and Gabolde 2025; Vercoutter 1956; Ranke; Ilin-Tomich 2025; DMic II
- EA: Moran, William L. (1992), The Amarna Letters. Johns Hopkins University Press
- DMic II: Aura Jorro, Francisco, Diccionario Micénico, vol. II (CSIC 1993). 
- Dautais, Louis; Gabolde, Marc (2025), “Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea” from Knossos to Memphis: Hellenized Cretans in Egypt in the Mid-Eighteenth Dynasty (BM EA 5647). Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections,47,7–28
- GORILA I: Godart, Louis; Olivier, Jean-Pierre (1976), Recueil des inscriptions en linéaire A, volume 1: Tablettes éditées avant 1970 (GORILA I). École française d'Athènes (Études crétoises XXI, 1); Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner, Paris
- Vercoutter, Jean (1956), L'Égypte et le monde égéen préhellénique: étude critique des sources égyptiennes (du début de la XVIIIe à la fin de la XIXe dynastie) (BdE 22). Institut français d'archéologie orientale, Le Caire
- PNM: Ilin-Tomich, Alexander (2025), Persons and Names of the Middle Kingdom (PNM), version 6. Zenodo (Freie Universität Berlin); CC BY 4.0

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Page: https://linear-a.ai/lexicon/RU-SA/
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.