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Jump to: navigation, search Archaic inscription [...]Ι ϜΑΝΑΚΤΙ
([...]i wanakti, "to the king") on ceramic fragment, here shown
upside down; a warrior bearing a spear and mounted on a horse is
also depicted.  Anax (ἄναξ, from earlier ϝάναξ, wánax/wánaks) is
an ancient Greek word for "(tribal) king, lord, (military)
leader".[1] It is one of the two Greek titles traditionally
translated as "king", the other being basileus. Anax is the more
archaic term of the two, inherited from the Mycenaean period,
and is notably used in Homeric Greek, e.g. of Agamemnon. The
feminine form is ἄνασσα, ánassa, "queen" (from wánakt-ja).   The
word anax derives from the stem wanakt- (nominative *ϝάνακτς,
genitive ϝάνακτος), and appears in the Mycenaean language,
written in Linear B script as wa-na-ka[2] (𐀷𐀩𐀏), and in the
feminine form as wa-na-sa,[3] (later ἄνασσα, ánassa). The
digamma ϝ was pronounced /w/ and was dropped very early on, even
before the adoption of the P