Return to my Language pages
Go to my home page
© Copyright 1998, Jim Loy
In 1900,
Sir Arthur Evans discovered some clay tablets at Knossos, on the island of
Crete. These tablets were inscribed in two unknown languages, which he called
Linear A and Linear B. He used the word linear, because the writing was made up
of lines. Linear A turned out to be older and rarer than Linear B. Eventually
Linear B tablets were found on the Greek mainland. The picture on the left is
rather indistinct. It is a clay tablet, as are all other Linear B texts.
Linear A has not been deciphered, as there are too few known tablets in existence. Linear A is related to Linear B. Linear B has been almost completely deciphered.
It was deduced that the writing was probably syllabic, based on the number of symbols. Thus each symbol represents a syllable (a consonant and a vowel, and maybe a final consonant). And a few place names led to clues about the pronunciation of some symbols.
In the 1950's, Michael Ventris decided to test a hypothesis that the language of Linear B was Greek, as some of the place names were nearly identical to their Greek names. He was surprised to find that the language was indeed an old Greek dialect. With the help of John Chadwick, he deciphered most of the language.
On the right is my drawing of four Linear B signs.
Virtually all tablets of these two languages were lists of things (going top to
bottom), with numbers at the right. They are much like shipping lists, or
census tallies. These tablets were not intentionally fired (hardened), and so
most probably crumbled to dust, and are gone forever. However, some where
accidentally fired, when building housing them burned to the ground. And so,
some were accidentally preserved for millenia.