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Linear b
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{{dablink|This article is about the ancient syllabary. See
linear b (script engine) linear_b for information on the
ECMAScript engine.}}
Image:Linear_B.jpg thumb|200px|Linear B script sample
'''Linear B''' is a script that was used for writing
Mycenaean language Mycenaean, an early form of
Greek language Greek. It preceded the
Greek alphabet (which was an adaptation of the
Phoenician alphabet) by several centuries: it seems to have died out with the fall of
Mycenaean civilisation; the intervening period, in which there is no evidence of written language, is known as the
Greek dark ages Dark Ages.
Linear B occurs primarily on tablets dated from the
14th century BC 14th and
13th century BC 13th centuries BCE.
The script appears to be related to
Linear A, an undeciphered earlier script used for writing the
Eteocretan language Minoan language, and the later
Cypriot syllabary; derivation from another writing system is held to be the reason for its poor compliance with the
phonemic orthography phonemic principle. It is partly
syllabary syllabic, with additional
logographic signs that are "determinative", or "designational" (yielding "classes", and "types"). As such, it rather resembles modern
Japanese writing in graphemic structure.
The first
clay tablet at
Knossos was discovered by the
United Kingdom British archaeologist Arthur Evans on
March 31,
1900 and on
April 6 he discovered a significant hoard of tablets (measuring 5x10 inches).
The major cities and palaces of
Crete kept records for disbursements of goods. Wool, sheep, and grain were some common items, often given to groups of religious people and also to groups of "men watching the coastline". The tablets were kept in groups in baskets on shelves. When some of the palaces burned in large-scale fires precipitated by earthquakes or volcanic events (see
Knossos), the fires made "fired-clay tablets" of a portion of the tablets found. Impressions of the basket weaving have been left in the clay.
Decipherment
Michael Ventris and
John Chadwick deciphered Linear B between
1951–
1953. Before their work,
Alice Kober had studied Linear B and had managed to construct grids, linking symbols that seemed to have a strong grammatical relationship.
Kober noticed that a number of Linear B words had common roots and suffixes. This led her to believe that Linear B represented an inflected language, with nouns changing their endings depending on their case. However, some characters in the middle of the words seemed to correspond with neither a root nor a suffix. Because this effect was found in other, known languages, Kober surmised that the odd characters were bridging syllables, with the beginning of the syllable belonging to the root and the end belonging to the suffix. This was a reasonable assumption, since Linear B had far too many characters to be considered alphabetic and far too few characters to be
logogram logographic; therefore, each character should represent a syllable.
Using the knowledge that certain characters shared the same beginning or ending sounds, Kober built a table similar to the one below; she was unable, however, to link the characters to actual phonetics.
Based on her work, and after making some inspired assumptions, Ventris was able to figure out the pronunciation of the syllables. The deciphering of Linear B proved that it was a written form of Greek, to the amazement of Ventris himself, but also in direct contradiction to the general scientific views of the times. Chadwick, an expert in historical Greek, helped Ventris decipher the text and rebuild the vocabulary and grammar of ancient Cretan Greek.
Ventris' discovery was of immense significance, because he actually showed that a Greek-speaking Minoan-Mycenaean culture existed on Crete. The large majority of Linear B tablets were inventories and bureaucratic documents, with large tables of numbers and sums. This helped historians analyze the structure of ancient Minoan civilization.
Syllabic signs
{{History of the Greek language}}
Linear B has roughly 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs with phonetic values and logograms (or ideograms) with semantic values.
Linear B is assigned
Unicode [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10000.pdf Range 10000–1007F] for syllabic signs and [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10080.pdf 10080–100FF] for logograms.
{| border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
|
!''-a''
!''-e''
!''-i''
!''-o''
!''-u''
|-
|
|𐀀 ''a''
|𐀁 ''e''
|𐀂 ''i''
|𐀃 ''o''
|𐀄 ''u''
|-
!''d-''
|𐀅 ''da''
|𐀆 ''de''
|𐀇 ''di''
|𐀈 ''do''
|𐀉 ''du''
|-
!''j-''
|𐀊 ''ja''
|𐀋 ''je''
|
|𐀍 ''jo''
|𐀎 ''ju''
|-
!''k-''
|𐀏 ''ka''
|𐀐 ''ke''
|𐀑 ''ki''
|𐀒 ''ko''
|𐀓 ''ku''
|-
!''m-''
|𐀔 ''ma''
|𐀕 ''me''
|𐀖 ''mi''
|𐀗 ''mo''
|𐀘 ''mu''
|-
!''n-''
|𐀙 ''na''
|𐀚 ''ne''
|𐀛 ''ni''
|𐀜 ''no''
|𐀝 ''nu''
|-
!''p-''
|𐀞 ''pa''
|𐀟 ''pe''
|𐀠 ''pi''
|𐀡 ''po''
|𐀢 ''pu''
|-
!''q-''
|𐀣 ''qa''
|𐀤 ''qe''
|𐀥 ''qi''
|𐀦 ''qo''
|
|-
!''r-''
|𐀨 ''ra''
|𐀩 ''re''
|𐀪 ''ri''
|𐀫 ''ro''
|𐀬 ''ru''
|-
!''s-''
|𐀭 ''sa''
|𐀮 ''se''
|𐀯 ''si''
|𐀰 ''so''
|𐀱 ''su''
|-
!''t-''
|𐀲 ''ta''
|𐀳 ''te''
|𐀴 ''ti''
|𐀵 ''to''
|𐀶 ''tu''
|-
!''w-''
|𐀷 ''wa''
|𐀸 ''we''
|𐀹 ''wi''
|𐀺 ''wo''
|
|-
!''z-''
|𐀼 ''za''
|𐀽 ''ze''
|
|𐀿 ''zo''
|
|}
The names of these signs are only roughly phonetical, since most are used to represent a whole class of syllables each, ''see''
Mycenaean language. Note that "j" represents the semivowel equivalent to English "y", and is used as a glide (e.g. ''-a-jo'' for -αῖος), the "r" characters were used to write both the /r/ and /l/ phonemes, and the "q" series is used for indo-eurpoean /kʷ/, /gʷ/, /kʷʰ/ and /gʷʰ/.
There are some additional syllabic signs, the values of some of which are unknown, disputed, or infrequent. They are referred to either by a number, or by some hypothetical phonetic approximation, for example ''64'', ''a
2'',
''a
3'', ''au'', ''nwa'', ''pu
2'', etc.
The writing system is apparently an offshoot of
Linear A, which, having been apparently designed to write the Minoan language, did not fit the sounds of Greek too well. The Myceneans who used the syllabary had to work around this, until several hundred years later, when the first
Greek alphabet was developed.
Logograms
Due to the nature of the texts preserved, logographic representations of items counted are very frequent.
Not all of their values are known, and their pronunciation is, at best, the object of educated guessing. The logograms represent concepts such as ''MAN'', ''WOMAN'', ''COW'', ''BULL'', ''OIL'', ''WINE'', ''CLOTH'', ''GOLD'', ''BRONZE'' etc. There are several dozen signs representing various kinds of pots and vessels. (Example: ''tripod'', for ''ti-ri-po-de'', followed by the logogram for "3-footed pot".)
See also
*
Aegean civilization
*
Linear A
*
Linear C
Further reading
* {{cite book | author=
John Chadwick Chadwick, John | title=The Decipherment of Linear B | publisher=Second edition (1990).
Cambridge University Press Cambridge UP | year=1958 | id=ISBN 0521398304}}
* {{cite book | author=
John Chadwick Chadwick, John | title=Linear B and Related Scripts; "Reading the Past" | publisher=Third impression (1997).
University of California Press/
British Museum | year=1987 | id=ISBN 0520060199}} has the
Enkomi clay tablet, circa 1500 BCE., examples of Linear B tablets, and translated, the basic Linear B '''''syllabary''''', the Cypriot ''syllabary'' and discussions thereof, and short sections on
Linear A, and the
Phaistos Disk.
* {{cite book | author=
John Chadwick Chadwick, John | title=The Mycenaean World | publisher=
Cambridge University Press Cambridge UP | year=1976 | id=ISBN 0521290376}}
* {{cite book | author=
Andrew Robinson (author) Robinson, Andrew | title=The Story of Writing | publisher=Paperback edition (1999).
Thames and Hudson | year=1995 | id=ISBN 0500281564}} Chapter 6, Linear B, pp 108-119: discusses Arthur Evans, his work, the Cypriot clues, the '''''syllabary,''''' Alice Kober, the "Grid", and a sample tablet ''transliterated, and translated into English.''
* {{cite book | author=
Michael Ventris Ventris, Michael and Chadwick, John| title=Documents in Mycenaean Greek | publisher=Second edition (1974).
Cambridge University Press Cambridge UP | year=1956 | id= ISBN 0521085586}}
* {{cite book | author=
Simon Singh Singh, Simon|publisher=Anchor|title=The Code Book | year=2000 | id= ISBN 0385495323}} for a general outline of the Linear B deciphering story, from Schliemman to Chadwick.
* {{cite book | author=
Michael Ventris Ventris, Michael | title=Work notes on Minoan language research and other unedited papers | publisher=Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1988 Roma | year=1988}}
External links
*
Open Directory Project: [http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Graphemics_and_Orthography/Linear_B/ Linear B]
*Greek-Language.com: [http://greek-language.com/historyofgreek/linear_b.html The Linear B Syllabary]
*
Dartmouth College Dartmouth: [http://projectsx.dartmouth.edu/classics/history/bronze_age/index.html The Prehistoric Archaeology of the Aegean], [http://projectsx.dartmouth.edu/history/bronze_age/lessons/les/25.html The Linear B Tablets and Mycenaean Organization]
*
University of Texas at Austin UT-Austin: [http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/ Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (PASP)]
-
AncientScripts.com: Linear B
-
Linear B at Omniglot
*
Unicode code pages for the Linear B [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10000.pdf syllabary] and [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10080.pdf logograms], including sample glyphs.
Category:Hellenic scripts
Category:Syllabary writing systems
Category:Bronze Age writing systems
Category:Aegean civilization
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Linear B
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