25 September 2022

Linear B and Cypro-Minoan

The font Aegean is required to correctly display all used symbols.


This section is about two major writing systems of the second half of the 2nd millennium BC deriving from the Cretan Linear A syllabary. I do not believe the Linear B script is any different from Linear A or that it records a different language. In my opinion, it is a later stage of the continuous gradual evolution of the Cretan writing system from its first attested appearance as the Archanes script through hieroglyphics and Linear A (see section Cretan scripts). The reasons to dedicate a separate section are that Linear B, also known as the Mycenaean script, spread beyond Crete to mainland Greece and is the only linear Bronze Age script deciphered. It is now universally accepted to be the oldest attested form of Greek, although it predates the Greek alphabet by about 4 centuries, during which period no written Greek document exists. The oldest Cretan Linear B specimen was found in Knossos and dates to the second half of the 15th century BC. The oldest Mycenaean writing from mainland Greece (Fig. 1) was found by Professors Cynthia Shelmerdine and Michael Cosmopoulos at Iklaina, near Pylos, Peloponnese, and dates to about 1450 - 1350 BC (Anonymous 2011; Green 2011; Than 2011). Linear B was used in Crete (Knossos, Cydonia, Chania, Armeni, Malia, and elsewhere) and in many mainland sites (Pylos, Mycenae, Argos, Thebes, Laconia, and as far north as Volos) until 1200 BC (Freo 2020; Salgarella and Castellan 2021; Claus 2022).

Figure 1. The Iklaina tablet with Linear B inscription. From theumslcurrenttemporary.

The most important site of Linear B production remains Knossos, Crete, with more than 5500 specimens, including 4158 tablets and other documents. Many of them were unearthed by the discoverer of Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans, who coined the terms Linear A and B based mainly on differences in the aesthetics and organization of the signs in lines than the sign themselves (Clodd 1900; Evans 1909). The second largest collection comprising about 1100 documents, comes from Pylos. An important Mycenean site recently discovered in Laconia (Karadimas 2016) yielded more than 210 pieces, including 115 tablets. The corpus now consists of more than 6000 inscriptions.

Linear B shares about 80 signs with the older Cretan script, Linear A. Some of these signs are even found among even older Cretan hieroglyphs. Based on the research of American classicist Alice Kober, the English architect and self-taught linguist Michael Ventris attributed open syllabic phonetics to a core of 59 of those common Linear A and B signs. Open are syllables consisting of a vowel or a consonant and a vowel (Fig. 2). A smaller additional set of signs were also given syllabic values but less ‘certain’ (Fig. 3). Thus, about 87 signs have provisional or established syllabic values,. Still, each script has over 100 additional ideograms without phonetic value. When these syllabic values are applied to Linear B inscriptions, the texts sound Greek, but the same values applied to Linear A inscriptions make no sense (Ventris 1952). The decipherment was published in the form of an exhaustive lexicon, together with grammatical, spelling, and phonetic rules, about 20 years later (Ventris and Chadwick 1973).

Figure 2. The syllabograms of Linear B from Olivier (1986).



Figure 3. Some ideograms or logograms of Linear B from Olivier (1986).

In the meantime, Ventris remained skeptical about the accuracy of his decipherment. His syllables required drastic phonetic rules to fit Greek. Moreover, there were still anomalies like the use of ko-wo and ko-wa, instead of ko-ro (Attic κόρος; koros) and ko-ra (κόρα; kora), for boy and girl, or the use of sign *78 (qe) for the enclitic conjunction te (τε; and) instead of the syllabogram *04, te (Freo 2020). Compare, however, Latin quĕ (and) and Homeric Greek καί (kai; /ke/; and). Ventris had good reasons to doubt. Was Linear B Pre-Greek or Pre-Latin? Is Pre-Latin different from Pre-Greek, or is Latin different from Greek, concerning single model words? With little exaggeration for pedagogical purposes, claiming ‘Linear B is Greek’ is like claiming that ‘PIE is English’.

There is, nevertheless, more reason for skepticism. A current version of the Linear B lexicon has 2747 entries. If we remove duplicate lemmas (transcription) and definitions, we are left with 1723 primary entries. Some 41% of these remaining transcriptions are explained as anthroponyms, 13% as toponyms, and 8% as theonyms or unspecified object names (total proper or unspecified names about 62%). The trouble with proper names is that they are unfalsifiable, therefore, anti-scientific hypotheses. It is too easy to give the syllabic values ma-no-li-se-pa-na-ki to a series of seven signs on an ancient Chinese oracle bone and claim that I have deciphered old Chinese or that the oracle states my name. Nobody would trust me!

Moreover, about 6% of the Linear B lexicon entries are explicitly stated to be obscure or uncertain, 24% of the definitions have a question mark, and 8% are cautiously stated with the words probably, possibly, or perhaps. Therefore, the authors doubt their interpretation more than 1:3 of the time. When we remove proper names and doubtful explanations, we are left with 504 (18%; i.e., less than 1:5 words) confident linguistic propositions to validate. One of them has been independently validated impressively and convincingly.

Carl Blegen, an archaeologist responsible for the excavation of the Palace of Pylos, communicated to Ventris and Chadwick that he applied the phonetic values they proposed to some hitherto unpublished tablets he read, in front of an unequivocal drawing of a vase with three feet, the word ti-ri-po-de, i.e., Greek τρίπους (tripous) or τριπόδιος (tripodios), Latin trĭpūs, trĭpēs, trĭpŏdes (plural), all meaning tripod, three-footed. This was taken by Philhellenes and Greeks alike as the ultimate proof that Linear B is Greek. But other nationalists could claim that ti-ri-po-de is Pre-Latin, Pre-English (tripod), Pre-Hungarian (tripod), Pre-Finnish (tripodi), Pre-Turkish (tripod), Pre-Sanskrit (tripāda), Pre-Urdu (tipāī), or proper Pre-Spanish (tripode).

Ideograms have no phonetic value and are never used as words in a sentence. Instead, logograms are signs that represent words or morphemes in a particular language, lending their phonetic value independently of what they graphically represent. They can thus be used in rebus. For example, an arrow is an ideogram understood by everybody without a phonetic value. The sign 2 is an ideogram meaning two and can be understood in every language using the so-called Hindu-Arabic numerals, regardless of the analog of two in each language. But, in English, 2 may be used as a logogram replacing the preposition to. Olivier insists that Linear B pictograms are wrongly called ideograms; they are rather logograms (Olivier 1986). Reading, he rightly says, is not necessarily understanding. Before claiming that we can read and understand an ancient pictographic language, we must agree on how its symbols were used. Suppose a Linear B icon representing a sheep is an ideogram. In that case, it can only be read and understood as sheep, independently of how a sheep was called in Mycenaean and Cretan languages. If it is a logogram, we need to know its phonetic value, i.e., the word it stands for and its homophones in Mycenaean or Cretan languages. Otherwise, we cannot tell what a sheep logogram could read and mean.

A third possibility seems equally plausible. A sheep pictogram (󰀴; OVIS; Olivier1986, p. 381, Fig. 4) is neither an ideogram nor a logogram. It may be just a pictogram for an array of objects that a sheep evokes for which there were no words and cannot be drawn with sufficient clarity. Apart from a sheep, a sheep-icon may read as wool, milk, meat, or whatever the animal affords. Besides, the Latin ovis means both sheep and wool. The currently accepted decipherment of Linear B, full of anthroponyms, toponyms, and numerals, creates the impression that this script was developed for administrative purposes (Ventris and Chadwick 1973). What a script says, however, depends on the reader's assumptions and mindset. If we live in a world of Kafkaesque bureaucracy, we may assume that societies were always driven by bureaucracy and the first written documents we cadastres for taxation. Taxes are suitable for building public services or feeding the chief’s family. Because public roads, schools, hospitals, and social security were unlikely to have existed in the Bronze Age, we must assume that taxes were collected by the palace and the temples. In a religious setting, the first text would be prayers. In a gastronomical world, literacy would have started with recipes and menus. At school, everything is exercise. In the commercial world, where most of us have undoubtedly been living in history, most texts are about the qualities and prices of goods.


Figure 4. An Athenian red-figure kylix from Vulci, Italy, with Hera wearing a heavy coat, dated circa 470 BC. Artwork by Sabouroff painter and BibiSaint-Pol marked as public domain.


To take Olivier’s example (Olivier1986, p. 379), the Linear B phrase e-ko-to-pa-i-to-[OVIS]-100 is split into four parts: e-ko-to, pa-i-to, [OVIS], and 100. Olivier identifies e-ko-to as Hector and pa-i-to as Phaistos. He, therefore, translates: ‘Hector, [at] Phaistos, [has a flock of] 100 sheep’. Assuming the phrase Greek, e-ko-to exists as ἑκοτόν, an archaic form for ἑκατόν (ekaton), meaning a hundred. The coincidence of a numeral and a spelled-out version of a hundred in the same phrase may suggest a school exercise. The sequence pai may mean how, where (πᾷ), or this, that (παι). The sign OVIS may have had an unknown phonetic value or could be used to denote some monetary unit. The sequence pa-i-to – always translated as Phaistos – is reminiscent of the Greek patos (πάτος), a robe worn by Hera (Fig. 4), or palto, a widespread term for a type of garment thought to derive from French paletot – but, perhaps, paletot derives from pa-i-to along with its many Pontic-Caspian cognates – an overcoat (Table 1). If pa-i-to meant pa-l-to, then ekoto may have meant coton (cotton) or couture, and ekoto-OVIS, cottonwool. It is also possible that ekoto relates to Greek χιτών (chitōn), Doric κιτών (kitōn), and English coat, meaning garment, tunic, vesture, as well as to Coptic koutōn (ⲕⲟⲩⲧⲱⲛ), Arabic quṭun, Dutch katoen, Indonesian katun, Italian cotone, Maltese qoton, Sicilian cuttuni, Tagalog koton, Tamil koṭṭai, Welsh cotwm, French and Middle English coton, all cognates of Modern English cotton. The phrase would, then, translate as cottonwool (e-ko-to-OVIS) overcoat (pa-i-to), sewed (e-ko-to) wool (OVIS) overcoat (pa-i-to), or wool (OVIS) overcoat (e-ko-to pa-i-to), [price] 100. But this would not be specifically Greek.

 

Table 1. Postulated cognates of Linear B pa-(l)i-to (palto) and e-ko-to (coat, cotton).

The pa-(l)i-to pattern

The e-ko-to pattern

Albanian

pallto

Bengali

কোট (koṭ)

Alutiiq

paltuuk

Burmese

ကုတ် (kut)

Armenian

պալտո (palto)

Cornish

kota

Azerbaijani

palto

Hindi

कोट (koṭ)

Belarusian

паліто́ (palitó), пальто́ (palʹtó)

Korean

코트 (koteu)

Bulgarian

палто́  (paltó)

Macedonian

капут (kaput)

Mandarin

外套 (wàitào)

Malay

kot

French

paletot

Manx

cooat

Georgian

პალტო (ṗalṭo)

Māori

koti

Greek

παλτό (paltó)

Persian

کت‎ (kot)

Japanese

がいとう(gaitō)

Scottish Gaelic

còta

Kazakh

пальто (palto)

Serbo-Croatian

kàpūt

Kyrgyz

пальто (palʹto)

Slovak

kabát

Lithuanian

paltas

Swahili

koti

Mongolian

пальто (palĭto)

Taos

kùti’ína

Persian

پالتو‎ (pâlto)

Urdu

کوٹ‎ (koṭ)

Russian

пальто́  (palʹtó)

Welsh

cotcôt

Tajik

палто (palto)

 

 

Turkish

palto

 

 

Turkmen

palto

 

 

Ukrainian

пальто́  (palʹtó)

 

 

Uyghur

پەلتو‎ (pelto)

 

 

Uzbek

palʼto, palto

 

 

 

This is to say, there is no more certainty in Linear B being Greek and e-ko-to pa-i-to OVIS 100 meaning ‘Hector, at Phaistos, [has a flock of] 100 sheep’ than in Linear B being an archaic Indo-European language (Greek substrate?) and the phrase meaning ‘woolen coat [€] 100’. I have argued that Cretan hieroglyphics, preceding Linear B by several centuries, record a similar language with terms from the clothing industry (see section Cretan scripts).

Once the Mycenaean palaces were destroyed, by 1200 BC, Linear B disappeared. The following period of about four centuries, known as the Greek Dark Age, shows no evidence of literacy in the Greek mainland and the Aegean. The evolution of writing continues, however, in Cyprus with what appears to be another derivative of Linear A. From the 16 – 15th century BC, while Linear A was at its apogee in Crete, the Cypro-Minoan script – or set of scripts – appeared with a long tablet text from Enkomi, Cyprus, and continued to be used until the mid-10th century BC when it suddenly disappears. The term Cypro-Minoan was also coined by Evans to propound its similarity with the Minoan scripts of Crete.

Based on her husband’s Olivier earlier works, the Yugoslavian linguist and epigrapher Emilia Masson (born Jovanovic-Slavinski) published a systematic study of Cypro-Minoan inscriptions identifying three related but distinct scrips (Donnelly 2020). Fig. 5 shows Mason’s classification of the signs. Cypro-Minoan 2 (CM2; Fig. 6) refers to three long tablet inscriptions and a shorter cylinder inscription from Enkomi, Cyprus. CM3 refers to four Cypro-Minoan inscriptions from Ugarit today in northern Syria. CM1, also known as Linear C, refers to all the other Cypro-Minoan inscriptions from Cyprus (Masson 1974). The number of distinct syllabograms in each version and the nature of the difference, i.e., diachronic evolution of the same script or coexistence of multiple scripts and languages, is still under debate (Palaima 1989; Ferrara 2012; Steele 2013; 2014; Valério 2016; Olivier, n.d.). Olivier added the fourth category, CM0, referring to the oldest tablet from Enkomi (Fig. 7), which appears to be distinct from all the others (Olivier 2007; Duhoux 2010; Morpurgo-Davies and Olivier 2012a).


Figure 5. Comparison of syllabograms among various Cypro-Minoan script versions. From Masson (1974; Fig. 2-4).



Figure 6. The CM2 version of Cypro-Minoan script on one of the three known tablets from Enkomi, Cyprus, dated to the 16-15th century BC.

At first glance, Cypro-Minoan inscriptions resemble cuneiform writing. The reason is the use of a cuneiform stylus. A characteristic of this type of writing implement is its difficulty drawing curves. The text looks like a seven-segment display (Fig. 8). We, therefore, expect letters like O to be rectangular or curvy parts represented by loose straight strokes. This is the reason, for example, why sign Masson-CM1 002 (󱀘, 󱀙) has been proposed to be equivalent to represent a ф (Everson 2020). Today everybody agrees the Cypro-Minoan glyphs have nothing to do with the classical cuneiform characters of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, or the Middle East. They are related to Minoan and Mycenaean scripts (Linear A and B), hence Cypro-Minoan.



Figure 7
. Facsimile of the oldest Cypro-Minoan tablet Nr. 1885 from Enkomi (Duhoux 2010).



Figure 8. Facsimile of one of the CM2 tablets from Enkomi, Cyprus, compared to modern seven-segments displays of Latin script.

Olivier presented a table of 32 signs shared among all three primary variants of the Cypro-Minoan script, CM1, CM2, and CM3. Comparing those common signs to Cretan hieroglyphics and Linear A, I found 26 matches, most perfect or almost (Fig. 9).



Figure 9. Cypro-Minoan signs shared among the CM1, CM2, and CM3 versions of the Cypro-Minoan script (from Olivier, 2007) with matching Cretan hieroglyphics (framed in orange) or Linear A symbols in the margins.

In addition to this remarkable overall resemblance between Cypriot and Cretan Minoan scripts, there are pairs of signs not shown in Fig. 9 that are too complex to have been reinvented independently by chance. Compare, for example, 𐀨 and 󱃡, 󰖺 and 󱃢, 󰟚 and 󱀣, 󱀺 and 󰙥, 󲇪 and 󱃚, 󰚘 and 󱂎, 󰖛 and 󱂾, 󰖝 and 󱃜, 󰖟 and 󱃝, 󲅶 and 󱃘, or 󰖨 and 󱁼 (Valério, 2016, page 184, Table 3.15 sign CM0 06). Therefore, we can confidently say that Cypro-Minoan is not similar to Linear A; it is Linear A, at least at its early stages, with some later adaptation, innovation, and admixture with other linear systems such as the Balkan and Armenian.

All versions of Cypro-Minoan remain undeciphered but are thought to be syllabaries because the number of signs varies between 50 and 110. According to a recent study, there are between  57  and  70  different syllabograms, depending on the validity of several proposed allographs (Valério 2016). We have only about 200 documents with a total length of 3500 glyphs from the 2nd millennium in Cyprus, compared to 1500 documents (8000 characters) of Linear A and 6000 documents (70000 characters) of Linear B from the same period in Crete (Morpurgo-Davies and Olivier 2012b). Despite the relatively small number of documents found so far, scholars argue that we have found all or nearly all of their signs (Steele 2014). The number of core signs shared by all Cypro-Minoan script versions (32; Fig. 9) is comparable to the number of core signs shared among Cretan hieroglyphics, Linear A and B (29; see section Cretan scripts, Fig. 23). It suggests that Cretan and Cypriot syllabaries evolved around a core of about 30 signs, a number typical of an alphabet. Moreover, the Cretan and Cypriot core sign set broadly overlap, suggesting that all those syllabaries, and the underlying languages, are closely related.

Since I mentioned Ugarit, I should also point out that Ugarit had its own alphabet of 30 cuneiform consonants (abjad) from around 1400 – 1300 BC to 1190 BC when it was destroyed (Bordreuil and Pardee 2004; Pardee 2008). The idea of an alphabet was not Phoenician. Ugarit lies at a strategic coastal position just opposite Cyprus. Traders from Enkomi could take the protected coast of the Karpas Peninsula and had only 105 km to navigate in the open sea before reaching Ugarit. Evidently, Bronze Age Cypriots had a commercial exchange with Ugarit because we found Cypro-Minoan tablets in Ugarit and because the Cypriot writing looks like cuneiform. They, therefore, must have been aware of the Ugaritic alphabet and, perhaps, liked the idea. Unfortunately, that alphabet disappeared with the city's destruction in the early 12th century BC. But, in Late Bronze Age Cyprus, we have the idea of an alphabet and a set of Linear A signs, perhaps also some Balkan and Armenian ones.

Phonocentric theory associates sign and script variation with synchronic dialectal variation and diachronic evolution. Scholars talk about variant signs and scripts representing dialects, some say languages, coexisting within the same geographical region, sometimes within the same settlement. It means that from one historical moment and village district to the following, whole sets of characters may change, be dropped, or be added. Such dramatic changes reflect analogous phonetic variation and evolution, usually explained in terms of population movements or trade dynamics.

Modern linguistic history provides some examples. In modern-day Greece, Thessaloniki has been the home of Turks, Jews, and Greeks at roughly equal proportions speaking three distinct languages during Ottoman rule. Today, we are not surprised to find linguistic vestiges of that cosmopolitan past in the city. Thessaloniki was 'purified' in less than a century from one historical moment to the next. Firstly, the Turks were forced by treaty to leave, while Greeks from Asia Minor speaking distinct dialects were massively forced in. Then the Jews were exterminated during WWII. Only the Greek script survives. This is the prevalent paradigm of social and cultural rearrangement in the minds of historical linguists. Such rearrangements are indeed accompanied by phonetic change.

There are, however, counter-examples. Turkish changed its script from Ottoman Arabic to Latin-based by decree overnight without impact on its phonetics. Serbian, a standardized variety of Serbo-Croatian, uses two equivalent and interchangeable official alphabets, a Cyrillic introduced in 1815 and a Latin-based, in the 1830s (Magner 2001). Literate Serbs are trained in both scripts and decide which one to use for their purpose. Both alphabets are phonemic, i.e., each letter corresponds to a phoneme. This is a paradigm whereby a phonetically acquired language can be transcribed using arbitrarily chosen phonemic symbols. Such phonemic symbols do not carry meaning other than their phonetic value. But hieroglyphs and their direct linear derivatives had semantic values and could be juxtaposed to create composite signifiers (words).

Of course, such digraphia is an exception rather than a rule. For obvious reasons, modern societies are reluctant to accept chaotic variation and brutal change. Scripts usually evolve much slower, introducing a few minor reforms per century. In the Bronze Age, however, writing was more like a private business than a public institution. The scribes themselves, not the ministers of education, were those who decided how to write. They would use different terms and symbols for cloth washing than for bread baking, house building, or criminal punishment. This arbitrariness could explain at least some of the variation in early scripts. In other words, we use different 'languages' or 'dialects' for law, cooking, science and technology, economy, poetry, or religion. When glyphs had meaning, the script's differences could represent different linguistic applications.

 

 

References

Anonymous. 2011. “Professor Shelmerdine’s Exciting Mycenaean Find.” University of Texas. June 2, 2011.

Bordreuil, Pierre, and Dennis Pardee. 2004. Manuel d’Ougaritique: Grammaire Et Fac-Similes. Vol. 2. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner.

Claus, Patricia. 2022. “Minoan Language Linear A Linked to Linear B in Groundbreaking New Research.” Greek Reporter. April 20, 2022.

Clodd, Edward. 1900. The Story of the Alphabet. London: George Newnes Ltd.

Donnelly, Cassandra M. 2020. “Signs, Marks, and Olivier Masson.” Cahiers Du Centre d’Études Chypriotes 50 (December): 91–107.

Duhoux, Yves. 2010. “The Cypro-Minoan Tablet No. 1885 (Enkomi): An Analysis.” Kadmos 48 (1–2).

Evans, Arthur John. 1909. Scripta Minoa: The Written Documents of Minoan Crete, with Special Reference to the Archives of Knossos. Vol. 1. Crete: Clarendon Press.

Everson, Michael. 2020. “Final Proposal to Encode the Cypro-Minoan Script in the SMP of the UCS.” N5135. International Organization for Standardization.

Ferrara, Silvia. 2012. Cypro-Minoan Inscriptions. Analysis. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Freo, Maurizio del. 2020. “Linear B - 14th - 13th Century BC.” Mnamon Ancient Writing Systems in the Mediterranean. mnamon.sns.it.

Green, Tim. 2011. “Got It in Writing: A Surprising Bronze Age Discovery.” UT News, The University of Texas at Austin. June 2, 2011.

Karadimas, Nektarios. 2016. “Agios Vasilios in Lakonia.” The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, June, 1–1.

Magner, Thomas F. 2001. “Digraphia in the Territories of the Croats and Serbs.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2001 (150): 11–26. 

Masson, Émilia. 1974. Cyprominoica. Repertoire Document de Ras Shamra: Essais d’interprétation. Göteborg: Paul Åströms Förlag.

Morpurgo-Davies, Anna, and Jean-Pierre Olivier. 2012a. “Syllabic Scripts and Languages in the Second and First Millennia BC.” British School at Athens Studies 20: 105–18.

———. 2012b. “Syllabic Scripts and Languages in the Second and First Millennia BC.” British School at Athens Studies 20: 105–18.

Olivier, Jean-Pierre. 1986. “Cretan Writing in the Second Millennium B.C.” World Archaeology 17 (3): 377–89.

———. 2007. Édition Holistique Des Textes Chypro-Minoens. Edited by Fabrizio Serra. Rome: Biblioteca di Pasiphae VI.

———. n.d. “Les Écritures Syllabiques Égéennes et Leur Diffusion En Egypte Au Premier Millénaire Avant Notre Ère,” 167–81.

Palaima, Thomas G. 1989. “Cypro-Minoan Scripts: Problems of Historical Context.” Bibliothèque Des Cahiers de l’Institut de Linguistique de Louvain 49: 121–87.

Pardee, Dennis. 2008. “Ugaritic.” In The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia, edited by Roger D. Woodard, 8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Salgarella, Ester, and Simon Castellan. 2021. “SigLA: The Signs of Linear~A. A~Palæographical Database.” In Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, Part II, 5:945–62. Fluxus Editions.

Steele, Philippa M. 2013. Syllabic Writing on Cyprus and Its Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Steele, Philippa M. 2014. “Distinguishing between Cypriot Scripts: Steps towards Establishing a Methodology.” Kadmos 53 (1–2): 129–48.

Than, Ker. 2011. “Ancient Tablet Found: Oldest Readable Writing in Europe.” National Geographic News, April 1, 2011.

Valério, Filipe Miguel Grandão. 2016. “Investigating the Signs and Sounds of Cypro-Minoan.” PhD thesis. Dept Filologia Llatina. University of Barcelona.  

Ventris, Michael. 1952. “Linear B Decoder Michael Ventris on BBC in 1952.” BBC.

Ventris, Michael, and John Chadwick. 1973. Documents in Mycenaean Greek. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press.