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
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
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
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
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.
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 |
cot, côt |
|
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
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
Figure 7. Facsimile of the oldest Cypro-Minoan tablet Nr. 1885 from Enkomi
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
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
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
Bordreuil, Pierre, and Dennis Pardee. 2004. Manuel d’Ougaritique: Grammaire Et Fac-Similes. Vol. 2. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner.
Clodd, Edward. 1900. The Story of the Alphabet. London: George Newnes Ltd.
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.
Ferrara, Silvia. 2012. Cypro-Minoan Inscriptions. Analysis. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2012b. “Syllabic Scripts and Languages in the Second and First Millennia BC.” British School at Athens Studies 20: 105–18.
———. 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.
Ventris, Michael. 1952. “Linear B Decoder Michael Ventris on BBC in 1952.” BBC.