Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the earliest known examples dating to around 1450 BC."Professor Shelmerdine's Exciting Mycenaean Find". University of Texas Austin. 2 June 2011. It is adapted from the earlier Linear A, an undeciphered script, perhaps used for writing the Minoan language, as is the later Cypriot syllabary, which also recorded Greek. Linear B, found mainly in the palace archives at Knossos, Kydonia,E. Hallager, M. Vlasakis, and B. P. Hallager (1990), "The First Linear B Tablet(s) from Khania", Kadmos, 29. pp. 24–34 Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae, disappeared with the fall of the Mycenaean civilization during the Late Bronze Age collapse. The succeeding period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, provides no conclusive evidence of the use of writing.
Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by English architect and self-taught linguist Michael Ventris based on the research of the American classicist Alice Kober. It is the only Bronze Age Aegean script to have been deciphered, with Linear A, Cypro-Minoan, and Cretan hieroglyphic remaining unreadable.
Linear B consists of around 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs. These ideograms or "signifying" signs symbolize objects or commodities. They have no phonetic value and are never used as word signs in writing a sentence.
The application of Linear B texts appear to have been mostly confined to administrative contexts, mainly at Mycenaean palatial sites.Bennet, John (1985). "The structure of the Linear B administration at Knossos". American Journal of Archaeology, 89.2, pp. 231-249. In the handwriting of all the thousands of clay tablets, a relatively small number of scribes have been detected: 45 in Pylos (west coast of the Peloponnese, in Southern Greece) and 66 in Knossos (Crete). The use of Linear B signs on trade objects like amphora was more widespread. Once the palaces were destroyed, the script disappeared.Ventris and Chadwick 1973, p. 60.
Script Linear B has roughly 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs with phonetic values and ideograms with semantic values. The representations and naming of these signs have been standardized by a series of international colloquia starting in Paris in 1956. After the third meeting in 1961 at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin, a standard proposed primarily by Emmett L. Bennett Jr. became known as the Wingspread Convention, which was adopted by a new organization, the (CIPEM: Permanent International Committee of Mycenaean Studies), affiliated in 1970 by the fifth colloquium with UNESCO.Emmett L. Bennett Jr., "Mycenaean studies : proceedings of the Third International Colloquium for Mycenaean Studies held at 'Wingspread,' 4–8 September 1961", University of Wisconsin Press (January 1, 1964) Colloquia continue: the 13th occurred in 2010 in Paris.
Many of the signs are identical or similar to those in Linear A; however, Linear A encodes an as yet unknown language, and it is uncertain whether similar signs had the same phonetic values.Ventris and Chadwick (1973), page 37, quotes Bennett: "where the same sign is used in both Linear A and B there is no guarantee that the same value is assigned to it."
Syllabic signs The grid developed during decipherment by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick of phonetic values for syllabic signs is shown below.Ventris and Chadwick (1973), Fig. 4 on page 23 states the "Proposed values of the Mycenaean syllabary", which is mainly the same as the table included in this article. The "grid" from which it came, which was built up in "successive stages", is shown in Fig. 3 on page 20. (Note that "q" represents the labialized velar stops , not the uvular stop of the IPA, whereas "j" does represent the IPA voiced palatal approximant [j], represented by the letter "y" in English words such as "yes" and "yoke".)
Initial consonants are in the leftmost column; vowels are in the top row beneath the title. The transcription of the syllable, which may not have been pronounced that way, is listed next to the sign along with Bennett's identifying number for the sign preceded by an asterisk (as was Ventris's and Chadwick's convention).In the Unicode character names, Bennett's number has been rendered into a three-digit code by padding with initial zeros and preceding with a B (for "Linear B"). If the transcription of the sign remains uncertain, Bennett's number serves to identify the sign.Ventris and Chadwick (1973), Fig. 9 on page 41 states Bennett's numbers from 1 through 87 opposite the signs being numbered. The table includes variants from Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae and Thebes opposite the same numbers. The signs on the tablets and sealings often show considerable variation from each other and from the representations below. Discovery of the reasons for the variation and possible semantic differences is a topic of ongoing debate in Mycenaean studies.
+ Recognised signs of shape V, CVIn linguistics C and V in this type of context stand for consonant and vowel.-a-e-i-o-u a *08 e *38 i *28 o *61 u *10d- da *01 de *45 di *07 do *14 du *51j- ja *57 je *46 jo *36k- ka *77 ke *44 ki *67 ko *70 ku *81m- ma *80 me *13 mi *73 mo *15 mu *23n- na *06 ne *24 ni *30 no *52 nu *55p- pa *03 pe *72 pi *39 po *11 pu *50q- qa *16 qe *78 qi *21 qo *32r- ra *60 re *27 ri *53 ro *02 ru *26s- sa *31 se *09 si *41 so *12 su *58t- ta *59 te *04 ti *37 to *05 tu *69w- wa *54 we *75 wi *40 wo *42z- za *17 ze *74 zo *20
Special and unknown signs
In addition to the grid, the first edition of Documents in Mycenaean Greek contained a number of other signs termed "homophones" because they appeared at that time to resemble the sounds of other syllables and were transcribed accordingly: pa2 and pa3 were presumed homophonous to pa. Many of these were identified by the second edition and are shown in the "special values" below.Ventris and Chadwick (1973), page 385. The second edition relates: "It may be taken as axiomatic that there are no true homophones." The unconfirmed identifications of *34 and *35 as ai2 and ai3 were removed. pa2 became qa.Ventris and Chadwick (1973), pages 391–392.
Special values Character Transcription a2 (ha) a3 (ai) au dwe dwo nwa pte pu2 (phu) ra2 (rya) ra3 (rai) ro2 (ryo) ta2 (tya) twe two Bennett's number *25 *43 *85 *71 *90 *48 *62 *29 *76 *33 *68 *66 *87 *91
Other values remain unknown, mainly because of scarcity of evidence concerning them.Sign *89 is not listed in Ventris & Chadwick's (1973) tables, but it does appear in the appendix of Bennett (1964) as part of the Wingspread convention. Note that *34 and *35 are mirror images of each other, but whether this graphic relationship indicates a phonetic one remains unconfirmed.Evangelos Kyriakidis, "Phonetic attributions of undeciphered characters: The case of sign *56 in Linear B", The Cambridge Classical Journal, vol. 53, Cambridge University Press, pp. 202–28, 2007
Untranscribed and doubtful values Character Transcription *18 *19 *22 *34 *35 *47 *49 pa3? *63 swi? ju? zu? swa? *83 *86 *89 Bennett's number *18 *19 *22 *34 *35 *47 *49 *56 *63 *64 *65 *79 *82 *83 *86 *89
CIPEM inherited the former authority of Bennett and the Wingspread convention in deciding what signs are "confirmed" and how to officially represent the various sign categories. In editions of Mycenaean texts, the signs whose values have not been confirmed by CIPEM are always transcribed as numbers preceded by an asterisk (e.g., *64). CIPEM also allocates the numerical identifiers, and until such allocation, new signs (or obscured or mutilated signs) are transcribed as a bullet-point enclosed in square brackets: [•].
Spelling and pronunciation
The signs are approximations, since each may be used to represent a variety of about 70 distinct combinations of sounds within rules and conventions. The grid presents a system of monosyllabic signs of the type V/CV. Clarification of the 14 or so special values tested the limits of the grid model, but Chadwick eventually concluded that even with the ramifications, the syllabic signs can unexceptionally be considered monosyllabic.Ventris & Chadwick (1973), pages 385–391.
Possible exceptions, Chadwick goes on to explain, include the two diphthongs, (ai) and (au), as in , ai-ku-pi-ti-jo, for Aiguptios (, "Egyptian") and , au-ke-wa, for Augewās ( "Augeas").Ventris and Chadwick use Roman characters for the reconstructed Mycenaean Greek and give the closest later literary word in Greek characters. Often the phonetics are the same, but equally as often the reconstructed words represent an earlier form. Here the classical Greek was formed by dropping the w and lengthening the e to ei. However, a diphthong is by definition two vowels united into a single sound and therefore might be typed as just V. Thus (rai), as in , e-rai-wo, for elaiwon (),The w is dropped to form the classical Greek. is of the type CV. Diphthongs are otherwise treated as two monosyllables: , a-ro-u-ra, for arourans (accusative plural of , "tamarisk trees"), of the types CV and V.Ventris and Chadwick (1973), page 43. Lengths of vowels and accents are not marked.
(Twe), (two), (dwe), (dwo), (nwa) and the more doubtful (swi) and (swa) may be regarded as beginning with labialized consonants, rather than two consonants, even though they may alternate with a two-sign form: o-da-twe-ta and o-da-tu-we-ta for Odatwenta; a-si-wi-jo and a-swi-jo for Aswios (). Similarly, (rya), (ryo) and (tya) begin with palatalized consonants rather than two consonants: -ti-ri-ja for -trja (-).
The one sign Chadwick tags as the exception to the monosyllabic rule is (pte), but this he attributes to a development pte<*pje as in kleptei<*klep-jei.
Linear B does not consistently distinguish between voiced and unvoiced stop consonants or between aspirated and unaspirated stops, even though these distinctions are phonemic in Mycenaean Greek. (The exception is the dental series, where syllables starting with the voiced dental stop are written differently from syllables starting with the voiceless unaspirated or voiceless aspirated dental stop.) For example,The examples in this section except where otherwise noted come from the Mycenaean Glossary of Ventris & Chadwick (1973). pa-te is patēr (), pa-si is phāsi (),Classical words typically have the of the Attic-Ionic dialect where Linear B represents the original . ko-ru is korus (, "helmet"), ka-ra-we is grāwes (plural of ), ko-no is skhoinos ("rope"), to-so is tosos ( or ), to-ra-ke is thōrākes (plural of , "breastplate"). The exceptional d-series for voiced dentals is illustrated by do-ra for dōra (plural of , "gift").
In some cases aspiration may be marked, but this is optional: pu-te for phutēr ("planter", from ), but phu-te-re for phutēres ("planters"). Initial /h/ may be marked only when followed by a, and only rarely: ha-te-ro for hateron (masculine ),Ventris & Chadwick (1973), pages 388–391. and yet a-ni-ja for hāniai ().
The q-series is used for syllables beginning with labialized velar consonants (see under Mycenaean Greek), a class of consonants that disappeared from classical Greek by regular phonetic change (becoming in various circumstances , , , or , , ). These consonants had various sources: inheritance from Proto-Indo-European, assimilation, borrowing of foreign words, especially names. In Mycenaean they are /kʷ/, /gʷ/, and rarely /kʷh/ in names and a few words:Ventris & Chadwick (1973), page 45. The authors use q instead of k: qu, gu and quh, following the use of q- in transcription. a-pi-qo-ro for amphiquoloi (); qo-u-ko-ro for guoukoloi (, "cowherders"); qa-si-re-u for guasileus (, "basileus", meaning in this period "court official or local chieftain"), -qo-i-ta for -.