Linear B

This form of writing was developed by the Mycenaean Greeks.

Date: Used c. 1400-c. 1230 b. c.e. Category: Language Locale: Mycenae

Summary Linear B takes its name from the simple outline shape of its signs. It was derived from an earlier, as yet undeciphered, script employed in the Minoan culture of Crete, termed Linear A. Linear B is syllabic, with ninety signs representing syllables composed of a pure vowel or a consonant plus a vowel. Other signs are pictograms, and a third component consists of units designating numbers, weights, and measures. Discovered in early twentieth century excavations, the script was not easily or quickly learned. Collaboration by British architect and decoder Michael Ventris and British philologist John Chadwick led to its being deciphered as a form of Greek in 1952.

The function of the script was defined by accounting needs within each kingdom; it apparently served no other uses. Scribes recorded information about such matters as personnel, livestock, agricultural produce, and land ownership on clay tablets, many very small and containing information about a single item. The tablets were unbaked, evidently to be discarded at the end of the year. They were preserved only through the fires that destroyed the palace centers where they were produced.

Significance The disappearance of the script after the destruction, along with the meagerness of the finds and absence of Linear B communications in archives of other contemporary civilizations, implies a limited scribal literacy, not deeply rooted in the civilization.

Further Reading

Chadwick, John. The Decipherment of Linear B. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

_. Reading the Past: Linear B and Related Scripts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Miller, D. Gary. Ancient Scripts and Phonological Knowledge. Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1994.

Robinson, Andrew. The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002.

Carol G. Thomas

See also: Crete; Inscriptions; Language and Dialects; Linear B; Literary

Papyri; Mycenaean Greece; Writing Systems.