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Linear B is a script that was used for writing Mycenaean, an early form of 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 civilization; the intervening period, in which there is no evidence of written language, is known as the Dark Ages.
stablility
The script appears to be related to Linear A, an undeciphered earlier script used for writing the 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 principle. It is partly 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.
Contents |
[edit] The Script
| History of the Greek language (see also: Greek alphabet) |
| Proto-Greek (c. 2000 BC)
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| Mycenaean (c. 1600–1100 BC)
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| Ancient Greek (c. 800–300 BC) Dialects: Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, Attic-Ionic, Doric, Pamphylian; Homeric Greek. Possible dialect: Macedonian. |
| Koine Greek (from c. 300 BC)
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| Medieval Greek (c. 330–1453)
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| Modern Greek (from 1453) Dialects: Cappadocian, Cretan, Cypriot, Demotic, Griko, Katharevousa, Pontic, Tsakonian, Yevanic |
Linear B has roughly 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs with phonetic values and logograms (or ideograms) with semantic values.
[edit] Syllabic signs
Linear B is assigned Unicode Range 10000–1007F for syllabic signs and 10080–100FF for logograms.
[edit] Decipherment
The first clay tablet at Knossos was discovered by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans on March 31, 1900 and on April 6 he discovered a significant hoard of tablets (measuring 5x10 inches).
The convention for numbering the symbols still in use today was first devised by US Professor Emmett Bennett, who, by 1950, had deciphered the metrical system. He was also an early proponent of the idea that Linear A and B represented different languages.
Michael Ventris and John Chadwick performed the bulk of their decipherment of Linear B between 1951 and 1953. At first, Ventris chose his own numbering system, and agreed with Evans' hypothesis that Linear B was not Greek, however later switched back to Bennett's system, and ultimately reached the conclusion that Linear B was indeed an early form of Greek.
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 had 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 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 above; 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.
[edit] Trivia
On the television game show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, one $500,000 question was "Deciphered in 1952, Linear B is an early form of what language?" Alternate choices to the correct answer Greek were Latin, Russian and Arabic. Contestant Tom Hubler answered correctly. He left the game on the million dollar question taking the money with him.
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Chadwick, John (1958). The Decipherment of Linear B. Second edition (1990). Cambridge UP. ISBN 0521398304.
- Chadwick, John (1987). Linear B and Related Scripts; "Reading the Past". Third impression (1997). University of California Press/British Museum. 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.
- Chadwick, John (1976). The Mycenaean World. Cambridge UP. ISBN 0521290376.
- Levin, Saul (1964). The Linear B Decipherment Controversy Reexamined. State University of New York Press. ASIN B000CBCR94.
- Robinson, Andrew (1995). The Story of Writing. Paperback edition (1999). Thames and Hudson. 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.
- Ventris, Michael and Chadwick, John (1956). Documents in Mycenaean Greek. Second edition (1974). Cambridge UP. ISBN 0521085586.
- Singh, Simon (2000). The Code Book. Anchor. ISBN 0385495323. for a general outline of the Linear B deciphering story, from Schliemman to Chadwick.
- Ventris, Michael (1988). Work notes on Minoan language research and other unedited papers. Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1988 Roma.
[edit] YouTube links
This article is one of thousands on Wikipedia that have a link to YouTube in it. Based on the External links policy, most of these should probably be removed. I'm putting this message here, on this talk page, to request the regular editors take a look at the link and make sure it doesn't violate policy. In short: 1. 99% of the time YouTube should not be used as a source. 2. We must not link to material that violates someones copyright. If you are not sure if the link on this article should be removed or you would like to help spread this message contact us on this page. Thanks, ---J.S (t|c) 03:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
