Linear A and Linear B

[hermeneutika]

I was into archaeology as a youth. I seem to recall linear a and linear b and cuniform were very important.

[Kendall K. Down]

On 30/11/2022 16:57, hermeneutika wrote:

> I was into archaeology as a youth. I seem to recall linear a and linear b and cuniform were very important.

Cuneiform is very important, due to the vast number of inscriptions and
tablets that have been found. Like the latin script, cuneiform was used
to write a number of different languages - Elamite, Old Persian,
Hittite, Babylonian, Ugaritic (which used a subset of cuneiform and made
it almost an alphabet) and so on.

Linear A and B are from Greece and Crete. The number of inscriptions is
very small (just 1 for A, if I remember correctly, apart from a few
short jottings which may be names) and only a couple of hundred for B. B
was identified as a form of Greek (by Michael Ventris) and has more or
less been cracked. Nothing significant has come from the decipherment.

The language of A is still not known and therefore it has not yet been
deciphered.

God bless,
Kendall K. Down

[Mike Davis]

I recommend the book "The decipherment of Linear B" by John Chadwick. I
read it in the late '50's & it opened my mind to a whole range of
archeological matters.

Mike
--
Mike Davis

[Kendall K. Down]

On 01/12/2022 15:25, Mike Davis wrote:

> I recommend the book "The decipherment of Linear B" by John Chadwick. I
> read it in the late '50's & it opened my mind to a whole range of
> archeological matters.

Thanks for the recommendation. Years ago I read a book about Linear A
and B; I don't know whether it was that one and it was from a library so
I can't check. It is a fascinating subject.