Linear B Totally Explained

Everything about Linear B totally explained

Linear B is a script that was used for writing Mycenaean, an early form of Greek. It predated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization. Most of the tablets were found in Knossos, Cydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae. The intervening period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, evinces no evidence of the use of writing.
The script appears to be related to Linear A, an undeciphered earlier script used for writing the Minoan language, and the later Cypriot syllabary, which recorded Greek. Linear B consists of around 59 syllabic signs and a large repertory of sematographic signs. These “signifying” signs stand for objects or commodities, but don't have phonetic value and are never used as word signs in writing a sentence.
The application of Linear B was confined to administrative contexts. In all the thousands of tablets, a relatively small number of different "hands" have been detected: 45 in Pylos (west coast of the Peloponnese, in southern Greece) and 66 in Knossos (Crete). From this fact it could be theorized that the script was used only by some sort of guild of professional scribes who served the central palaces. Once the palaces were destroyed, the script disappeared.

The script

Linear B has roughly 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs with phonetic values and logograms (or ideograms) with semantic values. The representations and naming of these signs has been standardized by a series of international colloquia starting with the first 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, CIPEM, affiliated in 1970 by the fifth colloquium with UNESCO. Colloquia continue. The 13th is scheduled for 2010 in Paris.
Many of the signs are the same as or are similar to Linear A signs; however, Linear A, which encoded the unknown Minoan language, remains undeciphered and we can't be sure that similar signs had similar values.

Syllabic signs

Recognised signs of shape V, CV
	-a		-e		-i		-o		-u
	𐀀	a*08	𐀁	e*38	𐀂	i*28	𐀃	o*61	𐀄	u*10
d-	𐀅	da*01	𐀆	de*45	𐀇	di*07	𐀈	do*14	𐀉	du*51
j-	𐀊	ja*57	𐀋	je*46			𐀍	jo*36
k-	𐀏	ka*77	𐀐	ke*44	𐀑	ki*67	𐀒	ko*70	𐀓	ku*81
m-	𐀔	ma*80	𐀕	me*13	𐀖	mi*73	𐀗	mo*15	𐀘	mu*23
n-	𐀙	na*06	𐀚	ne*24	𐀛	ni*30	𐀜	no*52	𐀝	nu*55
p-	𐀞	pa*03	𐀟	pe*72	𐀠	pi*39	𐀡	po*11	𐀢	pu*50
q-	𐀣	qa*16	𐀤	qe*78	𐀥	qi*21	𐀦	qo*32
r-	𐀨	ra*60	𐀩	re*27	𐀪	ri*53	𐀫	ro*02	𐀬	ru*26
s-	𐀭	sa*31	𐀮	se*09	𐀯	si*41	𐀰	so*12	𐀱	su*58
t-	𐀲	ta*59	𐀳	te*04	𐀴	ti*37	𐀵	to*05	𐀶	tu*69
w-	𐀷	wa*54	𐀸	we*75	𐀹	wi*40	𐀺	wo*42
z-	𐀼	za*17	𐀽	ze*74			𐀿	zo*20

Additional Signs
Grapheme	𐁐	𐁑	𐁒	𐁀	𐁆	𐁊	𐁓	𐁁	𐁔	𐁅	𐁕	𐁖	𐁇	𐁗	𐁘	𐀎	𐁋	𐁉	𐁃	𐁈	𐁙	𐁚	𐁛	𐁂	𐁜	𐁌	𐁝	𐁄	𐁍
Transcription	*18	*19	*22	a₂	pu₂	ra₃	*34	a₃	*47	nwa	*49	*56	pte	*63	*64	*65	ta₂	ro₂	dwe	ra₂	*79	*82	*83	au	*86	twe	*89	dwo	two
Numerical value	*18	*19	*22	*25	*29	*33	*34	*43	*47	*48	*49	*56	*62	*63	*64	*65	*66	*68	*71	*76	*79	*82	*83	*75	*86	*87	*89	*90	*91

The signs are approximations: each may be used to represent a variety of distinct combinations of sounds. Linear B doesn't consistently distinguish between voiced and unvoiced stops (except in the dental series) and between aspirated and unaspirated stops even when these distinctions are phonemic in Mycenaean Greek, though there are exceptions (there is a separate d-series for voiced dentals, and aspiration can be marked by alternatives such as a₂).
   The j-series represents the semivowel equivalent to English "y", and is used word-initially and as an intervocalic glide after a syllable ending in ι (for example -a-jo for -αῖος; a-te-mi-ti-jo for Ἀρτεμιτιος).
   The r-series includes both the /r/ and /l/ phonemes.
   The "q"-series is used for the labiovelars resulting from Proto-Indo-European /kʷ/, /gʷ/, and /gʷʰ/, the latter being devoiced to /kʷʰ/ in Proto-Greek.
   Of the additional syllabic signs in the second table:

Some signs don't follow the simple V/CV typological model, such as au, dwo.
Some signs alternate with a 'core' sign, such as a₃ and pu₂. Their phonetic value may or many not fit the CV model, but the use of a subscript denotes that these are true variants, for example the version without the subscript is always an option for the scribe (as opposed to, for example dwe, which isn't written de₂, because it alternates with du-we).

In editions of Mycenaean texts, those signs whose value hasn't been confirmed by CIPEM are always transcribed as numbers preceded by an asterisk (for example *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: [•].

Ideograms

Linear B also uses a number of logograms, which are informally referred to as ideograms. These ideograms express:

The type of object concerned (for example a cow, wool, a spear)

A unit of measure. They are typically at the end of a line before a number and appear to signify the object to which the number applies. Many of the values remain unknown or disputed. Some commodities such as cloth and containers are divided into many different categories represented by distinct ideograms. Livestock may be marked with respect to their sex. The numerical references for the ideograms were originally devised by Ventris and Bennett, divided into functional groups corresponding to the breakdown of Bennett's index. These groups are numbered beginning 100, 110, 120 etc., with some provision of spare numbers for future additions; the official CIPEM numberings used today are based on Ventris and Bennett's numbering, with the provision that three or four letter codes (written in small capitals), based on Latin words that seemed relevant at the time, are used where the meanings are known and agreed. Unicode (as of version 5.0) encodes 123 Linear B ideograms.
The ideograms are symbols, not pictures of the objects in question - for example one tablet records a tripod with missing legs, but the ideogram used is of a tripod with three legs. In modern transcriptions of Linear B tablets it's typically convenient to represent an ideogram by its Latin or English name or by an abbreviation of the Latin name. Ventris and Chadwick generally used English; Bennett, Latin. Neither the English nor the Latin can be relied upon as an accurate name of the object; in fact, the identification of some of the more obscure objects is a matter of exegesis.

Glyph	Codepoint	Bennett	CIPEM	English
People and Animals
𐂀	U+10080	100 A-	VIR vir	MAN
𐂁	U+10081	102 A-	MUL mulier	WOMAN
𐂂	U+10082	104 Cn	CERV cervus	DEER
𐂃	U+10083	105 Ca S-	EQU equus	HORSE
𐂄	U+10084	105 Ca	EQU^f	mare
𐂅	U+10085	105 Ca	EQU^m	stallion
𐀥	U+10025	106 QI *21	OVIS ovis	SHEEP
𐀥		WE *75	we-ka-ta Bous ergatēs	"Adjunct to ox" (1973)
𐂆	U+10086	106^b C- D-	OVIS^f	EWE
𐂇	U+10087	106^a C- D-	OVIS^m	RAM
𐁒	U+10052	107 RA *22	CAP capra	GOAT
𐂈	U+10088	107^b C- Mc	CAP^f	SHE-GOAT
𐂉	U+10089	107^a C-	CAP^m	HE-GOAT
𐁂	U+10042	108 AU *85 C-	SUS sus	PIG
𐂊	U+1008A	108^b C-	SUS^f	SOW
𐂋	U+1008B	108^a C-	SUS^m	BOAR
𐀘	U+10018	109 MU *23 C-	BOS bos	OX
𐂌	U+1008C	109^b C-	BOS^f	COW
𐂍	U+1008D	109^a C-	BOS^m	OX/BULL
Units of Measurement
		110	Z kotylai	Volume Cup
		111	V khoinikes	Volume
		112	T	Dry
		113	S	Liquid
		114		Weight
		*21		Weight
		*2		Weight
		115	P	Weight
		116	N	Weight
		117	M dimnaion	Weight
		118	L talanton	TALENT
		*72 G-		Bunch?
		*74 S-		Pair
		*15 S-		Single
		*61		Deficit
By Dry Measure
𐂎	U+1008E	120 E- F-	GRA granum	WHEAT
𐂏	U+1008F	121 F-	HORD hordeum	BARLEY
𐂐	U+10090	122 F- U-	OLIV oliva	OLIVES
𐂑	U+1001B	NI *30 F	FICUS	FIGS
𐂑	U+1000E	*65	FARINA	FLOUR "some kind of grain"
𐂑	U+10091	123 G- Un	AROM aroma	CONDIMENT
		KO *70 G-		Coriander
	U+1002D	SA *31 G-		Sesame
		KU *81 G-		Cumin
		SE *9 G-		Celery
		MA *80 G-		Fennel
		124 G-	PYC	cyperus
𐂒	U+10092	125 F-	CYP	cyperus?
		126 F-	CYP+KU	cyperus+ku
𐂓	U+10093	127 Un	KAPO	fruit?
𐂔	U+10094	128 G-	KANAKO	safflower
By liquid measure
By weight
By weight or in units
Counted in units
Vessels
𐃆	U+100DF	200	sartago	BOILING PAN
𐃆	U+100E0	201	TRI tripus	TRIPOD CAULDRON
𐃆	U+100E1	202	poculum	GOBLET?
𐃆	U+100E2	203	urceus	WINE JAR?
𐃆	U+100E3	204 Ta	hirnea	EWER
𐃆	U+100E4	205 K Tn	hirnula	JUG
𐃆	U+100E5	206	HYD hydria	HYDRIA
𐃆	U+100E6	207		TRIPOD AMPHORA
𐃆	U+100E7	208	PAT patera	BOWL
𐃆	U+100E8	209	AMPH amphora	AMPHORA
𐃆	U+100E9	210		STIRRIP JAR
𐃆	U+100EA	211		WATER BOWL?
𐃆	U+100EB	212	SIT situla	WATER JAR?
𐃆	U+100EC	213	LANX lanx	COOKING BOWL
Furniture
𐃆	U+100C4	220 Ta	scamnum	FOOTSTOOL
𐃆	U+100C5	225	ALV alveus
Weapons
𐃆	U+100C6	230 R	HAS hasta	SPEAR
𐃇	U+100C7	231 R	SAG sagitta	ARROW
𐃈	U+100C8	232 Ta	*232	?
𐃉	U+100C9	233 Ra		DAGGER
𐃉	U+100CA	234	GLA gladius	SWORD
Chariots
𐃌	U+100CC	240 Sc	BIG biga	WHEELED CHARIOT
𐃍	U+100CD	241 Sd Se	CUR currus	WHEEL-LESS CHARIOT
𐃎	U+100CE	242 Sf Sg	CAPS capsus	CHARIOT FRAME
𐃏	U+100CF	243 Sa So	ROTA rota	WHEEL

Archives

Corpus

The tablets are classified by the location of their excavation.

KN Knossos: ca. 4360 tablets (not counting finds of Linear A).

PY Pylos : 1087 tablets.

TH Thebes: 99 tablets + 238 published in 2002 (L. Godart and A. Sacconi, 2002; see under Thebes tablets)

MY Mycenae: 73 tablets.

TI Tiryns: 27 tablets.

KH Chania: 4 tablets.

another 170 inscriptions in Linear B were found on vessels. The publication of the Thebes tablets (L. Godart and A. Sacconi, 2002) was long anticipated, and their actual content was rather disappointing compared to what had been hinted at by the editors in the previous years.
If it's genuine, the Kafkania pebble, dated to the 17th century BC, would be the oldest known Mycenean inscription, and hence the earliest preserved testimony of the Greek language.

Chronology

The main archives for Linear B are associated with these stages of Late Minoan and Helladic pottery:
LM II (1425-1390 BC):

Knossos, Room of the Chariot Tablets. LM IIIA2 (1370-1340 BC) or IIIB (1340-1190 BC):

Knossos, main archive. LM IIIB:

Chania, tablet Sq 1, 6659, KH 3 (possibly Linear B). LH/LM IIIB1 end:

Chania, tablets Ar 3, Gq 5, X 6.

Mycenae, tablets from Oil Merchant group of houses.

Thebes, Ug tablets and Wu sealings. LH IIIB2, end:

Mycenae, tablets from the Citadel.

Tiryns, all tablets.

Thebes, Of tablets and new Pelopidou Street deposit.

Pylos, all but five tablets.

Controversy

The Knossos archive was dated by Sir Arthur Evans to the destruction by conflagration at about 1400 BC (which baked and preserved the clay tablets), in the Late Minoan II (LM II) period. Evans made a career of excavating the Knossos site in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and creating the concept of Minoan civilization, which he believed was historically accurate.
   This view stood until Carl Blegen excavated the site of ancient Pylos in 1939 and uncovered tablets inscribed in Linear B, one of the two scripts discovered at Knossos and named by Evans. Those tablets were fired in the conflagration that destroyed Pylos about 1200 BC, at the end of Late Helladic IIIB (LHIIIB). With the decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris in 1952 serious questions about Evans' date began to be considered. Most notably, Blegen said that the inscribed stirrup jars (an oil flask with stirrup-shaped handles) imported from Crete around 1200 were of the same type as those dated by Evans to the destruction of 1400. Blegen found a number of similarities between 1200 BC Pylos and 1400 BC Knossos and suggested the Knossian evidence be reexamined, as he was sure of the 1200 Pylian date.
   The examination uncovered a number of difficulties. The Knossos tablets had been found at various locations in the palace and Evans hadn't kept exact records. Recourse was had to the day books of Evans' assistant, Duncan MacKenzie, who had conducted the day-to-day excavations. There were discrepancies between the notes in the day books and Evans' excavation reports. Worse, the two men had quarreled over the location and strata of the tablets, MacKenzie had called Evans a liar, and Evans hadn't only sacked him but made sure he didn't excavate anywhere else.
   The results of the reinvestigation were eventually published in a definitive work: . It consists of two works, Leonard Palmer's The Find-Places of the Knossos Tablets and John Boardman's The Date of the Knossos Tablets. In this book Palmer plays the role, so to speak, of prosecuting attorney and Boardman of defending attorney; consequently, the dispute was known for a time as "the Palmer-Boardman dispute."
   Like questions concerning the veracity of Heinrich Schliemann the controversy soon escalated beyond the evidence, which set the world of classical scholarship looking for additional evidence to resolve the question once and for all, a still unfulfilled hope. There appeared to be no "smoking gun" of Evans' mendacity; that is, he could in his excavation reports have simply been generalizing to resolve contradictions in the data. Moreover Blegen's arguments depended more on a preponderance of evidence rather than any single incontrovertable proof. No such incontrovertible proof was ever found.
   The real issue was whether sufficient reason existed to question Evans. It was never resolved and there's as much evidence for 1400 as there's for 1200. There not being a solid reason to doubt Evans the community of classical scholars tends to support a date of 1400 by default; that is, LM IIIA:2. As for LH IIIB, it likely begins in the 1310s or 1300s BC, after Mursilis II's sack of Miletus; it ends around 1200 BC.
   The colors of the scholars can be identified by the dates they give for the tablets. This article utilizes an outline developed by Cynthia Shelmerdine, who is in the Boardman camp. While stating two possibilities for the main archive of Knossian tablets, she accepts a 1400 date for the Room of the Chariot Tablets. There still might have been two conflagrations and tablet firings, one in 1200 and one in 1400. As an example of a scholar who is in the Palmer camp, see Rutter relies on a similarity of scribal hand between one of the Chania tablets and the Knossos tablets and dates all the tablets from 1350-1300 to 1200 BC.
   Nearly every scholar presents his view as the generally accepted view or the one most proved by recent evidence. Regardless of how they may present their perceptions, the issue is very much open and the search for evidence continues.

The major cities and palaces used Linear B for records of disbursements of goods. Wool, sheep, and grain were some common items, often given to groups of religious people and also to groups of "men watching the coastline."
The tablets were kept in groups in baskets on shelves, judging by impressions left in the clay from the weaving of the baskets. When the buildings in which they were housed were destroyed by fires, many of the tablets were then fired.

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 wasn't 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; her untimely death at age 43 in 1950 prevented her from possibly taking the final step or see others do it, namely 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 Mycenaean Greek.
   Ventris' discovery was of immense significance, because it demonstrated a Greek-speaking Minoan-Mycenaean culture on Crete, and presented Greek in writing some 600 years earlier than what was thought at the time.

Unicode

Linear B is assigned Unicode range 10000–1007F for syllabograms and 10080–100FF for ideograms.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Linear B'.

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