My Kingdom for a Writing System!

Again, Friday morning finds me returning* to the mountainous island of Crete, to visit the ancient woody kingdom of the Minoans.  This time, though, I’m here to look at ancient writing, not ancient speaking. 

*I wish! An island vacation sounds amazing right now…

Is this a language?  Good question!

So, as I have been researching the Minoans over the last few weeks, I have been finding references to both Cretan Hieroglyphics and some mysterious thing called “Linear A”.  I looked up a definition of Linear A and found that it was the as-of-yet untranslated script of the Minoan culture, and I knew already what hieroglyphics were, so I lumped them both in together and forgot completely about them both.  Now, in returning, to them, it turns out I was wrong!  Minoans apparently had two entirely different writing systems through their history. 

According to ancientscripts.com (thank you, Professor Burton, for that reference!), the Minoan culture may have been the earliest literate European culture.  The more ancient written form of the language (Cretan Hieroglyphics, displayed and linked above) appears to have begun as a series of icons.  These symbols were placed on ‘sealstones’; small stones used to impress the images onto surfaces; perhaps to indicate ownership.  As the Hieroglyphs evolved, they began to take on some of the characteristics of a more phonetic-based language; there are a few examples of what seem to be hybrids, such as the following image:

As the culture progressed and grew, a new form of writing emerged.  It is unknown if there were any corresponding changes in oral culture, or even if the hieroglyphics were in any way related to the spoken language.  Nonetheless, the aforementioned “Linear A” emerged, and as near as we can tell, is a phonetic representation of the spoken language of the time.  Linear A (so named for its rectangular structure) is largely untranslated, although there have been a few interesting insights.  It appears that Linear A is a direct predecessor of Linear B, which is an ancestor of modern Greek and was used by the Mycenaeans, who would later replace the Minoans on Crete.  Many of the symbols of Linear A are identical to Linear B, and from those symbols we have been able to somewhat reconstruct a few of the findings that have been made.   An example:

Interesting...Accounting shows up in antiquity again...I think there might be a
future blog post on this subject...

Most of the symbols can be read with Linear B pronunciations, and a few seem to have meant the same things (such as wine, above), but taken together they don’t mean anything in Linear B; it’s a real mystery.  This particular tablet appears to be either an inventory or a ledger, reflecting wine purchases or deliveries. 

(by the way; at first, when I was studying this, it seemed implausible to me that they used so many similar characters and yet we couldn't translate one after translating the other, but then I started thinking about our own alphabet and how many languages use some or even a lot of our characters, and it made more sense.)

To sum up...Cretan Hieroglyphics either became or gave way to Linear A, whose characters are almost identical to Linear B.  Linear B appears to have borrowed the same characters, but not their meanings, and was a direct ancestor of modern Greek.  What a strange history!

I'm very glad to not be a cryptographer or an archaeologist...
Just looking at this gives me a headache...