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,
Pylos,
Thebes and
Mycenae. The intervening period, in which there is no evidence of the use of writing, is known as the
Greek Dark Ages.
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.
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).[1] From this fact it could be theorised that the script was used only by some sort of guild of professional scribes, and from the poor match of the script to the Greek language that the Cretans' native language may have been Minoan rather than Greek.[2] For example, logogram-abbreviations used in the Linear B texts are often irreconcilable with known Greek words, and the orthography of Linear B texts is not well suited to the Greek language. This may be the reason why Linear B was quickly forgotten after the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces.
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 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.[3]
