Linear B

The linear B was a Syllabaire used for the writing of the Mycénien, an antiquated form of the old Greek .

It is composed of 90 signs. The Nombre S are decimal, the weights and measures is of Babylonian inspiration .

Corpus

The linear B appears in Crete with Cnossos around 1375 av. J. - C.. It was discovered there, with the Linéaire has, in 1900 by Sir Arthur Evans on shelves of Argile cooked accidentally by a fire. Shelves were also found with Pylos, Mycènes, Thèbes and Tirynthe. Linear B is also on vases, found with Éleusis, Kreusis, Orchomène, Chania and with the Ménélaion, with Thérapné. The styles of writing make it possible to identify a hundred different scribes with Cnossos, and around fifty with Pylos.

Deciphering

This writing was deciphered in 1952 by the Architecte English Michael Ventris and probably derives from the Linéaire has.

Hitherto, it was commonly allowed that the linear B transcribed the Minoen, language supposed of which one knew nothing, and not of the Greek. Ventris noticed the existence of alternatives for certain words. The presence of a Idéogramme accompanying a differently finishing group of signs made him suppose that it acted of two words indicating the same object but with a different kind. The differences being weak, it supposed an inflected language and that these differences corresponded to a difference of vowel. It built a table where the signs dividing same the Consonne were laid out on the horizontal ones and those having a common Voyelle on the verticals. The similarities highlighted made it possible to find the sounds of all the spelling-book starting from a restricted number of values.

The found shelves with Pylos and those found in Crete differed by the existence, in these last, of groups of signs, highlighted by Alice Kober. Ventris supposed that they were the names of toponyms of origin crétoise (and not Greeks). It identified Cnossos ( KB-No-so ), its port Amnisos ( have-semi-nor-so ) and some others. By deduction, and by rectifying and enriching the grid by reading progressively of the identifications, it was then possible to read the linear B which proved to transcribe an antiquated dialect cypriote-Greek.

Thus, linear B transcribes the old shape of the Greek. Thereafter, the hellenist John Chadwick, specialist in the evolution of the Greek, helped Michael Ventris to continue the deciphering to lead in 1955 to a treaty on the linear b: Documents in Mycenæan Greek (“Documents in Greek mycénien”).

Characters of linear B

Linear B comprises nearly 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs “, having probably a phonetic value, and in “Logogramme S” having them a semantic value.

Linear B is represented by the line Unicode 10000-1007F for the syllabic ones and 10080-100FF for the logogrammes.

Below, a list of syllabic most current with their supposed pronunciation, reconstituted according to the Mycénien.

Others

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