Table of Contents
Rhi Hart opens this reaction with the fact that Linear A can be looked at and still not read. Minoan clay tablets have survived as fired ceramics, and a sign list now exists online, yet no bilingual stone gives the language away. She walks through a news piece and a new book arguing that Greek Linear B did not invent a wholly separate system. Mycenaean scribes, on that account, borrowed the older Minoan writing and kept much of the graphic habit while the spoken language changed. Sounds for many syllables were already inferred from the later script. The language those syllables encoded remains unknown and may be an isolate. Shared picture signs for figs, wine, olives, and oil might mean the same thing in both scripts, which still does not produce a running translation. Marks used at only one find spot tended to drop out. After a gap with no writing on Crete, the Greek adaptation appears. Hart likes the open database more than any claim of a finished decipherment.
Key points
- Hart begins from the fact that Linear A tablets can be seen and still cannot be translated.
- Many sign sounds were inferred from later Greek writing, while the Minoan language behind them stays unknown.
- The piece she reads argues that the graphic system continued with limited change even though the spoken language shifted.
- Shared commodity signs may carry a similar sense in both scripts without yielding full sentences.
- Signs used at only one site, in that account, tended not to pass into the later Greek script.
- She praises an open sign database as the practical step, and she is clear that no bilingual key has solved the script.
Short quotes
examples of linear a but we don't actually know what the hell it's talking
Rhi Hart, Linear A and Linear B
She starts from the plain problem that the tablets still cannot be read. Watch at 1:10
linear a was borrowed from the Minoans by the Mycenaean Greeks and Linear B is
Rhi Hart, Linear A and Linear B
The article she is reading treats the later script as Greek use of an older Minoan writing. Watch at 5:46
is currently no exact translation of the same sequences a tested on linear a
Rhi Hart, Linear A and Linear B
Even with shared signs, she stresses that matching lines still have no settled translation. Watch at 9:04
Video by Rhi Hart. Watch on YouTube.