Table of Contents
Wanax TV asks which language the Minoans wrote, and answers that nobody knows. Crete’s palaces, in this account, produced Europe’s earliest writing. Cretan hieroglyphs come first, dated here to about 2100 BCE. A century or two later Linear A, mostly syllabic, becomes the script of palace records. Neither is deciphered. After the Mycenaeans took Crete they copied the signs into Linear B for Greek, read by Michael Ventris in 1952. That method fails on Linear A. The language is not Greek and matches no known tongue, so the signs can be sounded and still mean nothing. Picture signs for people, animals, crops, and wine, plus decimal numbers, are clear because later scribes reused them, but they do not unlock sentences. The leading guess is an isolate, perhaps separate since Neolithic Crete. Comparisons with Eteocretan, Tyrrhenian, and Semitic languages are reported as failures. Egypt wrote a few Keftiu names, and Cyprus built Cypro-Minoan from the Minoan signs. The script traveled. The language did not yield.
Key points
- Crete used Cretan hieroglyphs and then Linear A, the main script of the palaces, and neither has been read.
- Mycenaean Linear B was adapted from Linear A and turned out to be an early form of Greek.
- The same method fails on Linear A because the language does not look like Greek or any known relative.
- Numerals and some picture signs are partly clear, but they do not give the content of the tablets.
- Proposed links to Eteocretan, Tyrrhenian, and Semitic languages are presented as unsuccessful, while Cypro-Minoan shows the script’s wider path.
Short quotes
We know it today as the Linear A script.
Wanax TV, The language of Linear A
The later syllabic system is the one now called Linear A. Watch at 1:36
Furthermore, Minoan does not appear to be related to any language that we know of.
Wanax TV, The language of Linear A
The Minoan language is presented as unrelated to any tongue on record. Watch at 3:54
Cypro-Minoan was also derived from Minoan Linear A.
Wanax TV, The language of Linear A
Cyprus is said to have built its own script from the Minoan one. Watch at 8:52
Video by Wanax TV. Watch on YouTube.