Another Linear B tablet from Amnisos referencing olive oil and barley dedicated to all the gods, not once but twice

Another Linear B tablet from Amnisos referencing olive oil and barley dedicated to all the gods, not once but twice:



Here we have yet another Linear B tablet from Amnisos referencing olive oil and barley dedicated to all the gods, but this time it flags the signal importance to the scribe as well as to the palace administration at Knossos by stressing twice the necessity of offering up olive oil and barley as sacrifices to all the gods. We have already accumulated four (4) tablets referencing offerings of olive oil or olive trees and barley to all the gods, and there are two more to come from Pylos, for a grand total of 6, making such offerings the most frequently mentioned on Linear B tablets which are to be cross-correlated with Minoan Linear A tablets. So apudosi = “delivery” and Keresiya (feminine) = “Cretan” with 3 references each now have to take a back seat to pasiteoi = “to all the gods”, mentioned twice as often as I had expected. I would like to stress as well that if the Minoan Linear A tablets on olive oil and barley contain a phrase as long as pasiteoi, it is more likely than not that such a phrase means the same thing in the Minoan language as it does in Mycenaean Greek. But this is not necessarily the case, given that the Minoan tablets in Linear A may divide the phrase into two words, which is what we would expect. We shall soon see.

In addition, the frequent mention of units of dry measurement on previous Linear B tablets I have posted relating to olive oil and and barley strongly suggest that my earlier translations of reza, adureza and tereza, which refer to (linear) measurement, dry measurement and liquid measurement (of wine) respectively are probably correct after all. I was in considerable doubt of their meanings until I started deciphering the Linear B tablets on olive oil and barley, most of which directly reference dry measurement. These tablets seem to confirm that my initial decipherment of reza, adureza and tereza in Minoan Linear A are on the mark after all.

Linear B tablet on olive trees and barley as debts to be paid to the gods

Linear B tablet on olive trees and barley as debts to be paid to the gods:

Linear B tablet Knossos debts to the gods of olive oil and barley

This particular tablet serves as a minor variant on the others we have posted with reference to dedications of olive trees and barley to the gods. Twice over tt adds the notion of debts to be paid (to the gods). This emphasis is obviously of great importance to the fellow who must pay these debts to the gods, to the palace administration at Knossos (which benefits from said payment) and to the gods themselves (who do not, since no one can pay out debts to abstract beings).

The tablet adds an extra dimension to the vocabulary on Linear B tablets on olive oil and barley owed to the gods, which hopefully can be successfully cross-correlated with Minoan Linear A tablets possibly referencing the same procedure.

Knossos tablet with all sorts of references to olive oil and barley

Knossos tablet with all sorts of references to olive oil and barley:

Knossos tablet 1 j olive oil barley etc

This tablet is a real hodgepodge of references to olive oil, olive oil trees and barley, ranging from references the port of Amnisos, to units of dry measurement (which also frequently occur on Minoan Linear A tablets), to all the gods and to the goddess Erinu in particular. Not only that, it also tabulates bales of barley, even down to single units of dry measurement of barley. So this tablet serves as a real cornucopia for olive oil, olive oil trees and barley. Thus, it adds one more reference to every single facet of these commodities. I shall tally the totals for all references to each commodity when I have finished translating as many Linear B tablets as I can referencing olive oil.

Olive oil and olive trees in Mycenaean Linear B — Part B: Cretan olive trees:

Olive oil and olive trees in Mycenaean Linear B — Part B: Cretan olive trees:







Here we have 3 more tablets from Knossos which specifically mention Cretan olive trees in Mycenaean Linear B.  It would be nice if the word for “Cretan” in Minoan Linear A were similar to Keresiya (feminine here because it must agree with the feminine word erawa = “olive tree”. But Googling the Internet I have come up with nothing so far. This will make it very difficult to extrapolate the “correct” word for “Cretan” from the Linear A tablets on olive oil production, even though Kerasiya occurs as often as apudosi = “delivery” on the Linear B tablets.

Before we can decipher even a single Linear A tablet on olive oil, we must decipher as many as we can in Linear B, because… PART A: delivery of olive oil

Before we can decipher even a single Linear A tablet on olive oil, we must decipher as many as we can in Linear B, because... PART A: delivery of olive oil

Before we can plausibly (and frequently tentatively) decipher even a single Linear A tablet on olive oil, we must decipher as many as we can in Linear B, because there are so many facets to be taken fully into consideration in the olive oil sub-sector of the agricultural sector of the Minoan/Mycenaean economy related to the production of olive oil which on an adequate number of Linear B tablets (at least 10), mostly from Knossos, dealing with harvesting from olive oil trees and the production and delivery of olive oil that we must account for every single term related to olive oil on the Linear B tablets, and then compile a list of all of these terms in order to cross-correlate these with equivalent terms on the Linear A tablets, mostly from Haghia Triada.

Another vital factor which just occurred to me is that the Minoan economy appears to have been primarily centred in Haghia Triada, while the Mycenaean primarily in Knossos, with valuable contributions from Pylos as well. In other words, the economic centre or power house, if you will, of the Minoan economy appears to have been Haghia Triada and not Knossos. I am somewhat baffled by the fact that researchers to date have not taken this important factor adequately into account. It appears to reveal that Knossos had not yet risen to prominence in the Minoan economy in the Middle Minoan Period (ca. 2100-1600 BCE):

The gravest challenge confronting us in the cross-correlation of the several economic terms related to olive oil production in the late Minoan III 3a period under Mycenaean suzerainty (ca. 1500-1450 BCE) with potentially equivalent terms in Minoan Linear A arises from the mathematical theoretical constructs of combinations and permutations. Given, for instance, that there are potentially a dozen (12) terms related to olive oil production on an adequate number (10-12) Linear B tablets to afford effectual cross-correlation, how on earth are we to know which terms in Mycenaean Linear B correspond to apparently similar terms in Minoan Linear A? In other words, if we for instance extrapolate a total of 12 terms from Mycenaean Linear B tablets, how are we to line or match up the Mycenaean Linear B terms in a “Column A” construct with those in Minoan Linear B in “Column B”? There is no practical way that we can safely assert that term A (let us say, for the sake of expediency, that this word is apudosi = “delivery”) in Mycenaean Greek corresponds to term A in Minoan Linear A, rather than any of B-L, in any permutation and/or in any combination. This leads us straight into the trap of having to assign ALL of the signified (terms) in Mycenaean Linear A to all of the signified in Minoan Linear B. I shall only be able to definitively demonstrate this quandary after I have deciphered as many Linear B tablets on olive oil as I possibly can.

For the time being, we have no choice but to set out on our search with these 3 tablets, all of which prepend the first term apudosi = “delivery” to the ideogram for olive oil. In closing, I wish to emphatically stress that this is precisely the signified I expected to turn up in the list of terms potentially related to olive oil production in Mycenaean Linear B. It is also the most important of all Mycenaean Linear B terms prepended to the ideogram for “olive oil” on the Linear B tablets. When we come to making the fateful decision to assign the the “correct” Minoan Linear A term meaning just that, “delivery” on the Linear A tablets dealing with olive oil, how are we to know which Linear A signified corresponds to Linear B apudosi = “delivery”? Still the situation is not as bad as you might think, at least for this term. Why so? Because if it appears (much) more often on the Linear B tablets (say, theoretically, 5 times versus less than 5 for all the other terms in Linear B related to olive oil), then the term appearing the most frequently on Minoan Linear A tablets related to olive oil is more likely than not to be the equivalent of apudosi, i.e. to mean “delivery”.

The less frequent the occurrence of any particular term relative to olive oil on the Mycenaean Linear B tablets, the greater the room there is for error, to the point that where a term appears only once on all of the Linear B tablets we can manage to muster up for translation, it becomes next to impossible to properly align that term with any of the terms occurring only once on the Minoan Linear A tablets, especially where more than one signified occurs on the Mycenaean Linear B tablets. If for example, 3 terms occur only once on the Linear B tablets, which one(s) aligns with which one(s) on the Linear A? A messy scenario. But we must make the best of the situation, bite the bullet, and cross-correlate these 3 terms in all permutations and combinations (= 9!) from the Linear B to the Linear A tablets containing them. This I shall definitively illustrate in a Chart once I have translated all terms related to olive oil production in Mycenaean Linear A.

May the Force, I mean, WINE, be with you! Funny cartoon!

May the Force, I mean, WINE, be with you! Funny cartoon!



I found this funny cartoon on the Internet and I just add to share it... with a few minor adjustments of my own, of course.

2 new Minoan Linear A words for “wine”, aka = “wine skin” & kukani = “red” nos. 31 & 32

2 new Minoan Linear A words for “wine”, aka = “wine skin”  & kukani = “red” nos. 31 & 32:





On these 2 Linear A tablets, the first of unknown provenance to me, and the second Linear A tablet Haghia Triada HT 38, there appear two words of interest, the first being the logogram, aka = “wine skin” and the second, kukani “red”. The latter corresponds roughly to the Mycenaean Greek Linear A words erutara =“red” or mitowesa = “deep red”. It could also mean “honey”, for “honey wine”, but I am less inclined to that interpretation. Red wine was much more common than honey wine in Minoan and Mycenaean Greece, just as it is today.

P.S. As long as we stick to Linear A tablets dealing either with vessels or with wine, we can usually decipher at least part of them. It is when we try to pass beyond the bounds of these two commodities that we run into real trouble. It is of course intriguing that vessels and wine are intimately related, and in fact they often appear on the same tablet in Minoan Linear A, just as they do in Mycenaean Linear B.

A few cracks in the Berlin Wall of Linear A. How far can we decipher it?

Even if I have have made a few small cracks in the Berlin Wall of Linear A, the burning question remains, “How far can we decipher it?” The short answer and the long answer are both, “If you think you can decipher Minoan Linear A, you have another think coming!” (including yours truly). The bulk of the vocabulary of Minoan Linear A remains a closed door, firmly nailed shut and locked with padlocks. The following tablets make this all too painfully obvious:

I haven’t the faintest idea what they mean.

Unless we are able to apply at least one of the 5 principles applicable to even a minimal decipherment of a very few Minoan Linear A words (we have managed to decipher 30 so far – more or less – and it was like extracting teeth in most of the cases!), there is simply no way we can ever make any real progress towards deciphering the majority of Linear A words. It is just out of the question... at least for the foreseeable future. What the more distant future will bring no one knows.

The 5 principles for the decipherment of even a minimal cross-section of Minoan Linear A are:

1. (The so-called negative factor). Do not attempt to correlate the Minoan language with any other ancient language except for the Linear B syllabary and indirect derivation from Mycenaean Greek terms (2. below).

2. Basing our technique on that of the French philologist, Jean-François Champellion, who deciphered the Rossetta Stone in 1822, cross-correlate words in the Minoan Linear A syllabary with parallel words in the Linear B syllabary on strikingly similar tablets in Mycenaean Greek, squarely taking into account the meanings of such words in the latter script and their potential adaptation to vocabulary in a very similar context on Minoan Linear A tablets.

3. Take direct cues from parallel ideograms on reasonably similar Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B tablets.

4. Turn to reliable archaeological evidence where this is available and finally;

5. (the most important principle of all). It is critical to understand that Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B both dealt with inventories and the process of inventorying livestock, crops, military matters and commodities such as vessels and pottery and textiles.

Even if we rigorously apply these 5 principles, either singly or much better, jointly (the more principles we can call up the better), there is no guarantee that our decipherments a.k.a. Translations are accurate or even correct. While some are indisputably right on the mark, for instance, Linear A puko definitely means “tripod” and most of the Minoan Linear A words for plants and spices are on the money, as for the rest of the words I have attempted to decipher to date, some are more or less accurate, and some are wide open to academic dispute. This is as it should be in an imperfect world, especially in light of the fact that my attempts at decipherment constitute what I sincerely hope is the first rational approach to the decipherment of Minoan Linear A.

As far as I am concerned, even managing to (more or less) decipher 30 Minoan Linear A words is a fine start, but this small vocabulary amounts to little more than a few cracks in the Berlin Wall of Minoan Linear A.

Confirmation yet again that Minoan Linear A puko = tripod (3rd. Time)

Confirmation yet again that Minoan Linear A puko = tripod (3rd. Time):



Minoan Linear A tablet 19 consisting of 2 joins confirms yet again that Minoan Linear A puko = tripod (3rd. Time). Prof. John G. Younger’s interpretation that puko = “bronze” simply does not hold up under even cursory scrutiny, as the following illustration makes perfectly clear.



Minoan tripods were almost always made of pottery, rarely of bronze. I could find only 1 Minoan tripod made of bronze in my Google image search. So the interpretation “bronze” for puko must be ruled out once and for all.

Linear A labrys with inscribed Idamate = king? or god (Zeus)? no. 29

Linear A labrys with inscribed Idamate = king? or god (Zeus)? no. 29:



Does the inscription on the Linear A labrys with inscribed with Idamate simply mean that this labrys (double axe) is dedicated to a Minoan potentate at Knossos whose name is Idamate? Perhaps. But there are two other more cogent decipherments, and these are either (a) idamate = Linear B wanaka = “king” or just as convincingly (b) idamate = Linear B diwo = “god” or “Zeus.” I am far more inclined to the either of the latter two.

Pylos tablet Py Ta 711 (Chris Tselentis) may lend some credence to the decipherment “king”. Certainly the King  (Idamate or Wanaka) of Knossos would be highly deserving of such an honour. But so for that matter would Zeus, whose immortal power would certainly be strikingly symbolized by this inscription on a Minoan labrys!




Recall the great importance the Minoans and Mycenaeans alike at Knossos imputed to the double axe or labrys. The Hall of the Double Axes is decorated with a whole series of them, one after another, on a magnificently painted frieze, so typical of the masterful artistry of the Minoans at Knossos.

Linear A tablet Zakros ZA 11, kana = Linear B meri = honey + wine = honey wine? no. 28

Linear A tablet Zakros ZA 11, kana = Linear B meri = honey + wine = honey wine? no. 28:





By cross-correlating Linear A tablet Zakros ZA 11, I have intuited that the word kana on the VERSO may possibly mean “honey”, and since it is followed by the ideogram for “wine”, which is precisely the same formula we find on Linear B tablet Pylos TA Un 718 L for “honey wine” (See Zakros ZA 11 above for the comparison), I believe I may be onto something here. But there is a bit of a problem.  The word, ?kunasa appears on the RECTO, also immediately followed by the ideogram for “wine”. This throws a wrench into the decipherment. However, I am more inclined to the former word, kana, because it is followed by a tabulation of the number of amphorae? of  (honey?) wine = 3.  The word ?kunasa on the RECTO may itself in fact mean “wine”... or vice versa. How confusing! Take your choice!

Following Linear A tablet Zakros ZA 11 is the Mycenaean Linear B fragment KN 718, which clearly illustrates that a female slave (doera) is bringing honey (meri) to be poured into an amphora to her mistress. 



What with our reaching Minoan word no. 28, we have almost doubled our Linear A vocabulary from 16 a week ago.

10 Mycenaean Linear B & Minoan Linear A words for plants & spices (grand total = 27)

10 Mycenaean Linear B & Minoan Linear A words for plants & spices (grand total = 27):

This chart lists 10 Mycenaean Linear B & Minoan Linear A words for plants & spices, with the Linear B in the left column, its Minoan Linear A in the middle column, and the English translation in the right column. It should be noted that I had to come up with a few Mycenaean Linear B words for plants on my own, because they are nowhere attested on Linear B tablets, regardless of provenance. Nevertheless, the spellings I have attributed to these words are probably correct. See the chart above. While most Mycenaean Linear B words and their Minoan Linear A words are equivalent, some are quite unalike. For instance, we have serino for celery in Mycenaean Greek and sedina in Minoan, and kitano in Mycenaean Greek versus tarawita in Minoan. There is a critical distinction to be made between Minoan Linear A kuruku, which means crocus, from which saffron is derived, and kanako, its diminutive, referring to its derivative, saffron, which is identical in form and meaning to its Mycenaean Linear B counterpart. The ultimate termination U in Minoan Linear A always refers to larger objects. Hence, kuruku must mean “crocus” while its diminutive, kanako, means “saffron”, just as in Mycenaean Greek. This latter discovery is my own.

I wish to emphasize as strongly as I can that I did not decipher these words in Minoan Linear A. Previous researchers were able to do so by the process of regressive extrapolation in most of the cases. Regressive extrapolation is the process whereby later words in a known language, in this case Mycenaean Greek, are regressively extrapolated to what philologists consider to have been their earlier equivalents in a more ancient language, in this case, the Minoan language, which is the best candidate which can be readily twinned with Mycenaean Greek. The primary reason why all of these words can be matched up (relatively) closely in the Minoan language and in Mycenaean Greek is that they are all pre-Indo-European. In other words, Mycenaean Greek inherited most of the words you see in this chart from the Minoan language. It is understood that these words are not Greek words at all, not even in Mycenaean Greek. Almost all of them survived into classical Greek, and are still in use in modern languages. For instance, in English, we have: cedar, celery, cypress, dittany, lily & olive oil, all of which can be traced back as far as the Minoan language (ca. 3,800 – 3,500 BCE), or some 5,800 years ago.

It is to be noted, however, that I am the first philologist to have ever written out these words in both the Linear A and Linear B syllabaries.

This brings the total number of Minoan Linear A words we have deciphered to at least 27.

Translation of most of the RECTO of Linear A tablet HT 13 (Haghia Triada)

Translation of most of the RECTO of Linear A tablet HT 13 (Haghia Triada):



A partial decipherment of the recto side of Linear A tablet HT 13 (Haghia Triada) holds up quite well under scrutiny. I was able to decipher lines 1, 3 and 4 with reasonable accuracy, the tail end of 5.(idu) and the beginning of 6. (nesi) to extract the toponyms (place names) Kydonia and Idunesi. To date, this is the most complete translation I have managed of a Linear A tablet. One thing that stood out was the total amount of teki = 27 1/2, which would appear to be the amount of teki (plural) per tereza, but I cannot be sure. If this is the case, then teki is a small measurement of wine = 27 1/2 per tereza. I suspect that this small standard amount of wine would be the amount measured out in a large kylix or small wine amphora to be served at a palace feast. But this only the case if teki is a small unit of measurement.        

The VERSO almost completely escapes me, at least for now. Perhaps some day... But for now I am satisfied with my translation of the RECTO.

The 5 principles applicable to the rational partial decipherment of Minoan Linear A

The 5 principles applicable to the rational partial decipherment of Minoan Linear A:

If we are to make any headway at all in the eventual decipherment of Minoan Linear A, there are certain principles which should be strictly applied. There are 5 of them:

1. (The so-called negative factor). Do not attempt to correlate the Minoan language with any other ancient language except for the Linear B syllabary and indirect derivation from Mycenaean Greek terms (2. below).

2. Basing our technique on that of the French philologist, Jean-François Champellion, who deciphered the Rossetta Stone in 1822, cross-correlate words in the Minoan Linear A syllabary with parallel words in the Linear B syllabary on strikingly similar tablets in Mycenaean Greek, squarely taking into account the meanings of such words in the latter script and their potential adaptation to vocabulary in a very similar context on Minoan Linear A tablets.

3. Take direct cues from parallel ideograms on reasonably similar Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B tablets.

4. Turn to reliable archaeological evidence where this is available and finally;

5. (the most important principle of all). It is critical to understand that Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B both dealt with inventories and the process of inventorying livestock, crops, military matters and commodities such as vessels and pottery and textiles.

1. The attempt to correlate Minoan with known ancient language (negative principle or factor):

All too many past researchers and philologists attempting to decipher Minoan Linear A have made the assumption that they had first to determine what class of language it must or may have belonged to before they even began to attempt decipherment. This is, as we shall see, a false premise, a non starter, a dead end.

The very first of these researchers to make such an assumption was none other than Sir Arthur Evans himself, though he could hardly be blamed for doing so, being as he was at the very frontier of the science of archaeology at the outset of the twentieth century, up until the First World War when he had to suspend archaeological work at Knossos (1900-1914). I made this clear in my article, “An Archaeologist’ s Translation of Pylos tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris)”, in Vol. 10 (2014) in the prestigious international journal, Archaeology and Science (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448, in which I emphasized and I quote from Evans:

It would seem, therefore, unlikely that the language of the Cretan scripts was any kind of Greek, and probable that it was related to the early language or languages of Western Anatolia – associated, that is, with the archaeological 'cultures’ of Alaja Hüyük I ('proto-hattic’) and of Hissarlik II and Yortan ('Luvian’)...”, and a little further, “Though many of the sign-groups are compounded from distinct elements, usually of two syllables each, there is little trace of an organized system of grammatical suffixes, as in Greek. At most, a few signs are notably frequent as terminals... (italics mine) and this in spite of its great antiquity, given that it preceded the earliest known written Greek, The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer by at least 600 years! It was a perfectly reasonable and plausible assumption, in view of the then understandable utter lack of evidence to the contrary.

Returning to my own analysis:

Besides, there were no extant tablets in either Minoan Linear A or Linear B with parallel text in another known ancient language, as had conveniently been the case with the Rosetta Stone, which would have gone a long way to aiming for a convincing decipherment of at least the latter script. Yet Evans was nagged by doubts lurking just below the surface of his propositions. (pp. 137-138)

So Evans was vacillating between the assumption that the Minoan language may have been related either to Luvian or Hittite (a brilliant assumption for his day and age) and that it was an ancestral form of proto-Greek. Both assumptions were wrong, but if only he had known that Linear B was alternatively the actual version of a very ancient East Greek dialect, namely, Mycenaean Greek, how different would the history of the decipherment of Linear B at least have been.

To complicate matters, Michael Ventris himself, following in the footsteps of Evans, began by making the same assumption, only this time correlating (italics mine) Linear B with Etruscan, stubbornly sticking with this assumption for almost 2 years before Linear B literally threw in his face the ineluctable conclusion that the script was indicative of Mycenaean Greek (June 1952).

My point is and here I must be emphatic. It is a total waste of time trying to pigeon-hole the lost Minoan language in any class of language, whether Indo-European or not. It will get us absolutely nowhere. So I have concluded (much to my own relief and with positive practical consequences) that it does not matter one jot what class of language Minoan belongs to, and that it serves us best simply to jump into the deep waters without further ado, and to attempt to decipher it on its own terms, i.e. internally.

2. Cross-correlation between the Minoan language and the Mycenaean syllabary:

Notice that in 1. above I italicized the word correlating. This is no accident at all. It is only by the process of cross-correlation with a known language that we can even begin to decipher an unknown one. And of course, the known language with which the Minoan language must be cross-correlated is none other than Mycenaean in Linear B, if not for any reason other than that Linear B uses basically the same syllabary as its predecessor, with only a modicum of changes required by the latter to represent Mycenaean Greek, more or less accurately. This assumption or principle, if you like, is squarely based on the approach used by the renowned French philologist, Jean-François Champellion, who finally deciphered in 1822, 23 years after it was discovered in Egypt in 1799.

How did he do it? He made the brilliant assumption that the stone, on which was inscribed the identical text in Demotic and ancient Greek, must have the exact same text in Egyptian hieroglyphics on it. And of course, he was right on the money. Here is were the principle of cross-correlation comes charging to the fore. If a given text in an unknown ancient text is on the same tablet as at least one other known language (and in this case two), a truly observant and meticulous philologist cannot but help to draw the ineluctable conclusion that the text of the unknown language must be identical to that of the known. Bingo!

But I hear you protest, there are no media upon which the identical text is inscribed where Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B are concerned. The medium on which texts in both Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B are inscribed is the clay tablet. While it is indisputably true that there exist no tablets on which the identical text is inscribed in Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B, upon close examination, we discover to our amazement that there is at least one tablet in Minoan Linear A which is potentially very close to another in Mycenaean Linear B, and that tablet is none other than Linear A HT 31 from Haghia Triada, on which the text, at least to a highly observant philologist, would appear to be very close to a text on a particular Linear B tablet. And that tablet, we discover to our amazement, is none other than Pylos tablet TA Py 631-1952 (Ventris). Armed with this assumption, I forged right ahead and made a direct comparison between the two. And what did I discover? Both tablets mention (almost) the very same types of vessels in at least 4 instances. Armed with this information, I simply went ahead and found, this time not to my amazement or even surprise, that I was – at least tentatively – correct.

In the case of at least two words on both tablets, as it turned out, I was right on the money. These are (a) puko = tripod on HT 31 and tiripode = tripod on Py TA 631-1952 (Ventris). This was the very first word I ever managed to decipher correctly in Minoan Linear A. My translation, as it turns out, is without a shadow of a doubt, correct. My excitement mounted. (b) The second is supa3ra or supaira on HT 31, which would appear to be almost if not the exact equivalent of dipa mewiyo = a small(er) cup on Py TA 631-1952 (Ventris), but without the handles on the latter. And as it turns out, I was again either close to the mark or right on it. Refer to our previous posts on the decipherment of these two words, and you can see for yourselves exactly how I drew these startling conclusions.

Another Linear B tablet which is a goldmine of Mycenaean vocabulary from which certain Minoan words may be indirectly extrapolated is Pylos tablet TA Py Un 718 L.

By extrapolation of Minoan Linear A terms from their Mycenaean Linear B equivalents, I certainly do not mean that the former can be directly divined from the latter, since that is impossible, given that Mycenaean Greek is a known language whereas Minoan Linear A is unknown. What I mean is simply this: there is a good chance that a word which appears on a Minoan Linear A tablet which shares (almost) identical ideograms and relatively similar placement of (quasi-)identical text with its reasonably similar Mycenaean counterpart may share (approximately) the same meaning as its Mycenaean Greek counterpart. The clincher here is context. If the (quasi-)identical ideograms on both the Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B tablets appear strikingly alike, then we may very well have something substantial to go on. Pylos tablet TA Py Un 718 L is as close to an ideal candidate as there comes for such cross-correlation with tablets with similar text on one or more Minoan Linear A tablets.

3. Parallel ideograms on Linear A and Linear B tablets:

The presence of apparently (very) similar ideograms for vessels on both of the aforementioned tablets only serves to confirm, at least tentatively for most of the words on vessels I have attempted to decipher, and conclusively for the two words above, that I am (hopefully) well on my way to a clear start at deciphering at deciphering a small subset of Minoan Linear A. For lack of space, I cannot give details this post, which is already long enough, but once again, previous posts reveal in much more detail this principle on which my decipherments are founded, and the methodology behind it which lends further credence my translations.

4. Archaeological evidence lends yet further credence to my decipherments of 4 of the largest vessel types on HT 31, namely, karopa3 or karopai, nere, qapai & tetu. The problem here is, which one of the largest is the largest of them all, being approximately equivalent to the Greek pithos? I cannot tell from the tablet. However, since my initial stab at decipherment, I have tentatively concluded that Minoan Linear A words terminating in the ultimate U are masculine singular for the very largest in their class. Hence, it would appear at least that tetu is the most likely candidate for the equivalent to the ancient Greek pithos. I cannot as yet determine with any degree of certainty that this is so, but it is at least a start.

5. (the most important principle of all). It is critical to understand that Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B both dealt with inventories and the process of inventorying livestock, crops, military matters and commodities such as vessels and pottery and textiles. Based on this assumption, it only makes sense that a particular inventory on a Mycenaean Linear B tablet which appears very close to a similar one on a Minoan Linear A tablet (Cf. Linear B Pylos tablet TA Py 641-1952 (Ventris) and its strikingly similar counterpart Linear A tablet Haghia Triada HT 31) is quite likely to bear some fruit in at least a partial decipherment of the latter. And this proves to be the case, as I have amply illustrated in previous posts. I am therefore committed to working on the operating assumption and principle that Minoan Linear A tablets (approximately) parallel to their Linear B counterparts (See principle 2. above).

These five principles form the foundation of the first steps that appear to yield relatively convincing results in the decipherment of the 18 words in Minoan Linear A I have tackled so far. Relying on the application of these four principles, either singly or in combination, we can, I believe, make some real headway in the decipherment of roughly 5% to 10 % of the terms on the Linear A tablets. The greater the number of these principles entering into the equation for the decipherment of any Minoan word in particular, the greater are our chances of “getting it right”, so to speak. This is a very good start.

Warning! Caveat: yet even the application of these 5 principles, singly or in tandem (and the more we can apply, the better) cannot guarantee that at least some of our “translations” are incorrect or even way off the mark, because some of them are bound to be just that. I have already discovered that my initial translation of kaudeta on Linear A tablets HT 13 and HT 31 is probably off-base. Time to return to the drawing board.

On the other hand, at least to date, it is virtually impossible to decipher any Linear A words on any tablet to which any or all of the aforementioned principles cannot be safely applied. This leaves hundreds of Minoan terms virtually beyond our reach. In other words, tablets on which Minoan vocabulary appears, but without any reference or link to the 4 principles mentioned above remain a sealed mystery. But that does not trouble me in the least.

Vocabulary and Supersyllabograms in Minoan Linear A classified by tablets

Vocabulary and Supersyllabograms in Minoan Linear A classified by tablets (Click on the logo to visit his site):




NOTE: Decipherment of many of these words in Minoan Linear A can be cross-correlated with relative ease with Mycenaean Linear B tablets with supersyllabograms on them, since the latter may give hints relative to the potential meanings of the words in question. 

Relatively intact Minoan Linear A tablets with vocabulary potentially suited for decipherment.




Grains (wheat & barley):

ARKH 3 ?
... kane + grain
... kinu + grain
... yapi + grain
... pipu3 = pipai + grain
(all left truncated)?

ARKH 5
adaro + grain 

HT 21
pitakase + TE = grain 

HT 44 (cf. HT 88 (human) + HT 131)
iqa*118*

HT 91
ika

HT 92 (Cf. HT 133)
adu

HT 93 
pa3nina = painina + grain + PA3 + RE + SE
ase + grain + PA
pa3nina = painina 

HT 101
zu*22*di + grain + QE
sara2 = sarai +grain (See also HT 105 HT 114 HT 121 & HT 125)
Total = 5 - I will attempt a preliminary decipherment soon. 

HT 102
sara2 = sarai + grain

HT 114
sara2 = sarai+ grain

HT 115
*47*nuraya + grain

HT 116
kupaya
pura2 = purai + grain + DI – I will attempt this one soon.
pura2 = purai + grain + KI – I will attempt this one soon.
pi*34*te
sikine
qanuma 

HT 121
sara2 = sarai 
 
HT 125
sara2 = sarai 
reta2 = retai + grain + PA – I will attempt this one soon (See also sara2 = sarai)

HT 129
kireta2 = kiretai + grain
tuqirina + grain

HT 131
iqa*118 + grain (Cf. HT 44)

HT 133 
adu + TE + grain + DA – I will decipher this one very shortly (Cf. adureza = basic standard unit for dry measurement for grains such as barley and wheat)

KH 10
akipiete + grain

Man (human):

HT 58
qetiradu

HT 88 (See HT 133 above)
adu

HT 105
sara2 = sarai
yedi 
 
Oil and olive oil:

HT 14
apu2nadu + oil + MI + oil + DI

HT 91
teri = oil + MI – I will attempt this one soon.

HT 101
kupa3 = kupai + U – I will attempt this one soon.

HT 121
kirita2 = kiritai + oil + QE + DI – I will attempt this one soon.

HT 123-124 *
kitai + (owed) = kiro (total)– I will attempt these 3 soon.
saru +  (owed) = kiro (total)
datu +  (owed) = kiro (total)

HT 140
yedi + KI

Sheep:

HT 132
qareto = field (lease field -or- plot of land)? + ideogram for sheep. This does not mean sheep!

Vessels:

HT 93 – I will attempt this one soon.
darida 

Wine:

ARKH 2
kura = wine? or something related to wine. Cf. Linear B Tablet Pylos Py TA Un 718 L (to be posted next).

Gender in Minoan Linear A

Gender in Minoan Linear A:

This is a tentative list of words in Minoan Linear A by gender, in so far as I have been able to determine gender to this point. I am not sure whether I am correct, but I would rather take the chance than not, as per my usual. Note that I am of the opinion that in the Minoan language, as in modern Italian, (almost) all words ended in an ultimate vowel. My reason for this tentative conclusion is simple: in the Linear A syllabary all syllabograms end in a vowel. When Mycenaean Linear B largely inherited the Linear A syllabary, with quite a few necessary adjustments, all of its syllabograms still ended in vowels, which made the syllabary (Linear B) awfully clumsy for representing even archaic Mycenaean Greek, in which most words, just as in later ancient Greek, probably ended in consonants. 





Masculine:

akaru
datu (HT 123-124) + ideogram for “olive(s)”
dideru
kasaru
kinisu
kupu3natu
qaqaru
resu
supu = very large amphora
tetu = large amphora

Feminine:

adureza = basic standard unit of dry measurement (barley share?)
aresana
daweda = 2 handled cup its contents = wine 
ipinama
kupa
rariudeza
reza = basic standard unit (for linear?) measurement
risuma
tereza = basic standard unit for liquid measurement (of wine)

Feminine Diminutive:

kiretai2 = kiretai
dapa3 = dapai
sara2 = sarai (frequent!) + with grain + man
supa3ra = supaira (See supu masc. above) = smaller cups

Neuter (and Masculine?):

dinaro
kidaro
kumaro
kuro = total
puko = tripod
samaro
utaro
witero

How did I manage to decipher 17 Minoan Linear A words in 1 month? The 4 principles

That is the burning question. And here are the reasons why. To begin with, it is impossible to decipher any unknown ancient language by relying on its internal structure alone. It simply cannot be done. We must have recourse to certain fundamental principles before we even being to attempt any decipherment. So far, I have been able to isolate four of them. These are:

1. The attempt to correlate Minoan with known ancient language (negative principle or factor):

All too many past researchers and philologists attempting to decipher Minoan Linear A have made the assumption that they had first to determine what class of language it must or may have belonged to before they even began to attempt decipherment. This is, as we shall see, a false premise, a non starter, a dead end.

The very first of these researchers to make such an assumption was none other than Sir Arthur Evans himself, though he could hardly be blamed for doing so, being as he was at the very frontier of the science of archaeology at the outset of the twentieth century, up until the First World War when he had to suspend archaeological work at Knossos (1900-1914). I made this clear in my article, “An Archaeologist’ s Translation of Pylos tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris)”, in Vol. 10 (2014) in the prestigious international journal, Archaeology and Science (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448, in which I emphasized and I quote from Evans:

It would seem, therefore, unlikely that the language of the Cretan scripts was any kind of Greek, and probable that it was related to the early language or languages of Western Anatolia – associated, that is, with the archaeological 'cultures’ of Alaja Hüyük I ('proto-hattic’) and of Hissarlik II and Yortan ('Luvian’)...”, and a little further, “Though many of the sign-groups are compounded from distinct elements, usually of two syllables each, there is little trace of an organized system of grammatical suffixes, as in Greek. At most, a few signs are notably frequent as terminals... (italics mine) and this in spite of its great antiquity, given that it preceded the earliest known written Greek, The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer by at least 600 years! It was a perfectly reasonable and plausible assumption, in view of the then understandable utter lack of evidence to the contrary.

Returning to my own analysis:

Besides, there were no extant tablets in either Minoan Linear A or Linear B with parallel text in another known ancient language, as had conveniently been the case with the Rosetta Stone, which would have gone a long way to aiming for a convincing decipherment of at least the latter script. Yet Evans was nagged by doubts lurking just
below the surface of his propositions. (pp. 137-138)

So Evans was vacillating between the assumption that the Minoan language may have been related either to Luvian or Hittite (a brilliant assumption for his day and age) and that it was an ancestral form of proto-Greek. Both assumptions were wrong, but if only he had known that Linear B was alternatively the actual version of a very ancient East Greek dialect, namely, Mycenaean Greek, how different would the history of the decipherment of Linear B at least have been.

To complicate matters, Michael Ventris himself, following in the footsteps of Evans, began by making the same assumption, only this time correlating (italics mine) Linear B with Etruscan, stubbornly sticking with this assumption for almost 2 years before Linear B literally threw in his face the ineluctable conclusion that the script was indicative of Mycenaean Greek (June 1952).

My point is and here I must be emphatic. It is a total waste of time trying to pigeon-hole the lost Minoan language in any class of language, whether Indo-European or not. It will get us absolutely nowhere. So I have concluded (much to my own relief and with positive practical consequences) that it does not matter one jot what class of language Minoan belongs to, and that it serves us best simply to jump into the deep waters without further ado, and to attempt to decipher it on its own terms, i.e. internally.

2. Cross-correlation between Minoan and a known ancient language:

Notice that in 1. above I italicized the word correlating. This is no accident at all. It is only by the process of cross-correlation with a known language that we can even begin to decipher an unknown one. And of course, the known language with which the Minoan language must be cross-correlated is none other than Mycenaean in Linear B, if not for any reason other than that Linear B uses basically the same syllabary as its predecessor, with only a modicum of changes required by the latter to represent Mycenaean Greek, more or less accurately. This assumption or principle, if you like, is squarely based on the approach used by the renowned French philologist, Jean-François Champellion, who finally deciphered in 1822, 23 years after it was discovered in Egypt in 1799.

How did he do it? He made the brilliant assumption that the stone, on which was inscribed the identical text in Demotic and ancient Greek, must have the exact same text in Egyptian hieroglyphics on it. And of course, he was right on the money. Here is were the principle of cross-correlation comes charging to the fore. If a given text in an unknown ancient text is on the same tablet as at least one other known language (and in this case two), a truly observant and meticulous philologist cannot but help to draw the ineluctable conclusion that the text of the unknown language must be identical to that of the known. Bingo!

But I hear you protest, there are no media upon which the identical text is inscribed where Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B are concerned. The medium on which texts in both Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B are inscribed is the clay tablet. While it is indisputably true that there exist no tablets on which the identical text is inscribed in Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B, upon close examination, we discover to our amazement that there is at least one tablet in Minoan Linear A which might potentially be very close to another in Mycenaean Linear B, and that tablet is none other than HT 31 from Haghia Triada, on which the text, at least to a highly observant philologist would appear to be very close to a text on a particular Linear B tablet. And that tablet, we discover to our amazement, is none other than Pylos tablet Py TA 631-1952 (Ventris). Armed with this assumption, I forged right ahead and made a direct comparison between the two. And what did I discover? Both tablets mention the (almost) the very same types of vessels in at least 4 instances. Armed with this information, I simply went ahead and found, this time not to my amazement or even surprise, that I was – at least tentatively – correct.

In the case of at least two words on both tablets, as it turned out, I was right on the money. These are (a) puko = tripod on HT 31 and tiripode = tripod on Py TA 631-1952 (Ventris). This was the very first word I ever managed to decipher correctly in Minoan Linear A. My translation, as it turns out, is without a shadow of a doubt, correct. My excitement mounted. (b) The second is supa3ra or supaira on HT 31, which would appear to be almost if not the exact equivalent of dipa mewiyo = a small(er) cup on Py TA 631-1952 (Ventris), but without the handles on the latter. And as it turns out, I was again either close to the mark or right on it. Refer to our previous posts on the decipherment of these two words, and you can see for yourselves exactly how I drew these startling conclusions.

3. Parallel ideograms on Linear A and Linear B tablets:

The presence of apparently (very) similar ideograms for vessels on both of these tablets only serves to confirm, at least tentatively for most of the words on vessels I have attempted to decipher, and conclusively for the two words above, that I was well on my way to a clear start at deciphering Minoan Linear A. For lack of space, I cannot give details this post, which is already long enough, but once again, previous posts reveal in much more detail this principle on which my decipherments are founded, and the methodology behind it which lends further credence my translations.

4. Archaeological evidence lends yet further credence to my decipherments of 4 of the largest vessel types on HT 31, namely, karopa3 or karopai, nere, qapai & tetu. The problem here is, which one of the largest is the largest of them all, being approximately equivalent to the Greek pithos? I cannot tell from the tablet. However, since my initial stab at decipherment, I have tentatively concluded that Minoan Linear A words terminating in the ultimate U are masculine singular for the very largest in their class. Hence, it would appear at least that tetu is the most likely candidate for the equivalent to the ancient Greek pithos. I cannot as yet determine with any degree of certainty that this is so, but it is at least a start.

These four principle form the foundation of the first steps that appear to yield relatively convincing results in the decipherment of the 17 words in Minoan Linear A I have tackled so far. Relying on the application of these four principles, either singly or in combination, we can, I believe, make some real headway in the decipherment of roughly 5% to 10 % of the terms on the Linear A tablets. The greater the number of these principles entering into the equation for the decipherment of any Minoan word in particular, the greater are our chances of “getting it right”, so to speak. That is a very good start.

On the other hand, at least to date, it is virtually impossible to decipher any Linear A words on any tablet to which any or all of the aforementioned principles cannot be safely applied. This leaves hundreds of Minoan terms virtually beyond our reach. In other words, tablets on which Minoan vocabulary appears, but without any reference or link to the 4 principles mentioned above remain a sealed mystery. But that does not bother me in the least.

In the next post, relying on principles 2. (cross-correlation) and 3. ideograms, I shall decipher the eighteenth Minoan word (18), this time one related to spices.

KEY Linear A Minoan Language Blog back online after 4 years lying fallow!

KEY Linear A Minoan Language Blog back online after 4 years lying fallow!

The extremely important Minoan Language Blog by Andras Zeke of Hungary is back online after 4 years lying fallow. I am hugely impressed by the highly conscientious and meticulous work Andras has poured into his magnificent blog, and I am delighted he is back online. Click on its banner to visit his site




and if you are worth your salt as a Mycenaean Linear B and potential Minoan Linear A researcher, I strongly recommend you follow his blog. I am actually flabbergasted by the fact that Andras has come back online just as I have begun deciphering Minoan Linear A in the vessels and wine sectors at least. The co-incidence seems too amazing to be true, but I am a firm believer in serendipity and the intervention of Providence, whatever that is!

The extreme significance of the ideogram for “wine” on 2 Linear A tablets

The extreme significance of the ideogram for “wine” on 2 Linear A tablets:

It is extremely significant that the ideogram for “wine” appears on these two rectangular Minoan Linear A tablets.

The fact that they are rectangular is unique in and of itself. and therefore indicative of something of capital importance to the further decipherment of Minoan Linear A. What is even more striking is that the ideogram for “wine” appears dead centre on the A.Y. Nickolaus tablet, immediately after the first 3 ideograms for vessels incharged with attributive supersyllabograms = [1] – [3] and immediately before the last 3 = [4] – [6]. It is as if the Minoan Linear A scribe who inscribed this tablet deliberately wanted to draw attention to this striking quasi-geometric positioning. And why? If I understand the scribe’s intention correctly, he is directly correlating the ideogram for “wine” with all of the ideograms for vessels on this singularly rectangular tablet. In other words, he is stressing that all of the vessels are meant to contain WINE. If this is the case (and I can see no reason why it is not), then all of the tablets on vessels I have translated so far are vessels containing wine or meant to contain it. This is such a significant development in the first steps in the decipherment of Minoan Linear A that it cannot safely be ignored. What it implies is that there is a DIRECT (or INDIRECT but notable) between Linear A tablets inventorying vessels by type and those inventorying the standard scalar measurement of units of wine to be stored in amphorae in the magazines at Knossos, from the largest = teresa to the next four in descending size = [1] teke [2] nere [3] dawe?da and the smallest [4] quqani.

I shall shortly be illustrating this striking parallelism between Linear A terms related to the five standard units of measurement of wine and the several specific types of vessels on other Linear A tablets in a chart cross-correlating the notable relationship between the two (wine and vessels). This chart should serve to clear up any confusion and probably also any lingering doubts over my extremely precise definitions of the Linear A terminology for both wine and vessels.

5 standard units of measurement for wine in Minoan Linear A

5 standard units of measurement for wine in Minoan Linear A:




Apart from tereza, which I have already tentatively established as the largest standard unit of measurement for wine storage in Minoan Linear A, there appear to be 4 additional standard units for the measurement of wine storage on Linear A tablet Haghia Triada HT 13, and these are, from largest = 1. to smallest = 4. (after tereza itself):

1. teke   
2. nere
3. dawe?da
4. quqani

When we take a good look at the storage magazines at Knossos, we observe the following:







As astonishing as it might seem, there are in fact 5 different sizes of storage amphorae in these magazines. Co-incidence with the Minoan Linear A apparent standard storage units for amphorae? I have to wonder.

Notice also that the two largest standard unit sizes for storage of wine end in E (teke & nere), while the medium size ends in A (dawe?da) and the smallest size in I (quqani), indicating that these ultimates may represent size, where E = large (macro), A = medium and I = small (micro).

Tag: Minoan Linear A

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