Linear A

Numbers follow a decimal system: units are represented by vertical dashes, tens by horizontal dashes, hundreds by circles, and thousands by circles with rays. There are special symbols to indicate fractions and weights. Specific signs that coincide with numerals are regarded as fractions;[6] these sign combinations are known as klasmatograms.

Integers can be read and the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are quite straightforward, similarly to Roman numerals.[7]

Aegean numerals

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
𐄇	𐄈	𐄉	𐄊	𐄋	𐄌	𐄍	𐄎	𐄏
10	20	30	40	50	60	70	80	90
𐄐	𐄑	𐄒	𐄓	𐄔	𐄕	𐄖	𐄗	𐄘
100	200	300	400	500	600	700	800	900
𐄙	𐄚	𐄛	𐄜	𐄝	𐄞	𐄟	𐄠	𐄡

There is a lack of scholarly agreement on fractions.[8][9][10] Corazza et al. (2020) proposed the following values, most of which had been previously proposed:[11]

Other fractions are composed by addition: the common 𐝕 JE and 𐝓 DD are 3⁄4 and 1⁄3 (2⁄6), 𐝒 BB = 2⁄5, EF = 3⁄8, etc. (and indeed B 1⁄5 looks like it might derive from KK 2⁄10). Corazza et al. (2020) propose that the hapax legomenon, glyph L 𐝈, is spurious.

Several of these values are supported by Linear B. Although Linear B used a different numbering system, several of the Linear A fractions were adopted as fractional units of measurement. For example, Linear B 𐝓 DD and 𐝎 (presumably AA) are 1⁄3 and 1⁄12 of a lana, while 𐝇 K is 1⁄10 of the main unit for dry weight.[11]

The main discoveries of Linear A tablets, many fragmentary, have been at Hagia Triada, Zakros, and Khania on Crete:[20]

Inscriptions have been discovered at the following locations on Crete:[21]

Linear A tablet from the palace of Zakros, Archeological Museum of Sitia.

Until 1973, only one Linear A tablet had been found outside Crete (on Kea).[25] Since then, other locations have yielded inscriptions.

Most—if not all—inscriptions found outside Crete appear to have been made locally, as indicated by the composition of the substrate and other indications.[25] Also, close analysis of the inscriptions found outside Crete indicates the use of a script that is somewhere between Linear A and Linear B, combining elements from both.

• Kea[21]
• Kythera[21]
• Melos[21]
• Samothrace[21]
• Thera (5 vases, 2 ostraka, and 3 clay tablet fragments)[26][21]

• Mycenae[21]
• Tiryns[21]
• Hagios Stephanos, Laconia[21][27]

• Miletus (1 vessel fragment)[28]
• Troy (2 clay spindles)[29]

A Linear A inscription was said to have been found in southeast Bulgaria.[30] Another, somewhat more solid, find was at Tel Lachish[31] A Minoan graffito found at Tel Haror on a vessel fragment is either Linear A or Cretan hieroglyphs.[32]

The majority of signs in the Linear A script appear to have graphical equivalents in the Linear B syllabary. Comparison of the Hagia Triada tablets HT 95 and HT 86 shows that they contain identical lists of words and some kind of phonetic alteration. Scholars who approached Linear A with the phonetic values of Linear B produced a series of identical words. The Linear B–Linear A parallels: ku-ku-da-ra, pa-i-to, ku-mi-na, di-de-ro →di-de-ru, qa-qa-ro→qa-qa-ru, a-ra-na-ro→a-ra-na-re.[35] Though identical, some of these words, such as ka-pa, are used in much different ways.[36]

In 1957, Bulgarian scholar Vladimir I. Georgiev published his Le déchiffrement des inscriptions crétoises en linéaire A ("The decipherment of Cretan inscriptions in Linear A") stating that Linear A contains Greek linguistic elements.[38] Georgiev then published another work in 1963, titled Les deux langues des inscriptions crétoises en linéaire A ("The two languages of Cretan inscriptions in Linear A"), suggesting that the language of the Hagia Triada tablets was Greek but that the rest of the Linear A corpus was in Hittite-Luwian.[38][39] In December 1963, Gregory Nagy of Harvard University developed a list of Linear A and Linear B terms based on the assumption "that signs of identical or similar shape in the two scripts will represent similar or identical phonetic values"; Nagy concluded that the language of Linear A bears "Greek-like" and Indo-European elements.[40] Michael Ventris' decipherment of Linear B in 1952 suggests an old form of Greek: it is derived from Linear A. Therefore, we can assume that the signs related to the Linear A express the same value as the Linear B. In all Linear B values for related words give a large number of identical forms or identical root forms, but alternate with the final vowel, or almost identical forms among linear texts, mainly those of Hagia Triada.

Extracting conclusions or arguments from a simple morphology can hardly be considered methodologically satisfactory. Yves Duhoux in the "Linear A as Greek" discussion at AEGEANET in March 1998:[35]

I would like to remind you of some basic facts related to the Greekness of Linear A's language: (1) The word for "total" is different in Linear A and in Linear B: LB to - so(- de); LA > B ku-ro. (2) The Linear B language is significantly less "prefixing" than Linear A. (3) Votive Linear A texts, where we are pretty sure to have variant forms of the same "word", show morphological (I mean: grammatical) features totally different from Linear B. The conclusion must be that even if one can find some casual resemblances between words in both languages (remember this MUST statistically happen: e.g. English and Persian use the same word "bad" to express the meaning of BAD, although it is proven that both words have no genetic relation at all), they are probably structurally different.

Since the late 1950s, some scholars have suggested that the Linear A language could be an Anatolian language.[41]

Luwian Hieroglyphs

Palmer (1958) put forward a theory, based on Linear B phonetic values, suggesting that Linear A language could be related closely to Luwian.[41] The theory, however, failed to gain universal support for the following reasons:

• There is no remarkable resemblance between Minoan and Hitto-Luwian morphology.
• None of the existing theories of the origin of Hitto-Luwian peoples and their migration to Anatolia (either from the Balkans or from the Caucasus) are related to Crete.
• There was a lack of direct contact between Hitto-Luwians and Minoan Crete; the latter was never mentioned in Hitto-Luwian inscriptions. Small states located along the western coast of ancient Asia Minor were natural barriers between Hitto-Luwians and Minoan Crete.
• There were major differences in material culture between the Hitto-Luwian and Minoan civilizations.

There are recent works focused on the Luwian connection, not in terms of the Minoan language being Anatolian, but rather in terms of possible borrowings from Luwian, including the origin of the writing system itself.[42] It has been suggested that "Hittite and Luwian cognates often reappear in Linear A".[43]

In an article from 2001, Margalit Finkelberg, Professor of Classics emerita at Tel Aviv University, suggested a "high degree of correspondence between the phonological and morphological system of Minoan and that of Lycian" and proposed that "the language of Linear A is either the direct ancestor of Lycian or a closely related idiom."[35][44]

Cyrus H. Gordon, having earlier pointed out that some Linear A words had Semitic roots, first proposed in 1966–1969 that the texts contained Semitic vocabulary that was based on the lexical items such as kull-, meaning 'all' (Akkadian kalu, kullatu, Hebrew kol).[45][46][3] Gordon uses morphological evidence to suggest that u- serves as a prefix in Linear A like Semitic copula u-. However, Gordon's copula u- is based on an incomplete word, and even if some of Gordon's identifications were true, a complete case for a Semitic language has not yet been built.[3]

In 2001, the journal Ugarit-Forschungen published the article "The First Inscription in Punic—Vowel Differences in Linear A and B" by Jan Best, claiming to demonstrate how and why Linear A notates an archaic form of Phoenician.[47] This was a continuation of attempts by Cyrus Gordon in finding connections between Minoan and West Semitic languages.

Another recent interpretation, based on the frequencies of the syllabic signs and on complete palaeographic comparative studies, suggests that the Minoan Linear A language belongs to the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages. Studies by Hubert La Marle include a presentation of the morphology of the language, avoid the complete identification of phonetic values between Linear A and B, and also avoid comparing Linear A with Cretan hieroglyphs.[48] La Marle uses the frequency counts to identify the type of syllables written in Linear A, and takes into account the problem of loanwords in the vocabulary.[48]

However, La Marle's interpretation of Linear A has been subject to some criticism; it was rejected by John Younger of the University of Kansas who showed that La Marle had invented at will erroneous and arbitrary new transcriptions, based on resemblances with many different script systems (as Phoenician, Hieroglyphic Egyptian, Hieroglyphic Hittite, Ethiopian, Cypro-Minoan, etc.), ignoring established evidence and internal analysis, while for some words La Marle proposes religious meanings inventing names of gods and rites.[49] La Marle made a rebuttal in "An answer to John G. Younger's remarks on Linear A" in 2010.[50]

Italian scholar Giulio M. Facchetti attempted to link Linear A to the Tyrrhenian language family comprising Etruscan, Rhaetic, and Lemnian. This family is reasoned to be a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean substratum of the 2nd millennium BC, sometimes referred to as Pre-Greek. Facchetti proposed some possible similarities between the Etruscan language and ancient Lemnian, and other Aegean languages like Minoan.[51]

Michael Ventris, who (with John Chadwick) successfully deciphered Linear B, also believed in a link between Minoan and Etruscan.[52] The same perspective is supported by S. Yatsemirsky in Russia and Raymond A. Brown.[53][54]

Monti put forward a Hurrian-Urartian hypothesis based on morphematic elements.[55] An Indo-European hypothesis was proposed by Witczak and Zawiasa based on an analysis of the combinatory data, mostly in libation formulas.[56][57] A decipherment based on Proto-Indo-European has also been proposed.[58]

Some researchers suggest that a few words or word elements may be recognized, without (yet) enabling any conclusion about relationship with other languages. In general, they use analogy with Linear B in order to propose phonetic values of the syllabic sounds.[59] John Younger, in particular, thinks that place names usually appear in certain positions in the texts, and notes that the proposed phonetic values often correspond to known place names as given in Linear B texts (and sometimes to modern Greek names). For example, he proposes that three syllables, read as KE-NI-SO, might be the indigenous form of Knossos.[60] Likewise, in Linear A, MA+RU is suggested to mean wool, and to correspond both to a Linear B pictogram with this meaning, and to the classical Greek word μαλλός with the same meaning (in that case a loan word from Minoan).[4]