A team of archaeologists has discovered in Knossos, on the Greek island of Crete, the longest Linear A inscription found to date. The script appears on a circular ivory object with an attached handle, discovered in a context of clear religious significance within a Neopalatial building. Besides providing the longest inscription in this yet-to-be-deciphered system, the find offers new perspectives on the use of Minoan writing in ceremonial contexts.
Anyone willing to guess what’s the language in Linear A?
Personally I wouldn’t be surprised if it was:
- related to Etruscan and Lemnian
- Semitic
- non-Greek Indo-European (Anatolian?)
- some paleo-Balkan language unaffiliated with any of those, but you find some odd cognates in Greek for words without an IE origin.
Wonder if this is the breakthrough needed to finally crack Linear A. Probably still not enough but let’s hope!
Probably not.
If some breakthrough appears, I expect it to be a bilingual inscription containing the same text in Linear A and Linear B; similar to the Rosetta stone for Egyptian, having the text also in Greek was key.
“Be sure to drink your…”
Who knows what it was referring to.
Linear A
It’s clearly written in a circle. 🤨
that means there will be a new wave of
guessestranslations. :/but yay, more text! :)
