The Decoding of Linear B Sheds New Light on Mycenaean Civilization
Overview
The Mycenaean civilization flourished in Greece and the surrounding islands in the Aegean Sea around 1400 B.C., during the era Homer depicted in his epics the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Mycenaean language was written in a script known as Linear B. Sir Arthur Evans first discovered specimens of the Linear B script in 1900 inCrete, and Michael Ventris deciphered them about 50 years later. The ability to read the Mycenaean texts shed new light on this important culture.
Background
The Bronze Age civilization of Crete was the first society in Europe to be capable of fine craftsmanship, public architecture, and writing. It is often called the Minoan civilization, after the legendary King Minos, who was said to have ruled the Cretan city of Knossos. The Minoans spoke a local language about which little is known, but which may have been related to languages spoken in southwestern Turkey. They wrote using a script known as Linear A for four centuries beginning about 1850 B.C. Before that, they had employed a type of hieroglyphic script, using symbols to represent words. The famous Phaistos Disc, dating from about 1700 B.C., is stamped with a series of 45 hieroglyphs of yet another type, arranged in a spiral.
This page contains 201 words.
The Decoding of Linear B Sheds New Light on Mycenaean Civilization article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 1,707 words
(approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Linear B Article
