Linear B

Linear B is a syllabic script adapted from Linear A, an earlier script used in the Aegean. Its signs represent syllables, supplemented by other signs and numerals used in the records. The Mycenaeans used it to write an early Greek dialect, now called Mycenaean Greek. Unlike an alphabet, it does not represent every consonant and vowel separately, so spellings can omit or simplify parts of Greek words.

Archaeologists have found Linear B inscriptions chiefly on clay tablets at palace centers including Knossos on Crete and Mycenae, Pylos, Thebes and Tiryns on the Greek mainland. The surviving records are predominantly administrative and economic: they document such matters as commodities, allocations and other activities managed by palace institutions. The tablets therefore provide evidence about Mycenaean language and administration, but they are not a continuous narrative of the period.

The British archaeologist Arthur Evans found large numbers of inscribed tablets at Knossos around 1900, but the writing and language remained unknown. In 1952, Michael Ventris demonstrated that Linear B recorded Greek. His work built on earlier research, including that of Alice Kober; classicist John Chadwick then collaborated with Ventris on the linguistic interpretation of the tablets. Their decipherment established Linear B as the earliest known written form of Greek and enabled scholars to read Mycenaean administrative records directly.

Because the tablets preserve Greek from the second millennium BCE, Linear B extends the written record of the Greek language much earlier than the later Greek alphabetic texts. Their administrative subject matter offers unusually direct evidence about palace economies and institutions. At the same time, the tablets are limited in scope: they mostly record practical transactions rather than literature, and they survive from particular archival contexts rather than as a complete account of Mycenaean life.