Ancient Scripts Ladder · High school · Grade 9–12
Linear A and Linear B
The Bronze Age Aegean and its writing: the Minoans and Mycenaeans, how Linear B was deciphered, reading tablets sign by sign, Mycenaean Greek, and Linear A, which is still unread. High school to college.
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Unit 1 The Bronze Age Aegean
6 topics
Crete, the islands and mainland Greece: the Minoans and Mycenaeans, their palaces, how they are dated, and how the palaces ended.
Unit 2 Kinds of Writing
5 topics
Word signs, syllables and letters; the scripts of Crete and Cyprus; and the Greek alphabet that came after them.
Unit 3 The Discovery
3 topics
Arthur Evans at Knossos, Carl Blegen at Pylos, and the fires that saved the tablets.
Unit 4 The Decipherment
6 topics
From Bennett's sign numbers and Kober's triplets to Ventris's grids, the 1952 breakthrough and the tablet that confirmed it.
Unit 5 The Linear B Signs
5 topics
The vowels, the rows of the syllabic grid, the special signs and the signs no one has read.
Unit 6 How Linear B Spells Greek
5 topics
Open syllables, missing consonants, empty vowels, shared signs and glides: the rules for getting from signs to words.
Unit 7 Logograms, Numbers and Tablets
7 topics
Object signs, male and female animals, numerals and measures, the shapes of tablets, the scribes, and reading a line.
Unit 8 Mycenaean Greek
4 topics
The oldest written Greek: words and their later forms, endings you can see, places and gods.
Unit 9 What the Tablets Tell
4 topics
The palace economy, the wanax and his officials, offerings to the gods, and what the tablets leave out.
Unit 10 Linear A
6 topics
The Minoan script: where it is found, the signs it shares with Linear B, its numbers and fractions, ku-ro, the libation formula, and why it is still unread.
Unit 11 Judging and Comparing
2 topics
How to test a decipherment claim, and the two scripts side by side.