Breakthrough Decipherment of Minoan Linear A and Cretan Hieroglyphs

A presentation of the decipherment of two Minoan scripts, Cretan Hieroglyphs and Linear A, based on considerations of script similarities, grammar, and etymology. This lecture was given in the Computational Linguistics class at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Spring 2019.

References
(open access)

[scottnunnemaker]

I wish there was just a website that had every piece of ancient writing we have, with translations, time periods, usage geography, spread, evolution, etc. It seems to me that if we activated all the information we have about ancient writing systems we could probably answer a lot more questions about our history. Like who has what legends and myths written could tell us if stories were based off of real events. It seems to me that everything gets so spread out into individual fields of study so much that we might actually know a lot more than we think we do it’s just in fragments across many disciplines.

[IvarDaigon]

there are 3 more reasons why you would read the Phaistos disk from the inside out and left to right.
1. the human and animal characters are mostly all facing to the right. this indicates a sequence of events from left to right because some of them are walking/moving in that direction.
2. the disk is round so it would be nearly impossible for any writer to guess how many words they could fit on the disk.. this means that if they started from the edge and then realized they were running out of space then the words would get smaller towards the center as they to tried and compensate and fit them all in. (you'd still have this problem even when using stamps where the gaps between characters would decrease instead.)
Conversely, if they start from the middle then the words can all be the same size because if you realize you are running out of space you just need to add more clay and make the disc a little bigger.
3. Smudging.. Clay, like paper is prone to smudging so it is much easier to work from the middle outward because if you accidentally touch the unwritten edges then no harm done, you can just smooth it over.. if, however, you start from the edges and work you way in and then accentually touch the clay that you have already written on, you can smudge it and perhaps even ruin the entire piece of work.

[arisd]

When you said that Linear B does not distinguish phonetically between r and l, I immediately thought of relatives I have in Crete where they still do that in my family village. In both sounds the tongue curves backward and touches the back of the top of the uraniscus and sounds like the "r" vowel in Sanskrit. The village is called Ανώγεια and they even joke (as Cretans love to do) about the pronounciation among themselves. How wonderful it has survived to this day!

[AlaaSrour-hr]

That was truly excellent, thank you! The effort required to create so many tables is remarkable.

Good morning professor: we are currently studying Guatemalan mayan languages, modern ones, as a prerequisite for studying northern mayan languages. Your lecture and the strategies you depict are fabulous and much relevant for our effort in linguistics here in Central America. Best wishes.

This is of primary importance for us, because, in our effort there is the possibility of renewing the mayan glossaries, while understanding the way ancient indoeuropean peoples constructed their own.

For instance, the mountain maya do not have a word for "dolphin", presenting it just as another "fish", which is not a solution for such a construct. And it would be unfair to abandon mayan glossaries to their own fate, while spanish borrowed words from all other indoeuropean stock.

Our aim is to find a linguistic way to solve the scarcity of mayan glossaries while embracing linguistic solutions that have proved successful in other ancient languages.

[danielm.]

I don't understand how you go from Linear A symbols share some features with old hungarian & carian, & is agglutinative - to classifying it as a part of the language family that includes hungarian?

To me this is a leap that does not (necessarily) logically follow.

Equally plausible is that Minoan is not part of that family but gave loanwords to Old hungarian through trade/contact?

[newtronix]

This was a great lecture. I can't believe they didn't ask any questions at the end. He had to do it for them!

[nobunaga]

Fabulous, professor, thank you very much! I won’t pretend to follow much of it, but you show the complexity of the subject and the knowledge and skill needed to study this and many other subjects.

[stevenschilizzi]

Wow!! I am truly flabbergasted by this “tour de force”, Professor Revesz! I remember very well, while studying at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, ancient & Homeric Greek, and learning that the Mycenean Linear B syllabary encoded an archaic form of Greek, I remember as if it were yesterday that everyone was puzzling and phantasizing about the Phaistos Disk and Linear A, undeciphered and mysterious. And it had set my imagination alight. But then I went on to study social science and economics… Your discovery and translation are of the same historic caliber as Champollion’s with the Rosetta Stone. Did the students in that class realize what a momentous event they were listening to? Personally, it was a complete surprise to learn from you that the language the Minoans used to write (but perhaps did not speak?) is an Ugric language! I’d have put my money on some near-eastern language, probably of the semetic family like Phoenecian, but never on it being related to Hungarian which came from north of the Black Sea. But then, as you say, the Black Sea was criss-crossed in all directions by all manner of merchants and other travellers, so what people knew at one end of the sea people at the other end would soon know too! It’s amazing how much and how far people travelled, by land and by water, in those days, and had been from much earlier still. After all, about a million years ago, Homo Erectus colonized most of the planet and may already have used boats of some kind to reach the Indonesian island of Flores. Thank you Peter for this fascinating presentation! And let no-one be fooled by your calm, low-key, matter-of-fact tone of voice and composure! You are in the same league as Paul Dirac: a very humble attitude can hide an exceptionally brilliant mind!

[dorkgirlalamode]

This is the most interesting thing I've found in years. Many thanks for posting.

[ellanguage]

Your presentation shed more light into my research on Linear A&B and the connection with some of the languages, such as Hungarian, an information new to me. Of course I would be happier when I see non-native Greek speakers researching on old forms of Greek, or pre-Greek as you may put it, write the sounds in Greek letters as well. That would help recognising the words. For example, at the example of substituting the syllabic value into Linear A Texts you write the word for 'shine' as fe-ne-je-n. I would not recognise the Greek word without looking at the translation and this word is still used today in Modern Greek: φέγγειν ('Feggein) and similar words are: feggari (moon), fos (light), ? fenomai (appear, be visible)

[slightlybetterthanaveragej]

1. Where can I learn to read this now?
2. How do I get my hands on scripts that need translating?
This is exciting

[jtd]

31:00 should the word 'latter' be 'ladder'?

[BenJuan]

I’m genuinely staggered by this research and I’m surprised it’s not getting more attention. I hope this opens the door to a much richer understanding of Minoan society and culture. Thank you for your work 🙏

[unakanasi]

Regarding your approach to decipherment of both Linear A and the Phaistos disc, I was wondering why you categorically exclude Linear B from your list of possibly related writing systems. There are words in Linear A, that, when read with the phonetic values of Linear B, do have great similarities to Mycenaean words, an example of which being the name of Phaistos written pa-i-to in LB and PA-I-TO in LA.

[ilonameagher]

Thank you so much for your amazing work, Dr. Revesz! Your findings are more important than most realize today (and when you recorded this absorbing presentation). But more and more will learn through your continued efforts and research. Thank you for all you do to help reveal the secrets of history, language and communication using modern technology to 'crack' difficult codes whose legends have lost long ago. Kudos!

[alexfocus]

That was truly great, thank you! The amount of work involved in constructing the many tables is staggering, well done. I am not a linguist but the passion and dedication shown by you and your students is truly praiseworthy.

[ryanb]

Is there somewhere I can stay updated on this? I would be interested in actually helping too, because it's more fun to do hands on studies, but that probably won't work because I am not an expert in Linguistics or Writing Software; plus very limited free time.

[ruichenyoutube]

Very interesting topic. Hope this study gets more advanced and use the similar approach to decipher other ancient languages.

[guidopahlberg]

I wonder if there is also a connection to lemnic (and etruscan) or is this considered to be of a different language family?