Deciphering writing systems of the Aegean Bronze Age with Cambridge Academics

With James Clackson, Professor of Comparative Philology; Torsten Meissner, Associate Professor of Classics; Dr Ester Salgarella, Research Fellow at St John’s College and Dr Pippa Steele, Principal Investigator of the European Research Council funded project Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS).

Sixty years after Michael Ventris and John Chadwick first worked on newly deciphered texts of Linear B, Cambridge is still at the centre of new research into the scripts used in and around the Aegean Sea in the second millennium BC. In this webinar from the autumn 2021 series, Torsten, Pippa and Ester discuss their pioneering research and new discoveries about Linear B and its relationship to Linear A and other ancient scripts.

Torsten, Pipppa and Ester are introduced by James Clackson.

[hectorpascal]

John Chadwick's book "The Decipherment of Linear B" first piqued my lifelong curiosity about Cretan scripts. The death of Michael Ventris at such an early age was truly a very sad loss for the study of ancient Mediterranean scripts and languages. But personally the one I REALLY want to see much more progress in is Etruscan. So much is already known about its structure but not the language itself. Hopefully somewhere in Etruria there is a large cache of inscriptions still waiting to be discovered!

[dikeosmariosoumpasis]

Thank you very much for this concise and clear summary of your important scientific work

[amycollins]

I have been following the Linear A question since the mid-1990s. SigLA represents a huge advance of the very thing I was attempting to do on a magnetic dry erase board. There were too many variations and ambiguities to hold in the mind and on paper! I also attempted to trace individual signs through Cretan Hieroglyphic (per CHIC), Linear A Linear B, Cypro-Minoan and Cypro-Syllabic. I knew the Linear A grid and transliteration as presented by GORILA, while foundational, had flaws that were serious enough to be a potential impediment to attempts at decipherment. Among these were the scribal and site variations, ligatures, erasures, and misinterpreted signs that were transliterated using the known Linear B values. That is where Dr, Salgarellas paleographic work is key to new discoveries from resulting from refinement of the knowledge base. BTW, and yes, I am on the fence (leaning to slightly not) to whether Phaistos disk is a valid artifact, best to keep this to the side.

[dikeosmariosoumpasis]

Is it possible to obtain statistics of the signs in SigLA ?(e.g. a priori and conditional probabilities for nearest neighbor pairs)

[bluelithium]

Linear A predates any concept of Greek or Hellenic civilization and as a major influence on Linear B one could easily argue Greek and Hellenic are late Cretan or Cycladic.

[jfsabastian]

It is very difficult to understand. Your hesitation, tour coff and the lack of clarity on the speech makes this very difficult to understand and follow. You have to improve on your presentations and any university should have a training course on oratory and effective communication. I hope you have a transcription of this presentation.

[MoneyB-ry]

Linear A is african in orgin.we have always known that.