Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

54 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
The evidence for the existence of the Greek language in the Bronze
Age derives from a prealphabetical Greek script called Linear B,
which was deciphered by a 30-year-old English architect named
Michael Ventris in 1952. It is so named in order to distinguish it
from an earlier, still undeciphered, script called Linear A, which
may or may not have been Greek. (Linear A was used extensively
throughout the Minoan world in the period from 1800 to 1450 b.c.e.
Because it has not been deciphered, it is not known whether the
Minoans were in fact Greek speakers.) Linear B was based on the
principle that one sign represents one syllable. Objects are denoted
by ideograms—that is, signs that were originally pictorial. Clay
tablets engraved in Linear B by means of a sharp instrument have
been found at Mycenai, Tiryns, Thebes, Pylos, and Knossos (Crete).
Most of them date to the thirteenth century b.c.e. There is very little
regional variation, which suggests a high degree of administrative
centralization. It was used mainly for accounting records, as in the
following tablet from Pylos: “Kokalos repaid the following quantity
of olive oil to Eumedes: 648 liters; from Ipsewas 38 stirrup-jars”
(Knox, in Finley, The World of Odysseus, viii) . With the collapse of the
Mycenaean world, the script died out and literacy disappeared.
Greece remained illiterate for over four hundred years. Then, in
the early eighth century b.c.e. , the Greeks came into contact with
a seafaring people called the Phoenicians, who inhabited cities on
the coast of Syria. They adapted the Phoenician alphabet to their
own language by adding 7 vowel sounds (i.e., a, short and long e,
i, short and long o, and u ) to the original 16 consonants, making it
a much more flexible script. Many of the Phoenician names for the
Clay tablet showing Linear B ideograms for cuirass, chariot,
and horse. From J. T. Hooker, Linear B: An Introduction (Bristol,
U.K.: Bristol Classical Press, 1980). Reprinted by permission
of Schocken Books and Bristol Classical Press.