Deciphering writing systems of the Aegean Bronze Age with Cambridge Academics

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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!

[@tweedledumart4154]

Thank you. The work done is amazing.

[@amycollins8832]

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.

[@kevinolson1102]

Have you seen Peter Revesz's (University of Nebraska, Lincoln) analyses of Linear A and the Phaistos disk? By statistical analyses, he infers that the language encoded by the Phaistos disk is an ancient branch of the Finno-Ugric language family (closer to Hungarian than to Finnish), and that Linear A is a later encoding of the same. He has several videos here on his YT channel (www.youtube.com/@PeterRevesz/videos) discussing his analyses, with links to papers in the show notes. A relevant video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hpqvqoFviZemqrs As I recall, he posits (perhaps in one of his papers) that the original language of both Crete and mainland Greece was this Finno-Ugric language, with what we recognize as ancient Greek later usurping its place, but with some of the earlier vocabulary persisting (often in modified form). But, it's been a while since I went down that rabbit hole, so I could be mis-remembering (this is out of my bailiwick, but I am curious and interested). I am not qualified to assess whether he is "right", but I am fascinated by his approach. If his decoding of the Phaistos disk is reasonably correct, then that would weigh heavily in its favor as a genuine archaeological artifact, rather than a modern contrivance.

[@IfiyeniaSpiliotopoulou]

Wonderful!

[@TT3TT3]

Thanks!

[@classicsatcambridge]

No problem, we hope you liked the webinar :)

[@bluelithium9808]

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.