test - Page 02 - What Is Linear B?
What Is Linear B?
Linear B was a script used to record the Mycenaean Greek language during the Bronze Age of Greece, c. 1500 BC. Tablets with Linear B script has been recovered on Crete and mainland Greece at the sites of Pylos, Mycenae, Thebes, among other spots. The script would disappear by approximately 1100 BC.Linear B has 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs. Each syllabic sign represents a syllable, like "du", "ko", or "ri". For Samartzidis, these are a part of his “language homeland.”
The scripts was used by Minoan and Mycenaean palace record-keepers. The bulk of these tablets are administrative records. They document inventories of goods at the palatial centers they were written and then buried. They comprise, “a kind of picture writing known as Cretan hieroglyphic (because this style of writing reminded the earliest scholars of Egyptian hieroglyphs)….
Rediscovery in 20th Century
The script was re-discovered in 1900 by Sir Arthur Evans on the island of Crete. Thousands of Linear B tablets would be unearthed throughout the twentieth century and to this day.The script was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick with significant contributions by Alice Kober and Emmett Bennett, Jr.
[Interested in more Linear B? more on Linear B can be read here]
How can I read the paintings?
The Samartzidis paintings here are already translated with annotations to his poetry.You can decipher them too. Try a painting like Anodymene. It does not have so many character to work through. Use a [syllabary] to identify the symbols Samartzidis uses and start deciphering his poetry.
Here are step-by-step instructions to decipher the paintings of Samartzidis.
This page has paths:
- Test- Page 01 - Nikos Samartzidis Collection The Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory