Linear A: The Undeciphered Script of Minoan Crete

Linear A is the writing system of the Minoan civilisation of Bronze Age Crete, used from about 1800 to 1450 BC. It recorded the Minoans’ own language, which is still unknown, mostly on clay tablets used for palace accounts. More than a century after its discovery, Linear A remains one of the best-known undeciphered scripts in the world.

Origins and use

The Minoans first wrote in a script known as Cretan Hieroglyphic, which appears around 2000 BC. Linear A developed alongside it during the Old Palace period, in the centuries after about 1800 BC, and had largely replaced it by the New Palace period after about 1700 BC. The name “Linear” was given by Arthur Evans, the excavator of Knossos, because the signs are drawn with lines rather than pictures.

Most Linear A texts are administrative. Scribes used them to record quantities of grain, wine, olive oil, figs, livestock and people. The script also appears on stone offering tables, clay vessels, gold and silver pins and small clay sealings that marked goods and documents.

Use of Linear A ended with the destruction of Cretan palaces and towns around 1450 BC. Afterwards, Mycenaean Greek administrators at Knossos wrote in Linear B, a script adapted from Linear A to write Greek.

Where it has been found

Linear A inscriptions come from more than 40 sites. The largest single group, around 150 tablets, comes from the villa at Hagia Triada near Phaistos in southern Crete. Other important finds come from Khania, Phaistos, Zakros, Knossos, Malia and Arkhanes.

Outside Crete, Linear A has been found on the Aegean islands of Thera (at Akrotiri), Kea, Melos and Kythera, and at Miletus on the coast of Anatolia. These finds show how far Minoan trade and influence reached.

The tablets survived largely by accident. Unbaked clay crumbles easily, but fires that destroyed buildings baked some tablets hard, preserving them for archaeologists.

How the script works

Linear A has around 90 signs that stand for syllables, such as da, ku or ro, together with many more logograms, signs that represent whole words such as “wine” or “man”. It also uses a decimal number system and a set of fraction signs.

Many Linear A syllable signs look almost identical to Linear B signs, whose sound values are known. By applying Linear B values, scholars can read Linear A words aloud approximately. This is how the word ku-ro, written below lists beside the sum of the numbers, has been identified as “total”. Place names such as pa-i-to (Phaistos) can also be recognised.

A recurring sequence on stone offering tables, often written a-sa-sa-ra-me, may be part of a religious formula or the name of a deity, but its meaning is unknown.

Why it resists decipherment

Three problems stand in the way. First, the corpus is small: about 1,400 inscriptions containing some 7,000 to 7,500 signs, many on broken or tiny objects. Second, no bilingual text, like the Rosetta Stone for Egyptian hieroglyphs, has been found. Third, the underlying language does not seem to belong to any known family.

Scholars have proposed that Linear A records a Semitic language, a form of Luwian or another Anatolian language, an Indo-Iranian language or even an early Greek dialect. Each theory explains a handful of words but fails for most of the corpus. Most specialists conclude that “Minoan” was an unrelated language now lost.

The standard edition of the texts, known as GORILA, was published by Louis Godart and Jean-Pierre Olivier between 1976 and 1985. Digital corpora and statistical methods have since helped researchers test proposals more rigorously, but no breakthrough has yet been accepted.

Myths and facts

Myth: Linear A and Linear B are the same script in two styles. The two share many sign shapes, but they write different languages. Linear B records Greek, while Linear A records the unknown Minoan language, so reading Linear B does not mean reading Linear A.

Myth: Linear A has finally been cracked. Claims of a full decipherment appear regularly in the press. So far none has convinced specialists, because no proposal produces consistent, testable translations across the whole corpus.

Fact: some things can be understood. Even without knowing the language, scholars can follow the arithmetic of the accounts, identify commodities from logograms and recognise recurring names and formulas. These clues show a literate administration managing farm produce, labour and offerings.

Timeline

• c. 2000 BC: Cretan Hieroglyphic script appears on Crete.
• c. 1800 BC: Earliest Linear A inscriptions in the Old Palace period.
• c. 1700–1450 BC: Linear A in widespread use across Crete and the southern Aegean.
• c. 1450 BC: Destructions on Crete end the use of Linear A; Linear B takes over at Knossos.
• 1900: Arthur Evans finds tablets at Knossos and later names the scripts Linear A and Linear B.
• 1952: Michael Ventris deciphers Linear B, providing approximate sound values for Linear A.
• 1976–1985: Godart and Olivier publish the complete corpus (GORILA).

Why it matters

Linear A is the main written voice of the Minoans, one of Europe’s earliest literate civilisations. Until it is read, our understanding of Minoan religion, society and language depends almost entirely on archaeology and on later Greek legends.