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camwynSomething that came up last night when I was looking up the Linear B alphabet- well, character set anyway, it's logograms as well as a syllabary and there's still some undeciphered chunks o' language. Those of y'all who're more widely fannish than most may recognise why this made me twitch and then snicker.
This is a chunk of the Odyssey rendered in Linear B. For those of you who're looking at me now as if my head fell off and was replaced with a small yellow chicken, Linear B is the writing system used by SERIOUSLY Ancient Greek civilisation. The Greek alphabet as we know it is the second or third or possibly fourth writing system used by the language; there was a dark age from about 1200 BCE to 800 BCE during which writing in general was lost throughout the Greek-speaking world. Linear B was originally derived from the writing used in Crete, as nearly as I can tell. It didn't get deciphered as a form of actual Greek until 1953 and the story thereof is absolutely fascinating- ANYWAY.
That's what writing would have looked like to the people who were alive at the time the events of the Odyssey supposedly took place. Each of those marks represents a syllable, unless it's one of the logograms where a single sign stands for an actual word- but I don't think any of the ones in that batch do. Each of the syllabary marks stands for a consonant sound paired with one of the five basic vowels, with the consonants used being d, j, k, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, w and z. A few of the consonants had to substitute for other sounds because the original system was meant for a language that didn't have the same sounds as Mycenean Greek.
If you've read Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising books, you're already casting suspicious looks at one of those recurring characters. Now, have you read Stephen King's The Dark Tower books? Because the one that's giving the Dark is Rising fans the twitchies? That would be the sign for 'ka'.
I'm just gonna be over here now.
(The rest of y'all can have a gander at this page on Linear B if you want more details; it's a neat place to start.)
This is a chunk of the Odyssey rendered in Linear B. For those of you who're looking at me now as if my head fell off and was replaced with a small yellow chicken, Linear B is the writing system used by SERIOUSLY Ancient Greek civilisation. The Greek alphabet as we know it is the second or third or possibly fourth writing system used by the language; there was a dark age from about 1200 BCE to 800 BCE during which writing in general was lost throughout the Greek-speaking world. Linear B was originally derived from the writing used in Crete, as nearly as I can tell. It didn't get deciphered as a form of actual Greek until 1953 and the story thereof is absolutely fascinating- ANYWAY.
That's what writing would have looked like to the people who were alive at the time the events of the Odyssey supposedly took place. Each of those marks represents a syllable, unless it's one of the logograms where a single sign stands for an actual word- but I don't think any of the ones in that batch do. Each of the syllabary marks stands for a consonant sound paired with one of the five basic vowels, with the consonants used being d, j, k, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, w and z. A few of the consonants had to substitute for other sounds because the original system was meant for a language that didn't have the same sounds as Mycenean Greek.
If you've read Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising books, you're already casting suspicious looks at one of those recurring characters. Now, have you read Stephen King's The Dark Tower books? Because the one that's giving the Dark is Rising fans the twitchies? That would be the sign for 'ka'.
I'm just gonna be over here now.
(The rest of y'all can have a gander at this page on Linear B if you want more details; it's a neat place to start.)
