Correcting some errors of mine...

Hello again, dear readers! While my tedious lab work has left me very little for pastime activities in 2012, I still managed to make some interesting discoveries in the past months. What is more, I even managed to make a minor breakthrough with the Cretan Hieroglyphs. Thus several Middle Minoan inscriptions have now become not just readable, but also meaningful. To achieve this, I had to correct the reading of several signs: even some signs whose case I previously considered "already solved". During my years of research, I observed that most scientists tend to "fall in love" with their own theories: and that is where trouble starts. After all, you should be critical with your own results, even more so than with the results of others. Only so can you ensure the quality of research you provide.

As I mentioned earlier, it is very easy to make unintended errors when attempting to decipher a fully-unknown writing system. And - without enough attention - these early assignment errors will become a true pain in the later stages of decipherment. They would definitely cause the entire attempt to derail at a certain point. My earlier work on the identification of potential 'KA' and 'QE' signs in the Cretan Hieroglyphic system is no exception to the rule. It was too late I realized that the sign I attempted to assign to Linear A 'QE' is in fact non-existent! Although endowed with an identifier by Godart and Younger (as if it were a syllabary sign), Hiero *73 seems to be nothing more than the numeral '100' on the hieroglyphic clay tablets. On the stamps, the few dubious instances of  Hiero *73 are probably identical to sign *47 (the "sieve" sign) or they are just decorative separators. This leaves my earlier theory nothing short of a fancy speculation. But let us start everything from the beginning!

Recently I have put quite some work into adding more signs to the list of "known" Hieroglyphic Minoan characters. With some luck, I was able to identify the probable counterpart of Linear A 'DI' (*07) syllabogram. Now I can state that 'DI' very likely corresponds to the Hiero *11 (the "boucranium") sign. Where do I pull this conclusion from? As we have seen before many times, a mere similarity between the shapes of Hieroglyphic and Linear A signs can be misleading - due to the very significant time gap between the Knossos Hieroglyphic and Haghia Triada Linear A archives. It is as if we attempted to assign our letter 'P' to the classical Greek 'Ρ', not paying attention to the lengthy and non-linear development (Greek letter 'Ρ' is actually rho and corresponds to our letter 'R').

What I apply now is a combined approach based on not just the graphical design of signs, but also on their tendencies to form certain lexeme units. One can note that occurrances of a given open syllable are not random in any language, but they obey certain statistics governing their appearence in a given position relative to other syllables in words. Mathematicians would call my approach "entropy minimalisation". I observed that sign Hiero *11 is very common in not just word-initial positions, but also directly before signs Hiero *56 (= 'NA') and Hiero *29 (possibly 'NI'). All these features are true to the Linear A 'DI' sign as well, probably stemming from the high frequency of the (closed) syllable written as 'DI-N'- in the Minoan language.

The reading of Hiero *11  sign as 'DI' gives words that can directly be paralleled with Linear A forms. As it is trivial for clay bars and medals, most if not all the terms mentioned are names (sometimes with titles). These are mostly hapaxes, even in Linear B. Thus the best one can prove is that the words share their stem, but not their complete form. Such examples include the term A-WA-DI in Hieroglyphics, paralleling the name WA-DI-NI in Linear A (it is unclear whether the latter is a personal or a place-name). It is also notable, that there are plenty of hieroglyphic documents containing the phrase DI-NA. This recalls an interesting word - probably a place-name - in Linear A: DI-NA-U [HT9, HT16, HT25], often abbreviated as just 'DI' on the Haghia Triada tablets [e.g. HT85]. Although the occurrance of the name DI-NA-U on a vessel at Knossos [KN Zb27] suggests potential northern Cretan affinities for this place, so far I was unable to suggest any further identification. One may also read another familiar term in Cretan Hieroglyphics: WI-DI-NI, closely resembling a personal name mentioned on the Haghia Triada tablets: WI-DI-NA [a hapax on HT 28]. Despite all my earlier fancy theries, Hiero *37 could reasonably be identified with Linear A 'WI', yielding the reading above. On one bar, we can find the same signs in a permuted order, giving the reading DI-NI-WI instead of WI-DI-NI. Could this be an early form of Linear A DI-NA-U? There are still so many open questions lingering around hieroglyphic documents!

Still, despite all the above identifications and speculations, an uncomfortable feeling remains. There were no identical phrases in both Hieroglyphics and Linear A, reading with 'DI'. So we still need a better example to ascertain this value. When browsing through the CHIC volume, I came upon a little piece of clay from Knossos (CHIC #45) with an interesting text. There are no logograms on this medallion, as common in Linear A. Nor there are any word-dividers, thus we should read both of its sides as a single phrase. The word definitely spells ?-?-TA-RE (the two last syllabary signs are certain), and now we are in the position to read its initial syllable as 'DI'. But what could the last unidentified syllable be? A value with 'K' would fit very aptly there, with the most appropriate value being 'KA'. This way, the inscription shall read as DI-KA-TA-RE !

Mentions of the sacred mountain Dikte are common in Linear A sources: we have already seen versions like JA-DI-KI-TE-TE- and A-DI-KI-TE-TE- as well as JA-DI-KI-TU on the libation tablets. Linear B sources refer to the place as DI-KA-TA. What we see here is a form similar to the Linear B nominative case, but endowed with a typical Minoan suffix (*-ale) denoting origin, as commonly seen on Linear A tablets (e.g. compare A-MI-DA-U [ZA10] with JA-MI-DA-RE [HT122]). Although the reading is dubious due to the low quality characters, another medallion from Knossos (CHIC #47) may also contain a word DI-DI-KA on one of its sides. If correct, this would exactly be the same as the stem of a Linear A word written on a Zakros vessel (ZA Zb3): DI-DI-KA-SE, dealing with wine, similarly to CHIC #47.

Now we are in the situation, that we need to prove the reading of Hiero *77 as 'KA' in order to validate all these hypotheses. Fortunately, the hieroglyphic archives contain plenty of names: place names and personal names alike. Sometimes these words are written in an alternative form: the same phenomenon has been an important tool for the clarification of phonetic values in Linear B. Although at a limited extent, this approach is also useful for Hieroglyphics. I was able to come across such an intriguing pair of names in Cretan Hieroglyphic. One of the documents, a clay medallion from Knossos contains a separate word (name) on one of its sides that might read as SA?-*77-NI. On the other hand, a seal impression from Mesara (near Phaistos) features a very similar name: SA?-KI-NI.  The only difference is the middle sign: and this is actually explainable if the original name was something like *Sakni. Resolving the *-kn- cluster one way around would give SA-KA-NI (progressive spelling), the other way the result would be SA-KI-NI (regressive spelling).

Time has come to mention another notable inscription. I discovered a spectacular specimen when checking the DBAS database for Hieroglyphic sealstones containing this very character. The seal in question is CHIC #200 (found at Malia) and it is no boasting to call this fine piece of jewellery the "Royal Seal of Malia", you shall immediately see why. The stone seal is unusual in a certain sense that - although it is drilled in the middle and made to be rotated, it has only one flat side that is actually inscribed. Unexpectedly, the "start sign" (that designates the first word to be read) is also in the middle of the line. However, the crowded placement of signs (the two last signs are on top of each other) suggests an alternative arrangement: the inscription might run in a circle!

Using our corrected phonetic values, the first word of this masterwork seal would read WA-NA-KA. This is the same word that Linear B used for the title of a king (wanax in Mycenaean Greek)! Although wanax (stem: wanakt-, behaving as a heteroclite in Classical Greek with a -t- extension) is sometimes believed to be a Pre-Greek loanword, this is the first time we see it in pure Minoan context. Finally, the last sign of the line can be read together with the first one if the inscription is circular; this could be another term specifying the kingdom. This last sign has a somewhat dubious interpretation. Most scholars would read it with the value "JA" without question, but this is not the only possible reading, and might not be the correct one, either. For this instance of Hiero *38 (that could also be Hiero *39) also resembles Linear A "PA3". Plugging that into the Hieroglyphic script yields a very familiar place-name: PA3-NI, mentioned about half a dozen times at Haghia Triada [HT6, HT85, HT93, HT102], and also at other places, like the peak sanctuary at Syme [SY Za4].

Based on the co-occurrances of PA3-NI with other names, it could already be mapped to mid-central Crete (it seldom groups with western Cretan places, and never with more eastern towns like SE-TO-I-JA or KI-TA-NA). Very tentatively, I placed it to Gournia, but Malia would have been an equally good candiate. Now we see the first hint that PA3-NI could have been the ancient name for Malia, and that Malia was a separate kingdom into itself (it had a WA-NA-KA of its own). This is very well in-line with the results of archaeologic research, suggesting that Crete was politically fragmented during the Minoan era into at least four small souvereign city-states or kingdoms, with no central "Minoan" authority whatsoever.

How much do these minor discoveries add to our understanding of Cretan Hieroglyphics? I hope that these bits of information shall be crucial in the future to fully decipher the first known Aegean script. Unfortunately, we still do not have a "critical mass" of known signs. If we had them, they could hopefully start a true chain reaction, suddenly turning all the remaining signs readable  - as happened to Michael Ventris, after he plugged in a critical number of correctly-identified Linear B signs into the grids of Alice Kober. But before we reach that point: well, research must continue!

Potential 'MO', 'JO' and 'WE' signs in Linear A - lessons learned from the latest Minoan clay tablets

Instead of making any more wild theories about the meaning of certain Minoan phrases, I decided to turn back to the basics once again. After all, how can we understand words written in Linear A, if we cannot even be certain about their reading? The existence of many signs without any phonetic value assigned is especially annoying. The situation is definitely worse than in Linear B, partly because some Linear B signs do not even have a Linear A counterpart (ancestor) identified. Now, how can we reconcile this? It is very likely that at least some "asterisked numbers" do correspond to already-deciphered Linear B syllabograms. So, what I am going to present in the next series of posts is a new attempt to identify the phonetic values of the more common, yet-unreadable Linear A signs.

To achieve this goal, we have to browse through all the original tablets, over and over again, to find clues. The positional distribution of the signs in question (initial, medial or terminal) and the phonetic values of neighbouring signs offer a good deal of information. But this has to be evaluated within the bounds of the Minoan language, since we know it was radically different from Mycaenean Greek. Comparisons with Linear B sign-distributions do not help much, that was also noted by Packard. The graphic appearence and variation classes of syllabograms - on the other hand - do give us a chance to meaningfully compare Linear A signs with either Hieroglyphic or Linear B ones. The last one especially comes handy, since we may get a good phonetic value if we can find the correct assignment.

Fortunately, there are some spectacular Linear A documents that help us in our quest more than a thousand other tablets. In this post, I will be focusing upon the clay tablet KH11. Although it may appear as an oddball of a specimen at first, we shall see soon that these features are explainable with the tablet being in some sense "transitional" towards Linear B: both in style and in context!

You can see the facsimile of KH11 and the suggested reading of its entries on figure #1. Note that I have been playing with the values of fractional signs a lot, slightly altering some of the traditionally assigned numbers. Although nothing is set in stone yet, this is something that I plan to make a separate post later on. I will not mention the details here: everything comes at its own time.

The first entry of KH11 starts with the word A-DU-RE-ZA. It has two possible interpretations: first of all, it could be a pair of separate words: A-DU  RE-ZA (transaction term + toponym). But it is more probable that the table refers to persons instead of places (due to the small quantity of goods mentioned). This could also happen if A-DU-RE-ZA (as a single word) was a personal name or title somehow derived from DU-RE-ZA (mentioned on KH20, also recurring on ZA10 and ZA20 in the form DU-RE-ZA-SE), another place-name. On KH11, every donor (person?) delivers an array of different goods, often with small, fractional quantities. The most important of them was marked with the logogram *303. Based on the context of other tablets (e.g. KH6, KH7) and the shape of the sign, it must have been an important foodstuff for humans and animals alike, most likely a type of grain: barley. Two common variants exist in Linear A: the bare *303 sign - that I labelled HOR (Latin hordeum = barley) - and "fractionalized" variants, for example HOR+1/4. The meaning of the latter is unclear, though the GRA sign (grain: likely wheat) also somes with similar fractional ligatures. Another type of goods was labelled with *306. This sign is mostly phonetical in Linear A, with the possible value WO (same as Lin B WO). But on the KH tablets, it also denotes a type of agricultural goods. It comes in integer quantities only, and *306 looks like an animal head, so I assigned it the reading donkey, ASI (Latin asinus = donkey). Other tablets from Khania (e.g KH 6) also list animals with portions of barely - usually, it cannot be decided whether the barely was a low-quality one, used as fodder, or intended for human consumption.

Although the sign Lin A *303 is slightly dissimilar in shape to the Linear B sign denoting barley, it still very closely resembles a purely phonetic sign: Linear B MO. Immediately in the second line of KH11, we also see a series of two *303 signs next to each other. This is almost impossible to explain as pure logograms. Godart & Olivier noted that one of these signs contains a tiny extra stroke, so they designated it as a new sign, *348. Nevertheless, its graphic image does not support the distinction. Also, why would one repeat the same type of goods from one donor three times over? It is way more sensible therefore, to read these *303 signs not as HOR, but with a phonetic value: MO. This yields a new name in the second line: MO-RO-MO (the middle sign should be RO instead of fraction B). This is the first time we see a genuine MO (= Lin B *15) in Linear A.

And the tablet just keeps giving surprises. In the third line, we can read another name, transliterated by J. Younger as A-TO-*349-TO-I.The penultimate sign is damaged, so we cannot meaningfully decide whether it was indeed TO or NA instead. But the one identified as *349 looks fairly similar to the Linear B JO sign: especially with its "wavy" shaft. It is generally dissimilar to anything other in Linear A, except perhaps the very peculiar TO sign on the vessel KN10 (that could also be a JO, by the way). So now we have another name with a lot of 'o' sounds in it, probably A-TO-JO-TO-I. Serious caution is adviced, though, before defining a new sign-class from a single occurrance. The Linear B JO sign is also possible to derive - by simplification - from other signs, most prominently Lin A *310. At the same time, *349 could also be a regular *301 sign, to which the scribe simply forgot to add a vertical stroke. This would support a reading A-TO-WE-TO-I instead (very putatively: *Αρτοϝενθοι from Ancient Greek αρτος, bread - see the discussion later).

The last full word on the tablet is equally interesting: It starts with an A, surely enough. The second sign is a hastely written SU (and probably not TA). The third sign - for some inexplicable reasons - was given a unique identifier (*350) by Godart: I am not sure why, because it looks like a good-enough PU sign for me. The last syllabogram of this word is the well-known *301 - in its "wavy" variant. It does not only look like Linear B WE, but also gives a meaningful reading this way: the word is thus A-SU-PU-WE - known from other Linear A tablets in different forms (A-SU-PU-WA on ARKH2 and A-SI-SU-PO-A on KH9). Judged by the context (no logogram follows it), it is probably a transaction term - I have no better idea.

The conclusion that *301 can in fact be read as WE also receives a nice reinforcement from another source: The inscribed vessel TY Zb4 shows a correcture *306 → *301. Although it was probably incorrect (the form *306-KI-TA or WO-KI-TA is known from other sources), the error was not particularly big if *301 was indeed WE. This also means that we can now finally read the first words of the libation formulae in full. Although A-TA-I-WE-WA-JA or TA-NA-I-WE-U-TI-NU are a bit unexpected due to the high frequency of semivowels, we have no real reason to dismiss this reading. It is also possible that one or more additional consonants were ommitted here. Just remember that clusters like *-rw- also get simplified to *-w- in Linear B (c.f. KO-WO from *korwos = boy). If one observes carefully, the shape of Lin A *301 also shows a clear evolution. The earlier (Middle Minoan) verson is still similar to its Hieroglyphic ancestor (the "adze"-figure), while the Late Minoan versions are gradually becoming more-and-more similar to a "dollar" character. They are also frequently mirrored all the time. Finally, the central shaft is ommitted, and we have the snake-like Linear B *75 = WE sign!

But how can we interpret all these unusual names on KH11? Their most prominent feature - the one that triggered the use of "rare signs" - is the high frequency of 'o' vowels. This is uncommon in Minoan contexts, but it is perfectly what we would expect if their bearers were Mycaenean Greeks. Indeed, this tablet (as all the Khania tablets) comes from the end of the Late Minoan Ib period (approx. 1425 BC). This was a time of great turmoil, war and destruction on Crete: many of the cities were burnt to the ground, never to be re-settled again. And even in those that remained inhabited, the subsequent appearence of Linear B inscriptions (in early Greek) points to a shift of power - to a centralized Mycaenean administration controlled by a Greek-speaking aristocracy. While the destruction on the eastern end of the island was severe at the end of LMIb, the transition was probably less violent in the west (note that Khania as well as other settlements remained inhabited without a major break). And it is perfectly possible that some Greek individuals were already present on the island in the LMI era, well before a major wave of continental Greeks reached and settled on Crete in the LMII period. Linear B itself is more-or-less a straight continuation of the (150 years earlier) late Linear A script, without any major changes to the phonetic values, ortography, or the shapes of the signs. This gives hope that - one nice day - the phonetic values behind even the most mysterious Linear A signs will be deciphered.

The Linear A *306 sign: searching for a value

Trying to assign the most signs of linear A to their linear B counterparts, one sooner or later stumbles into really problematic questions. After the assignment of the simpler signs (that were already done more than a decade ago, see the works of Jean-Pierre Olivier and Louis Godart), a handful of unique ones remain, that do not show obvious similarity to one or more of the (yet unassigned) linear B signs. Well, for at least for the first sight...

The LinA sign I will treat here bears the label of *306 - it is so high because scholars initially believed it to be a logogram. I would not say it is not used as a logogram on some places (e.g. KH6, where it likely stands for some kind of animal), but in most of its occurrances, it is a phonetic sign. Examples include the tablets HT6, HT119 and HT122 (*306-TU), HT115 (*306-TU-JA), HT122 (?-*306-KI-TA2)and HTwc3017 (DI-*306). But this sign is not particularly frequent, and these examples are - unfortunately - insufficient to guess at the phonetic value directly. All we can say is that the syllabe it represented was prone to stand word-initially.

If we believe (and this is clearly a hypothesis) that the use of this sign continued into the mycaenean era, we may attempt to search for a parallel in Linear B. As I stated before, sign LinA *306 belongs to the group of "animal-signs", i.e. those depicting various (domesticated) animals. Most of them have heavily simplified graphical structure, and are often used as logograms as well. Such examples of somewhat similar signs include the LinAB *23 sign (with the value 'MU'), that is sometimes used as a logogram for "cattle" or the LinAB *21 signs (phonetic value: QI), depicting (albeit simplified) the head of a sheep (and being a logogram for the latter). Fortunately, this group of signs is very limited in its numbers and their structure is very characteristic: with 1 line inserted below the main bulk ("head") as a "neck" and with an occasional addition of a "skirt" (an additinal vertical line) or "pants" (2 horizontal lines) to indicate the gender of animals.




If we look at the sign *306, we can guess the following: the animal it stood for is female (as *306 always bears "skirt"), and it has 2 prominent appendages on its head (horns or long ears), in addition to a large, bulky head. Now, if we go to the linear B signs, we may attempt to search for a sign with similar characters. However, one shall quickly find that the signs for "sheep" (LinAB *21), "goat" (LinAB *22), "horse" (LinB *105, LinA *336), "cattle" (LinAB *23) or "pigs" (LinAB *85) were already assigned to linear A signs, with great certainty. So the job of finding a counterpart is not that easy. Fortunately, we also know that LinA *306 also had a phonetic value used reasonably regularly. So we may search among the purely phonetic signs as well. There we may encounter LinB *42, that has a similar graphical structure to LinA *306. It has a skirt-like triangular lower part, with a line-like head, containing 2 appendages behind. So it is not beyond reason that linB *42 originally represented some kind of animal. Unfortunately, I cannot cite even a single unambiguous example, where linB *42 would have been used as a logogram. This leaves us a good guess at what kind of animal it may depict. My guess would go at "mule" or "donkey", (the latter maybe because the mycaenean greek word "Onos" = donkey rhymes well with the phonetic value of LinB *42 = WO ) but that is purely hypothetic.

As I mentioned before, the sign LinB*42 has the phonetic value 'WO' in linear B documents. But could a sign beginning with 'W' stand so frequently word-initially in Linear A? Without dismissing the hypothesis that LinA *306 is indeed 'WO' with no proposed phonetic change between LinA and LinB, let us look at other examples of 'W'-signs! A striking discovery is that both WA and WI (the only two such signs attested with certainty) are unexpectedly prone to stand word-initially. So, after all, words beginning with "WO-" in Minoan might not be misreadings at all.

Junction effects in Linear A script

The Linear B script is pretty heavily imperfect. This is caused by its simplicity (remember, Linear A or B had a comparable number of characters to the modern japanese syllabaries Hiragana and Katakana). All these systems represent only open syllabes. So consonantal clusters can only be written if one inserts auxiliary vowels between the consonants. Yet the mycaenean (and very likely the minoan) scribes did not bother themselves with doing this: they simply ommitted consonants (and often, vowels too) in case of encountering a cluster.

Thus for the consonants, the minoan Linear B is an imperfect system. This is not to say that there were no rules to tell whether to resolve or simplify a cluster (more on this in another post later). But if some clusters were consistently simplified, we may never tell from an extict word if it had a cluster or not. We know, for example that the place-name PA-I-TO (LinA and LinB) has to be spelled as Phaistos (at least in linB), but we would never be able to tell whether it had any 'S' in the middle if this name would be extinct. But just let us leave for the consonant problem for later. What is more interesting for us, to look at the representation of vowels in Linear A. Signs representing simple vowels in linear B are well-represented for all 5 vowels for linear A as well:

Signs with A, I, or U are most common, while those with E or O are much rarer. What really interesting is regarding the vowels, is the relative scarcity of diphtongs. Unlike linear B, where special signs (thought to represent diphtongs) are well-represented, these signs (most of them exist in linear A as well) occur very rarely in linear A. An even more interesting thing is the presence of 'junctional effects' when certain vowel-vowel signs meet each other. For example, if we have a meeting of U and A vowels, the minoan scribes have consistently rendered it to U-WA, perhaps corresponding to a lingustic tendency to avoid unwanted diphtongs. Such tendency cannot be observed in Linear B, where a meeting of vowels such as e.g. U-A was allowed without modification. If we represent all the possible junctions of vowels in Linear A, our table would look like as follows:

      A          O          E          I          U

A      A-A        O-A        E-JA       I-JA       U-WA

O      A-O        (?)       (E-JO?)    (I-JO?)    (U-WO?)

E      A-E        O-E        (?)        I-JE      (U-WE?)

I      A-I        O-I        E-I*       I-I*       U-WI

U      A-U       (O-U?)      E-JU       I-JU       U-U*

The junctions or signs shown with ? are not well attested. Apart from those, the tendency can be clearly seen: all junctions are allowed, though those that contain a semovowel as their first part (U=W, I=J) will have their following signs rendered to the corresponding CV-type signs. Signs ending in E behave as if they ended in I. An interesing case (*), and the only exception from the above rule is the case of homogenous joinings (I-I and U-U). In this case, the syllabes JI and WU will get rendered to simple I and U. The same happens for E-I (JI->I).

These vowel junctional effects can be used to effectively predict a (vowel) value of unknown or dubious signs. If an unknown sign is consistently followed by syllabes beginning with W+?, then it is highly probable that the sign had 'U' as a vowel. But this is never 100%, given that W+? signs can also stand alone (e.g. A-MA-WA-SI, the presence of WA does not imply the preceding sign to end with 'U'). Nevertheless, the same rule can be used to exclude given sign-values with certainty. If we observe an unknown sign to form a junction with A without the A-sign turning into WA or JA, then the unknown sign simply cannot end in U or I.

This exclusion rule can be applied to the Linear A sign *79 ('eye') to show why it cannot represent the value 'ZU' (that was assigned to it by John Younger et al.). The case-ruling example we find on the tablet ZA4,row a.5 where the term QE-SI-*79-E can be read. The same name recurs on tablet ZA15. Now, if the reading of *79 were 'ZU', we would rather expect an ending ZU-WE (with a not well characterised linear A WE sign) and NOT ZU-E. On the other hand, the value suggested and used by many (e.g Glen Gordon) for this linear A sign: 'DO', fits perfectly, as DO-E is absolutely possible.

But the case of LinA *79 has to approached with care. Apparently, there are two distinct LinearB signs (*79 and *14) corresponding to single cluster (*79) Linear A. I label it as a cluster, as it contains signs of very variable design: it is easily possible that there are two signs lumped into a single cluster: at least one of these is (with resonably high probability) is the Linear A counterpart of Linear B 'DO' sign (LinB *14).

Linear A signs with value 'PE' and 'RO2'

As the language of the Minoan Crete is irrevocably lost, the only clue to reconstruct bits of it, lies with the only written remnants of Crete's history from that age: the famous Linear A and Hieroglyphic documents (not counting the Phaistos disc). But with no one to tell us how to read those inscriptions, currently our only clue to the true phonetic values those signs hide, is some sort of 'back-tracing' of signs from the Linear B system.

I won't cover details of the Linear B writing system: one can find enough appropriate desription of the Linear B syllabary in any library or on the web. It is enough to say that the Linear B "alphabet" is one of the simpler writing systems of the ancient middle east: almost every (if not all) of its signs are of the structure CV or V (C=consonant, V=Vowel). This syllabary encompasses roughly about 100 signs (including those with an unidentified value). In addition to the syllabary, various ideograms are also used on the tablets as tools of a scribal stenography.

If one looks at the Linear A signs, similarities with the (younger) Linear B alphabet become too obvious to be ignored. Many of the signs can be identified one-to-one without doubt. But there are a handful of them, that do not display such counterparts. At least not one to be identified at first sight. But some of them have gradually found their counterpart thanks to the relentless work of scholars. Currently, there are so many identified linear A and B sign-pairs, that we may assume: almost all Linear B signs must have a Linear A ancestor, and most Linear A signs were continued to see use in the (Greek) Linear B inscriptions.

So, if we have a one-to-one relationship regarding most of these signs, then why not go and find the missing pairs? This is exactly what I tried with the following Linear B signs: LinB *72 (PE) and LinB *68 (RO2). Up to date, there have been but little suggestions on whether these signs had any Linear A counterpart.

As for the sign LinB *72, the sign displays a characteristic 'humpy' shape to the side, with a horizontal symmetry axis, consisting only of straight lines (check it here).

Now, in linear A we had a sign, labelled LinA *305, that has a fairly similar layout: Consising of straight lines only, having a horizontal axis of symmetry, with a fair degree of resemblance to the greek letter capital sigma ('summa sign'). (If you want, you can check its details here)

Now what if this identification is correct, and the sign LinA *305 is indeed the same as LinB *72? It is obvious that LinA *305 is primarily not an ideogram, it is too frequently used as a component of words. We can directly check it in the Linear A texts (thanks to John Younger for that). On the HT9 tablet,line b2, we see KA-*305, a term contrasted to the term SA-*315 in the first line, on the other side. Since we may observe a term KA-PA as a very common transaction term on the Haghia Triada tablets, it is more than tempting to assume a reading KA-PE for HT9b.2. As for the other occurrances of *305 as a phonetic sign, HT10a3-4 gives the reading PE-RU, HT27a.4-5 KU-PE (this may be connected to KU-PA, another word appearing on the tablets - e.g. on ZA11), HT146.3 RI-PE, Kh7a.4 SE-PE, PE2.2 RU-PI[]PE-MI, PHZb48 QA-PE[], ZA6a.1 PE-WA-NA, etc.

The same method can be applied to the Linear B sign *68 (RO2). It is a 'lyre-like' sign, with vertical symmetry axis, and has an inner cross that is already pretty much like the bare RO sign LinAB *02. I would propose an identity of the LinA *68 with the LinA *315 sign. The latter has similarity to LinAB *02 as well, though it is not always perfectly symmetric with a vertical axis. Again, LinA *315 is more of a phonetic sign than a logogram. Now, if we use this value to read Linear A texts, we may get some interesting results (the truth is, that the identification of these occurrences of LinA *315 with the phonetic value RO has already been proposed by John Younger). But let us not simply subsitute RO to these places but RO2 (which might have been *RYO). This way, we see the word SA-RO2 on the mentioned HT9 tablet. This reading does not seem imaginary, since we have a very common transaction term on the tablets: SA-RA2. Another nice thing is to observe, is that SA-RA2 never alternates with *SA-RA. This reminds us that the reading of RA2 was different from that of RA (it is often assumed to be RYA). But the term KU-RO can alternate with the term KU-RA (e.g. ZA20). In turn SA-RA2 seems to alternate with SA-RO2.