Abstract
This paper presents a set of eighteen signs of the Minoan scripts, used for syllables of the Consonant-Vowel (CV) type. What these eighteen syllabograms have in common is their vowel, which is a kind of “schwa”, treated here as the “sixth vowel” of the Minoan scripts, counted after the usual five vowels: “a”, “e”, “i”, “o” and “u”. Most of these syllabograms are considered to be of unknown phonetic value, while a few are known to be used for the Mycenaean Greek “αι” ([əj]). The presented approach is conducted according to the theory of the Protolinear script, being the script that all the Minoan scripts evolved from, including Linear A, Linear B and Cretan Hieroglyphics. A detailed study on the nature of that “schwa” and its evolution from - and to - related vowels precedes the presentation of the syllabograms. In conclusion, it is demonstrated that the phonetic value of each syllabogram corresponds to the Sumerian name (in a conservative dialect) of the object depicted by the syllabogram, thus more light is shed on the linguistic ancestry of the Minoan scripts, the practice followed for their creation and the phonetic values of eighteen hitherto un-transliterated syllabograms.
Highlights
It has been forty years since Willetts (1977, p. 100) firstly proposed the existence of a Cretan Protolinear script, followed indirectly by Owens (1996) and Schoep (1999, p. 266) later on, who suggested or suspected the common ancestry of Cretan Hieroglyphs and Linear A
It is demonstrated that the phonetic value of each syllabogram corresponds to the Sumerian name of the object depicted by the syllabogram, more light is shed on the linguistic ancestry of the Minoan scripts, the practice followed for their creation and the phonetic values of eighteen hitherto un-transliterated syllabograms
The term CP is conceived as the script that all the Bronze Age Aegean scripts evolved from, including Linear A ( LA), Linear B ( LB) and Cretan Hieroglyphics ( CH) that is the ornamental version of CP (Papakitsos & Kenanidis, 2016)
Summary
It has been forty years since Willetts (1977, p. 100) firstly proposed the existence of a Cretan Protolinear script, followed indirectly by Owens (1996) and Schoep (1999, p. 266) later on, who suggested or suspected the common ancestry of Cretan Hieroglyphs and Linear A. In 1992, Kenanidis (1992) initially demonstrated the Linear B (and other Minoan scripts’) syllabograms’ phonetic values as equivalent to the Sumerian names of the objects depicted by those syllabograms. In all Minoan scripts, each syllabogram usually renders a syllable of the Consonant-Vowel (CV) form, with only very few exceptions of signs rendering C/j/V, C/w/V or CVCV forms (Kenanidis & Papakitsos, 2017). An almost complete reconstruction of Cretan Protolinear ( CP) was released a few years ago (Kenanidis, 2011-2013) and selectively presented recently (Kenanidis & Papakitsos, 2015b; Papakitsos & Kenanidis, 2015). The term CP is conceived as the script that all the Bronze Age Aegean scripts evolved from, including Linear A ( LA), Linear B ( LB) and Cretan Hieroglyphics ( CH) that is the ornamental version of CP (Papakitsos & Kenanidis, 2016)
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