DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2015.v03i01.046

Pages: 332-346

The Aegean scripts comprise five scripts, among them Linear-A, Linear-B and Cretan Hieroglyphic, that are encountered in the Aegean Sea area during the 2nd millennium BC. The Linear-B script conveys the Mycenaean Greek dialect in a very inaccurate manner, regarding the Greek phonology. It has been argued that the unsuitability of Linear-B to represent the Greek phonological system is due to the limited usage of this syllabary for keeping records or for keeping the recorded information classified. The authors argue herein that this is hardly the case. According to some linguistic approaches, Linear-B syllabary was devised from the previous Linear-A one, which had been originally invented for another language of the Aegean linguistic substratum (pre-Greek). Various studies attempt to connect the conveyed languages of Linear-A to Proto-Greek dialects, a pre-Greek Indo-European language, Luwian or Akkadian. Such attempts regard as well the language conveyed by the Cretan Hieroglyphic. Yet, the relation between the signs and their corresponding phonetic values of Linear-A and Cretan Hieroglyphic is ill-formed while for Linear-B it is well established. The Aegean scripts are compatible to the consonant-vowel syllabic pattern of the phonetic signs. Such a phonetic pattern is mainly akin to agglutinative languages, like Sumerian, considering some arguments based on the presented herein linguistic evidence.