USEFUL WEBSITES
Linear A Texts in phonetic transcription
URL: http://people.ku.edu/%7Ejyounger/LinearA
This website, published by John Younger of the Department of Classics of the University of Kansas, provides a brief introduction to the script, transliterations of all the major Linear A texts from Crete and the Aegean, a comprehensive bibliography of related publications from 1980 and a series of free downloadable fonts for Macintosh and Windows users of all the ancient Aegean scripts (Hieroglyphic, Linear A, Linear B and the Phaistos disc). Linear A, the main writing system of the Minoan civilisation of Bronze Age Crete in the second millennium BC, is one of the last undeciphered scripts of the ancient Mediterranean. The website also supplies a rudimentary grammar and vocabulary of Linear A and speculates on the language underlying the script, which Younger believes to be related to one of the Indo-European Hittite languages of Anatolia. Linear A is first attested in Middle Minoan (MM) I B palatial contexts circa 2000 BC but its use and occurrence expanded dramatically throughout Crete and the Aegean the during the MM II-III periods and finally disappeared in the course of the 16th century BC (Late Minoan IB), probably as a result of major cultural or political influence from the Greek Mainland. While there are no photographs or drawings of the actual Linear A documents themselves, the texts are presented in a way which allows the reader to reconstruct the original layout of the tablets. In addition, all the various epigraphic conventions and abbreviations are also provided. The editor has also usefully grouped together all the texts believed to be of religious significance. While this is a specialist resource for professional archaeologists, ancient philologists and epigraphists, it will also interest undergraduates and the interested amateur (text from Intute: http://www.intute.ac.uk).
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