- By Emeline Clarkson
Dr Susan Lupack on site at the Perachora Peninsula Archaeological
Project, where she is co-director.
When I first learnt about Pompeii and Herculaneum I was immediately interested—and when I started my degree in archaeology at Macquarie, I only wanted to focus on this area of ancient history. But then I took a few classes with Dr Susan Lupack, who got me even more interested (if that's possible) in another area of study: the Minoans and Mycenaeans. Four years later, coming to the end of my degree, I am hooked.
Linear B is the mysterious ancient script of the Mycenaean people that bewildered modern scholars for decades. When I was invited to write a blog about Linear B to accompany the exhibition Mysteries Revisited!, I knew Dr Lupack would be the perfect person to interview. Dr Lupack is a specialist on the Aegean in the Bronze Age, including Minoan and the Mycenaean cultures. In our conversation, Dr Lupack delved deep into the story of this mystifying language and how it was deciphered by extraordinary scholars including Emmett Bennett, Alice Kober and Michael Ventris. You can read more about some of the Linear B material on display in the exhibition, including Alice Kober’s precious index cards (on loan from the Program in Aegean Script and Prehistory, University of Texas at Austin) in The Lighthouse.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity. I hope you enjoy it!
Dr Lupack, I am interviewing you today about your involvement, thoughts and knowledge on the Linear B tablets, in particular the history, the text, the decipherment.
Thanks, Emeline. I'm really greatful that you asked for this interview because this whole exhibition is very near and dear to my heart and my academic career as well.
A lot of the objects that are in the exhibit, come from the Program in Aegean Script and Prehistory, which is the institute where I did my Masters’ and my PhD, under the guidance of Cynthia Shelmerdine and Thomas Palaima, who is the director of the program.
I did my thesis on a Linear B topic, the role of the religious sector in Mycenaean economics. Since then, I've put a revised version of that out as a book, and I've also written many articles on Linear B topics and the script intersects with the archaeology of the Mycenaeans. I also made a short Ted-Ed video summarising the decoding of this language.
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| British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. Image: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) |
As a lecturer who has taught many students about the fascinating lives of the Mycenaeans, can you explain what the Linear B texts are and why this ancient language is called Linear B?
It was named Linear B because [archaeologist] Sir Arthur Evans was able to discern differences between the two types of scripts that had been found, but because they were also quite similar, he named them Linear A, which we now know was written by the Minoans, and Linear B, which was written by the Mycenaeans. They were both different from Cretan hieroglyphs, a Minoan script that looked more pictographic, which is why Evans called them “linear” rather than “hieroglyphs.”
Linear B, I should say, represents the Greek language – an early form of the Greek language – whereas Linear A is an undeciphered script.
Where was Linear B believed to have come from, whose language was it?
Linear B was used by the Mycenaeans, which was a culture that developed on the mainland of Greece from Middle Helladic times and maybe even the late Early Helladic. It really seems to come into its own around 1600 BCE and develops through that time to the point at which we get palatial centres, they're not palaces in the sense of a European palace but administrative and religious centres, founded about 1400 BCE.
These Greek speakers on the mainland were encountering the Minoans early on, probably 1700 BCE or even earlier. They saw that the Minoans were writing, in their script, which we call Linear A, and adapted the script to represent their own language.
What was this text predominantly used for?
Ah, that's a very good question. The Mycenaeans used these texts for administrative purposes. Keeping track of goods that they were bringing into the palace, and commodities, things that they were manufacturing: the textile industry and the sheep, the wool, and the workshops, and a lot about monitoring the manufacturing of goods. A lot of the tablets also talk about religious festivals and religious offerings and keeping track of the goods that were being sent as offerings to different sanctuaries, and goods coming in when a religious festival was being held.
This is a little window into other parts of Mycenaean society, not just the economy but also into their religion.
A window into what they really found important.
Exactly! Keeping up with their religious obligations was clearly one of the primary things that they cared about.
When was it re-discovered by modern archaeologists?
It was Sir Arthur Evans when he was excavating the palace of Knossos in 1900, who came across the first large set of Linear B tablets. The other largest cache we have is from Pylos, on the mainland, and those were excavated for the first time in 1939 by Carl Blegen. He was interrupted by WWII, but resumed excavations in 1952.
Why did the text remain a mystery to modern scholars for so long?
The reason why it took so long is unfortunately because Evans wanted so badly to be the person to decipher them. That led him to keep most of the tablets to himself.
He did not publish them; he (mostly) did not let them out into the scholarly community.
It's not that Evans was just hoarding them, but the person who discovers something has the first right to publish it.
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| Alice Kober, known for her work in deciphering Linear B. |
What was the role of Emmett Bennett, Alice Kober and Michael Ventris in deciphering Linear B?
Emmett Bennett discovered that a lot of the tablets have an ideogram on the right-hand side to show what the scribe was compiling, the amounts, what they were calculating, what they were keeping track of. He was able to make different sets of these different texts, it was like a filing system at Pylos. For example, land tenure was in one basket and the tax tablets would have been in another.
Alice Kober had access to the Knossos tablets through John Myers, who inherited them from Evans. She was the one who realised that there was a male and a female sign—if it's feminine, you get a feminine ending and if it's masculine, you get a masculine ending. This is basically what she saw in the script, and that's what's called her Kobler triplets.
Bennett and Kober gave some order to the signs, and that's what Michael Ventris built on. Apparently, Ventris was inspired to try and decipher Linear B when he was a schoolboy because he went on a trip to a museum where Evans spoke to them about Linear B. The research that Kober and Bennett and other scholars were doing allowed him to take that amazing leap to discover that it was Greek.
And then everything starts connecting.
Exactly, so that's really sort of like the inspired leap that he took on the basis of the hard work that these other people had done.
You’ve come across Linear B in your own work, what's your understanding of it?
[In my doctoral thesis] I was interested in the economy of the Mycenaeans, but also the religion. So, I looked at the religious and economic aspects of the tablets.
It was originally thought that the palace was supporting the religious sanctuaries, and that the sanctuaries were beholden to the palace politically as well as financially. I think that's not true, and luckily, many people have agreed with me. The religious sector seems to have its own separate power in a sense, not being supported by the palace.
My final question is about Linear A, which has remained undeciphered. Do you think there's any chance that in the future this ancient language will be solved?
Oh, of course I hope so. It just hasn't been done yet based on what we have. We only have about 400 Linear A tablets and one of the issues, particularly for Linear A as it was for Linear B, is we don't have a Rosetta stone. We don't have an example of a text where we can compare it to a known text.
Fingers crossed for the future, that one day we can find something that will decipher it.
About the Author
Emeline is completing a Bachelor of Archaeology majoring in Anthropology. She has always been interested in human history and during her time at Macquarie University has developed a strong interest in Indigenous cultures and in the treatment of disabilities in the ancient and modern worlds. Emeline is excited to explore the possibilities of where her degree can take her: she hopes to begin a master's degree in Archaeology and/or Anthropology, work on an excavation in Pompeii or Crete, or work in a museum.