The Undeciphered Aegean Scripts
The Undeciphered Aegean Scripts
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£125.00
GBPThe decipherment of Linear B, an early form of Greek used by the Myceneans, by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick has long been celebrated. But five other scripts from the Bronze-Age Aegean remain undeciphered. In this book, Brent Davis provides a thorough introduction to these scripts and uses statistical techniques drawn from linguistics to provide insights into the languages lying behind them. He deals most extensively with the script of the Minoan civilization on Crete (“Linear A”), whose decipherment remains one of the Holy Grails of archaeology. He discusses linguistic topics in clear language and explains linguistic terms in a comprehensive glossary. The book also includes all data on which the various analyses of the scripts are based. It will therefore be of great interest and use not just to experts in the undeciphered Aegean scripts, but to novices and aficionados of decipherment as well.
- Offers a comprehensive study of all five undeciphered Aegean scripts
- Advances careful and well-supported hypotheses and arguments in a field which is too often dominated by bogus theorizing
- Written in clear and accessible language and includes a comprehensive glossary of linguistic terms for the benefit of non-linguists
Product details
December 2025Hardback
9781009562348
520 pages
244 × 170 mm
50 b/w illus. 5 maps 200 tables
Not yet published - available from December 2025
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Overview of the Aegean scripts
- Part I. Linguistic Analysis of Linear A:
- 2. Evidence relevant to the character of the language that Linear A encodes
- 3. Linear A phonology
- 4. Linear A morphology
- 5. Linear A syntax and orthography
- Part II. Syllabotactic Analyses of The Aegean Scripts:
- 6. Syllabotactic analysis: a new methodology for investigating the languages behind the undeciphered Aegean scripts
- 7. Syllabotactic analysis of Linear A
- 8. Syllabotactic analysis of the Phaistos disk script against Linear A
- 9. Syllabotactic analysis of Cretan Hieroglyphic against Linear A
- 10. Syllabotactic analysis of Cypro-Minoan
- 11. Syllabotactic analysis of Eteocypriot and Linear A against Cypro-Minoan
- Epilogue.
