: a linear form of writing employing syllabic characters and used at Knossos on Crete and on the Greek mainland from the 15th to the 12th centuries b.c. for documents in Mycenaean Greek
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Recently, researchers from MIT and Google applied these abilities to ancient scripts – Linear B and Ugaritic (a precursor of Hebrew) – with reasonable success (no luck so far with the older, and as-yet undeciphered Linear A).
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Mary Lou Jepsen John Ryan, WIRED, 29 Dec. 2019
Egypt’s hieroglyphs and the Mycenaean script known as Linear B were also notoriously indecipherable—until the Rosetta Stone and a British genius produced working keys.
—Ariel Sabar, The Atlantic, 8 Aug. 2024
More tantalizing than even the story of Alice Kober’s work on Linear B, for Meiklejohn, was the fact that no one had been able to decipher Linear A, even after a century of study.
—Andy Greenberg, Ars Technica, 18 Jan. 2024
While it was determined in the 1950s that Linear B was used to jot down ancient Greek, very little is known about what spoken language Cretan hieroglyphics and Linear A were used to record.
—Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 5 June 2021
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Mary Lou Jepsen John Ryan, WIRED, 29 Dec. 2019
Egypt’s hieroglyphs and the Mycenaean script known as Linear B were also notoriously indecipherable—until the Rosetta Stone and a British genius produced working keys.
—Ariel Sabar, The Atlantic, 8 Aug. 2024
More tantalizing than even the story of Alice Kober’s work on Linear B, for Meiklejohn, was the fact that no one had been able to decipher Linear A, even after a century of study.
—Andy Greenberg, Ars Technica, 18 Jan. 2024
While it was determined in the 1950s that Linear B was used to jot down ancient Greek, very little is known about what spoken language Cretan hieroglyphics and Linear A were used to record.
—Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 5 June 2021
Cite this Entry
“Linear B.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Linear%20B. Accessed 21 May. 2025.
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