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The decipherment of Linear B was described in the first two chapters of our joint book, Documents in Mycenaean Greek. This is an attempt to present that story to the general reader, through the vital steps in the decipherment are here explained in more detail, and much of the background which is unfamiliar to the general reader is filled in.
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khaled •
Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer examines the origin of the Greek alphabet. Departing from previous accounts, Roger Woodard places the advent of the alphabet within an unbroken continuum of Greek literacy beginning in the Mycenean era. He argues that the creators of the Greek alphabet, who adapted the Phoenician consonantal script, were scribes accustomed to writing Greek with the syllabic script of Cyprus. Certain characteristic features of the Cypriot script–for example, its strategy for representing consonant sequences and elements of Cypriot Greek phonology–were transferred to the new alphabetic script. Proposing a Cypriot origin of the alphabet at the hands of previously literate adapters brings clarity to various problems of the alphabet, such as the Greek use of the Phoenician sibilant letters.
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