TY - JOUR
T1 - Minoan Cryptanalysis
T2 - Computational Approaches to Deciphering Linear A and Assessing Its Connections with Language Families from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea Areas
AU - NEPAL, Aaradh
AU - PERONO CACCIAFOCO, Francesco
N1 - Nepal, Aaradh, and Francesco Perono Cacciafoco. 2024. "Minoan Cryptanalysis: Computational Approaches to Deciphering Linear A and Assessing Its Connections with Language Families from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea Areas", Information, 15, 2, 73: 1-13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/info15020073
Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 by the authors.
PY - 2024/1/25
Y1 - 2024/1/25
N2 - During the Bronze Age, the inhabitants of regions of Crete, mainland Greece, and Cyprus inscribed their languages using, among other scripts, a writing system called Linear A. These symbols, mainly characterized by combinations of lines, have, since their discovery, remained a mystery. Not only is the corpus very small, but it is challenging to link Minoan, the language behind Linear A, to any known language. Most decipherment attempts involve using the phonetic values of Linear B, a grammatological offspring of Linear A, to ‘read’ Linear A. However, this yields meaningless words. Recently, novel approaches to deciphering the script have emerged which involve a computational component. In this paper, two such approaches are combined to account for the biases involved in provisionally assigning Linear B phonetic values to Linear A and to shed more light on the possible connections of Linear A with other scripts and languages from the region. Additionally, the limitations inherent in such approaches are discussed. Firstly, a feature-based similarity measure is used to compare Linear A with the Carian Alphabet and the Cypriot Syllabary. A few Linear A symbols are matched with symbols from the Carian Alphabet and the Cypriot Syllabary. Finally, using the derived phonetic values, Linear A is compared with Ancient Egyptian, Luwian, Hittite, Proto-Celtic, and Uralic using a consonantal approach. Some possible word matches are identified from each language.
AB - During the Bronze Age, the inhabitants of regions of Crete, mainland Greece, and Cyprus inscribed their languages using, among other scripts, a writing system called Linear A. These symbols, mainly characterized by combinations of lines, have, since their discovery, remained a mystery. Not only is the corpus very small, but it is challenging to link Minoan, the language behind Linear A, to any known language. Most decipherment attempts involve using the phonetic values of Linear B, a grammatological offspring of Linear A, to ‘read’ Linear A. However, this yields meaningless words. Recently, novel approaches to deciphering the script have emerged which involve a computational component. In this paper, two such approaches are combined to account for the biases involved in provisionally assigning Linear B phonetic values to Linear A and to shed more light on the possible connections of Linear A with other scripts and languages from the region. Additionally, the limitations inherent in such approaches are discussed. Firstly, a feature-based similarity measure is used to compare Linear A with the Carian Alphabet and the Cypriot Syllabary. A few Linear A symbols are matched with symbols from the Carian Alphabet and the Cypriot Syllabary. Finally, using the derived phonetic values, Linear A is compared with Ancient Egyptian, Luwian, Hittite, Proto-Celtic, and Uralic using a consonantal approach. Some possible word matches are identified from each language.
KW - Linear A
KW - Language Decipherment
KW - Computational Linguistics
KW - Historical Linguistics
KW - Minoan
KW - computational linguistics
KW - cryptanalysis
KW - language decipherment
UR - https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/15/2/73
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85185712627&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/info15020073
DO - 10.3390/info15020073
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85185712627
SN - 2078-2489
VL - 15
SP - 1
EP - 13
JO - Information (Switzerland)
JF - Information (Switzerland)
IS - 2
M1 - 73
ER -