Re-print - Minoan Cryptanalysis: Computational Approaches to Deciphering Linear A and Assessing Its Connections with Language Families from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea Areas

Aaradh NEPAL, Francesco PERONO CACCIAFOCO*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book or Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

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.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationComputational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing
EditorsPeter Z. Revesz
Place of PublicationBasel (Switzerland)
PublisherMDPI (Basel, Switzerland)
Chapter11
Pages215-227
Number of pages12
Volume1
Edition1
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-7258-1370-4
ISBN (Print)978-3-7258-1369-8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2024

Keywords

  • Language Deciphering
  • Minoan
  • Cryptanalysis
  • Historical Linguistics
  • Aegean Writing Systems

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