3 - The Origins of Writing in Western Civilization and the Kaulins Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance (MinAegCon™): A Syllabic Grid of Mycenaean Greek Linear B Script, the Cypriot Syllabary, the Phaistos Disk, two Old Elamite Scripts, the Inscription on the Axe of Arkalochori, and Comparable Signs from Sumerian Pictographs and Egyptian Hieroglyphs

(continued from Origins of Writing: Ancient Sign Concordance 2)

Not everyone will accord with exactly that exceptional laudatory sentiment, but the importance of the Linear B decipherment is undoubted. Accordingly, although some decipherment improvements in Mycenaean Greek are suggested subsequently in the course of this article, this takes nothing away from the genius of the original decipherment work. Whatever is done always builds on the work of others.

C. The /L/ and /R/ Phonemes in Mycenaean Greek Linear B Script

What kinds of improvements are going to be suggested in this work?

The subsequent table of Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance contains numerous improvements, especially in the analysis of the origin of the signs.

That analysis shows, for example, that Linear B script had both an /R/ and an /L/ phoneme and also R-based and L-based syllabic signs. An L phoneme is currently negated in Linear B by classical philologists, but this unfortunate view does not bear up to critical scrutiny. Currently, R-based syllables are applied erroneously in Linear B to words clearly containing the /L/ phoneme in both modern and Ancient Greek.

In Linear B the following well-known examples can be cited:

• the current transcription QA-SI-RE-U is transliterated as βασιλεύς
• the current transcription A-PI-QO-RO is transliterated as αμφίπολοι, and
• the current transcription QO-U-KO-RO is transliterated as βουκόλοι.

As shown subsequently by the Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance, Mycenaean Greek in fact had both an /R/ phoneme and an /L/ phoneme. A correct syllabic grid of Linear B must therefore include the syllabic values LA, LE, LI, LO, and LU. The syllabic grid of Ventris and Chadwick does not do this and is thus erroneous on that score. The missing L-based syllables are provided in this work.

D. Multiple Sources are used to determine the Origin of Syllabic Signs

The syllabic grid which follows subsequently in this work is a giant leap forward in the analysis of ancient syllabic scripts. Ventris created a syllabic grid applicable only to Linear B, while the syllabic grid presented here covers six different sources, all in one inter-connected syllabic grid: 1) the Cypriot Syllabary, 2) Linear B, 3) the Phaistos Disk, 4) the Axe of Arkalochori, 5) two Old Elamite Scripts, and 6) comparable syllabic signs in Sumerian pictographs and Egyptian hieroglyphs. This produces a symbiotic syllabic grid system with countervailing checks and balances.

2 - The Origins of Writing in Western Civilization and the Kaulins Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance (MinAegCon™): A Syllabic Grid of Mycenaean Greek Linear B Script, the Cypriot Syllabary, the Phaistos Disk, two Old Elamite Scripts, the Inscription on the Axe of Arkalochori, and Comparable Signs from Sumerian Pictographs and Egyptian Hieroglyphs

(continued from Origins of Writing: Ancient Sign Concordance 1)

In addition, written signs and symbols permit the creation of "languages" whose function far exceeds the limits of human speech. Modern software programming languages, for example, apply written symbols as "machine language" to a host of hardware applications that would be impossible without writing. In human history, the digital revolution was preceded by the writing revolution, the discovery of script.

Without the advent of writing, the mass of mankind would languish in ignorance, as it still does today in regions marked by illiteracy. The written word opened up a magic reservoir of human talents and abilities from which many of us on this planet profit every day. Whatever the origins of writing may be, we are indebted to the men and women who invented, introduced and dispersed this technology to the world.

B. Michael Ventris, John Chadwick and the Decipherment of Minoan Linear B as Mycenaean Greek

When Michael Ventris deciphered Minoan Linear B as Mycenaean Greek, it was a landmark achievement that opened the doors of understanding to a previously closed world. Ancient Mycenaean Greek is written communication that represents the initial stages of writing in the Western world. This was the dawn of modern man.

Ventris, an amateur classical scholar whose profession was actually that of an architect, was -- after the initial decipherment -- assisted in his efforts by John Chadwick, a Greek philologist at Cambridge University, culminating in the joint publication of the pioneering Documents in Mycenaean Greek. [4] That publication enabled a much greater understanding of our common historical "written heritage". Ventris and Chadwick (and also previous Linear B researchers such as Alice Kober) thus revealed to us some of the mysteries of the origins of writing in Western Civilization. Andrew Robinson wrote as follows about this singular achievement:

"Experts dubbed Ventris’s decipherment the Everest of Greek archaeology. An American classicist remarked, Mr. Ventris would have no trouble getting a job as scribe for King Minos. A French scholar [Georges Dumézil, upon hearing of the untimely early death of Ventris:], noted, devant les siècles son oeuvre est faite (in the centuries to come his reputation is secure). Today, his achievement ranks above even the nineteenth-century reading of Egyptian hieroglyphic and Babylonian cuneiform, or the late twentieth-century reading of the Mayan glyphs of Central America, as the greatest intellectual triumph in archaeological decipherment."

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[4] Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek, Volume I,  1956 (1st edition), corrected 1959; Volume II, 1973 (the 2nd edition consists of both volumes).

The Origins of Writing in Western Civilization and the Kaulins Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance (MinAegCon™) - 1 - A Syllabic Grid of Mycenaean Greek Linear B Script, the Cypriot Syllabary, the Phaistos Disk, two Old Elamite Scripts, the Inscription on the Axe of Arkalochori, and Comparable Signs from Sumerian Pictographs and Egyptian Hieroglyphs

This posting starts a series of postings that I will be making throughout the year regarding my sign concordance of ancient scripts, a "meshing" of ancient pictographic, hieroglyphic and syllabic scripts which will provide everyone a highly useful tool for future and further study of the origins of writing on our planet by ancient cultures. There will also be new decipherments.

There is very little doubt, based on my work, that the scripts of antiquity in my concordance point to a single origin and that they all retain very visible elements of their common ancestry.

It is a very ambitious project, indeed, so ambitious that even I can say in advance that there will be many aspects of this work that will need to be improved in the course of time. And there will be errors. That is unavoidable. But this is the beginning. One has to start. You have to take the first step.

The Origins of Writing in Western Civilization and the Kaulins Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance (MinAegCon™) [1]: A Syllabic Grid of Mycenaean Greek Linear B Script, the Cypriot Syllabary, the Phaistos Disk, two Old Elamite Scripts, the Inscription on the Axe of Arkalochori, and Comparable Signs from Sumerian Pictographs and Egyptian Hieroglyphs

by Andis Kaulins [2]

The origin of writing in Western Civilization was a technological quantum leap without which our modern world would not be possible. This publication unravels more of the mystery of how written script came to the Western world.

I. An Introduction to the Minoan Aegean Sign Concordance

A. Communication History and the David W. Packard Minoan Legacy

The importance of the study of ancient writing -- a fascinating field in its own right --is often underestimated. The origin of script impacts modern technology and the methods of modern digital science. Consider, for example, that David W. Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Co., wrote his dissertation on Minoan Linear A. [3]

Communication between human beings is the fundamental essence of the spoken languages of mankind. When those languages were put into written form, the scope of communication expanded beyond the immediate audience of listeners to all those humans who can read whatever is written. Modern communication depends a lot on literacy. Just think of Facebook and Twitter. Moreover, the written word not only communicates, but it also records human expression and knowledge for posterity.

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[1] The acronym MinAegCon (TM) was coined as a trademark on December 27, 2010. A Google search gave no hits on that same day. MinAegCon can be used to cite to this work, together with the name of the author, location and year: Andis Kaulins, Germany 2011.

[2] J.D. (Doctor of Jurisprudence) Stanford University Law School. Former FFA Lecturer in Anglo-American Law, Legal Research and Legal Writing, University of Trier Law School. Co-author of the Langenscheidt & Routledge German-English, English-German Dictionary of Business, Commerce and Finance (4th ed. 2010). Author of: The Phaistos Disc: Hieroglyphic Greek with Euclidean Dimensions (Darmstadt, 1980), The Phaistos Disc: An Ancient Enigma Solved: Two corroborative Old Elamite scripts can be deciphered using the Greek syllabic values obtained for the Phaistos Disc by A. Kaulins in 1980, International Conference on the Phaistos Disk, London, Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, October 31, 2008, Stars Stones and Scholars: The Decipherment of the Megaliths, Trafford, 2003 & 2006; Zum Ursprung des Horus-Glaubens im vordynastischen Ägypten (The Origin of the Cult of Horus in Predynastic Egypt), Efodon Synesis, 2005; Sternensteine - Darstellungen frühgeschichtlicher Astronomie am Beispiel der Externsteine (Star Stones - Prehistoric Astronomy and the Extern Stones), Forschungskreis Walther Machalett für Vor und Frühgeschichte, 2005; Die Himmelsscheibe von Nebra : Beweisführung und Deutung (The Sky Disk of Nebra: Evidence and Interpretation), Efodon Synesis, 2005; Der Bodenhimmel der Oesterholzer Mark um die Spitze der "Externsteinpyramide" (A Megalithic Sky Map at Oesterholz), Efodon Synesis, 2006; Das Tanum System - ein alteuropäisches Vermessungssystem? (The Tanum System: Ancient Seafarers as Megalithic Surveyors of Europe and Africa), Forschungskreis Externsteine., 2007; Der Osnabrücker Bodenhimmel (The Hermetic Planisphere at Osnabrück), Forschungskreis Externsteine, 2008.

[3] David W. Packard, Minoan Linear A, University of California Press in Berkeley, California, 1974.