The Decipherment of Minoan Linear A, Volume I, Part III

    Overall there is a great unity of evidence visible in all Minoan palatial centres, villas and farm-houses. The administrative clay tablets with Linear A inscriptions offer mainly lists of personal names, consisting of Hurrian 'sentence names' and so-called 'one-word' names comparable with those from Near-Eastern and Anatolian centres. It is significant that we find both 'Old Hurrian' names and 'Mitanni-Hurrian' names in the Minoan centres as in the Near East and Anatolia. The 'Old Hurrian' names contain 'Old Hurrian' verbal forms and the 'Mitanni-Hurrian' show verbal forms that we know from the Turatta letter.

    It is clear that Linear B inherited many features from Linear A, especially the majority of syllabic and ideographic signs, signs for weights and measures and numeral signs (that show a decimal system). Linear A used, however, also many ligatures, of which some turn out to represent theonyms, notably NUBES+pi 100 (HT 33.4) = 'Cloud'+pi, which appears to be a rebus-like notation of the 'God of clouds' = Teub+pi > Teuppi (genitive) 'of Teub' followed by qe+pa3 = e+pa3 100 (HT 33.4) = (Teub's wife) ebat, both followed by the high number of 100. Linear A has also signs for fractions, which Linear B seems to miss. In the Old Linear A grids Linear A sign 91 (showing graphic identity with Linear B sign *78) was still conventionally rendered as qe (labio-velar + e), but the actual phonetic value of Linear A 91 is e (voiced velar fricative + e), which is the value of this sign in the new Linear A grid. The same applies to Linear A sign 62, that was formerly transliterated as qa (like the graphically identical Linear B sign *16 = *qa), but that is in the new Linear A grid a. The author has proved with many confirmatory matches that Linear A sign 96 (and its variant sign 68) can be identified as i. Among the many new identifications are some interesting ethnics: Linear A ku-re-96 (HT 39.2; HT 117b.1), transliterated as ku-re-i = urr=e=i  'Hurrian', twice attested at Hagia Triada, and conventionally transliterated qa-ti-96 2 (ZA 14.2), interpreted as attii, att=i=i, 'man/w...