Writing in Bronze Age Crete: ‘Minoan' Linear A (Elements in Writing in the Ancient World)

The Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus were home to a plethora of scripts, including Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B, Cypro-Minoan and Cypro-Syllabic. This Element is dedicated to the conventionally named 'Minoan' Linear A script, used on Crete and the Aegean islands during the Middle and Late Bronze Age (ca. 1800–1450 BCE). Linear A is still undeciphered, and the language it encodes ('Minoan') thus remains elusive. Notwithstanding, scholars have been able to extract a good amount of information from Linear A inscriptions and their contexts of use. Current ongoing research, integrating the materiality of script with linguistic analysis, offers a cutting-edge approach with promising results. This Element considers Linear A within an investigative framework as well as narrative, shedding light on a number of burning questions in the field, often the subject of intense academic debate. Read more