GREK 016. An Introduction to Linear B

This course will introduce students to the Linear B script, which was used to write the Mycenaean language during the Aegean Late Bronze Age. We will begin with an overview of the Aegean scripts (Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A, Linear B, and the Cypro-Minoan Syllabary), exploring how they relate to the earlier writing systems of the Eastern Mediterranean devised by the Sumerians, Akkadians, and Egyptians. A thorough outline of the script’s syllabary, spelling conventions, and system of ideograms will follow. Students will learn the dialectal features of the Mycenaean language, for which a prior knowledge of ancient Greek will be beneficial but not strictly necessary. For the remainder of the course, each week we will work through a selection of documents drawn from Michael Ventris and John Chadwick’s Documents in Mycenaean Greek² (1973) and the more recent anthology of Yves Duhoux in A Companion to Linear B: Mycenaean Greek Texts and Their World, Vol. 1 (2008).
Humanities.
.5 credit
Catalog chapter: Classics
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics

Access the class schedule to search for sections.