Mycenaean Greek

Mycenaean Greek is the earliest form of the Greek language that we know about. It was spoken on the Greek mainland and the island of Crete from about the 16th to the 12th century BC, during a time called Mycenaean Greece. We know about this ancient language mostly from writing found on clay tablets. These tablets were written in a special script called Linear B, which scholars finally figured out how to read in 1952.

Most of these tablets were found in places like Knossos in central Crete and Pylos in the southwest part of the Peloponnese. Other important spots include Mycenae itself, Tiryns, Thebes, and Chania in western Crete. Even though these tablets are mostly just lists and inventories, they give us valuable clues about the people who lived in Mycenaean Greece and what life was like before a period known as the Greek Dark Ages.

Phonology

Mycenaean Greek kept some old sounds from its early roots that later disappeared in ancient Greek. For example, it had special sounds called labialized velars, written with the symbol ⟨q⟩. These sounds changed into different letters in later Greek depending on the word and dialect.

The language also included semivowels and a special sound between vowels. However, the writing system, called Linear B, was very simple and did not show all the sounds clearly. This made it tricky to know exactly how words were pronounced, so scholars use clues from older languages and later Greek to guess the meanings and sounds.

Orthography

Further information: Linear B

Mycenaean Greek is written in a script called Linear B, which uses around 200 symbols to represent sounds and pictures. These symbols come from an earlier writing system used by a different language, so they don’t capture every sound in Mycenaean Greek perfectly.

Because of this, some sounds are not shown clearly in the writing. For example, the script does not show the difference between certain soft and hard sounds, or between some similar letters. Also, some ending sounds are left out, and long vowel sounds are not marked. Writers could sometimes choose between similar symbols, depending on their own style.

Morphology

Nouns in Mycenaean Greek likely changed forms to show things like who something belongs to or where it is, called "cases." They also had different genders — masculine, feminine, and neuter — and could be singular, dual, or plural. Over time, some of these forms merged, and by Classical Greek, only a few remained.

Verbs showed different times and ways actions happened, like past, present, or future, and could be active, middle, or passive. We mostly find verbs in the present tense, with only a few examples of future or past actions.

Greek features

Main article: Proto-Greek language

Mycenaean Greek showed several unique changes that helped it become the Greek language we know today. For example, certain sounds shifted, like the soft "s" turning into an "h" sound. Words also changed shape, such as adding “-eus” to create nouns that describe a person’s role.

Some words found in Mycenaean Greek are only known in Greek. One example is qa-si-re-u, which later became the word for “king” in Greek. Other words, like wa-na-ka for “overlord” or “king,” were also used in Mycenaean times and evolved into Greek words we can still recognize today.

Corpus

Main article: Linear B § Corpus

The collection of Mycenaean Greek writing includes around 6,000 tablets and pieces of broken pottery written in Linear B, dating from the LMII to LHIIIB periods. These tablets provide our main source for understanding this ancient form of Greek.

One item, called the Kafkania pebble, was thought to be one of the oldest Mycenaean inscriptions, possibly from the 17th century BC, but many experts question if it is real. The earliest widely accepted Linear B tablets come from a room at Knossos and are believed to be from the late 15th to early 14th century BC.

Variations and possible dialects

Mycenaean Greek was mostly the same across different places, but some small differences hinted at local dialects. For example, some inscriptions used "i" instead of "e" or "a" instead of "o". Scholars think these differences might show that scribes sometimes used words from their everyday speech.

After Mycenaean Greece ended, these local dialects likely kept changing and evolved into the many Greek dialects spoken later. Some experts believe Mycenaean Greek was a special form used for official records, while regular spoken dialects continued on their own. However, not all experts agree, as the writing doesn’t show all the details needed to prove different dialects for sure.

Survival

In southern Greece, including places like Achaea, the Argolid, Laconia, Crete, and Rhodes, people spoke a dialect called Proto-Arcadocypriot. This was closely related to Mycenaean Greek. Over time, these dialects changed a bit and became what we know as Arcadocypriot. Even an ancient dialect called Pamphylian showed some similarities to Mycenaean Greek.