Linear B Syllabary

Overview Properties List Table

Linear B Syllabary is a Unicode block containing characters for the syllabic writing of Mycenaean Greek. Another block containing Linear B Ideograms.

Mycenaean Greek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, spoken on the Greek mainland, Crete and Cyprus in the 16th to 12th centuries BC, before the hypothesised Dorian invasion which was often cited as the terminus post quem for the coming of the Greek language to Greece. The language is preserved in inscriptions in Linear B, a script first attested on Crete before the 14th century BC. Most instances of these inscriptions are on clay tablets found in Knossos in central Crete, and in Pylos in the southwest of the Peloponnese. Other tablets have been found at Mycenae itself, Tiryns and Thebes and at Chania in Western Crete. The language is named after Mycenae, one of the major centres of Mycenaean Greece.

The tablets remained long undeciphered, and every conceivable language was suggested for them, until Michael Ventris deciphered the script in 1952 and by a preponderance of evidence proved the language to be an early form of Greek.

The texts on the tablets are mostly lists and inventories. No prose narrative survives, much less myth or poetry. Still, much may be glimpsed from these records about the people who produced them and about Mycenaean Greece, the period before the so-called Greek Dark Ages.

Properties

Range	10000–1007F
Characters	128

List of Characters

Table of Characters

FFF0–FFFF Specials 10080–100FF Linear B Ideograms

0: Basic Multilingual Plane

1: Supplementary Multilingual Plane

2: Supplementary Ideographic Plane

3: Tertiary Ideographic Plane

4-13: Not Used

14: Supplementary Special-purpose Plane

15: Supplementary Private Use Area Plane – A

16: Supplementary Private Use Area Plane – B