Reading Linear B: Volume 1, An Introduction to the Writing System and Mycenaean Greek

This book, which draws on Lisa Bendall's lectures over three decades, provides an engaging and accessible survey of everything students need to know to read and understand texts in Linear B. As John Chadwick noted, the Linear B scholar must be 'not just an epigraphist, not just a linguist, not just an economic historian and archaeologist; ideally he or she...must be all these things simultaneously'. Volume 1 introduces the student to the writing system and the language, especially the phonology and morphology. It also explains the formal aspects of the documents and gives guidance on the tools available to the student and scholar. Volume 2 will provide a guide to using the documents to understand the Mycenaean world.

List of contents

Part I. Linear B and Mycenaean Greek: 1. Discovery, decipherment, and context of Linear B; 2. Linear B facts, figures, and epigraphy; 3. The Linear B writing system; 4. Mycenaean Greek.

About the author

Lisa Maria Bendall s Sinclair and Rachel Hood Lecturer in Aegean Prehistory at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor for Archaeology at Keble College. She has published numerous articles and Economics of Religion in the Mycenaean World (2007), and helped to edit Sinclair Hood's The Masons' Marks of Minoan Knossos (2020). She curated the Ventris-Chadwick Exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum (Bendall 2003, 2013).

Product details

• Authors: Lisa Maria Bendall
• Publisher: Cambridge Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 30.04.2026
• EAN: 9781009336444
• ISBN: 978-1-009-33644-4
• Weight: 500 g
• Illustrations: Worked examples or Exercises
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Classical linguistics / literary studies; Linguistics, Ancient Greece, Greece, Crete, Language teaching & learning material & coursework, Ancient History, Archaeology by period / region, Ancient history: to c 500 CE, Language teaching and learning material and coursework, Philology, Writing systems, alphabets, Ancient (Classical) Greek, BCE to c 500 CE, Classical Greek & Roman archaeology, For higher / tertiary / university education, c 1500 BCE to c 1000 BCE, Textbook, coursework, Peloponnese, LANGUAGE STUDY / Ancient Languages, Writing systems, alphabets, scripts