Publisher's Synopsis
Following the discoveries of Troy and Mycenae by Schliemann, in 1900 Sir Arthur Evans excavated the site of the palace of Knossos, the capital of ancient Crete, expecting to find another Mycenaean type city. Instead he found a much older and more advanced civilization which he termed Minoan after the legendary king of Greek myth. He also discovered two types of clay tablets which he termed Linear writing of class B and Linear writing of class A, the latter having been found at an archaeologically older level. The underlying language ofLinear B was deciphered by Michael Ventris and found to be an archaic form of Greek, spoken by the Mycenaean Greeks. Linear A has remained undeciphered. This book proposes to show the evidence for deciphering the underlying language of Linear A, and to show the links it has to other languages and civilizations of the same period. These civilizations range from ancient Crete in the West through the Anatolian and Persian Plateaus to the Indus Valley in the east. They include not only Minoan Crete but also those of ancient Lycia, Prehistoric Troy, ancient Cyprus, ancient Elam, ancient settlements of the Persian Plateau, and the Indus Valley Civilization. This book is not only about the decoding of the Linear A script. It is also about the underlying civilizations that emerge, their influence on the surrounding cultures of the time, and through them on present day cultures. For example the civilization of ancient Crete, heavily influenced the Mycenaean Greeks not only in their material culture, including art and architecture, but also in their religious and intellectual thought. The Mycenaean Greeks influenced the Classical Greeks and the ancient Romans, whose culture lies at the root of Western Civilization. Concepts central to modern societies like democracy, egalitarianism where individuals are concerned, and equality of the sexes were embedded in these cultures. However the contributions these civilizations made remain largely unacknowledged and forgotten but continue to exert their influence at an unconscious level.
