Linear A
The Minoan script is readable as sound and meaningless as language.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 350 years
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Linear A shares many signs with the later Linear B, so the syllabic values can be guessed — which means the inscriptions can be pronounced without being understood, since the underlying language is unrelated to any known one. About 1,400 inscriptions survive, mostly short administrative records. It is one of the more frustrating undeciphered scripts precisely because it is half-readable.