Source: Library image of Linear B

Professor Michael Cosmopoulos, of the University of Missouri-Saint Louis in the USA, is returning the oldest written text found in Europe to Messenia in the Peloponnese, where it was discovered in 2010.

The writing in Linear B text, came to light during the excavation of the palace of Iklaina, near Pylos. The text on a ceramic tablet was discovered in an ancient rubbish pit and has been dated to around 1,500 B.C. Linear B is one of the earliest forms of writing, attributed to the Mycenaean civilisation, centred around the palace complex at Mycenae in the Peloponnese.  The Mycenaean Period is dated from 1,600 to 1,100 B.C., the time of the Homeric epics.

Tablets in Linear B script were mostly used by the Mycenaeans to record bureaucratic, accounting and ambassadorial documents. The script consists of around 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs. These ideograms or “signifying” signs symbolize objects or commodities.