Overview

Nearly 4000 years ago a hieroglyphic script was used on Crete which predates Linear A and Linear B, indeed any other writing in Europe, but remains undeciphered since its discovery at the beginning of the twentieth century. This is the first comprehensive account of this script, which is analysed by the leading experts through an array of lenses, including archaeology, philology, palaeography, cognitive studies and decipherment theory, in order to showcase its importance in the history of writing. The book takes a broad approach to writing, understanding it not solely or even mainly as a visual tool to convey language, but primarily as a social and cultural phenomenon rooted in agency, materiality, and semiotics. The volume will provide an invaluable tool for scholars and will facilitate further research. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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9781009490108

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MATILDE CIVITILLO is Associate Professor of Philology and Civilizations of the Aegean and Pre-Classical Mediterranean at the Università degli Studi della Campania 'Luigi Vanvitelli'. Her research has mainly been focused on the analysis of the three main corpora of Aegean texts, namely the written documentation in Cretan Hieroglyphic, in Linear A and in Linear B, on which she has published La scrittura geroglifica minoica sui sigilli. Il messaggio della glittica protopalaziale (2016) and a number of journal articles. SILVIA FERRARA is Professor of Philology and Civilizations of the Aegean and Pre-Classical Mediterranean at the Università degli Studi di Bologna. An expert on both ancient undeciphered scripts and the invention of writing, she is the author and editor of numerous books, including Cypro-Minoan Inscriptions (2012) and The Greatest Invention (2019). In 2017 she was awarded an ERC grant for the project INSCRIBE (Invention of Scripts and their Beginnings). TORSTEN MEISSNER is a Professor of Classical and Comparative Philology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow and Director of Studies in Classics at Pembroke College. His research mainly focuses on the early Celtic and Germanic languages, the history of Greek from the Bronze Age to the present day and the writing systems of the Bronze Age Aegean, on which he has published numerous articles and books, including S-stem Nouns and Adjectives in Greek and Proto-Indo-European (2006) and Personal Names in the Western Roman World (ed. 2011). He is also the head of the Mycenaean Epigraphy Group in Cambridge and an alumnus of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

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