Practice question · Multiple choice
Why was Ventris’s decipherment of Linear B as GREEK such a shock?
Hints
- The surprise was the language.
- And the content was a disappointment to anyone hoping for literature.
Show the answer
C. It was Greek, and the tablets were accounts
Why
Greek, and much earlier than expected, recording sheep, wool, bronze, chariot wheels (many broken), and rations for named workers. Like cuneiform before it, the script shows up doing inventory.
Practise The Bronze Age Aegean
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More questions on The Bronze Age Aegean
- What makes the systems-collapse thesis persuasive?
- The Greek alphabet spread quickly into non-administrative use partly because it belonged to no institution.
- Sort each factor in the 1200 BCE collapse.
- The Sea Peoples are best understood as the cause of the Late Bronze Age collapse.
- Complete the argument.
- Linear B tablets survive because a palace burned down. What does that accident tell us about what we can know?
- Linear B tablets are almost entirely inventories, sheep, wheel-rims, rations. Why is that mundane content so…