Footnote 1 – Historic Homer

Excavations on the island of Crete have uncovered inscriptions in three different scripts: (1) a hieroglyphic script, which has not been deciphered; (2) a Linear A script, which has been deciphered by Cyrus H. Gordon as a northwest Semitic language (this decipherment has not been widely accepted); and (3) the so-called Linear B script, which, as the British architect Michael Ventris demonstrated, recorded the Mycenaean Greek language. Linear B tablets have also been found in large numbers on the Greek mainland; they are generally stock inventories.