Image Details

Four words for “pot” are highlighted in the drawing of the Linear A text known as Hagia Triada 31, lower left. In each case, the word consists of a combination of syllables and a pictograph of a pot. In the second line, on the right, the two small symbols above the pot are the syllables su and pu. To the left, two other syllables read qa and pa. Pa, the ladderlike symbol, is repeated in the last two pictographs, which read ka-ro-pa (line 3) and su-pu-ra (line 5). Cyrus Gordon believes that each of these words is Semitic.

In the drawing at right, ku-ro, the Linear A word for “total,” appears in the last line, before the six marks that indicate “six.” Ku-ro appears frequently at the end of administrative tablets, and Gordon believes it derives from the Semitic kull (Linear A does not distinguish between l and r). In the drawing at top, the two symbols between the two vertical lines, which serve as word dividers, read ya-ne; the symbols appear on a wine jar discovered on Crete and are related, in Gordon’s view, to yayin, the Hebrew word for wine.