Britannica Sources used in this answer

How were the Linear B tablets identified as Greek?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Thematic map of Eurasia showing the approximate geographic distribution of Indo-European language families, each represented by a different color. Areas include Celtic in western Europe, Germanic in northern and central Europe, Romance in southwestern Europe, Slavic in eastern Europe and Russia, and Indo-Iranian languages in South Asia. Non-Indo-European language regions and areas of common bilingualism are also indicated. — Greek language Approximate locations of Indo-European languages in contemporary Eurasia.

The Linear B script was identified as an archaic form of the Greek language in 1952 by the English architect and cryptographer Michael Ventris.12

Ventris achieved this breakthrough primarily through the use of statistical analysis, which he applied to the arrangement of syllabic signs found on the clay tablets. His progress accelerated significantly following the 1951 publication of texts discovered on the Greek mainland in 1939, which were written in a script nearly identical to that found at Knossos.1

After Ventris announced his findings, he collaborated with the Cambridge linguist John Chadwick to assemble further evidence. Their joint research, published in the 1953 paper "Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives," provided the definitive proof that the Mycenaeans were Greek-speaking and that the tablets represented the oldest known form of the Greek language. This discovery confirmed that the bulk of Classical Greek deities existed as early as the Mycenaean period and provided invaluable insight into the linguistic roots of the Homeric epics.13