Is the syllabogram ZE just a plain old syllabogram?  A MAJOR discovery soon to be announced!

ZE, the Super Syllabogram!

Linear B ZE syllabogram logogram combinatory ideogram

Just the other day, while meticulously examining some of the 100s of the fragments of the Scripta Minoa I have already ploughed through with a fine-tooth comb, I noticed something particularly astonishing, something which has never been directly observed until now, but which is bound to have a significant impact on the continuing saga all of us, as researchers, are pursuing in our attempts to successfully decipher certain aspects of the Linear B syllabary, including both logograms and ideograms, which have hitherto remained entirely recalcitrant to interpretation. But I sincerely believe I have actually cracked another mystery in the Linear B saga, and that mystery revolves around not one, but more than one, Linear B syllabogram, logogram and ideogram, taken not in isolation but in specific, invariable combination(s) with one another.

This entirely new approach to the decipherment of hitherto inexplicable portions of Linear B tablets, indeed, even of fragments of Linear B tablets, is bound to have profound implications in our ability to break open at least some of the remaining mysteries of Linear B. Not only did I discover this particular syllabogram ZE in a specific configuration, that is to say, a specific, invariable order with the very same ideogram several times over, but I also discovered the same phenomenon occurring at least as frequently and in some cases, far more frequently, with specific syllabograms always combined in exactly the same order with exactly the same ideogram. Something is going on here, and I mean something big, which has eluded the notice of all Linear B researchers to date, in the 60 years plus since Michael Ventris first deciphered Linear B.

To say the very least, I was extremely lucky to have stumbled upon this particular and particularly precise usage of the “syllabogram” ZE in the Scripta Minoa, which places it firmly in the same class as the most common Linear B logograms, all of which are already perfectly understood. The big difference here is that, until now, all Linear B logograms we know the precise meaning of are all comprised of nothing but two or more syllabograms.  I stress this.  In the case of ZE, we have an entirely new phenomenon, as you shall soon discover for yourselves. Please understand that for my purposes, and in fact for the sake of absolute clarity and for sound theoretical purposes, I insist on a clear distinction between a logogram and an ideogram. In fact, as you are soon to see, we may have to “invent” at least one new class of Linear B “symbols” which is a composite of either:

a both a syllabogram and an ideogram, but always in the same precise configuration and in the same precise order;
b and, yes, even 2 ideograms, again always in the same precise configuration and in the same precise order.

I am in fact so convinced that the “meaning” I am about to assign to the syllabogram ZE in combination with the (as yet) “secret” syllabogram I shall be unveiling is in fact so sound as to be practically self-evident. I challenge all major researchers into Linear B to challenge my interpretation of the ZE + ideogram logogram, since after all I may be barking up the wrong tree. But somehow, intuitively, inductively and contextually, I do not believe I err. Only time will tell. 

What I sincerely believe I am about to demonstrate is this: Linear B is an even more complex, more sophisticated, in short, a more elegant syllabary system than we have yet imagined, so much so indeed that it may be the most sophisticated syllabary ever to have existed prior to the advent of the alphabetic scripts.   

Keep posted!

Richard