Minoan language

Not to be confused with the Minaean language.

The Minoan language is the language (or languages) of the ancient Minoan civilization of Crete written in the Cretan hieroglyphs and later in the Linear A syllabary. As the Cretan hieroglyphs are undeciphered and Linear A only partly deciphered, the Minoan language is unknown and unclassified. With the existing evidence, it is even impossible to be certain that the two scripts record the same language.

Minoan
(undeciphered)
Linear A tablet
Region	Crete
Era	About 2100–1450 BC
Language family	unclassified
Writing system	Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: omn – Minoan lab – Linear A
Linguist List	omn Minoan
	lab Linear A
Glottolog	mino1236  Minoan

The Eteocretan language, attested in a few alphabetic inscriptions from Crete 1,000 years later, is possibly a descendant of Minoan, but is also unclassified.

Tradition

Minoan is mainly known from the inscriptions in Linear A, which are fairly legible by comparison with Linear B. The Cretan hieroglyphs are dated from the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. The Linear A texts, mostly written in clay tablets, are spread all over Crete with more than 40 localities on the island.

The Egyptian texts

From the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt come four texts containing names and spells in the language of Keftiu. They are, as usual in non-Egyptian texts, written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, which has allowed the pronunciation of those names and spells to be reconstructed.

• Magic Papyrus Harris (Latin: Papyrus magicus Harris XII, 1–5); Beg. 18th Dynasty: a spell in the Keftiu language ^[1]
• Writing board (B.M. 5647); early 18th Dynasty: school blackboard with Keftiu names^[2]
• London Medical Papyrus (B.M., 10059); end of the 18th Dynasty: Two Spells Against Disease (#32–33)
• Aegean placard list [de]: some Cretan place names.

On the basis of these texts, the phonetic system of the Keftiu language has been reconstructed as having the following consonants:^{[3][failed verification]}

Consonant phonemes

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m		n
Stop	p b	t d	ts		k	q
Fricative	f		s	ʃ			h
Trill			r
Approximant				j	w

Classification

See also: Linear A § Theories regarding the language

Minoan is an unclassified language, or perhaps multiple indeterminate languages written in the same script. It has been compared inconclusively to the Indo-European, Semitic and Tyrsenian language families and is a language isolate.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]}

Syntax

Brent Davis, a linguist and archaeologist at the University of Melbourne, has proposed that the basic word order of the language written in Linear A may be verb-subject-object (VSO), based on the properties of a common formulaic sequence found in Linear A.^[11]