Linear B online – syllabary generator

Linear B – enter syllables such as ka-ro-te and see signs used for Mycenaean Greek. Learn the syllabary rules and transliteration limits.

One sign is a whole syllable

Why did Mycenaean palaces need a script of their own?

Writing appeared in Mycenaean Greece where administration began: in the palace archives. The tablets list inventories of grain, oil, sheep and people — what the palace administered and had to account for. Alongside syllabic signs it therefore used logograms standing for whole commodities and separate numerals, because in a list like that what counts is what and how much.

How does writing in syllables work?

Enter syllables separated by hyphens, for example “ka-ro-te”, and the generator turns each into a single sign. Matching starts from the longest syllable that fits, so compound signs such as “dwe” or “pte” beat shorter ones. Characters missing from the set pass through the tool unchanged.

Example: ka-ro-te and re-bu-so

“ka-ro-te” gives 𐀏𐀫𐀳 — three syllables, three signs. “re-bu-so” gives 𐀩b𐀄𐀰 because the current generator does not normalise B to the historical P series and leaves that letter unchanged. Real Linear B used the same series for P, PH and B, so the syllable /bu/ would be approximated with the “pu” sign.

Syllables available in the generator

The top row shows the syllable in Latin letters and the bottom row the matching sign. Whole series are visible: five vowels plus the da–du, ka–ku, ma–mu columns and the rest, rounded off by a few compound signs.

Syllables and their Linear B signs
Syllable	a	e	i	o	u	da	de	di	do	du	ja	je	jo	ju	ka	ke	ki	ko	ku	ma	me	mi	mo	mu	na	ne	ni	no	nu	pa	pe	pi	po	pu	qa	qe	qi	qo	ra	re	ri	ro	ru	sa	se	si	so	su	ta	te	ti	to	tu	wa	we	wi	wo	za	ze	zo	au	dwe	dwo	nwa	pte	twe	two
Sign	𐀀	𐀁	𐀂	𐀃	𐀄	𐀅	𐀆	𐀇	𐀈	𐀉	𐀊	𐀋	𐀍	𐀎	𐀏	𐀐	𐀑	𐀒	𐀓	𐀔	𐀕	𐀖	𐀗	𐀘	𐀙	𐀚	𐀛	𐀜	𐀝	𐀞	𐀟	𐀠	𐀡	𐀢	𐀣	𐀤	𐀥	𐀦	𐀨	𐀩	𐀪	𐀫	𐀬	𐀭	𐀮	𐀯	𐀰	𐀱	𐀲	𐀳	𐀴	𐀵	𐀶	𐀷	𐀸	𐀹	𐀺	𐀼	𐀽	𐀿	𐁂	𐁃	𐁄	𐁅	𐁇	𐁌	𐁍

How do you read the signs back?

Reading back turns every sign into its conventional syllable and joins them with hyphens, so 𐀏𐀫𐀳 returns as “ka-ro-te”. With foreign characters in the text the division is less regular, because letters outside the set stay where they were. This is the generator’s mechanical notation, not a reconstruction of historical Mycenaean spelling.

Why syllables rather than letters?

The system was applied to a language it could not write precisely: it did not distinguish voiced from voiceless consonants, used one series for both r and l, and could not write a consonant at the end of a syllable. The same group of signs could therefore match several Greek words, and the reader settled them from the context of the account.

History and interesting facts

Linear B recorded Mycenaean Greek in the Late Bronze Age. About 89 phonetic signs represented vowels or open consonant-vowel syllables, alongside logograms and numerals. Surviving clay tablets were mainly temporary administrative records concerning people, goods and palace economies. Some endured only because palace fires accidentally baked them. Michael Ventris demonstrated in 1952 that the language was an early form of Greek, building on the classification and sign analysis of scholars including Alice Kober and Emmett Bennett.

What this tool does not do

The generator does not translate into Mycenaean Greek and supplies neither the logograms nor the numerals without which a real tablet made no sense. Nor does it check whether a syllable could occur in a Mycenaean word — it simply turns what you type into signs from the set.

How was Linear B deciphered?

The tablets survived by accident: they were never fired, but the fires that destroyed the palaces at Knossos and Pylos baked the clay. Alice Kober showed that the words carried regular endings, and in 1952 Michael Ventris announced the decipherment, proving with John Chadwick that the language was an early form of Greek. The older Linear A remains unread.