1.
Ideographic
–
An ideogram or ideograph is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. In proto-writing, used for inventories and the like, physical objects are represented by stylized or conventionalized pictures, for example, the pictorial Dongba symbols without Geba annotation cannot represent the Naxi language, but are used as a mnemonic for reciting oral literature. Some systems also use ideograms, symbols denoting abstract concepts, the term ideogram is often used to describe symbols of writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian cuneiform and Chinese characters. However, these symbols are logograms, representing words or morphemes of a language rather than objects or concepts. In these writing systems, a variety of strategies were employed in the design of logographic symbols, pictographic symbols depict the object referred to by the word, such as an icon of a bull denoting the Semitic word ʾālep ox. Some words denoting abstract concepts may be represented iconically, but most other words are represented using the rebus principle, many signs in hieroglyphic as well as in cuneiform writing could be used either logographically or phonetically. Semantic compounds are semantic combinations of characters, such as 明 míng bright, composed of 日 rì sun and 月 yuè moon, or 休 xiū rest, composed of 人 rén person and 木 mù tree. An example of ideograms is the collection of 50 signs developed in the 1970s by the American Institute of Graphic Arts at the request of the US Department of Transportation, the system was initially used to mark airports and gradually got more widespread. An early proposal was An Essay towards a Real Character, a recent example is the system of Blissymbols, which was proposed by Charles K. Bliss in 1949 and currently includes over 2,000 symbols, emoji Heterogram Icon Lexigram List of symbols List of writing systems Logotype Therblig Traffic sign The Ideographic Myth Extract from DeFrancis book. American Heritage Dictionary definition Merriam-Webster OnLine definition
Ideographic
–
Ideogram in the
Church of the Visitation, Jerusalem
Ideographic
–
"No Dogs!" sign in Spain. The dog illustration is a
pictogram. The red circle and bar is an ideogram representing the idea of "no" or "not allowed".
Ideographic
–
Writing systems
2.
Syllabary
–
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or moras which make up words. This loosely corresponds to shallow orthographies in alphabetic writing systems, most syllabaries only feature one or two kinds of syllabograms and form other syllables by graphemic rules. Otherwise they are synthetic, if they vary by onset, rime, nucleus or coda, or systematic, some scholars, e. g. Daniels, reserve the general term for analytic syllabaries and invent other terms as necessary. Some system provides katakana language conversion, in addition, the undecoded Cretan Linear A is also believed by some to be a syllabic script, though this is not proven. Chinese characters, the script used for Sumerian, Akkadian and other languages. They are therefore referred to as logosyllabic. The contemporary Japanese language uses two syllabaries together called kana, namely hiragana and katakana, which were developed around 700. They are mainly used to some native words and grammatical elements, as well as foreign words. Because Japanese uses mainly CV syllables, a syllabary is well suited to write the language, as in many syllabaries, however, vowel sequences and final consonants are written with separate glyphs, so that both atta and kaita are written with three kana, あった and かいた. It is therefore called a moraic writing system. Languages that use syllabaries today tend to have simple phonotactics, with a predominance of monomoraic syllables, few syllabaries have glyphs for syllables that are not monomoraic, and those that once did have simplified over time to eliminate that complexity. For example, the Vai syllabary originally had separate glyphs for syllables ending in a coda, the modern script has been expanded to cover all moras, but at the same time reduced to exclude all other syllables. g. Ko-no-so for Κνωσός Knōsos, pe-ma for σπέρμα sperma, the Cherokee syllabary generally uses dummy vowels for coda consonants, but also has a segmental grapheme for /s/, which can be used both as a coda and in an initial /sC/ consonant cluster. The languages of South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as the Ethiopian Semitic languages, have a type of alphabet called an abugida or alphasyllabary, in the 19th century these systems were called syllabics, a term which has survived in the name of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. In a true syllabary there may be graphic similarity between characters that share a common consonant or vowel sound, but it is not systematic or close to regular. For example, the characters for ke, ka, and ko in Japanese hiragana have no similarity to indicate their common k sound, compare abugida, where each grapheme typically represents a syllable but where characters representing related sounds are all similar graphically. For example, in Devanagari, an abugida, the characters for ke, ka and ko are के, का and को respectively. English, along many other Indo-European languages like German and Russian, allows for complex syllable structures
Syllabary
–
Writing systems
Syllabary
–
Each
syllable (σ) branches into
consonantal onset (ω) and
rime (ρ) that is divided into
nucleus (ν) and
coda (κ), non-/supra-segmental parameters like
tone (τ) affect the syllable as a whole
3.
Minoan chronology
–
Sir Arthur Evans developed a relative dating scheme of Minoan chronology based on the excavations initiated and managed by him at the site of the ancient city of Knossos. He called the civilization that he discovered there Minoan, the same scheme was later applied to the Greek mainland and the Cyclades Islands to form a general plan for dating events of the prehistoric and early historic Aegean. The relative chronology is based on the shapes and decorative styles of pottery found at sites on Crete. Arthur Evans began excavating on a hill called tou tseleve he kephala, two of the palace storerooms had been uncovered by Minos Kalokairinos in 1878, whose work ceased at the demand of the land owners. Simultaneously, coins and seals inscribed with a script were also discovered. These came to Evans attention as the curator of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, the area was rumored to have been the site of the ancient city of Knossos. Evans examined the site on March 19,1894, nothing further could be done at that time, but in 1898 Crete became an independent republic. In 1899 Evans purchased the land with his own funds and decided to set up an excavation, attacking the site with crews of hundreds of diggers, Evans uncovered most of the sites 6 acres within 6 seasons. Subsequently he concerned himself mainly with restoration, an activity frowned upon by archaeologists of today and he continued to excavate there and elsewhere and to restore until 1935. Evans was knighted in 1911 for his work, in 1921, the first edition of his monumental work, Palace of Minos, was released, which became indispensable for any department of classical archaeology. On Evans death in 1941, the British School of Archaeology assumed responsibility for the excavation, later turning the property over to the Greek government, while retaining excavation rights. Evans chronological framework had triple divisions each triply divided, a formula that has retained, thus Early Minoan I, II and III, Middle Minoan I. Each subsection he divided into A and B, early and late, wace and Carl Blegen adapted Evans chronology to the Greek mainland and the islands, where the culture was termed Helladic and Cycladic. In 1941 Arne Furumark applied the term Mycenaean to LH and LC, as it is clear that the Mycenaean Greeks dominated at Knossos at some point in Late Minoan, the latter is often included under Mycenaean or called Minoan-Mycenaean. The major study of Cretan pottery was Evans, a very general stylistic trend was from dark decoration on a light background in the Early Minoan to white and red decorations on a dark wash or slip in Middle Minoan. Finally, there was a return to the manner of dark on light in Late Minoan. New body shapes for vessels also emerged and various styles of decoration are evident within Evans chronology, Evans never intended to give exact calendrical dates to the pottery periods. Most criticism does not aim at the overthrow of Evans system, even with these faults the system has no competitors
Minoan chronology
–
Model of the "Palace of Minos" on Kephala at the Museum in Iraklio. Note the central courtyard, the columned porticos, the agglutinative architecture, the frequent light wells and the lack of defenses. Not shown are the extensive water supply and sanitation systems.
Minoan chronology
–
Photograph of the Palace.
Minoan chronology
–
Another View of the Palace.
4.
Proto-writing
–
They used ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols to convey information yet were probably devoid of direct linguistic content. These systems emerged in the early Neolithic period, as early as the 7th millennium BCE, in 2003, tortoise shells were found in 24 Neolithic graves excavated at Jiahu, Henan province, northern China, with radiocarbon dates from the 7th millennium BCE. According to some archaeologists, the symbols carved on the shells had similarities to the late 2nd millennium BCE oracle bone script, others have dismissed this claim as insufficiently substantiated, claiming that simple geometric designs such as those found on the Jiahu shells cannot be linked to early writing. 5300 BCE, it has argued that the alignment of the symbols evokes the impression of a text. The Dispilio Tablet of the late 6th millennium is similar, the hieroglyphic scripts of the Ancient Near East seamlessly emerge from such symbol systems, so that it is difficult to say at what point precisely writing emerges from proto-writing. Adding to this difficulty is the fact very little is known about the symbols meanings. The transition from proto-writing to the earliest fully developed writing systems took place in the late 4th to early 3rd millennium BCE in the Fertile Crescent. The Kish tablet, dated to 3500 BCE, reflects the stage of proto-cuneiform, by the end of the 4th millennium BCE, this symbol system had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, using a round-shaped stylus impressed into soft clay at different angles for recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic writing using a stylus to indicate what was being counted. The transitional stage to a writing system takes place in the Jemdet Nasr period. A similar development took place in the genesis of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, various scholars believe that Egyptian hieroglyphs came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and. Invented under the influence of the latter, although it is pointed out and held that the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy and that a very credible argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt. The so-called Indus script is a system used during the 3rd millennium BCE in the Indus Valley Civilization. With the exception of the Aegean, the writing systems of the Near East did not reach Bronze Age Europe. The earliest writing systems of Europe arise in the Iron Age, however, there are number of interpretations regarding symbols found on artefacts of the European Bronze Age which amount to interpreting them as an indigenous tradition of proto-writing. Of special interest in this context are the Central European Bronze Ages cultures derived from the Beaker culture in the half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Sommerfeld favours an interpretation of symbols as numerals associated with a lunar calendar. Even after the Bronze Age, several cultures have gone through a period of using systems of proto-writing as a stage before the adoption of writing proper
Proto-writing
–
Typical "Indus script" seal impression showing an "inscription" of five characters.
Proto-writing
–
Clay amulet, one of the
Tărtăria tablets, dated to ca. 4500 BC
Proto-writing
–
Nsibidi character for "welcome"
5.
Linear A
–
Linear A is one of two currently undeciphered writing systems used in ancient Greece. Linear A was the script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civilization. It was discovered by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans and it is the origin of the Linear B script, which was later used by the Mycenaean civilization. In the 1950s, Linear B was largely deciphered and found to encode an early form of Greek, although the two systems share many symbols, this did not lead to a subsequent decipherment of Linear A. Using the values associated with Linear B in Linear A mainly produces unintelligible words, if Linear A uses the same or similar syllabic values as Linear B, then its associated language, dubbed Minoan, appears unrelated to any known language. Linear A has hundreds of signs and they are believed to represent syllabic, ideographic, and semantic values in a manner similar to Linear B. It primarily appears in the direction, but occasionally appears as a right-to-left or boustrophedon script. An interesting feature is that of how numbers are recorded in the script, the highest number that has been recorded is 3000, but there are special symbols to indicate fractions and weights. Linear A has been unearthed chiefly on Crete, but also at other sites in Greece, as well as Turkey, the extant corpus, comprising some 1427 specimens totalling 7362–7396 signs, if scaled to standard type, would fit easily on two sheets of paper. Discoveries have been made at the locations on Crete, Prior to 1973. Since then, other locations yielded inscriptions, according to Finkelberg, most—if not all—inscriptions found outside of Crete were made locally. This is indicated by such factors as the composition of the material on which the inscriptions were made. Also, close analysis of the inscriptions found outside of Crete indicates the use of a script that is somewhere in between Linear A and Linear B, combining the elements of both. Kea Kythera Melos Samothrace Thera Mycenae Tiryns Hagios Stephanos, Laconia Linear A was a contemporary and possible child of Cretan hieroglyphs, several tablets inscribed in signs similar to Linear A were found in the Troad. While their status is disputed, they may be imports, as there is no evidence of Minoan presence in the Troad, Classification of these signs as a unique Trojan script is not accepted by other linguists. It is difficult to evaluate a given analysis of Linear A as there is point of reference for reading its inscriptions. The simplest approach to decipherment may be to presume that the values of Linear A match more or less the values given to the deciphered Linear B script, in 1957, Bulgarian scholar Vladimir I. Georgiev published his Le déchiffrement des inscriptions crétoises en linéaire A stating that Linear A contains Greek linguistic elements
Linear A
–
Linear A incised on tablets found in
Akrotiri, Santorini.
Linear A
–
Linear A
Linear A
–
Linear A tablet –
Chania Archaeological Museum.
Linear A
–
Linear A incised on a vase, also found in Akrotiri.
6.
International Phonetic Alphabet
–
The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark
International Phonetic Alphabet
–
The official chart of the IPA as of 2005. Click to enlarge. The proper symbols for upstep and downstep are not available in this font, and have been substituted.
International Phonetic Alphabet
–
X-ray photos show the sounds [i, u, a, ɑ]
7.
Mojibake
–
Mojibake, from the Japanese 文字 character + 化け transform, is the garbled text that is the result of text being decoded using an unintended character encoding. The result is a replacement of symbols with completely unrelated ones. This display may include the replacement character � in places where the binary representation is considered invalid. A replacement can also involve multiple consecutive symbols, as viewed in one encoding and this is either because of differing constant length encoding, or the use of variable length encodings. Failed rendering of glyphs due to either missing fonts or missing glyphs in a font is a different issue that is not to be confused with mojibake, symptoms of this failed rendering include blocks with the codepoint displayed in hexadecimal or using the generic replacement character �. Importantly, these replacements are valid and are the result of error handling by the software. To correctly reproduce the text that was encoded, the correspondence between the encoded data and the notion of its encoding must be preserved. As mojibake is the instance of incompliance between these, it can be achieved by manipulating the data itself, or just relabeling it. Mojibake is often seen with text data that have been tagged with an encoding, it may not even be tagged at all. A major source of trouble are communication protocols that rely on settings on each computer rather than sending or storing metadata together with the data. Whereas Linux distributions mostly switched to UTF-8 for all uses of text, Microsoft Windows still uses codepages for text files, for some writing systems, an example being Japanese, several encodings have historically been employed, causing users to see mojibake relatively often. If the encoding is not specified, it is up to the software to decide it by other means, depending on type of software, the typical solution is either configuration or charset detection heuristics. Both are prone to mispredict in not-so-uncommon scenarios, the encoding of text files is usually governed by the OS-level setting, which depends on brand of operating system and possibly the users language. Therefore, the encoding is systematically wrong for files that come from a computer with a different setting. One solution is to use a byte order mark, but for source code and other machine readable text, another is storing the encoding as metadata in the filesystem. Filesystems that support extended file attributes can store this as user. charset and this also requires support in software that wants to take advantage of it, but does not disturb other software. While a few encodings are easy to detect, in particular UTF-8, Mojibake also occurs when the encoding is wrongly specified. This often happens between encodings that are similar, for example, the Eudora email client for Windows was known to send emails labelled as ISO-8859-1 that were in reality Windows-1252
Mojibake
–
Mojibake caused by a song title in Cyrillic (
Моя Страна) on a car audio system
Mojibake
–
The
UTF-8 -encoded Japanese Wikipedia article for mojibake, as displayed in the
Windows-1252 encoding.
8.
Unicode
–
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters
Unicode
–
Logo of the
Unicode Consortium
9.
Jasper
–
Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or chalcedony and other mineral phases, is an opaque, impure variety of silica, usually red, yellow, brown or green in color, and rarely blue. The common red color is due to iron inclusions, the mineral aggregate breaks with a smooth surface and is used for ornamentation or as a gemstone. It can be polished and is used for vases, seals. The specific gravity of jasper is typically 2.5 to 2.9, along with heliotrope, jasper is one of the traditional birthstones for March. Jaspilite is a banded iron formation rock that often has bands of jasper. The name means spotted or speckled stone, and is derived via Old French jaspre and Latin iaspidem ) from Greek ἴασπις iaspis, green jasper was used to make bow drills in Mehrgarh between 4th and 5th millennium BC. Jasper is known to have been a gem in the ancient world, its name can be traced back in Arabic, Azerbaijani, Persian, Hebrew, Assyrian, Greek. On Minoan Crete, jasper was carved to produce seals circa 1800 BC, although the term jasper is now restricted to opaque quartz, the ancient iaspis was a stone of considerable translucency including nephrite. The jasper of antiquity was in many cases distinctly green, for it is compared to the emerald. Jasper is referred to in the Nibelungenlied as being clear and green, the jasper of the ancients probably included stones which would now be classed as chalcedony, and the emerald-like jasper may have been akin to the modern chrysoprase. The Hebrew word yushphah may have designated a green jasper, flinders Petrie suggested that the odem, the first stone on the High Priests breastplate, was a red jasper, whilst tarshish, the tenth stone, may have been a yellow jasper. Jasper is a rock of virtually any color stemming from the mineral content of the original sediments or ash. Patterns arise during the process forming flow and depositional patterns in the original silica rich sediment or volcanic ash. Hydrothermal circulation is thought to be required in the formation of jasper. Jasper can be modified by the diffusion of minerals along discontinuities providing the appearance of vegetative growth, the original materials are often fractured and/or distorted, after deposition, into diverse patterns, which are later filled in with other colorful minerals. Weathering, with time, will create intensely colored superficial rinds, the classification and naming of jasper varieties presents a challenge. A few are designated by the place of such as a brown Egyptian or red African. Picture jaspers exhibit combinations of patterns resulting in what appear to be scenes or images, diffusion from a center produces a distinctive orbicular appearance, i. e. leopard skin jasper, or linear banding from a fracture as seen in leisegang jasper
Jasper
–
Jasper outcrop,
Bucegi Mountains,
Romania
Jasper
–
Moveable ring from 664 to 322 BC (Late Period). Green jasper and gold. The
Walters Art Museum
Jasper
–
Goat-headed basket carved from red jasper. Russian, late 19th century,
Kremlin Armoury
Jasper
10.
Hieroglyph
–
A hieroglyph is a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called hieroglyphs, in Neoplatonism, especially during the Renaissance, a hieroglyph was an artistic representation of an esoteric idea, which Neoplatonists believed actual Egyptian hieroglyphs to be. The word hieroglyphics refer to a hieroglyphic script, middle Egyptian, An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, A Practical Guide, the Story of Writing, Alphabets, Hieroglyphs & Pictograms
Hieroglyph
–
Egyptian hieroglyphs typical of the Graeco-Roman period, sculpted in
Relief. Glyphs:
viper,
owl,
'bread bun',
folded cloth
11.
Bronze Age
–
The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
Bronze Age
–
Chalcolithic copper mine in
Timna Valley,
Negev Desert,
Israel.
Bronze Age
–
Diffusion of metallurgy in
Europe and
Asia Minor. The darkest areas are the oldest.
Bronze Age
–
A
Shang Dynasty two-handled bronze gefuding gui (1600–1046 BC).
Bronze Age
–
Spring and Autumn Period pu bronze vessel with interlaced
dragon design (722–481 BC)
12.
Crete
–
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, 88th-largest island in the world and the fifth-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete and a number of surrounding islands and islets constitute the region of Crete, the capital and the largest city is Heraklion. As of 2011, the region had a population of 623,065, Crete forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece, while retaining its own local cultural traits. It was once the centre of the Minoan civilization, which is regarded as the earliest recorded civilization in Europe. The island is first referred to as Kaptara in texts from the Syrian city of Mari dating from the 18th century BC, repeated later in Neo-Assyrian records and it was also known in ancient Egyptian as Keftiu, strongly suggesting a similar Minoan name for the island. The current name of Crete is thought to be first attested in Mycenaean Greek texts written in Linear B, through the words
Crete
–
NASA photograph of Crete
Crete
–
Lefka Ori
Crete
–
Port of Heraklion
Crete
–
Lefka Ori (White mountains).
13.
Minoan civilization
–
The Minoan civilization was an Aegean Bronze Age civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean islands which flourished from about 2600 to 1100 BC. It preceded the Mycenaean civilization of Ancient Greece, the civilization was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of British archaeologist Arthur Evans. It has been described as the earliest of its kind in Europe, the term Minoan, which refers to the mythical King Minos, originally described the pottery of the period. Minos was associated in Greek mythology with the labyrinth and the Minotaur, according to Homer, Crete once had 90 cities. The Minoan period saw trade between Crete and Aegean and Mediterranean settlements, particularly the Near East, traders and artists, the Minoan cultural influence reached beyond Crete to the Cyclades, Egypts Old Kingdom, copper-bearing Cyprus, Canaan and the Levantine coast, and Anatolia. Some of its best art is preserved in the city of Akrotiri on the island of Santorini, although the Minoan language and writing systems remain undecipherable and are subjects of academic dispute, they apparently conveyed a language entirely different from the later Greek. The reason for the end of the Minoan period is unclear, theories include Mycenaean invasions from mainland Greece, the term Minoan refers to the mythical King Minos of Knossos. Its origin is debated, but it is attributed to archeologist Arthur Evans. Minos was associated in Greek mythology with the labyrinth, which Evans identified with the site at Knossos. However, Karl Hoeck had already used the title Das Minoische Kreta in 1825 for volume two of his Kreta, this appears to be the first known use of the word Minoan to mean ancient Cretan, Evans said that applied it, not invented it. Hoeck, with no idea that the archaeological Crete had existed, had in mind the Crete of mythology, although Evans 1931 claim that the term was unminted before he used it was called a brazen suggestion by Karadimas and Momigliano, he coined its archaeological meaning. Instead of dating the Minoan period, archaeologists use two systems of relative chronology, the first, created by Evans and modified by later archaeologists, is based on pottery styles and imported Egyptian artifacts. Evans system divides the Minoan period into three eras, early, middle and late. These eras are subdivided—for example, Early Minoan I, II and III, another dating system, proposed by Greek archaeologist Nicolas Platon, is based on the development of architectural complexes known as palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and Kato Zakros. Platon divides the Minoan period into pre-, proto-, neo-, the relationship between the systems in the table includes approximate calendar dates from Warren and Hankey. The Thera eruption occurred during a phase of the LM IA period. Efforts to establish the volcanic eruptions date have been controversial, the eruption is identified as a natural event catastrophic for the culture, leading to its rapid collapse. Although stone-tool evidence exists that hominins may have reached Crete as early as 130,000 years ago, evidence for the first anatomically-modern human presence dates to 10, the oldest evidence of modern human habitation on Crete are pre-ceramic Neolithic farming-community remains which date to about 7000 BC
Minoan civilization
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Minoan civilization
Minoan civilization
–
Minoan
copper ingot.
Minoan civilization
–
Fresco showing three women who were possibly
queens. [
citation needed]
14.
Malia (city)
–
Malia is a coastal town and a former municipality in the northeast corner of the Heraklion regional unit in Crete, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Hersonissos and it lies 34 kilometres east of Heraklion, the Cretan capital city. The town was the seat of the municipality of Mália, the municipal unit also includes the villages of Mochos, Krasi, and Stalida, and has a total land area of 60.720 square kilometres. The town is a tourist attraction, primarily for its significant archaeological site, the Minoan town ruins lie three km east of the site and cover an area of approximately 1 square kilometre. The original name for the town is not known, the palace of Malia, dating from the Middle Bronze Age, was destroyed by an earthquake during the Late Bronze Age, Knossos and other sites were also destroyed at that time. The palace was rebuilt toward the end of the Late Bronze Age. Most of the ruins visible today date from this period of construction. The palace features a giant central courtyard, 48m x 23m in size, on the south side are two sets of steps leading upwards and a maze of tiny rooms. Also here is a carved stone called a kernos stone. On the north side of the courtyard were storage rooms with giant earthenware pithos jars and these were used for holding grain, olive oil and other liquids, the floor of these rooms has a complex drainage system for carrying away spilled liquids. The palace of Malia was discovered in 1915 by Joseph Hadzidakis and it was fully excavated from 1922 onwards by the French School at Athens in collaboration with Greek scholars. In 1921 the French School of Athens was invited to continue its work,1981, Pascal and Claude Darcque Bourrain further investigated the NO corner of the palace. The soundings in the years 1981 and 1982, conducted by Olivier Pelon have brought new insights into the precursors of the palace, since 1988, the excavations of Alexandre Farnoux and Jan Driessen have been continued. The Palace of Malia has an area of 7,500 m2 and is oriented as all Minoan palaces to NS. With regard to design and equipment, it is smaller and more modest compared to Knossos and Phaestos, around this Central Court the district or ensembles are arranged, whose communication was made possible through corridors and routes. Each of these quarters has been assigned a function, but each of these chamber ensembles should be considered on its own. Olivier Pelon differentiated 4 functional areas, representative, residential, cultic-religious and economic From the Central Court, thereby the typical projections and recesses of the Minoan Palace façades arise. The façade was given a different meaning, Undoubtedly, the west façade is the most important in Malia, in the center, it consists of carefully hewn cuboid blocks of sandstone, which are built on a base along the entire width
Malia (city)
–
Malia and bay of Malia
Malia (city)
–
Malia Strip during the day
Malia (city)
–
Ruins of the Palace
Malia (city)
–
A model of the Palace
15.
Knossos
–
Knossos is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and is considered Europes oldest city. The name Knossos survives from ancient Greek references to the city of Crete. The coins came from the Roman settlement of Colonia Julia Nobilis Cnossus, a Roman colony placed just to the north of, the Romans believed they had colonized Knossos. The second palace was built on a grander scale over the old Palace after an earthquake destroyed it. The structure and ruins we see today are from the second Palace, during the Bronze Age, the town surrounded the hill on which the palace was built. The site was discovered in 1878 by Minos Kalokairinos, the excavations in Knossos began in AD1900 by the English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans and his team, and they continued for 35 years. The palace was excavated and partially restored under the direction of Arthur Evans in the earliest years of the 20th century. Its size far exceeded his expectations, as did the discovery of two ancient scripts, which he termed Linear A and Linear B, to distinguish their writing from the pictographs also present. The palace of Knossos was undoubtedly the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and it appears as a maze of workrooms, living spaces, and storerooms close to a central square. The palace was abandoned at some time at the end of the Late Bronze Age. The occasion is not known for certain, but one of the disasters that befell the palace is generally put forward. The hill was never again a settlement or civic site, although squatters may have used it for a time, however, fieldwork in 2015 revealed that during the early Iron Age, Knossos was rich in imports and was nearly three times larger than indicated by earlier excavations. Except for periods of abandonment, other cities were founded in the vicinity, such as the Roman colony. The population shifted to the new town of Chandax during the 9th century AD, by the 13th century, it was called Makruteikhos Long Wall, the bishops of Gortyn continued to call themselves Bishops of Knossos until the 19th century. Today, the name is used only for the site now situated in the expanding suburbs of Heraklion. In the first palace period around 2000 BC the urban area reached a size of up to 18,000 people, in its peak the Palace and the surrounding city boasted a population of 100,000 people shortly after 1700 BC. The name Knossos was formerly Latinized as Cnossus or Cnossos, and occasionally Knossus, Gnossus and this site history is to be distinguished from the ancient. In Greek mythology, King Minos dwelt in a palace at Knossos and he had Daedalus construct a labyrinth, a very large maze in which to retain his son, the Minotaur
Knossos
–
Restored North Entrance with charging bull fresco
Knossos
–
A
labrys from
Messara.
Knossos
–
View to the east from the northwest corner. In the foreground is the west wall of the Lustral Basin.
Knossos
–
View to the south. The hill in the background is Gypsades. Between it and Knossos is the Vlychia. The South Entrance is on the left.
16.
Phaistos Disk
–
The Phaistos Disc is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age. Now, the island of Crete is part of modern Greece, the disk is about 15 cm in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols. Its purpose and meaning, and even its original place of manufacture, remain disputed. This unique object is now on display at the museum of Heraklion. The Phaistos Disc captured the imagination of amateur and professional archaeologists, while it is not clear that it is a script, most attempted decipherments assume that it is, most additionally assume a syllabary, others an alphabet or logography. Although the Phaistos Disc is generally accepted as authentic by archaeologists and this grouping of four rooms also served as a formal entry into the palace complex. It was found in the cell of an underground temple depository. These basement cells, only accessible from above, were covered with a layer of fine plaster. Their content was poor in artifacts, but rich in black earth and ashes. In the northern part of the cell, in the same black layer. The Phaistos Disc is generally accepted as authentic by archaeologists, the assumption of authenticity is based on the excavation records by Luigi Pernier. This assumption is supported by the discovery of the Arkalochori Axe with similar. The possibility that the disc is a 1908 forgery or hoax has been raised by two scholars, according to a report in The Times the date of manufacture has never been established by thermoluminescence. In his 2008 review, Robinson does not endorse the forgery arguments and it will either confirm that new finds are worth hunting for, or it will stop scholars from wasting their effort. A gold signet ring from Knossos, found in 1926, contains a Linear A inscription developed in a field defined by a spiral—similar to the Phaistos Disc, a sealing found in 1955 shows the only known parallel to sign 21 of the Phaistos disc. This is considered as evidence that the Phaistos Disc is a genuine Minoan artifact. Yves Duhoux dates the disc to between 1850 B. C. and 1600 B. C. on the basis of Luigi Perniers report, jeppesen dates it to after 1400. Doubting the viability of Perniers report, Louis Godart resigns himself to admitting that archaeologically, best suggests a date in the first half of the fourteenth century B. C. based on his dating of tablet PH1
Phaistos Disk
–
The Phaistos Disc (side A)
Phaistos Disk
–
Palace complex at
Phaistos
Phaistos Disk
–
Side B (Original)
Phaistos Disk
17.
Arkalochori Axe
–
The bronze Arkalochori Axe is a second millennium B. C. Minoan votive double axe excavated by Spyridon Marinatos in 1934 in the Arkalochori cave on Crete, the labrys is inscribed with fifteen symbols. It has been suggested that these symbols might be Linear A, the labrys and the Phaistos Disc are conserved in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. Of the fifteen signs, two appear to be unique, the following suggestions for comparison with Linear A and Phaistos Disc glyphs are attributed to Torsten Timm. Reading top to bottom, right to left, the symbols are
Arkalochori Axe
–
Arkalochori Axe - the central central portion of the bronze labrys bears inscriptions - circa second millennium B.C.
18.
Samothrace
–
Samothrace is a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea. It is a municipality within the Evros regional unit of Thrace, the island is 17 km long and is 178 km2 in size and has a population of 2,859. Its main industries are fishing and tourism, resources on the island include granite and basalt. Samothrace is one of the most rugged Greek islands, with Mt. Saos and its tip Fengari rising to 1,611 m. Samothrace was not a state of any significance in ancient Greece, since it has no natural harbour and most of the island is too mountainous for cultivation. It was, however, the home of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, among those who visited this shrine to be initiated into the island cult were Lysander of Sparta, Philip II of Macedon and Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, father-in-law of Julius Caesar. The ancient city, the ruins of which are called Palaeopoli, was situated on the north coast, demetrios of Skepsis mention the Samothracian Mysteries. The traditional account from antiquity is that Samothrace was first inhabited by Pelasgians and Carians, at the end of the 8th century BC the island was colonised by Greeks from Samos, from which the name Samos of Thrace, that later became Samothrace, however, Strabo denies this. The archaeological evidence suggests that Greek settlement was in the sixth century BC, the Persians occupied Samothrace in 508 BC, it later passed under Athenian control, and was a member of the Delian League in the 5th century BC. It was subjugated by Philip II, and from then till 168 BC it was under Macedonian suzerainty, with the battle of Pydna Samothrace became independent, a condition that ended when Vespasian absorbed the island in the Roman Empire in AD70. Apart from the sanctuary, decisive role in the great development of Samothrace played also her two ports from which passed the sea road Troas - Macedonia. Furthermore, an important role played as well her possessions in Perea, st. Theophanes died in Samothrace in 818. The Byzantines ruled until 1204, when Venetians took their place, only to be dislodged by a Genoan family in 1355, the island came under Greek rule in 1913 following the Balkan War. It was occupied by Bulgaria during the Second World War, from 1941 to 1944, the modern port town of Kamariotissa is on the north-west coast and provides ferry access to and from points in northern Greece such as Alexandroupoli and Kavala. There is no airport on the island. Other sites of interest on the island include the ruins of Genoese forts, the picturesque Chora and Paliapoli and it was discovered in pieces on the island in 1863 by the French archaeologist Charles Champoiseau, and is now—headless—in the Louvre in Paris. It had the territory as the present municipality. List of settlements in the Evros regional unit Samothrace temple complex Winged Victory of Samothrace Samothrace travel guide from Wikivoyage Official Samothrace webpage
Samothrace
–
View of the Chora (Samothraki)
Samothrace
–
Sanctuary of the Great Gods, Palaiopolis.
Samothrace
–
Samothrace, with Mount Fengari in the background.
Samothrace
–
Waterfall and pond, characteristics of the island.
19.
Anatolian hieroglyph
–
Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs. They were once known as Hittite hieroglyphs, but the language they encode proved to be Luwian, not Hittite. They are typologically similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs, but do not derive graphically from that script, there is no demonstrable connection to Hittite cuneiform. Individual Anatolian hieroglyphs are attested from the second and early first millennia BC across Anatolia, the earliest examples occur on personal seals, but these consist only of names, titles, and auspicious signs, and it is not certain that they represent language. Most actual texts are found as inscriptions in stone, though a few documents have survived on lead strips. The first inscriptions confirmed as Luwian date to the Late Bronze Age, after some two centuries of sparse material, the hieroglyphs resume in the Early Iron Age, ca. 10th to 8th centuries BC. In the early 7th century BC, the Luwian hieroglyphic script, by then aged some 700 years, was marginalized by competing alphabetic scripts, there was occasionally some use of Anatolian hieroglyphs to write foreign material like Hurrian theonyms, or glosses in Urartian. As in Egyptian, characters may be logographic or phonographic—that is, the number of phonographic signs is limited. Most represent CV syllables, though there are a few disyllabic signs, a large number of these are ambiguous as to whether the vowel is a or i. Some signs are dedicated to one use or another, but many are flexible, words may be written logographically, phonetically, mixed, and may be preceded by a determinative. Other than the fact that the phonetic form a syllabary rather than indicating only consonants. The lines of Luwian hieroglyphs are written alternately left-to-right and right-to-left and this practice was called by the Greeks boustrophedon, meaning as the ox turns. Some scholars compare the Phaistos Disc and Cretan hieroglyphs as possibly related scripts, the same characters were recorded in Boğazköy, and presumed by A. H. Sayce to be Hittite in origin. By 1915, with the Luwian language known from cuneiform, in the 1930s, it was partially deciphered by Ignace Gelb, Piero Meriggi, Emil Forrer, and Bedřich Hrozný. Transliteration of logograms is conventionally the term represented in Latin, in capital letters, Anatolian hieroglyphs were added to the Unicode Standard in June,2015 with the release of version 8.0. com The invention of Luwian hieroglyphic script
Anatolian hieroglyph
Anatolian hieroglyph
–
Anatolian hieroglyphs Luwian Hittite hieroglyphs Hittite hieroglyphs
Anatolian hieroglyph
–
Hittite hieroglyphs surround a figure in royal dress. The inscription, repeated in cuneiform around the rim, gives the seal owner's name: the Hittite ruler Tarkummuwa. This famous bilingual inscription provided the first clues for deciphering Hittite hieroglyphs.
20.
Heraklion Archaeological Museum
–
The Heraklion Archaeological Museum is a museum located in Heraklion on Crete. It is one of the greatest museums in Greece and the best in the world for Minoan art, as it contains the most notable, the museum began in 1883 as a simple collection of antiquities. A dedicated building was constructed from 1904 to 1912 at the instigation of two Cretan archaeologists, Iosif Hatzidakis and Stefanos Xanthoudidis, after three destructive earthquakes in 1926,1930, and 1935, the museum nearly collapsed. The director of the Heraklion Museum was then Spyridon Marinatos, who made efforts to find funds and persuade the locals. In 1935, Marinatos succeeded in engaging Patroklos Karantinos to build a structure that has withstood both natural disasters and the bombing that accompanied the German invasion in 1941. Although the museum was damaged during World War II, the collection survived intact, a new wing was added in 1964. The Herakleion Archaeological Museum is one of the largest and most important museums in Greece and it houses representative artifacts from all the periods of Cretan prehistory and history, covering a chronological span of over 5,500 years from the Neolithic period to Roman times. The singularly important Minoan collection contains examples of Minoan art. The Heraklion Museum is rightly considered as the museum of Minoan culture par excellence worldwide, the museums antiseismic building is an important example of modernist architecture and was awarded a Bauhaus commendation. He also anticipated future extensions to the museum, the colours and construction materials, such as the veined polychrome marbles, recall certain Minoan wall-paintings which imitate marble revetment. The museum shop, run by the Archaeological Receipts Fund, sells museum copies, books, postcards, most of the museum was closed for renovation from 2006 and reopened in May 2013. The museum organizes exhibitions in Greece and abroad, collaborates with scientific and scholarly institutions. EU students can receive a discounted entry, there is air conditioning within the building. Some of the collection cannot be photographed due to publication or another reason, there are usually signs posted nearby the restricted items. Snake Goddess Phaistos Disc Arkalochori Axe List of museums in Greece Minoan civilization Minoan pottery The Rough Guide to Crete
Heraklion Archaeological Museum
–
The
bull leaper (c.1500 BC), an ivory figurine from the palace of Knossos.
Heraklion Archaeological Museum
–
Phaistos Disc
Heraklion Archaeological Museum
–
Minoan
jewelry.
Heraklion Archaeological Museum
–
Kamares style vases from Phaistos and Knossos.
21.
Logograms
–
In written language, a logogram or logograph is a written character that represents a word or phrase. Chinese characters and Japanese kanji are logograms, some Egyptian hieroglyphs, the use of logograms in writing is called logography. A writing system that is based on logograms is called a logographic system, in alphabets and syllabaries, individual written characters represent sounds rather than concepts. Unlike logograms, phonograms do not necessarily have meaning by themselves, Writing language in this way is called phonemic orthography. Logographic systems include the earliest writing systems, the first historical civilizations of the Near East, Africa, China, a more recent attempt is Zlango, intended for use in text messaging, currently including around 300 icons. The term logosyllabary is used to emphasize the partially phonetic nature of these scripts when the domain is the syllable. For example, Egyptian was used to write both sȝ duck and sȝ son, though it is likely that these words were not pronounced the same apart from their consonants and this can be illustrated with Chinese. Not all Chinese characters represent morphemes, some morphemes are composed of more than one character, for example, the Chinese word for spider, 蜘蛛 zhīzhū, was created by fusing the rebus 知朱 zhīzhū with the bug determinative 虫. Neither *蜘 zhī nor *蛛 zhū can be used separately, in Archaic Chinese, one can find the reverse, a single character representing more than one morpheme. An example is Archaic Chinese 王 hjwangs, a combination of a morpheme hjwang meaning king, in modern Mandarin, bimorphemic syllables are always written with two characters, for example 花儿 huār flower. These logograms, called hozwārishn, were dispensed with altogether after the Arab conquest of Persia, logograms are used in modern shorthand to represent common words. In addition, the numerals and mathematical symbols used in systems are logograms—1 one,2 two, + plus, = equals, and so on. In English, the ampersand & is used for and and et, % for percent, # for number, § for section, $ for dollar, € for euro, £ for pound, ° for degree, @ for at, etc. All historical logographic systems include a dimension, as it is impractical to have a separate basic character for every word or morpheme in a language. In some cases, such as cuneiform as it was used for Akkadian, many logographic systems also have a semantic/ideographic component, called determinatives in the case of Egyptian and radicals in the case of Chinese. In the case of Chinese, the vast majority of characters are a combination of a radical that indicates its nominal category. The Mayan system used logograms with phonetic complements like the Egyptian, Chinese scholars have traditionally classified the Chinese characters hanzi into six types by etymology. The first two types are single-body, meaning that the character was created independently of other characters, single-body pictograms and ideograms make up only a small proportion of Chinese logograms
Logograms
–
Egyptian hieroglyphs, which have their origins as logograms.
22.
Linear B
–
Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of Greek. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the oldest Mycenaean writing dates to about 1450 BC. It is descended from the older Linear A, an earlier script used for writing the Minoan language, as is the later Cypriot syllabary. Linear B, found mainly in the archives at Knossos, Cydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae. The succeeding period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, provides no evidence of the use of writing and it is also the only one of the prehistoric Aegean scripts to have been deciphered, by English architect and self-taught linguist Michael Ventris. Linear B consists of around 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs and these ideograms or signifying signs symbolize objects or commodities. They have no value and are never used as word signs in writing a sentence. The application of Linear B appears to have been confined to administrative contexts, in all the thousands of clay tablets, a relatively small number of different hands have been detected,45 in Pylos and 66 in Knossos. It is possible that the script was used only by a guild of professional scribes who served the central palaces, once the palaces were destroyed, the script disappeared. Linear B has roughly 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs with phonetic values, the representations and naming of these signs have been standardized by a series of international colloquia starting with the first in Paris in 1956. Colloquia continue, the 13th occurred in 2010 in Paris, many of the signs are identical or similar to those in Linear A, however, Linear A encodes an as-yet unknown language, and it is uncertain whether similar signs had the same phonetic values. The grid developed during decipherment by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick of phonetic values for syllabic signs is shown below, initial consonants are in the leftmost column, vowels are in the top row beneath the title. The transcription of the syllable is listed next to the sign along with Bennetts identifying number for the sign preceded by an asterisk, in cases where the transcription of the sign remains in doubt, Bennetts number serves to identify the sign. The signs on the tablets and sealings often show considerable variation from each other, discovery of the reasons for the variation and possible semantic differences is a topic of ongoing debate in Mycenaean studies. Many of these were identified by the edition and are shown in the special values below. The second edition relates, It may be taken as axiomatic that there are no true homophones, the unconfirmed identifications of *34 and *35 as ai2 and ai3 were removed. Other values remain unknown, mainly because of scarcity of evidence concerning them, note that *34 and *35 are mirror images of each other but whether this graphic relationship indicates a phonetic one remains unconfirmed. In recent times, CIPEM inherited the authority of Bennett
Linear B
–
Linear B
Linear B
–
Linear B tablet discovered by Arthur Evans
Linear B
–
Tablets
23.
Greek mainland
–
Greece is a country in Southern Europe, located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The country consists of a mainland and two additional smaller peninsulas projecting from it, the Chalkidice and the Peloponnese, which is separated from the mainland by the Isthmus of Corinth. Greece also features a number of islands, of various sizes, both large ones including Crete, Euboea, Rhodes and Corfu, and groups of smaller ones such as the Dodecanese. According to the CIA World Factbook, Greece has 13,676 kilometres of coastline, Greece is largely mountainous, with its latitude ranging from 35°00′N to 42°00′N and in longitude from 19°00′E to 28°30′E. As a result, the country has considerable climatic variation, Greeces climate is divided into three main classes, A Mediterranean climate features mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. Temperatures rarely reach extremes, although snowfalls do occur even in Athens. An alpine climate is primarily in Western Greece. A temperate climate is found in Central and Eastern Macedonia and parts of Thrace, including Komotini, Xanthi and this climate is characterized by cold, damp winters and hot, dry summers. Greeces largest island, Crete, due to its position and vast size. As such, the climate in Crete is primarily temperate, the atmosphere can be quite humid, depending on the proximity to the sea, while winter is fairly mild. Snowfall is common on the mountains between November and May, but rare in low-lying areas, especially near the coast, during the summer, average temperatures may reach the low 30s °C, with maxima touching the mid 40s. The south coast of the island, including the Mesara Plain and Asterousia Mountains, falls in the North African climatic zone, in southern Crete, date palms bear fruit and swallows remain all year round, without migrating to Africa. Greece is located in Southern Europe, bordering the Ionian Sea and it is a peninsular country, possessing an archipelago of about 3,000 islands. It has an area of 131,957 km2, of which land area is 130,647 km2. Land boundaries with Albania, Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey measure approximately 1,110 km in total. Of the countrys territory,83. 33% or 110,496 km2 is mainland territory. Greeces coastline measures 13,676 km. 80% of Greece is mountainous, the Pindus mountain range lies across the center of the country in a northwest-to-southeast direction, with a maximum elevation of 2,637 m. Mount Olympus is the highest point in Greece and the fourth highest in relative prominence in Europe
Greek mainland
–
A geographical map of
Greece and its offshore territories
Greek mainland
–
NASA photograph of Crete
Greek mainland
–
Mount Olympus
Greek mainland
–
Volcanic crater,
Santorini
24.
Aegean islands
–
The ancient Greek name of the Aegean Sea, Archipelago was later applied to the islands it contains and is now used more generally, to refer to any island group. The vast majority of the Aegean Islands belong to Greece, being split among nine administrative regions, the only sizable possessions of Turkey in the Aegean Sea are Imbros and Tenedos, in the northeastern part of the Sea. Various smaller islets off Turkeys western coast are also under Turkish sovereignty, most of the islands enjoy warm summer temperatures and cold winter influenced by the Mediterranean climate. In the Treaty of Peace in 1947, these Italian-controlled islands were ceded to Greece, media related to Islands of the Aegean Sea at Wikimedia Commons
Aegean islands
–
Satellite view of the
Aegean Sea and Islands
25.
Kea (island)
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Kea, also known as Gia or Tzia, Zea, and, in antiquity, Keos, is a Greek island in the Cyclades archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Kea is part of the Kea-Kythnos regional unit and it is the island of the Cyclades complex that is closest to Attica and is also 20 km from Cape Sounio as well as 60 km SE of Athens. Its climate is arid, and its terrain is hilly, Kea is 19 km long from north to south and 9 km wide from west to east. The area is 128.9 km2 with the highest point being 560 m above sea level, the municipality, which includes the island Makronisos, has an area of 148.926 km2. Its capital, Ioulis, is inland at an altitude and is considered quite picturesque. Other major villages of Kea are the port of Korissia and the village of Vourkari. After suffering depopulation for many decades, Kea has been rediscovered by Athenians as a convenient destination for weekend. The population in 2011 was 2,455, in the Archaic period, the island was divided between four city-states, Ioulis, Karthaia, Poieessa and Koressos. During the classical period, Kea was the home of Simonides and of his nephew Bacchylides, coins retrieved from the island from the 3rd century BC feature dogs or stars with emanating rays, highlighting Sirius importance. During the Byzantine period, many churches were built and the prosperity of the island rose and it was Byzantine until, in 1204, it was captured by the Venetians in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. The Archbishop of Athens, Michael Choniates, came here in exile after his city fell to the Crusaders in 1205 and it was recaptured by the Byzantines under Licario in 1278. In around 1302 during the Byzantine–Venetian War, it fell to the Venetians. Kea was taken from the Venetians by the Ottoman Turks in 1537, along with the rest of the Cyclades, Kea joined Greece following the Greek War of Independence in 1821. HMHS Britannic, the largest ship sunk in World War I, which was the ship to the RMS Titanic. It is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see, the island is famous for scuba diving, with excellent visibility, rich marine life, and wall, cavern and wreck diving. The water temperature ranges from 20°-26°C, the highlight for recreational divers is the wreck of the unique paddle/wheeler steamship Patris which sank in 1868. She was a passenger steamer 66 m long, in service in the Aegean Sea, owned by the Hellenic Steamship Co. based on Syros island and she hit the reef off Koundouros Bay at Makriopounda, Kea island on 24 February 1868 with about 120 passengers aboard. No casualties were reported owing to the proximity of land, the world-famous wreck of the HMHS Britannic, sister ship of the Titanic, located 1.5 nautical mile offshore, is at a depth of about 120 m
Kea (island)
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Kea Island
Kea (island)
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Coin from ancient Kea; with a dog and a star
Kea (island)
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Temple of Athena (Karthaia) on the island
Kea (island)
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Ioulida
26.
Kythera
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Kythira is an island in Greece lying opposite the south-eastern tip of the Peloponnese peninsula. It is traditionally listed as one of the seven main Ionian Islands, administratively, it belongs to the Islands regional unit, which is part of the Attica region. The island is located between the Greek mainland and Crete, and from ancient times until the mid 19th century was a crossroads of merchants, sailors. As such, it has had a long and varied history and has influenced by many civilisations. This is reflected in its architecture, as well as the traditions and customs, influenced by centuries of coexistence of the Greek, Venetian, and Ottoman cultures. Kythira and the island of Antikythira were separate municipalities until they were merged at the 2011 local government reform. The municipality has an area of 300.023 km2, the municipal unit 279.593 km2, the province of Kythira was one of the provinces of the Piraeus Prefecture. It had the territory as the present municipality Kythira. There are archaeological remains from the Helladic period, contemporary with the Minoans, there is archaeological evidence of Kythiran trade as far as Egypt and Mesopotamia. Kythira had a Phoenician colony in the archaic age, the sea-snail which produces Tyrian purple is native to the island. Xenophon refers to a Phoenician Bay in Kythira, the archaic Greek city of Kythira was at Scandea on Avlemonas, its ruins have been excavated. Its acropolis, now Palicastro, has the temple of Aphrodite Ourania, in classical times, Kythira was part of the territory of several larger city-states. Kythira was independent, and issued her own coins, in 195, in Augustus time, it was again subject to Sparta, being the property of Gaius Julius Eurycles, who was both a Spartan magnate and a Roman citizen. By this time, the Greek cities were in practice subject to the Roman Empire, Kythira continued to exist under the Roman Empire and its Byzantine successor state for centuries. Christianity is attested from the fourth century AD, the time of Constantine, according to her legend, archaeological evidence suggests the island was abandoned about 700 AD. When Saint Theodore of Cythera led a resettlement after the Byzantine reconquest of Crete in 962 and he established a great monastery at Paliochora, a town grew up around it, largely populated from Laconia. When the Byzantine Empire was divided among the conquerors of the Fourth Crusade, during the Venetian domination the island was known as Cerigo. Ottomans called this island Chuha Island, kythirans still talk about the destruction and looting of Paliochora by Barbarossa, it has become an intrinsic part of the Kytherian folklore
Kythera
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Cythera's capital (Chora) with the Castle
Kythera
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Antikythera mechanism,
National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Kythera
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Ruins of
Paliochora
Kythera
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View of Kythira Castle
27.
Melos
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Milos or Melos is a volcanic Greek island in the Aegean Sea, just north of the Sea of Crete. Milos is the southwesternmost island in the Cyclades group, the island is famous for the statue of Aphrodite, and also for statues of the Greek god Asclepius, the Poseidon and an archaic Apollo in Athens. Milos is a popular tourist destination during the summer, the Municipality of Milos also includes the uninhabited offshore islands of Antimilos and Akradies. The combined land area is 160.147 square kilometres and the 2011 census population was 4,977 inhabitants, obsidian from Milos was a commodity as early as 15,000 years ago. The mining of obsidian did not lead to the development of permanent habitation or manufacturing on the island, instead, those in search of obsidian arrived by boat, beaching it in a suitable cove and cutting pieces of the volcanic glass from the quarries. The position of Milos, between mainland Greece and Crete, and its possession of obsidian, made it an important centre of early Aegean civilisation, Milos lost its arms-making importance when bronze became the preferred material for the manufacture of weapons. The first settlement at Phylakopi arose in the Bronze Age, flourishing as the extraction of obsidian was in the decline, the first settlers were tuna fishermen. The famous fresco of the fish was found in the ruins of the Pillar room and was executed with delicate colouring. Stylistic similarities to Minoan frescoes are suggested, and it could perhaps have been the work of a Cretan artist, part of the site has been washed away by the sea. The antiquities found at the site covered three major periods, from the Early Cycladic period to the Mycenaean period, at the site much pottery was excavated, with several changing styles and influences over the sites long occupation. In the early occupation of the site, there are similarities and imports from other Cycladic islands. The quantities found at the Cycladic sites have taken to suggest a Minoan control over the region. At Phylakopi a Megaron structure, which is associated with the Mycenaean palaces, such as those at Tiryns, Pylos. This has been taken to suggest that the Mycenaeans conquered the settlement, the evidence is not clear, though again it could be a legacy of the islanders adopting foreign elements into their culture. Particularly unexpected was the discovery in the 1970s of a shrine at the site, the shrine is unprecedented in the Bronze Age Cyclades and has provided a valuable insight ito the beliefs and rituals of the inhabitants of Phylakopi. The site was abandoned and was never reoccupied. The first Dorian settlement on Melos was established no earlier than the 1st millennium BC, dorians are the ethnic group to which the Spartans belonged, but the Dorian settlers of Melos made themselves independent. They eventually established a city whose site lies on the shore of the bay
Melos
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Milos Island in August 2014.
Melos
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The ancient theatre.
Melos
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Venus de Milo,
Louvre.
Melos
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Coin from Melos, 2nd century BC, Obverse:
Apple (μῆλον mēlon) Reverse: The
Palladion (right),
krater (left).
28.
Santorini
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Santorini, classically Thera, and officially Thira, is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km southeast of Greeces mainland. It is the largest island of a small, circular archipelago which bears the name and is the remnant of a volcanic caldera. It forms the southernmost member of the Cyclades group of islands, with an area of approximately 73 km2, the municipality of Santorini includes the inhabited islands of Santorini and Therasia and the uninhabited islands of Nea Kameni, Palaia Kameni, Aspronisi, and Christiana. The total land area is 90.623 km2, Santorini is part of the Thira regional unit. Santorini is essentially what remains after a volcanic eruption that destroyed the earliest settlements on a formerly single island. A giant central, rectangular lagoon, which measures about 12 by 7 km, is surrounded by 300 m high, the main island slopes downward to the Aegean Sea. On the fourth side, the lagoon is separated from the sea by another smaller island called Therasia. The islands principal port is Athinios, the capital, Fira, clings to the top of the cliff looking down on the lagoon. The volcanic rocks present from the prior eruptions feature olivine, and have a presence of hornblende. It is the most active volcanic centre in the South Aegean Volcanic Arc, the volcanic arc is approximately 500 km long and 20 to 40 km wide. The island is the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history, the Minoan eruption, another popular theory holds that the Thera eruption is the source of the legend of Atlantis. Before then, it was known as Kallístē, Strongýlē, or Thēra, the name Thera was revived in the nineteenth century as the official name of the island and its main city, but the colloquial name Santorini is still in popular use. During the Ottoman Empires domination of the Aegean Sea, the Turkish exonym for the island was Santurin or Santoron, Oia is now called a Κοινότητα, within the municipality of Thera, and it consists of the local subdivisions of Therasia and Oia. The two main sources of wealth in Santorini are agriculture and tourism, in recent years, Santorini has been voted one of the worlds most beautiful islands. Santorini remains the home of a small, but flourishing wine industry, white varieties also include Athiri and Aidani, whereas red varieties include mavrotragano and mandilaria. The Cyclades are part of a complex that is known as the Cycladic Massif. The complex formed during the Miocene and was folded and metamorphosed during the Alpine orogeny around 60 million years ago, Thera is built upon a small, non-volcanic basement that represents the former non-volcanic island, which was approximately 9 by 6 km. The basement rock is composed of metamorphosed limestone and schist
Santorini
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View across collapsed caldera
Santorini
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Fira, main town of Santorini
Santorini
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Satellite image of
Santorini caldera. The large island to the east is Thera, with Aspronisi and
Therasia making up the rest of the caldera ring, clockwise. In the centre is the larger
Nea Kameni and the smaller Palea Kameni.
Santorini
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Volcanic craters at Santorini today
29.
Laconia
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Laconia, also known as Lacedaemonia, is a region in the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. The word laconic is derived from the name of the region by analogy—to speak in a concise way, as the Spartans were reputed by the Athenians to do. Laconia is bordered by Messenia to the west and Arcadia to the north and is surrounded by the Myrtoan Sea to the east and by the Laconian Gulf and it encompasses Cape Malea and Cape Tainaron and a large part of the Mani Peninsula. The islands of Kythira and Antikythera lie to the south, the island, Elafonisos, situated between the Laconian mainland and Kythira, is part of Laconia. The Evrotas is the longest river in the prefecture, the valley of the Evrotas is predominantly an agricultural region that contains many citrus groves, olive groves, and pasture lands. It is the location of the largest orange production in the Peloponnese, lakonia, a brand of orange juice, is based in Amykles. The main mountain ranges are the Taygetus in the west and the Parnon in the northeast, Taygetus, known as Pentadaktylos throughout the Middle Ages, is west of Sparta and the Evrotas valley. It is the highest mountain in Laconia and the Peloponnese and is covered with pine trees. Two roads join the Messenia and Laconia prefectures, one is a mountain pass through Taygetus. The stalactite cave, Dirou, a major tourist attraction, is located south of Areopolis in the southwest of Laconia, Laconia has a Mediterranean climate with warm winters and hot summers. Snow is rare on the coast throughout the winter but is common in the mountains. In ancient Greece, this was the region of the Spartan state. For much of antiquity the Spartan sphere of influence expanded to Messenia. Significant archaeological recovery exists at the Vaphio-tomb site in Laconia, found here is advanced Bronze Age art as well as evidence of cultural associations with the contemporaneous Minoan culture on Crete. Laconia was at war with the Kingdom of Macedonia and saw several battles, at the end of the Mycenaean period, from the early-2nd century BC until 395 AD, it was a part of the Roman Empire. In the medieval period, Laconia formed part of the Byzantine Empire, following the Fourth Crusade, it was gradually conquered by the Frankish Principality of Achaea. In the 1260s, however, the Byzantines recovered Mystras and other fortresses in the region and managed to evict the Franks from Laconia, by the mid-14th century, this evolved into the Despotate of Morea, held by the last Greek ruling dynasty, the Palaiologoi. With the fall of the Despotate to the Ottomans in 1460, with the exception of a 30-year interval of Venetian rule, Laconia remained under Ottoman control until the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence of 1821
Laconia
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Eurotas (river) outside the city of Sparti.
Laconia
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Municipalities of Laconia
Laconia
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The theater of ancient
Sparta with modern Sparti and Taygetus in the background.
Laconia
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Palace of
Mystras
