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Mycenaean Greek
Region	Southern Balkans/Crete
Era	16th–12th century BC
Language family	Indo-European Hellenic Greek Mycenaean Greek
Writing system	Linear B
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gmy
Linguist List	gmy
Glottolog	myce1242
Map of Greece as described in Homer's Iliad. The geographical data is believed to refer primarily to Bronze Age Greece, when Mycenaean Greek would have been spoken, and so can be used as an estimator of the range.
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Mycenaean Greek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, on the Greek mainland and Crete in Mycenaean Greece (16th to 12th centuries BC), before the hypothesised Dorian invasion, often cited as the terminus ad quem for the introduction of the Greek language to Greece.^{[citation needed]} The language is preserved in inscriptions in Linear B, a script first attested on Crete before the 14th century BC. Most inscriptions are on clay tablets found in Knossos, in central Crete, as well as in Pylos, in the southwest of the Peloponnese. Other tablets have been found at Mycenae itself, Tiryns and Thebes and at Chania, in Western Crete.^[1] The language is named after Mycenae, one of the major centres of Mycenaean Greece.

The tablets long remained undeciphered, and many languages were suggested for them, until Michael Ventris, building on the extensive work of Alice Kober, deciphered the script in 1952.^[2]

The texts on the tablets are mostly lists and inventories. No prose narrative survives, much less myth or poetry.^{[citation needed]} Still, much may be glimpsed from these records about the people who produced them and about Mycenaean Greece, the period before the so-called Greek Dark Ages.

Orthography

The Mycenaean language is preserved in Linear B writing, which consists of about 200 syllabic characters and ideograms. Since Linear B was derived from Linear A, the script of an undeciphered Minoan language, the sounds of Mycenaean are not fully represented. A limited number of syllabic characters must represent a much greater number of syllables used in spoken speech: in particular, the Linear B script only fully represents open syllables (those ending in vowel sounds), where Mycenaean Greek frequently used closed syllables (those ending in consonants).

Orthographic simplifications therefore had to be made:^[3]

• Contrasts of voice and aspiration were not marked for any consonants except the dentals d, t. For example, 𐀁𐀒, e-ko may be either egō ("I") or ekhō ("I have").
• r and l are not distinguished: 𐀣𐀯𐀩𐀄, qa-si-re-u is gʷasileus (classical βασιλεύς basileús "king").
• The rough breathing /h/ is generally not indicated: 𐀀𐀛𐀊, a-ni-ja is hāniai ("reins"). However, 𐁀, a₂ is optionally used to indicate ha at word beginning.^[4]
• The consonants l, m, n, r, s are omitted at the end of a syllable or before another consonant (including word-initial s before a consonant): 𐀞𐀲, pa-ta is panta ("all"); 𐀏𐀒, ka-ko is khalkos ("copper"), 𐀲𐀵𐀗, ta-to-mo is σταθμός stathmós ("station, outpost").
• Double consonants are not represented: 𐀒𐀜𐀰, ko-no-so is Knōsos (classical Knossos).
• Other consonant clusters are dissolved orthographically, creating apparent vowels: 𐀡𐀵𐀪𐀚, po-to-ri-ne is ptolin (Ancient Greek: πόλιν pólin or πτόλιν ptólin, "city" accusative case).
• Length of vowels is not marked.

Certain characters can be used alternately: for example, 𐀀, a, can always be written wherever 𐁀, a₂, can. However, these are not true homophones (characters with the same sound) because the correspondence does not necessarily work both ways: 𐁀, a₂ cannot necessarily be used in place of 𐀀, a. For that reason, they are referred to as 'overlapping values': signs such as 𐁀, a₂ are interpreted as special cases or 'restricted applications' of signs such as 𐀀, a, and their use as largely a matter of an individual scribe's preference.^[5]

Phonology

Mycenaean preserves some archaic Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Greek features not present in later ancient Greek:

• labialized velar consonants , written ⟨q⟩.^[6] In other ancient Greek varieties, labialized velars were replaced with labials /b, p, pʰ/, dentals /d, t, tʰ/, or velars /ɡ k kʰ/, depending on the context and the dialect. For example, 𐀦𐀄𐀒𐀫, qo-u-ko-ro is gʷoukoloi (classical βουκόλοι boukóloi, "cowherds").

• The semivowels /j w/. Both were lost in standard Attic Greek, although ?pojem= was preserved in some Greek dialects and written as digamma ⟨ϝ⟩ or beta ⟨β⟩.

• The glottal fricative /h/ between vowels.

The consonant usually transcribed z probably represents *dy, initial *y, *ky, *gy.^[6] It is uncertain how it was pronounced. It may have represented a pair of voiceless and voiced affricates /ts/ and /dz/ (marked with asterisks in the table above): /ts/ deriving from Pre-Greek clusters of a voiceless or voiceless aspirated velar stop + *y (*ky, *kʰy, *kʷy, kʷʰy) and corresponding to -ττ- or -σσ- in Greek varieties written in the Greek alphabet, and /dz/ deriving from Pre-Greek clusters of a voiced dental or velar stop + *y (*dy, *gy, *ɡʷy), or in certain instances from word-initial *y, and corresponding to ζ in the Greek alphabet.

There were at least five vowels /a e i o u/, which could be both short and long.

As noted above, the syllabic Linear B script used to record Mycenaean is extremely defective and distinguishes only the semivowels ⟨j w⟩; the sonorants ⟨m n r⟩; the sibilant ⟨s⟩; the stops ⟨p t d k q z⟩; and (marginally) ⟨h⟩. Voiced, voiceless and aspirate occlusives are all written with the same symbols except that ⟨d⟩ stands for /d/ and ⟨t⟩ for both /t/ and /tʰ/). Both /r/ and /l/ are written ⟨r⟩; /h/ is unwritten unless followed by /a/.

The length of vowels and consonants is not notated. In most circumstances, the script is unable to notate a consonant not followed by a vowel. Either an extra vowel is inserted (often echoing the quality of the following vowel), or the consonant is omitted. (See above for more details.)

Thus, determining the actual pronunciation of written words is often difficult, and using a combination of the PIE etymology of a word, its form in later Greek and variations in spelling is necessary. Even so, for some words the pronunciation is not known exactly, especially when the meaning is unclear from context, or the word has no descendants in the later dialects.

Morphology

Nouns likely decline for 7 cases: nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, vocative, instrumental and locative; 3 genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; and 3 numbers: singular, dual, plural. The last two cases had merged with other cases by Classical Greek. In Modern Greek, only nominative, accusative, genitive and vocative remain as separate cases with their own morphological markings.^[7] Adjectives agree with nouns in case, gender, and number.

Verbs probably conjugate for 3 tenses: past, present, future; 3 aspects: perfect, perfective, imperfective; 3 numbers: singular, dual, plural; 4 moods: indicative, imperative, subjunctive, optative; 3 voices: active, middle, passive; 3 persons: first, second, third; infinitives, and verbal adjectives.

The verbal augment is almost entirely absent from Mycenaean Greek with only one known exception, 𐀀𐀟𐀈𐀐, a-pe-do-ke (PY Fr 1184), but even that appears elsewhere without the augment, as 𐀀𐀢𐀈𐀐, a-pu-do-ke (KN Od 681). The augment is sometimes omitted in Homer.^[8]

Greek features

Mycenaean had already undergone the following sound changes particular to the Greek language and so is considered to be Greek:^[9]

Phonological changes

• Initial and intervocalic *s to /h/.
• Voiced aspirates devoiced.
• Syllabic liquids to /ar, al/ or /or, ol/; syllabic nasals to /a/ or /o/.
• *kj and *tj to /s/ before a vowel.
• Initial *j to /h/ or replaced by z (exact value unknown, possibly ).
• *gj and *dj to /z/.
• *-ti to /-si/ (also found in Attic-Ionic, Arcadocypriot, and Lesbian, but not Doric, Boeotian, or Thessalian).

Morphological changes

• The use of -eus to produce agent nouns
• The third-person singular ending -ei
• The infinitive ending -ein, contracted from -e-en

Lexical items

• Uniquely Greek words:
  • 𐀣𐀯𐀩𐀄, qa-si-re-u, *gʷasiléus (later Greek: βασιλεύς, basiléus, "king")
  • 𐀏𐀒, ka-ko, *kʰalkós (later Greek: χαλκός, chalkos, "bronze")
• Greek forms of words known in other languages:
  • 𐀷𐀙𐀏, wa-na-ka, *wánaks (later Greek: ἄναξ, ánax, "overlord, king, leader")^[10]
  • 𐀷𐀙𐀭, wa-na-sa, *wánassa (later Greek: ἄνασσα, ánassa, "queen")^[11]
  • 𐀁𐀨𐀺, e-ra-wo or 𐀁𐁉𐀺, e-rai-wo, *élaiwon (later Greek: ἔλαιον, élaion, "olive oil")
  • 𐀳𐀃, te-o, *tʰehós (later Greek: θεός, theos, "god")
  • 𐀴𐀪𐀡, ti-ri-po, *tripos (later Greek: τρίπους, tripous, "tripod")

Comparison with Ancient (Homeric) Greek