Welcome to the Ancient Aegean Languages pages

Note: in order to read the Aegean Languages pages correctly, you need a Unicode compliant browser which can read hexadecimal code and a font which supports IPA, Greek, Extended Greek and Hebrew characters.

At present, these pages deal mainly with the Eteocretan language as it is preserved on inscriptions written in the Greek alphabet. No consideration has been given to the undeciphered Linear A script. In my opinion there has been no successful decipherment, but the Linear A language ("Minoan") is likely to be the ancestor of Eteocretan, which shows no sign of being related either to the Semitic group of languages or to the Indo-European group.

You can find the Linear A corpora in "phonetic transcription" at:
http://people.ku.edu/~jyounger/LinearA/
The phonetic transcriptions use Linear B values for Linear A signs assumed to be the same.

Also not considered in these pages is the famous (or infamous) Phaistos Disk. There has, in my opinion, been no decipherment of the texts impressed in clay on each side of the disk; nor can there be, as the item is unique and there is no way, at present, of testing any proposed decipherment. Indeed, it is not even certain that the disk contains writing! Some, for example, think it is a board game and there are those who even doubt its authenticity as an ancient object. For an overview of all the multifarious 'decipherments' of the disk, see:
users.otenet.gr/~svoronan/phaistos.htm
and for an interesting interpreatation of it as a board game, see:
www.recoveredscience.com/phaistoscontents.htm

Most of the material in these pages are the results of research I was doing into evidence from Greek alphabetic material for pre-Greek languages in Crete during the 1970s in order to submit a thesis to Birmingham University for the M.Litt. degree. The thesis was submitted and accepted in 1982. Two years later it was printed, without change:
R.A. Brown, 1984, Pre-Greek Speech on Crete, Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert. ISBN 90 256 0876 0.

Quite independently, Yves Duhoux was at about the same time compiling a book on the Eteocretan texts and language. The book was published in the same year that I presented my thesis. It is:
Y. Duhoux, 1982, L'Étéocrétois: les textes - la langue, Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben. ISBN 90 70265 05 2.

I did not become aware of the book until after I had submitted my thesis (the book published two year's later was simply a re-print of the thesis; I was not able to make any changes or amendments). In these pages I refer to Yves Duhoux's book simply as "Duhoux".

The only other language at present considered in these pages is that of a 6th century BCE funerary inscription found on the Island of Lemnos. The language appears to show structural similarities with Etruscan and may be a survival of the old Pelasgian language. Unfortunately, the Pelasgians have attracted many myths, both ancient and modern. Please do NOT mail me about visitors from other planets or galaxies, nor about "What really happened to Atlantis." I have received more than enough such mails already; such mails will be treated as junk.