The Relationship Between Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A: A Palaeographic and Structural Approach

This work has two specific objectives : 1. The reconstruction of a palaeographic model that describes the relationship between the Cretan Hieroglyphic script and Linear A ; 2. The structural analysis of the sign distribution of the two scripts and the distribution of their sign sequences (or sign groups). The two sets of analysis aim to establish via rigorous, solid parameters the degree of relation between the two scripts, by reconstructing through an evolutionary dimension the development of each sign and by establishing its positional distribution in each script corpus. The conclusions indicate that, despite sharing a nucleus of signs, the two scripts show notable divergences : a percentage of Linear A signs is not shared by the Cretan Hierolgyphic, which implies innovation strategies from a common template. In addition, the analysis of the two writing systems shows that no sign sequences are shared, in addition to different positional distributions. This evidence indicates that Linear A was the result of substantial adaptation strategies of the Cretan Hieroglyphic model.