Library
About the lexicon
Linear A was the syllabary of Minoan Crete, recorded from about 1800 to 1450 BC on tablets, roundels, sealings, stone libation vessels, metal, and pottery. It precedes Linear B, the script adapted for the Mycenaean Greeks, deciphered through the efforts of many scholars like Alice Kober and Michael Ventris. Linear B took many of its signs from Linear A, and scholars have long agreed these signs kept their sound values. We present an open-source decipherment of Linear A as a lexicon spanning Semitic, Hurrian, Middle Egyptian, Sumerian, Indo-European, and Aegean layers.
The decipherment
Linear A, in our reading, records Minoan, an archaic Semitic language and a sister to Northwest Semitic and Arabic. It builds upon the work of Cyrus Gordon and his successors, who first argued for a Semitic Linear A. Tom di Mino presented the case in Ya Diktu: Grammar of the Minoan Peak Sanctuary Libation Formula (2026). The entire research record is open in kaphtor, the source of this site, where each reading stands beside its evidence, its tier and its rivals. The readings are di Mino’s unless an entry names an earlier proposer, as with Gordon’s KU-RO kull ‘total’.
How far a reading holds
Every reading is a proposal, and its tier says how far the evidence carries it. The tier rests on the word’s place in the texts, not on the comparison alone.
- Confirmed18 entries
- The function is fixed inside the corpus (position, arithmetic, commodity signs). The etymology may still be a proposal.
- Probable67 entries
- Fits the word’s contexts and has a close external comparison, without an independent control.
- Candidate242 entries
- A comparison worth testing; the evidence is thin or the word is rare.
- Speculative310 entries
- A proposed reading on a word too rare to test. Most occur only once.
Reading an entry
- 2Reading
- yā Diqqitu
- 4Confidence
- Probable
- 5Root
- √d-q-q
- 6Kind
- Divine
- 7Language
- Semitic
- 8Compared forms
- Ugaritic dqt 'female head of small cattle for sacrifice', a ewe or she-goat (Gordon UT §19.695, cited by Astour 1966, 283 n. 74); DN dqt, KTU 1.102:8 (Astour 1966, 283–84; DULAT 276)
- 10Attestations
- IO Za 2
What each field means
- Signs
- The word in Linear A, sign by sign, each sign linked to every entry that uses it.
- Reading
- The word as it was spoken, vocalized from the signs and the comparison. Linear A writes no final consonants and no consonant clusters, so the reading restores what the script leaves out.
- Meaning
- The sense the reading gives the word in its contexts.
- Confidence
- The reading’s tier, as set out above.
- Root
- The Proto-Semitic root the reading comes from, with its reflexes branch by branch.
- Kind
- What the word names: a person, a place, a god, a commodity, a vessel, an office, a ritual act and so on.
- Language
- The layer the reading belongs to: Semitic, Hurrian, Egyptian, Anatolian and others. A layer is a hypothesis about the word, not about the language of Linear A: names and loanwords travel.
- Compared forms
- The cognates in the related languages, each with its source. A form marked cf. is a parallel, not a cognate.
- First proposed
- The scholar who first put the reading forward, where it is not di Mino.
- Attestations
- Every document the word stands on, with its line and the translation’s gloss.
- Commentary
- The case for the reading: its contexts, its spelling and its parallels.
- Rival readings
- The other readings on record, named so they can be weighed.
- References
- The works the entry cites, each linked to the bibliography.
Signs and abbreviations
- KU-RORA₂*301
- Linear A signs in capitals, joined by hyphens within a word. A subscript number marks a second sign with the same sound value; an asterisk and a number name a sign by its GORILA number when it has no agreed value.
- *kʷall-
- An asterisk before a form: a reconstruction, attested in no text.
- √k-l-l
- A Semitic root, written as its consonants.
- < >
- Comes from; becomes.
- ~
- Varies with; written either way.
- ʾʿḥṣṭśšṯ
- The usual transliteration of the Semitic consonants: glottal stop, ʿayin, and the emphatic, lateral and interdental series.
- Heb., Ug., Akk., Aram., Arab., Syr., Phoen., Sum.
- Hebrew, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Aramaic, Arabic, Syriac, Phoenician, Sumerian.
- PS, NWS, LB
- Proto-Semitic; Northwest Semitic; Linear B.
- PN, DN, GN
- Personal name; divine name; geographical name.
- 1cs, 3ms, 3fs, 1cp
- Person, gender and number of a verb or pronoun: first person common singular, third masculine singular, and so on.
- G, D, N, tG, Gt stems
- The Semitic verb stems: the base stem, the doubled stem, the n-stem and the stems with an infixed or prefixed t.
- cf., s.v., var., ibid.
- Compare; under the word; a variant; in the same work.
The data
Our corpus follows the standard edition, GORILA, by Louis Godart and Jean-Pierre Olivier, and its supplement RILA-S1, alongside SigLA, by Ester Salgarella and Simon Castellan, and lineara.xyz. We checked its readings against GORILA, John Younger’s Linear A Texts and the primary editions, and corrected many of them. The London Medical Papyrus also preserves spells of the Keftiu, the Cretans, written in Egyptian script. Their words remain in kaphtor, but this site keeps to Linear A.
The 3D inscriptions are templates we drew at Plasma AI from each text and the object that carries it, not museum scans. This edition of the data is kaphtor 50525edd.
Licence and citation
The lexicon, names, translations, commentary and roots are all free to reuse with credit, under CC BY 4.0. The corpus keeps the terms of its sources: SigLA’s records are under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, and kaphtor’s corrections and added layers under CC BY 4.0. The site’s code is under the Apache License 2.0.
Cite it as:
di Mino, Tom. 2026. Linear A Lexicon. Plasma AI. https://linear-a.ai/. Data: kaphtor, commit 50525edd.
To cite a single reading, give its entry’s address and the work it names.
Corrections
We welcome corrections, whether a wrong form, a missed attestation or a better reading. Open an issue on kaphtor naming the entry and your source, or write to info@plasma.ai. Corrections are made in kaphtor first, and reach this site with the next edition of the data. All contributors will be on record and credited in the decipherment.
Designed at Plasma AI with by Maxim Kuznetsov, Vittorio Retrivi and Tom di Mino.