Tablet with Europe’s oldest decipherable writing found

A fragment of a clay tablet discovered in an olive grove in Greece last year shows the oldest known decipherable writing in Europe.

The clay tablet, roughly 2.5 cm tall and 4 cm wide, is marked by an early writing system known as Linear B, which consisted of 87 single-syllable signs and was used to record economic matters.

National Geographic News reports the writing was done by a Greek-speaking Mycenaean scribe between 1450 and 1350 B.C.

Excavations in the Greek village of Iklaina led to the tablet's discovery. Dig director Michael Cosmopoulos claims the tablet was a complete surprise to the archeologists, who uncovered evidence of an early Mycenaean palace, giant terrace walls, murals and an advanced drainage system in the area.

"According to what we knew, that tablet should not have been there," Cosmopoulos told National Geographic News.

Until now, Mycenaean tablets this old weren't thought to exist; the find precedes previous tablets by 150 years. Furthermore, tablets had only been found in major palaces. Historians had assumed Pylos (made famous by the "Iliad") and Mycenae were the major Mycenaean state capitals.

"Iklaina could potentially challenge what we know about the origins of states in ancient Greece," Cosmopoulos said. "Not only does it push the origins of those states back in time by at least a century and a half, but the tablet shows that literacy and bureaucracy appeared earlier and were more widespread than what we had thought until now. We still have a lot to learn about the ancient world."

What does the clay fragment read? On the front of the tablet, a verb relating to manufacturing is found, on the back there's a list of names and numbers, most likely a property list.

The tablet appears to have survived by accident; these records were usually saved for a single fiscal year.

"Those tablets were not baked, only dried in the sun and [were], therefore, very brittle. ... Basically someone back then threw the tablet in the pit and then burned their garbage," Cosmopoulos said. "This fire hardened and preserved the tablet."

The ability to read and write was considered "magical or mysterious" in Mycenaean society and was a highly restricted practice. Four to six centuries later, the ancient Greek alphabet was introduced and demystified the written word.

It should be noted that the tablet found in Iklaina exemplifies the earliest writing system in Europe. Other writings founds in China, Mesopotamia and Egypt predate Linear B considerably.