Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

If the first two articles on Linear b are a beginning, pointing out a new research direction, then Liang En's third article is the beginning of detailed research on Linear b.

The core content of the third paper is to list vowels and consonants, which is a crucial step in translating those pinyin texts, and then make a table similar to the Japanese 50 phonetic chart.

Of course, this table is just a framework, and vowels and consonants have no real values. Just the relationship between these syllables is given.

But this is already the most important step in deciphering Linear B. The only real deciphering left is to complete the table and assign values ​​to these syllables.

The beginning of the deciphering of Linear B is similar to Ancient Egyptian, that is, the breaking point is a noun with a fixed pronunciation. The only difference is that Ancient Egyptian begins with a personal name, while Linear B begins with a place name.

Because pronunciations like place names or people's names are relatively fixed, if you determine the name of the place name, you can determine some pronunciations, and then further assign corresponding values ​​to the syllable table in Liang En's hand.

This was possible because the clay tablets had been discovered more than once, and because of the previous excavations in Crete, Liang En had access to all this information.

Among those tablets, he discovered a word that was common in tablets found in Crete and the Peloponnese, but not in another tablet known as the Pyrrhic Document. to this word.

Because of this translation, Liang En added his own point of view, saying that words with the same prefix do not mean that they are all inflections of verbs, but derivatives.

The reason for this judgment is that if it is a verb, there is no reason for it to be common in one place but not in another place, and that word is most likely the name of a place on the island of Crete.

A distant relative of the Linear script is the Linear script of Cyprus. The islands of Cyprus and Crete are both in the Aegean Sea, and the two scripts are also very similar.

There is a bilingual stone tablet written in Greek and Phoenician in Cypriot Linear script that was deciphered in 1870. Cypriot Linear script is 1,000 years later than Linear B, and the symbols are also many different.

But relying only on these connections, researchers can still boldly use Cyprus Linear symbols to infer the place names in Crete's Linear script.

Liang En chose a four-syllable place name as a breakthrough point. Based on his previous guess from studying the pronunciation, the first syllable is a, and the third syllable is very similar to ni in Cypriot linear script.

So from what is known, we can conclude that this is the name of a place on Crete called Aminisos [a mi ni so]. Based on this, we know the pronunciation of the two syllables mi and so.

In this way, row n, row m, row s, and columns i and o are all known. Based on this, Liang En can reasonably infer that another place name *noso is Knossos, which is where the palace of Minos was discovered.

In this way, k rows of the text table are also known. Next, as long as one syllable in a row or column is deciphered, the entire row and column can be read.

In this way, it is very easy to decipher Linear B. Soon you will know the pronunciation of each syllable. If you read those documents at this time, you will find that the pronunciation of many words is similar to Greek.

In other words, linear script b was indeed used to write ancient Greek, which is the most important and basic origin of a series of European languages ​​today.

For this reason, even though University College Cork is average in archaeology, it still tracks and studies the content of this aspect. Therefore, in the free questions in the second half of this speech, everyone basically focused on this aspect.

The students present could ask, obviously because they had read Liang En's previous papers, but what they saw from the papers was not very perfect, and on-site questions could just make up for this shortcoming.

This also reflects the benefit of Liang En going through the entire process before. This process gave him a clear understanding of the whole thing, so that no matter what questions the students below asked him, he could quickly answer them. .

If he had copied directly to save trouble, he might not be able to answer some questions at this time or he had never been exposed to some questions at all. In that case, he could easily be considered a plagiarist.

The current situation is just the opposite. Because Liang En can answer all questions and answers very quickly, the students' vague contempt for Liang En at the beginning has disappeared. .

After all, not only ordinary undergraduate students came here this time, but also master's and doctoral students. At first, they were a little contemptuous of people who were younger than themselves and only had an undergraduate degree.

However, with Liang En's speech today, their contempt gradually disappeared, because through these questions and answers, they saw that Liang En did have a very good academic level in this area, and was even better than the professor in some aspects.

In addition to academic questions in this area, at the end of the lecture, several young students also asked and wrote some questions about Liang En's previous novel writing, such as where he got the inspiration for his writing.

"These inspirations are mainly related to the previous treasure hunting work." Liang En said with a smile. “Fairy tales, for example, come from a series of found documents, and ghost stories about the polar regions come from searching for British expeditions to the North Pole.”

"As for the vampire novel, I found a long-lost Hungarian nobleman and received an ancient castle as a gift. Then I wrote this novel in order to make some money to pay property taxes——"

"Of course, I am still writing a new novel about vampires, also in order to earn back the property taxes. I should be able to release the first one next year."

After convincing these students academically, everyone realized the multiplicity of Liang En's identities. Therefore, when Liang En made the final summary of this speech, the classroom was quiet, and everyone was listening to what he was saying.

"——Modern research on history is very important, so daily accumulation is very important. Therefore, reading more books is a good way to improve yourself." Liang En said to everyone at the end.

After coming off the stage, Professor Hunter began to give the final words, and then it was time for some free activities. Somewhat unexpectedly, many students took out pens and notebooks at this time, hoping that Liang En would sign.

Liang En was a little confused by everyone's enthusiasm at first, but he soon responded and signed autographs for everyone. Fortunately, there were not many people in the room, so he quickly completed the signing work for those who wanted to get signatures.

"Your speech was very good today." Just as Liang En walked out of the library and was about to go to the parking lot to pick up his car and leave, Professor Hunter said to his student. "I think we will invite you to participate in activities in this area in the future."

"Thank you very much." Liang En, who walked to the car, shook hands with his professor and said, "As long as I am free, I will definitely come over if you invite me. Goodbye!"