Linear A Sign A309b

Its exact ancient referent is unknown. 𐙞 is A309b, the catalogue name for the curved-line variant in the A309 series. On clay tablet TY 2 from Tylissos, a site on Crete, the series follows a heading written with syllabic signs and appears with numerals. That placement points to a category in a counted record, but not to what the category contained.

As of 2026, no secure pronunciation or referent is established. A confident translation—or a reading borrowed from a similar Linear B sign—goes beyond the evidence.

How old is 𐙞?

The A309 series is attested at Tylissos in Late Minoan IB. A309a is a plain circle, A309b a circle with a curved line below, and A309c concentric circles. These are palaeographic variants—a grouping by written shape—not evidence of three separate words.

Linear A first appears in Middle Minoan IIA, an archaeological period on Crete, and becomes more consistently attested in Middle Minoan IIB. It developed alongside Cretan Hieroglyphic, and scholars argue that much of its graphic repertoire came from that script. Linear B later drew heavily on Linear A. These script-level connections do not reveal A309b's meaning.

Is 𐙞 a letter or an ideogram?

On tablet TY 2, it functions as an ideogram, not a known letter. An ideogram is a sign that stands for a category or thing; the record pairs A309b with quantities rather than giving it a secure syllabic reading.

Linear A was used for economic records on clay tablets, though it also appears on other objects, many with religious content. This one context supports only a narrow verdict: A309b marked something counted on TY 2. Unicode encodes the modern sign; it does not make its catalogue label pronounceable.