Linear A Sign A566

A566 is a catalogue label, not a decoded word. As of 2026, Linear A remains undeciphered, so the sign has no agreed spoken reading. GORILA is the catalogue used to identify Linear A signs; A566 is its label for this sign.

Linear A’s earliest attestation is placed in Middle Minoan IIA, by the end of the nineteenth century BCE; records become more regular in Middle Minoan IIB. The script appears in palace accounts that tracked goods and movement, as well as ritual settings such as offering tables. Those uses make an administrative ship-load sign plausible, but they do not translate this particular sign.

Why is A566 linked to ships?

Its two components support a vessel carrying goods. The Unicode sign chart breaks A566 into 𐙅 (AB086) and 𐙓 (AB188). A study of Minoan shipment records identifies AB086 as a schematic ship ideogram and AB188 as a load sign, making “ship-load” a cautious functional gloss rather than a spoken translation.

A seal-corpus discussion calls A566 a ship ideogram for KH Wc 2062, a round clay seal from Khania dated Late Minoan IB. The SigLA sign catalogue lists that object under AB21/OVIS instead—a different sign label—so this individual attribution is uncertain. The component analysis and shipment contexts offer stronger support for the ship-load reading.

What does 𐛦 mean when someone sends it?

Treat it as a reference, not a fixed message. Someone sending 𐛦 alone may be pointing to Linear A, a catalogue entry, or a personal design choice. Ask for context before reading “ship” into it: the ship-load gloss belongs to specific historical contexts, not every message.

AB086 also has a similarly shaped counterpart in Linear B. In Linear A, the sign is interpreted as a ship ideogram; in Linear B, the related sign is phonetic but its sound is unknown. Linear B adapted many Linear A signs to write Mycenaean Greek, so similar forms can do different jobs. Cretan Hieroglyphic was a distinct earlier Cretan script, also compared with Linear A; that broader script history does not supply A566’s pronunciation.