What 𐛸 means
A585 identifies the sign in a catalogue; it is not a known word from ancient Crete. Linear A remains undeciphered, so as of 2026 no accepted reading can be assigned to 𐛸. Approximate sounds borrowed from the later Linear B script for some related signs do not establish this sign's sound or meaning.
Linear A first appears in the Middle Minoan IIA period of Crete, by the end of the nineteenth century BCE. Scholars disagree whether the island's earliest writing belongs to an older script or to an early form of Linear A. The script spread from Crete into parts of the Aegean and served palace record-keeping for goods; some inscriptions were religious or connected with offerings.
Cretan Hieroglyphic belongs to an earlier or parallel Cretan writing tradition, and its relationship to Linear A is debated. Linear A later provided a model for Linear B and Cypro-Minoan, scripts used to write different languages. A585's catalog entry combines the sign labels AB120 and A709²; that describes its construction, not a spoken word or sequence.
For readers who study inscriptions, A585 is a catalog label; the sign offers no established word to pronounce.
Do not assign 𐛸 a confident Minoan translation.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does 𐛸 appear as a box?
A font gap is the likely cause. A font without Linear A glyph coverage may show a blank or box; the character itself is unchanged. Try a font that supports Linear A.
How to type 𐛸
𐛸\106F8Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.