Linear B Ideogram B165

A textile or garment reading is safest.

Linear B was used to keep palace records. The earliest surviving setting linked to B165 is the Room of the Chariot Tablets at Knossos, a group of records dated late 15th to early 14th century BCE. B165 appears there beside TUN, another Linear B sign, and references to horses and chariots; that context points to an inventory label, not a sound.

Jean Duhoux compared B165 and B166 with loincloths in Egyptian images associated with Keftiu, an ancient Aegean people. Marie-Louise Nosch treats the pair as related forms whose shapes suggest a garment or textile. The loincloth is a comparison, not a settled translation.

Are B165 and B166 related?

They are treated as variant forms of one sign.

In the Chariot Tablets, both occur in records alongside TUN, horses, and chariots. On several tablets in the Sc series, a scribe erased TUN and wrote B165; other scribes used B165 and B166 in similar records. This links the pair to equipment records, but does not establish a spoken value for B165.

Linear B developed from Linear A, an earlier Aegean script. That script-level connection does not identify what this particular sign depicts.