Linear B Ideogram B184

Treat B184 as a catalog label, not an object name.

Unicode gives ideograms semantic names when scholars generally agree on what they denote. As of 2026, its list still labels this sign only with catalog number B184.

An edition may argue for a particular item from its tablet context, but the sign's outline alone cannot identify a person, animal, vessel, or commodity.

Why did Linear B use ideograms?

They marked the goods that palace offices counted.

Linear B combined syllabic signs, which spell words in syllables, with ideograms, signs that stand for things, and numerals. In administrative lists, those marks showed a category of goods and its quantity without spelling out every item.

Linear B adapted the earlier Linear A script to write Greek. Some signs occur in both, but their repertoires are not interchangeable. A Digital Pylia record published in 2015 dates an Iklaina tablet to ca. 1450–1400 BCE and calls it the earliest Linear B tablet then known from mainland Greece. That dates surviving evidence, not the script's invention.

How should I read B184 in an edition?

In an edition, B184 identifies the sign, not its ancient reading.

B184 is specialist catalog shorthand for a Linear B sign. Unicode marks its shape as only partly known, so a clean font outline is a typographic drawing of an uncertain ancient form, not proof that every detail is settled.