What 𐃎 means
The frame of a Mycenaean palace chariot, logged as a counted part. Linear B is the earliest written Greek — the script Mycenaean palaces kept their books in — and its ideograms mark counted items, not sounds or words.
Its oldest surviving home is the Room of the Chariot Tablets at Knossos on Crete — a palace archive of Linear B tablets dated Late Minoan II–IIIA1, broadly the late 15th to early 14th century BCE.
The usual scholarly reading: palaces stored chariots unassembled, so the scribe counted frames and wheels on separate lines.
Why four signs for one chariot?
Clerks counted parts, not just vehicles. The chariot ideograms split the machine into stock lines: 𐃌 B240 the wheeled chariot, 𐃍 B241 the chariot, 𐃎 B242 the bare frame, 𐃏 B243 a wheel. Labels like B242, *242 and CAPS are modern catalogue numbers, not recovered ancient words.
How do you type 𐃎?
By code point — it sits above UFFFF, past four-digit Alt codes. In Word, type 100CE then AltX. On Linux, CtrlShiftU then 100ce. On macOS, open the character viewer and search 'chariot'.
Strictly scholarly — it reads as an ancient-script reference, never a casual symbol.
It is the frame only — not the whole chariot, not the wheel.
Part of the collection
Who writes 𐃎
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Don't confuse it with
3
Related characters
2
Worth knowing
- Linear B was deciphered in 1952, when Michael Ventris showed the tablets were an early form of Greek.
Questions people ask
2Why does 𐃎 show as a box?
Font coverage. If the font lacks Linear B the glyph falls back to a box; one that covers the block, like Noto Sans Linear B, fixes it.
Did the Mycenaeans invent 𐃎?
Unclear. Linear B grew out of Linear A, but no exact Linear A forerunner of this shape is established in the surviving tablets as of 2026.
More like this
11
How to type or find 𐃎
- Also called
- *242 · CAPS
- Search it as
- b242 · linear b chariot · chariot frame · ideogram · chariot parts · knossos tablets · mycenaean chariot
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𐃎\100CECodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.