What 𐁄 means
It writes the sound dwo, not a word or number.
Linear B is a syllabary: each sign stands for a whole syllable, so it isn't an alphabet in the letter-by-letter sense. 𐁄 writes /dwo/ inside Mycenaean Greek, the earliest form of Greek we can read, and it turns up in forms of the word for 'two'. The sign itself is a sound sign, never a numeral.
The script survives on clay palace tablets listing grain, oil, workers, flocks and weapons — bookkeeping, not literature. 𐁄's job inside that system was spelling.
How did 𐁄 develop?
Probably a coined 'extra' sign, not an inherited one.
Linear B is attested on Crete and the Greek mainland around 1400–1200 BCE, adapted from the still-undeciphered Linear A. 𐁄 sits among the 'extra' signs added for Greek sounds; as of 2026 no Linear A ancestor for it is documented.
One analysis proposes it was drawn as two facing wo signs — a visual pun on Greek dwo, 'two'. Scribes could also spell the same sound sign-by-sign, as do-wo or du-wo, so 𐁄 was one option among several.
Specialist and archival: it signals classics or Mycenaean interests, not a conversational reaction.
Outside scholarly text, add the dwo label — most readers' fonts won't even draw it.
Part of the collection
Who writes 𐁄
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Related characters
3
Worth knowing
- Linear B baffled readers for fifty years until architect Michael Ventris deciphered it in 1952, revealing the earliest written Greek.
Questions people ask
3Is 𐁄 the symbol for two?
No. It writes the sound dwo and can appear in spellings of 'two'; the sign itself is a syllabogram, not a numeral.
Is Linear B an alphabet?
No. It's a syllabary: most signs write a consonant-plus-vowel syllable like dwo, not single letters.
Why does 𐁄 show as a box?
Your font lacks Linear B coverage. As of 2026 only a few fonts include the script — Noto Sans Linear B and George Douros's Aegean are the usual fixes.
More like this
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How to type or find 𐁄
- Also called
- dwo · *90 · B090
- Search it as
- linear b · linear b 90 · linear b alphabet · linear b two · linear b sign · mycenaean · mycenaean greek · syllabogram
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𐁄\10044Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.