Linear B Symbol B019

No settled sound or meaning — *19 is a placeholder.

In modern transcription it is written *19 and pronounced 'star nineteen' — an asterisked number that records which glyph is on the clay without claiming a sound value. The glyph is real; the missing piece is its reading.

Nor is it an isolated doodle: tablets preserve it inside spelled words, embedded in palace bookkeeping like every other Linear B sign.

Linear B grew out of Linear A for palace records

The script was adapted from Linear A in the Bronze Age Aegean to write Mycenaean Greek — an early form of Greek. Much of the syllabary carries over, while other signs were dropped or invented for sounds Greek needed. That kinship sits between two scripts; it gives 𐁑 no proven one-to-one Linear A ancestor.

The earliest surviving mainland tablet is the Iklaina tablet, dated around 1450–1400 BCE; the oldest Knossos group may reach the late 15th century BCE. What survives is palace bookkeeping — inventories, personnel lists, offerings — on clay that fires happened to bake hard.

Why is the reading still disputed?

Still undeciphered: it occurs too sparsely for context to force a reading.

A report from Ayios Vasileios records 19 in ]pi-19-ta and a-*19-ni-jo — the latter probably personnel — and it surfaces on several Pylos tablets as well. Real administrative wording, just never enough of it to corner one sound.

Most of the syllabary surrendered to decipherment; *19 did not. A proposed tie to the word e-pi-zo-ta is treated as possibly unrelated, so it stays a lead, not a reading.