Good Friday 48 -Only a fantasy perhaps - but do you think there is room for a more general exchange of views? For one thing, I don't even know exactly who is working on Minoan at the moment. - Hrozny evidently (but Myres says he's all wrong) - Sundwall (I haven't seen his recent Hagia Triada stuff at all) - Ktistopoulos - Is there anyone else? I suspect there must be some in Italy. I feel it shouldn't be altogether impossible, eventually, to fix fairly reliable phonetic values to the Linear letters, though all I've got at the moment are hunches xxx rather than opinions - that _ represents a vowel, and so on. But when all the material's available I think pure statistics will get us a certain way. I am trying gradually to build up the probabilities for phonetic values in a form which I call "the Grid". I'm using the symbols :C: and :V: to mean "has the same consonant (or vowel) as....". Arranging the :V: series in vertical lines on the page, and the :C: series horizontally, one might eventually be able to solve the crossword puzzle satisfactorily and construct the whole syllabary.* Briefly, I take it there is a case for :C: if two signs replace each other in words apparently from similar radi- cals. First priority here seems to be the relationship between the second letter in two-letter names, and the second letter of longer names with the same initial letter. The assumption here is that names are in fact generally built up on monosyllabic or disyllabic radicals with added suffix-groups. I take it there is a case for :V: if 2 signs occur with more than average frequency both before and after each other: again, there is a possibility of :V: between double signs and the signs immediately before and after them. Here the assum- ption is that vowel-harmony occurs to a certain extent, both in the actual structure of words, and in the syllabic spelling of consonant-clusters. If at a later stage you would care to exchange "grid" possibilities I'd be only too willing. Yours sincerely, Michael Ventris *my current guess is that the complete syllabary (if it is complete) should contain 80 letters :- the vowels a,e,i,o,u and their combinations with the consonants c (k) r w (v) s from x h*(x) s' *if h is differentiated ^ one would z t expect the syllables built on it _ f (_) to occur only initially. j (uncertain) l m n p there doesn't seem to be room for diphthongal or closed syllables, except possibly for exceptional signs.