I have had to REVISE this extremely important post, as Ms. Gretchen Leonhardt has brought to my attention a clear oversight in my interpretation of ama + epikere as a SINGLE word, when in fact they are SEPARATE on the tablet. Her comment clears up any problem my oversight would have occasioned.
Richard
Sappho, spelled (in the dialect spoken by the poet) Psappho, (born c. 610, Lesbos, Greece — died c. 570 BCE). A lyric poet greatly admired in all ages for the beauty of her writing style.
Her language contains elements from Aeolic vernacular and poetic tradition, with traces of epic vocabulary familiar to readers of Homer. She has the ability to judge critically her own ecstasies and grief, and her emotions lose nothing of their force by being recollected in tranquillity.
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2 responses to “REVISED: Co-op Storage of Olive Oil & Mass Production of Wheat in Linear B”
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This is a bit of a ramble but I was looking at the word ἐπικείρω which you have translated as “cut down” or “harvest”. In Greek it means cut down rather then specifically harvest – cut someone off or cut down though there are instances of it meaning cut down in the sense of harvest.
However I was quite surprised to discover that our word harvest and Greek κείρω (keir-o) are actually cognates. This is easier to understand if you realise that “k” can shift in its pronounciation to “h”. For example the Greek kardia is our heart where the k has shifted to “h”; both derive from the same proto Indo-European language. In the same way keir is equivalent to har.
There is also a Cretan Goddess Karme who was a harvest Goddess and whose name also derives from κείρω.
So ἐπικείρω is rightly translated as “cut down” or “harvest” – the ἐπι prefix probably means “over” as in cutting “over” the extent of the field.