All 22 Arcado-Cypriot Linear C syllabograms we have learned so far I have tagged each of 22 of the syllabograms we have covered so far with a large asterisk on the chart of the Arcado-Cypriot syllabary below. Click to ENLARGE:& again!
I will introduce the remainder of the Arcado-Cypriot syllabary sometime in the late summer. Richard
Category: Poetry
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Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Syllabograms: Moderate-Intermediate Linear
Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Syllabograms: Moderate-Intermediate Linear: Click to ENLARGE:
These 8 syllabograms all consist of 3-6 linear strokes only, and are relatively easy to learn. Once again, remember that the majority of Linear C syllabograms are primarily linear, with a few of them circular, or a combination of linear & circular, making the syllabary relatively straightforward to learn. For the time being, this is as far as we intend to go with Linear C syllabograms, having introduced the first 22 or already 40 % of 56 syllabograms, enough for us to decipher a few words on the Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Idalion Tablet, and to compare these with their counterparts in Mycenaean Linear B. These comparisons, or as I prefer to call them, cross-correlations, serve to make it perfectly obvious to anyone familiar with either of these syllabaries, Linear B or Linear C, and especially to those familiar with both syllabaries, that indeed the Mycenaean dialect in Linear B and the Arcado-Cypriot in Linear C are the 2 most closely related early East Greek dialects, which were all to eventually merge into the Ionic and finally, the Attic dialect. In other words, what I am saying is that all of these East Greek dialects, from Mycenaean to Attic, are all of the self-same family.
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8 more Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Syllabograms: Simple Linear
8 more Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Syllabograms: Simple Linear: Click to ENLARGE
From here on in, we can forget about correlating any Linear C syllabograms whatsoever with any Linear B syllabograms, simply because the two scripts part ways once and for all, beyond the 6 which we just introduced in the last post, which simply happen to look like their counterparts in Linear B, whether intentionally or not.
Apart from that, these 8 syllabograms all consist of 2-5 linear strokes only, and are easy to learn. It should also be noted that the majority of Linear C syllabograms are primarily linear, with a few of them circular, or a combination of linear & circular, making the syllabary relatively straightforward to learn. The problem is - and I don’t know about you - trying not to confuse the 56 syllabograms in Linear C with the 81 in Linear BV just might drive one half nuts. I only hope it doesn’t do that to me. I will let you know if it does (joke!). Anyway, as it stands, we now have 14 or exactly 25% of the 56 syllabograms under our belt, which is a good start.
Richard
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PROTO-GREEK: Online Resources – including my response to a query whether ASTU (town) & KAIO = KAUO (to burn) are Proto-Greek Words
PROTO-GREEK: Online Resources – including my response to a query whether ASTU (town) & KAIO = KAUO (to burn) are Proto-Greek Words: A research colleague of mine recently asked me whether ASTU (town) & KAIO = KAUO (to burn) are Proto-Greek Words. Here are my answers. A: ASTU In answer to your question, is ASTU Proto-Greek, it appears so. But always remember that it is also a Classical Attic word meaning “town/ city”, equivalent to the Latin “urbs” Liddell & Scott, pg. 110 (1986), as opposed to “polis” meaning “the fortress of the city” or even a “whole country” Liddell & Scott, pp. 570-571 (1986). B: KAIO/KAUO See Greek Civ., Quiz 1: http://quizlet.com/26471816/greek-civ-quiz-1-flash-cards/ RE KAIO it appears, YES, again, probably Etruscan & Proto-Greek: from: Etruscan Phrases http://quizlet.com/26471816/greek-civ-quiz-1-flash-cards/ And anyway, its variant, KAUO, to burn, is all over the place in Mycenaean Linear B, so the answer is a definite YES. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN & PROTO-GREEK ONLINE RESOURCES:
NOTE that Mycenaean Greek is NOT Proto-Greek, and should never be considered as such. It is the earliest pre-Ionic Greek Dialect in the class of Eastern Greek Dialects, which include Mycenaean, Arcado-Cypriot, Aeolic, Ionic and much later, Attic Greek.
Sites and Pages with further informationon Proto-Greek:
1 Wikipedia: Pree-Greek Substrate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Greek_substrate#Possible_Pre-Greek_loanwords
2 Proto Indo-European Vocabulary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_vocabulary
3 Proto-Greek Vocabulary: Quizlet
http://quizlet.com/14227179/proto-greek-vocabulary-flash-cards/
4 Hellenic Ancient Dialects, on hte Blog: We the Ecoumenists
https://spacezilotes.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/hellenic-ancient-dialects-proto-graieak-meros-a/
5 Brill Indo-European Languages Online
http://iedo.brillonline.nl/dictionaries/content/greek/index.html
(need a password to search: I will contact the professor and try and get one, Peter)
6 Proto-European & Sanskrit (important grammatical observation on reduplicating athematic MI verbs)
https://linearalinearblinearc.ca/tag/proto-indo-european/
7 ***** Do Inscriptions in Linear A Belong to Different Languages? *****
http://www.anistor.gr/english/enback/v011.htm
PRINT IT OUT!
8 Proto-Germanic & Indo-European Studies: Pre-Greek Substrate
http://www.protogermanic.com/search/label/Pro
9 EUPEDIA: Forums = Proto-Greek
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/27821-Proto-Greek
10 Current Status on the Controvery on the Date of the Indo-European Dispersion
https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/7259/current-status-of-the-controversy-on-the-date-of-indo-european-dispersion
Richard
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Haiku: eni wanakatero… kowo suni kowaisi… prenuptial celebrations!
Haiku: eni wanakatero... kowo suni kowaisi... prenuptial celebrations! (Click to ENLARGE):
Imagine yourself joyous in the presence of the King and Queen of Knossos, 6 lush floral arrangements, some with the sacred lilies, circling the throne room, while boys and girls swirl about, dancing with one another, celebrating the marriage of the Princess, the daughter of the King and Queen, to the Prince of Lilies, such as we see in this lovely triptych of 2 frescoes and 4 of the 6 flower pots: Click to ENLARGE:
Finally, we see that in the second line of this celebratory haiku, I have used two of the new ideologograms for “flower pot”, for a total of 6 flower pots, which I take to be a floral arrangement, as for instance for a wedding, which may be what this haiku is about, at least to my mind. Others will find other interpretations for this haiku, as that is what haiku are all about. We leave it to our own imagination to see what we see in the haiku.RichardShare this:
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Our First Anniversary has come and gone and now the time has come for the Consolidation of the Mission & Ultimate Goals of Linear B, Knossos Mycenae (2014-2018)
Our First Anniversary has come and gone and now the time has come for the Consolidation of the Mission & Ultimate Goals of Linear B, Knossos Mycenae (2014-2018). In it first full year (May 2013-May 2014), our Blog has become the premier Linear B blog on the Internet, and for many sound reasons: 1 In our first year, we designed and set up a Lesson Plan at 5 Levels (Levels 1 & 2, Basic), Level 3 (Intermediate) & Levels 4 & 5 (Advanced), which were specifically designed with the needs and tailored to the learning curve of each and every serious new student of Linear B, and of course, a review guide for students and researchers already familiar with Linear B. All the vocabulary we introduced in these Lessons is attributed [A] vocabulary found on extant Linear B tablets. We have not quite finished with Level 5. 2 We introduced our new Theory of the Regressive-Progressive Construction of both Linear B Grammar and Vocabulary, a theory which is elegant in in its simplicity & which we believe is sound, viable and eminently logical to that end. 3 We began reconstructing our all-new Progressive Grammar of Mycenaean Greek in Linear B, by building the first ever all-but complete tables for the indicative active voice of both thematic and athematic verbs in all of these tenses: present, future, imperfect, aorist and perfect. This was merely the first step in our long-term project to reconstruct as much of the corpus of Mycenaean Greek grammar as is feasible and practical. 4 We began translating Book II of the Iliad, which exemplifies the most ancient alphabetical Greek in existence, and hence, serves as our reference point or as we say in French, notre point de repère, for the regressive reconstruction of missing Mycenaean vocabulary in Linear, which we designate as derived [D], as opposed to attributed [A] vocabulary found on extant Linear B tablets. 5 We translated a number of Linear B Tablets, some of them simple, some of them of intermediate difficulty, and a few extremely complex ones, amongst which we count: BM 1910.04 232 (British Museum); Knossos: KNV 684 + Scripta Minoa pg 154: 217 N j 31, 218a KN 07, 222 Nk 224 Nk 06, 231 N k 04, 259 N k 21 & 264 N k 02 + Pylos: AE08, cc665, TA 641-1952 (Ventris) + FL 1994 (Heidelburg: Thomas C. Palaima) + Tosa Pakana (Total number of swords), Attendants & Millworkers tablets
6 We made a few first tentative baby steps into the study of Linear A, which is however not a main goal of this blog, but merely ancillary. 7 We made a few first tentative baby steps into the study of Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, the most ancient Greek script, also Linear, after Linear B, which is a major project of this blog. See more below in the Table Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae: CONSOLIDATION 2014-2015. 8 We began to investigate the 3.5 K + tablets & fragments in Sir Arthur Evan’s Scripta Minoa & soon came to the realization that a massive effort at translating at least 50 % of these must be undertaken, if we are to further our understanding of Linear B beyond the bounds of present-day knowledge. Those were our targets for our first year and 1 month of our Blog, and we met them handsomely. However, up until now, threads of our goals and projects have been posted willy-nilly throughout the blog, and this has now to change, as it is time for us to CONSOLIDATE, and expound in the clearest possible ways the specific distinct goals, projects as well as the overall mission of our Blog throughout the remainder of 2014 and to the end of 2015 at least. Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae: CONSOLIDATION 2014-2015 & Beyond: Click to ENLARGE:
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5 Newly “Deciphered” Ideograms in Linear B: B190, B221, B180, B213 & B218 in that order… This is fun!
5 Newly "Deciphered” Ideograms in Linear B: B190, B221, B180, B213 & B218 in that order: Click to ENLARGE:
Upon minute and scrupulous examination of 5 previously undeciphered Linear B Ideograms, I have been able to conclude (or as some folks might very well say, jump to the conclusions) that the 5 Ideograms I have illustrated with actual pictorial examples here may very well mean what I believe they do, or if not that, closely approximate my guesstimates. Now, here as elsewhere in our blog, whenever I have proposed new decipherments of Linear B ideograms previously considered opaque, I have taken risks. And again, I say, why not? — because if no one else is willing to take such risks, I might as well, especially when and where contextual evidence (either from text on extant tablets or pictorial evidence – as in this case – gives me some room to manoeuvre with.
As for my estimates of the % accuracy of each of the 5 Ideograms, these are all of course, entirely subjective, and any of you reading this blog may very well disagree with some or even all of my estimates. No one is ever "right” when on the threshold of new discoveries or insights into ancient scripts which have been mostly, but not not entirely, "cracked”, as the saying goes.
On a last note, I should like to say that while I do not feel quite as confident about my "decipherments” of B190 (Boars Tusk Helmet) & B221 (Oil Lamp), I feel much more confident of my dual "decipherment” of B180 (Throne) & B213 (Lustral Basin) because, at least to my impressionable mind, these 2 Ideograms look so uncannily like the throne and the lustral basin in the Queen's Megaron as almost to boggle the imagination.
And as for B218, “the one handled-cup similar to Nestor's cup” I am pretty much 100% convinced that I have nailed it.
However, if anyone disagrees with me, however little or however much, please let me know ASAP, because no one gains from a one-sided learning experience.
Comments on this critical post are most welcome!
What with these 5 new attempts at deciphering previously opaque ideograms, this brings the total number of ideograms I have tackled so far in my attempts to decipher them to at least 18. By the autumn of this year, I shall review them all plus any discoveries I chance upon this summer. Keep posted.
Richard
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The Homophone HA, used less often than AI, but equally significant… if not more so!
The Homophone HA, used less often than AI, but equally significant: Click to ENLARGE:
This makes for entertaining reading, though possibly somewhat perplexing to some.
Let no-one be under any illusion that the Linear B homophone HA is any less significant than AI, regardless of the fact that it appears less often in Linear B texts on extant tablets. The homophone HA is not a diphthong! This homophone (HA) takes an enormous leap forward, specifically and exclusively in the Linear B syllabary, by explicitly expressing initial or even internal aspirated A’s. This incredible achievement eclipsed even the ancient Greek alphabet, which, need I remind you, was always written in CAPS (uppercase) alone, and hence, was utterly incapable of expressing any aspirated, let alone, unaspîrated vowels.
"What” I hear you indignantly explain, "Of course, they had aspirated and unaspirated vowels.” Yes, they did. But they never expressed them. Search any ancient alphabetical text in any dialect whatsoever for aspirated or unaspirated vowels, and you search in vain. Search Linear B, and voilà, staring us squarely in the face, is the aspirated A. Astonishing? Perhaps... perhaps not. But what this tells us unequivocally is that the ancient Greeks, even after the appearance of the alphabet, must have pronounced aspirated and unaspirated vowels, because in Mycenaean Greek, the aspirated A is squarely in the syllabary."But”, I hear you exclaim again, "If those Mycenaeans were so smart, why didn’t they also have a homophone for the aspirated E, which pops up all over the place in Medieval manuscripts in Classical Greek?” The answer is that Mycenaean Greek almost certainly had no use for the aspirated E, since all classical Greek words beginning with an aspirated E invariably begin with an aspirated A in Mycenaean Greek, as for instance, Mycenaean "hateros” versus classical Greek "heteros” (well, in most dialects, if not all). In other words, Mycenaean Greek grammar has no homophone for aspirated E, simply because they never used it, nor were they even aware of its existence. Still, the fact remains that, at least where the aspirated A is concerned, Linear B was one step ahead of ancient alphabetical Greek. Both aspirated and unaspirated initial consonants were a feature introduced into written classical Greek alphabet only in the Middle Ages, when monks & other scribes began making extensive use of lower case letters. And, sure enough, along with the aspiration and non-aspiration of initial vowels (most often A, E & U), they also introduced all those other crazy accents we all must now memorize: the acute, grave, circumflex and susbscripted iota, just to make reading ancient Greek wretchedly more complicated. Don’t you wish they had left well enough alone? I often do. But this was not to be, since from the Middle Ages, and especially from the Renaissance on, almost all Occidental languages (Greek & French being two of the worst offenders) used accents liberally. Apparently only the Romans never bothered with accents ... but even here we cannot be sure, as they too wrote only in CAPS (uppercase). Even English, which is the Western language most adverse to accents, always uses them in borrowed words from French, Italian, Spanish etc. So you just can’t win. Once again, amongst the ancient languages, at least as far as I know, Linear B alone was able to explicitly express the initial aspirated A, just as Linear B had the common sense to separate every word on the tablets from the next with a vertical line (|). After that, "something got lost in translation” (so to speak), and for at least 2 millennia, when all of a sudden everyone in the whole world went bonkers for accents. Such are the vagaries of linguistics. Richard
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Review of Homophones in Linear B: the Diphthong AI (the Most Common in Linear B)
Review of Homophones in Linear B: the Diphthong AI (the Most Common in Linear B): Click to ENLARGE:
This post, as the next few following it dealing with homophones in Linear B, is intended for students of Linear B who have already mastered the Basic Syllabograms, and for researchers and others who would just like to review their homophones. I would like to point out that I have no intention of covering all of the homophones, since some of them are so rarely used as to be practically inconsequential, but that I shall focus on these ones alone: AI, HA, PTE, DIPTE, RAI, RIYA, RIYO, SIYA and TIYA, with passing references to SWA & SWI. Our final review of homophones will be concluded well before the end of June 2012.
In the next post, we will be featuring the next most commonly used homophone in Linear B, HA, which was used to express an initial aspirated A.
Richard
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Greece’s economy might be rebounding, but the Parthenon Marbles have yet to return | Elginism
Personally, I am SICK TO DEATH of The British Museum refusing to restore the Parthenon Marbles to the Parthenon. This is one of the most heinous crimes of major theft in all of history, and is utterly inexcusable. What would you think if Sir Arthur Evans had moved all of the Knossos buildings and gorgeous frescoes to the British Museum! Ghastly thought.
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CRITICAL POST: Table 3B: Syllables ending with Consonants in (early) Alphabetical Greek, which Linear B Syllabograms Cannot Account for:
Table 3B: Syllables ending with Consonants in (early) Alphabetical Greek, which Linear B Syllabograms Cannot Account for: Click to ENLARGE:
NOTE! This is the most important post I have ever posted on our Blog to date. So if you are really serious about learning Mycenaean Grammar, you cannot afford not to read it and digest it thoroughly.
With this table (Table 3B), we have finally come to the end of our (occasionally exasperating) adventure in cross-correlating orthographic or spelling “conventions” in Linear B with those of (early) alphabetical Greek, by which I mean preferentially the spelling conventions in The Catalogue of Ships of Book II of the Iliad; failing that, the orthography of Book II of the Iliad; failing that, the orthographic conventions of the Iliad; failing that, of the Odyssey; failing that, of the Arcado-Cypriot dialect, the most ancient Greek dialect (ca. 1100-400 BCE) second only to the Mycenaean (ca. 1500-1200 BCE); and finally, failing that, of early Ionic Greek. The cross-correlation of Linear B spelling conventions with those of early Greek should and indeed, to my mind, must strictly follow the order of precedence I have set out here, for various reasons, not the least of which are:
1. The orthographic conventions of (The Catalogue of Ships in) Book II of the Iliad mirror those of Mycenaean Linear B so closely that at times the correlation is almost uncanny, as for instance, in the ancient Greek genitive singular, which is “oyo” in Linear B and “oio” in Book II of the Iliad – in other words, identical. Other examples of such intimate orthographic correspondences include, but are not limited to, the ancient masculine nouns, whose nominative ending is “eu” in Linear B and “eus” in Book II of the Iliad, leading us to more than reasonably speculate that the Mycenaean Linear B declension of all such nouns must have been all but identical in Mycenaean and early alphabetical Greek (See the entries in Table 3B tagged [7]. Or yet again, we notice that entries [6], namely, the masculine singular nominal and adjectival ending “os”, already prevalent in early alphabetical Greek is represented in Linear B, but with this important distinction: the final S in the alphabetical Greek is missing in the Linear B equivalents, for the obvious reason that Linear B syllabograms cannot end with consonants. And what is true of the masculine is also true of the neuter. The Linear B ending “o” must correspond to the Greek ending “on”. Getting messy, eh?
2.1 IN PRINCIPLE: Restated in general terms and in principle, the nominative singular any and all (early) alphabetical adjectives & nouns, regardless of gender, (almost) always ends with a consonant, whereas naturally in Linear B, this consonant is always missing: See Table 3B [4-7 inclusive]. It is crucial that you master this principle, if you are to truly grasp the several (mostly apparent) distinctions that obtain between nominal and adjectival declensions in Mycenaean Linear B versus early alphabetical Greek.
2.2 IN PRINCIPLE: As we shall soon discover, this principle is universal, and applies to all adjectival and nominal declensions in both the singular and plural in both Mycenaean Linear B and early alphabetical Greek. Failure to fully grasp this principle in its essence will lead to all sorts of misunderstandings and (often egregious) misinterpretations in all nominal and adjectival declensions, regardless of gender and number, in so far as these can be logically and practically reconstructed, either in whole or in part – and, as it unfortunately turns out, almost always in part.
3 NOTE that this scenario, whereby we shall endeavour to the best of our ability, and under severe constraints, to regressively-progressively reconstruct nominal and adjectival declensions for nouns in at least most their cases (rarely all of them) is very much at odds with the conjugations of verbs, both thematic and athematic, with which I have encountered striking success in the reconstruction of the active voice of all of these tenses: present, future, imperfect, aorist and perfect.
STEP 1: The Reconstruction of Mycenaean grammar in Linear B: Conjugations of Verbs:
As a prelude to our gainful attempts to reconstruction adjectival and nominal declensions, I shall first post the complete table of our successful reconstruction of both thematic and athematic verbs in the active voice of all of these tenses: present, future, imperfect, aorist and perfect. The conjugations of participles in Mycenaean Linear B are relatively straight-forward, because we have many examples of these (for good reasons, as we shall eventualy see). We will, however, run into some difficulties with middle and passive verbs,
Step 2: The Reconstruction of Mycenaean grammar in Linear B: Nominal-Adjectival Declensions:
before we move onto the second step in the reconstruction of Mycenaean grammar, nominal-adjectival declensions. I shall thoroughly explain why I have (a) deliberately omitted the other active tenses & (b) why the reconstruction of verbs has proven to be a much greater success than I can ever reasonably expect from my future attempts at reconstructing nominal-adjectival declensions.
And that is still only scratching the surface!
Step 3: The Reconstruction of Mycenaean grammar in Linear B: Prepositions and the Cases they “Govern”:
Wait until we have to deal with prepositions (originally always adverbs) and the cases they “govern”, a misnomer if I ever heard one.
FOR THE REST OF THIS YEAR AND WELL INTO 2015, IT IS MY INTENTION TO RECONSTRUCT AS MUCH OF THE CORPUS OF MYCENAEAN GRAMMAR IN LINEAR B AS IS FEASIBLE, GIVEN THE THEORETICAL, CIRCUMSTANTIAL AND EVIDENTIARY CONSTRAINTS WHICH I HAVE ALREADY STRICTLY IMPOSED UPON MYSELF ACCORDING TO MY NEW THEORY OF THE REGRESSIVE-PROGRESSIVE RECONSTRUCTION OF MYCENEAN GRAMMAR. The same theory is as equally and as totally applicable to the regressive-progressive reconstruction of Mycenaean Linear B vocabulary, but that is another (big!) kettle of fish to fry.
Richard
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Table 3A: Examples of Linear B Spelling Conventions Cross-Correlated with (early) Ancient Alphabetical Greek
Table 3A: Examples of Linear B Spelling Conventions Cross-Correlated with (early) Ancient Alphabetical Greek – Click to ENLARGE:
While most Linear B grammatical, didactic, instructional & research sites propound generally complex “rules” or regulatory tables for the transference of Linear B orthography (through no fault of their own), which is based almost exclusively on syllabograms, each consisting of a consonant + a vowel (with the sole exception of the vowels, which actually do correspond with their Greek alphabetical counterparts, but again with the exception of Linear B E & O, which cannot express short versus long E & O in alphabetical Greek, i.e. epsilon vs. aytay and omicron vs. omega), to my mind, it is simply not necessary to memorize all sorts of often perplexing arcane guidelines, when all we really need to do is illustrate how the single syllabograms in Linear B cross-correlate with their (frequently) multiple variants in early alphabetical Greek (by which I mean, first and foremost, the Homeric Greek in The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad; failing that, the Homeric Greek in Book II of the Iliad; failing that the Homeric Greek of the Iliad in toto; and failing that Arcado-Cypriot Greek. Just learn each of the relatively straight-forward procedures for the transference of Linear B spelling to early Greek alphabetical orthography in Tables 1, 2, 3A & 3B, and you will have it all down pat. Once you have mastered these guidelines, which I have tried to simplify as far as I possibly can (although as we all know by now, nothing in Mycenaean Linear B grammar is simple!), you will be ready to move on to the mastery of the corpus Progressive Mycenaean Linear B grammar which I will be reconstructing for all parts of speech throughout 2014 & 2015, until we have under our belts the first truly comprehensive Mycenaean grammar ever devised since the decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris in 1952. This is the entire raison d’être of this Blog.
What is more, these very same principles of Linear B versus early ancient Greek orthography are equally applicable, and with a level of precision never before attained in any Mycenaean Linear B – early ancient Greek – English Glossary or Vocabulary, when we apply the theory of progressive Linear B Orthography to our English – Linear B – early ancient Greek Lexicon, another massive project which may very well take until 2018 to bring to fruition. As I have repeatedly pointed out before in this blog, our Lexicon, which will be conceived along the lines of Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, is intended to increase the current Linear B Vocabulary of some 2,500 words, phrases and expressions to at least triple that amount, i.e. some 7,500 entries, many of which are attested on the extant tablets, and a large number of which will be derived from entries on the tablets, as well as from The Catalogue of Ships of Book II of the Iliad.
The scope of these undertakings,
(1) the progressive reconstruction of as much of Mycenaean Linear B grammar as is feasible (and that is a lot more than you can imagine);
(2) the progressive reconstruction of as much of Mycenaean Linear B vocabulary as is feasible (and that too is a lot more than you can imagine)
Richard
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Table 2: Comparison of Spelling Conventions in Linear B and Alphabetical Greek
Table 2: Comparison of Spelling Conventions in Linear B and Alphabetical Greek – Click to ENLARGE:
As you will quickly enough appreciate from studying Table 2, Comparison of Spelling Conventions in Linear B and Alphabetical Greek, the Linear B syllabary sometimes has a tough time representing exactly the Greek vowels and consonants they are supposed to be (exactly but not always!) equivalent to. This is particularly true for:
(a) the vowels E & O, which are both short and long (epsilon in the Table) and long (aytay in the Table in alphabetical Greek & o micron (short) & o mega (long) (See the 2 variants on each of these vowels in Greek in Table 2 above) can only be represented by 1 single vowel syllabogram for the same vowels, i.e. E & O, in Linear B. (See also the same Table).
(b) the situation seems considerably more complicated with the alphabetical Greek consonants, but the appearance of complexity is just that, merely apparent.
By studying the Table above (Table 2), it should dawn on you soon enough that the Linear B syllabograms in the KA, PA, RA, QE & TA series are forced to represent both alphabetical Greek variants on the vowels each of them contains, since once again, Linear B is unable to distinguish between a short vowel and a long vowel following the initial consonant in each one of these series.
(c) In the next post, we will provide ample illustrations of these principles of spelling conventions in Linear cross-correlated with their equivalent spelling conventions in (early) alphabetical Greek.
NOTE: When we eventually come around to analyzing the Syllabary of Arcado-Cypriot (the Greek dialect resembling the Mycenaean Greek dialect to a striking degree), we will discover that in fact the Syllabary for Arcado-Cypriot, known as Linear C, suffers from precisely the same deficiencies as Linear B, which in turn establishes and confirms the principle that no syllabary can substitute fully adequately for the Greek alphabet, although I must stress that both Linear B & Linear C are able to account for a great many (though certainly not all) of the peculiarities of the Greek alphabet. What is truly important to keep in mind is that a syllabary, in which all 5 vowels have already been accounted for, and in which the consonants (so to speak) are all immediately followed by any one of the vowels, is the very last step in evolution from hieroglyphic through to ideographic and logographic systems before the actual appearance of the (earliest form of) the ancient Greek alphabet. In other words, the evolution from hieroglyphic systems such as ancient Egyptian all the way right on through to the Greek alphabet, the culmination of 1,000s of years of evolution, looks something like this:
hieroglyphics -› ideograms -› logograms -› syllabary -› alphabet
in which only the last two systems, the syllabaries, represented by Linear A, Linear B & Linear C, and the Greek alphabet, contain all of the vowels. This is of the greatest significance in the understanding of the geometric economy of both syllabaries and alphabets, explaining why syllabaries consist of far fewer characters (generally no more than about 80-90 syllabograms, not counting logogams and ideograms, which are merely remnants of the previous systems) than any previous stage(s)in the evolution of ancient writing systems, and why alphabets consist of even fewer characters (only 24 in the classical Attic Ancient alphabet, and never more than 30 in the earliest Greek alphabets).
Richard
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Mycenaean Linear B Spelling Conventions: Obligatory Prelude to the Progressive Reconstruction of Mycenaean Greek Grammar
Mycenaean Linear B Spelling Conventions: Obligatory Prelude to the Progressive Reconstruction of Mycenaean Greek Grammar – Click to ENLARGE:
I must emphasize in no uncertain terms that it is practically impossible to master Mycenaean Greek grammar unless you have first mastered all the spelling conventions in Linear B, as these directly correspond, whether directly or elliptically (the latter case obtains far more often than the former) to those of ancient Homeric Greek. Not doing so is bound to entangle you in a hopeless mish-mash or maze of spelling discrepancies between Linear B and alphabetical Greek, most of which will seem utterly incomprehensible to you, and worse yet, make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for you to translate with any degree of fidelity the contents of almost all Linear B tablets, with the possible exception of the very simplest. So if you are as serious about learning Mycenaean Greek grammar in Linear B as I am in progressively reconstructing it from the ground up (as I have already done with the present, future, imperfect, aorist and perfect tenses of active voice of both thematic and athematic verbs), then you really have no choice but to master these conventions, even if you must memorize them as rules. Students who are already familiar with the spelling conventions of alphabetic ancient Greek should have little trouble mastering the subtleties of the Tables of Correspondences in Spelling Conventions in Linear B and Alphabetical Greek, beginning with Table 1 above. Those of you who are learning Mycenaean Greek grammar from scratch will have little choice but to memorize the correspondences, and to at least recognize at first sight the corresponding spelling conventions in ancient alphabetic Greek. And for that you will need to learn the Greek alphabet, as illustrated here – Click to ENLARGE:
Please note that the pronunciation of the ancient Greek alphabet (here in its Attic version) is only approximate, since we do not really know how the ancients precisely pronounced Greek, although our estimation of their pronunciation is probably reasonably accurate. It is crucial to understand that the pronunciation of Mycenaean Greek (the earliest East Greek dialect) is beyond our grasp, although we do know that it evolved at a steady pace through the pronunciation of Arcado-Cypriot, which was also written in a syllabary (Linear C) with a nearly identical pronunciation, and onto the pronunciation conceivably used by the Aecheans or Danians, as found primarily in the Catalogue of Ships of Book II of the Iliad. This then evolved into the later Ionic pronunciation, culminating in the Attic dialect, which in turn was to become the universal standard koine or common Greek for Greek pronunciation in the Hellenic era (ca. 400-200 BCE). To anyone familiar with the melody of Attic Greek, various academic notions of Homeric Greek pronunciation are bound to sound very peculiar indeed. Nevertheless, any of the 3 or 4 interpretive variants on the sound of Homeric are still easily mastered by people familiar with Attic Greek. The difficulty then lies in the question: just how far had the pronunciation of proto-Ionic Greek evolved from its Mycenaean source in around 1500-1200 BCE to the Homeric ca. 800 BCE or thereabouts. No-one really knows, nor will we ever know. But we can certainly take a stab at it. And I for one eventually intend to do just that.
Richard Share this:
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Haiku – The Fall of Mycenae: Mycenae a sea of blood
Haiku – The Fall of Mycenae: Mycenae a sea of blood - Click to ENLARGE:
We do not know the actual circumstances of the fall of Mycenae, but we can well imagine the massive destruction of the great citadel, and the sea of blood that must have poured though it as 1,000s of citizens were mercilessly slaughtered – hence the massive spill of blood into the Aegean Sea. Reminds one of the fall of Troy.
Note that I am using the archaic Homeric genitive ending in OIO.Richard
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Linear B Show & Tell # 4: Amphora Decorated with Spirals
Linear B Show & Tell # 4: Amphora Decorated with Spirals (Click to ENLARGE):
Anyone who is at all familiar with Minoan-Mycenaean architectural, fresco and pottery designs knows fully well that the Minoans and Mycenaeans were quite crazy about spirals in their beautiful designs, which proliferate above all else on their exquisite pottery: pithoi (huge storage jars, as seen at Knossos, used to store olive oil and many other commodities), amphorae, vases, jars, bowls, drinking vessels, you name it.
Here is a composite of more exquisite examples + the word for “cup” (Click to ENLARGE):
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Significance of the Statistical Frequency of Syllabograms in % according to Michael Ventris (1952)
Significance of the Statistical Frequency of Syllabograms in % according to Michael Ventris (1952) Michael Ventris was on to much more than even he imagined when he began to unravel the mysteries of the Linear B script by the spring of 1952, when he constructed the following table, in which he extrapolated the statistical frequency in percentage (%) of most of the syllabograms [Click to ENLARGE]:
What he didn't realize then, and what has become not only apparent but of paramount importance to myself and, I sincerely hope, to other researchers in the field of Linear B today is that most of the syllabograms with high or moderate frequencies (in %) play an enormous role in the progressive-regressive reconstruction of Mycenaean grammar and vocabulary alike. I cannot stress this point too much.
Some syllabograms, in fact, play such a decisive role in the grammar and vocabulary of Mycenaean Greek that they cannot be safely ignored in the reconstruction of the language. Of these, for the time being, the most significant for our purposes are, above all, JO (genitive sing. masc. & neut. adjs. & nouns) and SI (dative plural & endings for several forms of verb conjugations, as well as U (nom. sing. masc. nouns), YA (fem. sing. nom. & gen. adjs. & nouns), TA (fem. sing. nom. & neut. pl. nom.) and TE (verb conjugations).
Keep posted for our analyses of the contextual significance of each of these syllabograms in turn, beginning with the 2 most relevant to the reconstruction of both Mycenaean grammar & vocabulary, i.e. JO & SI.
We shall address the rest of the high and moderate frequency syllabograms late this year.
Richard
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First and Second Persons Singular of Athematic Verbs Fully Restored in Mycenaean Linear B!
First and Second Persons Singular of Athematic Verbs Fully Restored in Mycenaean Linear B! While sitting out on my patio sipping tea this afternoon for the first time this spring, I was astonished to discover that the archaic second person singular of Athematic verbs ended in in “si”, while the third person singular ended in “ti”, in other words, in a syllable, the second person singular ending having precisely the same value as the Linear B syllabogram SI & the third person singular ending having precisely the same value as the Linear B syllabogram TI, as illustrated here (Click to ENLARGE):
To my mind, this is a significant step forward in the genesis of a comprehensive Mycenaean Greek grammar, lending further weight to my hypothesis that archaic Greek conjugations seem to be virtually identical to their Mycenaean forerunners. But there is even more to this than first meets the eye. This is no mere happenstance. It confirms almost beyond a shadow of a doubt that certain verb conjugations and adjectival/nominal declensions in archaic (or Homeric) Greek were (almost) exactly the same as their predecessors in Mycenaean Greek some 400-700 years earlier. And the more archaic the alphabetic Greek grammatical form, the more likely it is that it will be (almost) identical to its Mycenaean “ancestor”.
This raises the appurtenant question whether Mycenaean Greek is all that different from archaic Greek, and even whether they are one and the same dialect, the latter being a later avatar of the former. A striking parallel is found in the proximity of Ionic Greek with Attic, even though the former dates to ca. 800 – 700 BCE, somewhat earlier the latter, ca. 600 BCE – 450 BCE. One could possibly even make a case for a historical (quasi-) linear continuity right on through from the Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot dialects, to the early Ionic Greek we find in Homer, to Attic, Hellenic and, finally the “koine” Greek of the New Testament. In other words, the timeline from Mycenaean Greek to the “koine” Greek of the New Testament may indeed constitute a continuum in the evolution of the Greek language. Given that modern Greek is the “terminus post quem” of “koine” Greek, one might even hypothesize that modern Greek is the “final” stage in the evolution of East Greek dialects from Mycenaean Greek to the present (ca. 1500 BCE – 2014 AD), i.e. some 3,500 years. Of course, while all this is, at least tentatively, pure speculation on my part, you have to wonder why the conjugation of “didomi” in Mycenaean Greek is so astonishingly similar to the “koine” conjugation of the New Testament, some 1,600 years in the future (Click to ENLARGE):
If confirmed, my hypothesis would be a real revelation! It would at least appear that Mycenaean Greek grammar changed very little over the 400 years after the fall of Mycenae itself in 1200 BCE to the first appearance of archaic alphabetical Greek around 800 BCE. If this is the case, it follows that we will be able to reconstruct a good deal more Mycenaean Greek grammar in Linear B than I had first imagined possible. However, a word of warning! I must test this hypothesis over and over with practical applications (paradigms) for as many categories of Mycenaean grammar as I can possibly survey and reconstruct, including above all else verb conjugations and nominal and adjectival declensions. If the results turn out to be as I presently project them in my busy-bee mind, the implications and ramifications for a truly comprehensive reconstructed grammar will be enormous, if not revolutionary. If nothing else, we may discover that there is a far greater affinity between grammar behind the Linear B syllabary and and that of archaic alphabetical Greek than we ever imagined to date.
On the other hand, the affinity may be weaker than I imagine, hence, probably invalid.
It will take me at least a year to carry this hypothesis to its “logical” outcome. In the meantime, I shall have to completely revise the complete conjugational tables for Athematic Verbs (present, future, imperfect, first & second aorist and perfect) I previously posted. These necessary revisions will affect both the Athematic conjugational tables and at least some of the text of that post.
Richard
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A Definitive Lexicon of Linear B? Is this even remotely possible?
A Definitive Lexicon of Linear B? Is this even remotely possible? STEP 1: Determining Attributed Absolute (Aab) Mycenaean Vocabulary from later Greek Dialects: Lest anyone suppose that even this first step towards constructing a Definitive Lexicon of Linear B, or even anything approaching it, is “obviously a cinch”, allow me to disenchant yourselves of such an assumption, as can clearly be confirmed from the several tenets I am bound to observe, which I have expostulated in detail below. This of course necessarily implies that even the apparently “simple” step of reliably verifying the authenticity of Attributed Absolute (Aab) Mycenaean words is open to all sorts of pitfalls. It is for this highly germane reason that I find myself insisting on checking and if needs be, double-checking the incidence of Attributed Absolute Mycenaean words according to the strict procedure I shall outline beneath the actual Table of Attributed Absolute Mycenaean Vocabulary. See below. But what on earth is the distinction between “Attributed Absolute” as opposed to merely “Attributed” Mycenaean vocabulary actually found on the thousands of extant Linear B tablets? The distinction is subtle yet, from a linguistic perspective, demonstrable, and it is this: any “Attributed Absolute” (Aab) Mycenaean word must be spelled (almost) the same as its alphabetical Greek dialectical counterpart to warrant this label. Unfortunately, the spelling of the vast majority of Attributed Mycenaean words either diverges somewhat or greatly from that of any relevant ancient Greek dialect as to make the correlation all that more difficult. And this of course all comes back to one of the most glaring characteristics of the Linear B syllabary, namely, that its syllabograms rarely correspond accurately to any alphabetical ancient Greek dialect, with the result that one sometimes cannot be sure at all whether the Linear B spelling of the Mycenaean word, even when Attributed, corresponds to only one Greek word, or in some cases, to 2 or even more possible alternatives. Some, though certainly not all, of the Linear B syllabary is rather poorly suited to writing ancient Greek, for the simple reason that it was adapted practically lock stock and barrel from the Linear A syllabary, which was used to (almost certainly accurately) represent the vocalic values of an unknown, undeciphered language, conveniently labeled “Minoan”, which simply has no relationship whatsoever to Greek (as far as we know). That is one big problem... much more on this later. From: MYCENAEAN (Linear B) — ENGLISH Glossary = linearb.pdf (widely available on the Internet) Click to ENLARGE:
As can be readily ascertained from the Table of Attributed Absolute Mycenaean words I have compiled in Linear B below, the only words I have listed in this Table are those whose spelling is (almost) exactly the same as the spelling of the same words in certain ancient alphabetical Greek dialects, prioritized according to these specific criteria from the most reliable original Greek text(s) or sources to the least reliable, as follows:
EXTREMELY RELIABLE:
1 The Catalogue of Ships (lines 4... ) in Book II of the Iliad;
2 The rest of Book II of the Iliad;
3 Any text written in Linear C, used exclusively in the Arcado-Cypriot dialect of ancient Greek, especially the famous Idalion Tablet, given that the Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot dialects are extremely close;
VERY RELIABLE:
4 Any text written in the Arcadian & Aeolic or other East Greek dialects of ancient Greek, and there are plenty of those (all in alphabetical Greek);
5. Any vocabulary from Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon (1986 edition), since Liddell & Scott takes into account many dialectal variants of ancient Greek words, including Aeolic, Arcadian etc, except of course the Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot Greek dialects, since texts in these 2 dialects are written in Linear B & Linear C, cousin syllabaries, which an alphabetical Greek dictionary, however comprehensive, cannot take into account.
RELIABLE (up to a certain point):
6 Any text written in any East Greek dialect of ancient Greek, especially the Ionic and Attic Dialects, which are the tried and true descendants of Mycenaean and/or Arcado-Cypriot Greek. There is so much literature in Ionic and Attic Greek as to make this task an extremely easy one. However, I must remind you that vocabulary in Ionic or Attic Greek is (sometimes significantly) less reliable than vocabulary in either the Mycenaean or Arcado-Cypriot Greek dialects, as the latter are far more ancient than the former. In other words, given the choice of sources for truly reliable confirmation that any Attributed Absolute word(s), ie vocabulary actually found on Linear B tablets is in fact almost beyond a shadow of a doubt as close to absolutely authenticated, we should have far more confidence in options 1 to 4 above than in any vocabulary in Ionic or Attic Greek, for which there abound tens of thousands of examples.
Source: The Greek Dialects, by C.D. Buck, Bristol Classical Press, © 1955, 373 pp., pages 141-154
WARNING! ABSOLUTELY UNRELIABLE:
Any attempt to verify the authenticity of any Mycenaean Greek Attributed vocabulary or word from any West Greek dialect, is almost certainly invalid, since all West Greek dialects (Doric itself, Northwest Greek, Argolic, Corinthian, Rhodian, Cretan etc. etc.) are cousins of the Doric dialect, which did not enter into the equation until after the fall of Mycenae around 1200 BCE. I do not categorically rule out the possibility that some attributed Mycenaean words might be derived from one of the West Greek dialects, but I myself will never resort to using any of these dialects as firm confirmation of the authenticity of any attributed Mycenaean Greek word, since that would simply invalidate my procedure, which I am not prepared to do.
Source: The Greek Dialects, by C.D. Buck, Bristol Classical Press, © 1955, 373 pp., pages 141-154-171 NOTE: there a lot more West Greek dialects than East Greek, so we must exercise extreme caution.)
On a final note, the Attributed Absolute Mycenaean words as derived here from the MYCENAEAN (Linear B) — ENGLISH Glossary are far from constituting a complete survey, since they do not take into account the much larger vocabulary in the significantly more reliable, A Companion to Linear B, Mycenaean Greek Texts and their World (Bibliothèque des cahiers de l'Insitut Louvain), also available in .pdf format on the Internet. It will take me considerably more time to ferret out the Attributed Absolute Mycenaean Linear B words from that magnum opus, which is 220 pages long! Only when I have compiled a complete list of Attributed Absolute Mycenaean Linear B words from both of these sources will we have even begun to construct a truly comprehensive Lexicon of the Mycenaean Linear B Vocabulary, both attested and derived.
Such a Lexicon is bound to run to at least 5,000 words, a vast improvement on the vocabulary in any currently available Mycenaean Linear B – English glossary. Moreover, our Lexicon of the Mycenaean Linear B Vocabulary will catalogue the vocabulary in two sections, Mycenaean Linear B – English & English – Mycenaean Linear B, a project the likes of which has never been attempted to date. I intend to rectify this lacuna, but this is a huge undertaking, which is bound to take me at least 2 years. since this task is to be realized in conjunction with the equally daunting exercise of reconstructing as much of the (lost) corpus of Mycenaean Greek grammar as I possibly can. All this together is bound to take me as long as 3-4 years, i.e. until 2018.
The next post on this subject will deal with “Attributed Contextual” (Aco) Mycenaean vocabulary, which is almost as reliable as “Attributed Absolute” (Aab) vocabulary.
Richard
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