Tag: homophones

Prospectus on my Presentation, “The Rôle of Supersyllbograms in Mycenaean Linear B”, exactly one month from today, at the Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, just outside of Warsaw, Poland, June 30-July 2

Prospectus on my Presentation, “The Rôle of Supersyllbograms in Mycenaean Linear B”, exactly one month from today.


aka Surcharged Adjuncts, to be held at the Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, just outside of Warsaw, Poland, June 30-July 2,





sponsored by the Department of Classics of the University of Warsaw and by the Association of Historical Studies, Koryvantes (Athens), with particular acknowledgement of the superb research Marie Louise Nosch in the domain of textiles in Mycenaean Linear B, whom I have cited 12 times in the bibliography of the paper. See Section A, page 4, July 1, 2015



Richard

Now on academia.edu: References, Notes & Bibliography for the Presentation, “The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B”

Has just been uploaded as my second research paper at (click to VISIT):



Comments, observations and criticisms welcome here at Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae and on my academia.edu pages.

The next paper I upload to academia.edu will deal specifically with the Gezer Algricultural Almanac in Paleo-Hebrew and its translation into Mycenaean Linear B.[


Richard

Bibliography (Part A: citations 1-69) for the Presentation, The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, by Richard Vallance Janke at the Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, Pultusk, Poland, June 30-July 2 2015

Bibliography (Part A: citations 1-69) for the Presentation, The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, by Richard Vallance Janke at the Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, Pultusk, Poland, June 30-July 2 2015 



NOTES

1. The following abbreviations are always used for the sources they represent:

AJA		American Journal of Archaeology
ANCL		L’Antiquité classique
ASSC		Actes del XV Simposi de la Secció Catalana de la S.E.E.C.
BCH		Bulletin de correspondance hellénique
CAMB		Proceedings of the Cambridge Colloquium on Mycenaean Studies.
		Palmer, R.L. & Chadwick, John, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University
		Press, © 1966. First paperback edition, © 2011. vii, 309 pp.
		ISBN 978-1-107-40246-1 (pbk.)
CMLB		Duhoux, Yves and Morpurgo Davies, Anna, eds. A Companion to
                Linear B: Mycenaean Greek Texts and their World. Vol. I.
                (Bibliotheque des Cahiers de l’Institut de Linguistique de
                Louvain 120). Louvaine-la-Neuve, France: Peeters, © 2014.
                292 pp.	ISBN 978-2-7584-0192-6 (France)
CRAN		Creta Antica		
CRR      	Colloquium Romanum: atti del XII colloquio internazionale di
		micenologia, Roma, 20 - 25 febbraio 2006
ECR     	Economic History Review
JHS      	Journal of Hellenic Studies	
KADM            Kadmos: Zeitschrift für Vor- und Frühgriechische Epigraphik
KOSM            Kosmos: Proceedings of the 13th. International Aegean Conference/
                13e Rencontre égéenne internationale. University of Copenhagen,
                Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research,
	        21-26 April 2010. Leuven-Liège: Peeters. Ix, 807+ pp. © 2012
KTMA   	        KTEMA, civilisations de l’orient, de la Grèce et de Rome antique.
	        Strasbourg: Université Marc Bloch de Strasbourg, Centre de
                recherches sur le proche orient et la Grèce antiques
MIN       	Minos: Revista de Filología Egea. ISSN: 0544-3733 	
MINR 		Minerva: Revista de Filología Clasíca
MYCAa		Risch, E. & Mühlestein, H., eds. Colloquium Mycenaeum. Actes du
		sixième colloque international sur les textes mycéniens et égéens
		tenu à Chaumont sur Neuchâtel du 7 au 13 septembre 1975, Neuchâtel.
		Genève : Librairie Droz. © 1979
MYCAb           Olivier J.-P., éd. Mykenaïka: Actes du IXe Colloque international
                sur les textes mycéniens et égéens, organisé par le Centre de
                l’Antiquité Grecque et Romaine de la Fondation Hellénique de
                l’École française d’Athènes (sic) (Athènes, 2-6 octobre 1990).
		Paris: BCH, Suppl. 25. © 1992
MYCAc 	        Carlier, P., de Lamberterie, C., et al. Etudes Mycéniennes 2010.
		Actes du XIIIè colloque	international sur les textes égéens,
                Sèvres,	Paris, Nanterre, 20–23 septembre 2010. Pisa et Roma,
                © 2012
OPUS		Opuscula, Annual of the Swedish Institutes at Athens and Rome
PALM		Palmer, L. R. The Interpretation of Mycenaean Texts. Oxford: Oxford
		University Press, © 1963. Special Edition for Sandpiper Books Ltd.,
		© 1998. xiii, 488 pp. ISBN 0-19-813144-5
PASR		Pasiphae: Rivista di filologia e antichità egee
REVC		Revista del Departament de Ciències de l’Antiguitat de
                l’Edat Mitjana  
SMEA		Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici  

2. Bibliographic Conventions for References & Notes and the Bibliography:

2.1 Monographs follow this convention:
Author(s) or Editor(s) -surname, first name-. Title. Place of publication: Publisher. no. of pages. © year of publication. ISBN(s) (if any. Books prior to 1965 do not have ISBNs)
2.2 Serials and Journals follow this convention:
Author(s) -surname, first name-. “Article Title”, pp. aa-bb (if any) in Journal Title. Vol. no., (issue no., if any), month (if any), year
2.3 Conventions and Colloquiums follow this convention, as far as possible, depending on the amount of bibliographical data provided:
Author(s) or Editor(s) -surname, first name-. Title. Place of publication: Publisher. no. of pages. © year of publication. ISBN(s) (if any. Books prior to 1965 do not have ISBNs) 
2.4 If the same author(s) or editor(s) with exact same title is/are cited a second time, or more than twice, each entry subsequent to the first one is tagged, Op. Cit. = opero citato, Latin for “in the work already cited”
2.5 If the same author(s) or editor(s) is/are cited under a title different from the first one or in a previous identical title or reference not immediately preceding the current one , each entry subsequent to the first one is tagged, Ibid. = Latin adverb ibidem, approximately equivalent to the English “by the same author(s) or editor(s) ”.
2.6 Monographs and articles, for which I have been unable to find sufficient bibliographical date are tagged (PDF) and may be downloaded in PDF format.
2.7 If there are more than two (2) or (3) Author(s) or Editor(s) for any given entry, the first two are named, followed by the tag, et al. = et alii, Latin for “and others”. 
2.8 If there is any error in any entry, orthographic or other, it is followed by the tag (sic) Latin for “thus”. 

Bibliography:

1. Alberti, M.E. “The Minoan Textile Industry and the Territory from Neopalatial to Mycenaean Times: Some First Thoughts”, pp. 243-263 in CRAN, Vol. 8, 2007 

2. Aravantinos, V.L., Godart Louis & Sacconi, A. Thebes. Fouilles de la Cadmee I. Les tablettes en lineaire B de la Odos Pelopidou. Édition et commentaire. Pisa and Rome: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, © 2005. xii, 339 pp.
ISBN 88-8147-421-2.(hb) & ISBN 88-8147-434-4 (pbk.)

3. Barber E. J. W. Prehistoric Textiles. The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean. Princeton: Princeton University Press © 1991. 504 pp. ISBN-10: 069100224X & 13: 978-0691002248

4. Bernabé, A. & Luján, Eugenio R. “Mycenaean technology” pp. 201-233 in CMLB. (n.d.) undated. PDF 

5. Bennett E. L. Jr. “A Selection of Pylos Tablets Texts”, pp. 103-127 in Olivier Jean.-Paul, ed. MYCAb. Paris: BCH (Suppl. 25), 1992

6. Ibid. “The Structure of the Linear B Administration at Knossos”, pp. 231-249 in AJA. Vol. 94, no. 2, April 1990

7. Bennet, John. “ ‘Collectors’ or  ‘Owners’, An Examination of their Possible Functions Within the Palatial Economy of LM III Crete”, pp. 65-101 in Oliver, Jean-Pierre, ed. BCH (Supplément XXV). ISSN 0304-2456  

8. Ibid. “Knossos in Context: Comparative Perspectives on the Linear B Administration of LM II-III Crete”, pp. 193-211 in AJA. Vol. 89, no. 2, April 1985

9. Ibid. “Space Through Time: Diachronic Perspectives on the Spatial Organization of the Pylian State”, pp. 587-602. Plates LXIX-LXXI. PDF (bibliographic information lacking) 

10. Bennett, E.L. “The Landholders of Pylos”, pp. 103-133 in AJA. Vol. 60, 1956

11. Ibid. “The Olive Oil Tablets of Pylos. Texts of Inscriptions Found”, in MIN. Supp. 2, 1955

12. Ibid. The Pylos Tablets: A Preliminary Transcription. Princeton: Princeton University Press. xii, 117 pp. © 1951
 
13. Ibid. The Pylos Tablets: Texts of the Inscriptions Found, 1939-1954. London: Institute of Classical Studies. xxxiii, 252 pp. © 1955 

14. Bennett, E.L. & Olivier, Jean-Paul. “The Pylos Tablets Transcribed”, in Incunabula Graeca. Vol L1. Roma: Edizioni Dell’Ateneo. Moulos. Vol. 63, 1973 

15. Bennett E. L. Jr., Driessen J. M., et al. “436 raccords et quasi-raccords de fragments inédits”, pp. 199-242 dans KT 5, MIN. Vol 24, 1989

16. Bernabé, A. & Luján. Eugenio R. “Mycenaean Technology”, pp. 201-233 in CLMB

17. Bunimovitz, S. “Minoan-Mycenaean Olive Oil Production and Trade: A Review of the Current Research”, pp. 11-15 in Eitam, D., ed. Olive Oil in Antiquity: Israel and Neighboring Countries from Neolith (sic) to Early Arab Period. Haifa: University of Haifa. © 1987

18. Burke, B. 2010. From Minos to Midas: Ancient Cloth Production in the Aegean and in Anatolia. (Ancient Textiles Series, Vol. 7). Oxford: Oxbow Books. © 2010.
240 pp. ISBN: 9781842174067 

19. Carington-Smith, J. Weaving, Spinning and Textile Production in Greece: The Neolithic to Bronze Age. Australia: University of Tasmania.
(Ph.D. Dissertation) © 1975

20. Chadwick, John,  Killen, John T. & Olivier, Jean Paul. The Knossos Tablets.
4th ed. London: Cambridge University Press. © 1971. 486 pp. ISBN-10: 0521080851 & 13: 978-0521080859

21. Chadwick John. “Pylos Tablet Un 1322”, pp. 19-26 in Bennett E. L. Jr., ed. Mycenaean Studies. Proceedings of the Third International Colloquium for Mycenaean Studies Held at ‘Wingspread’, 4 -8 September 1961. Madison, Wisc. © 1964  

22. Davies, Lyn. A is for Ox: A short history of the alphabet. London: The Folio Society. 127 pp. © 2006. no ISBN  

23. Del Freo, Maurizio & Rougemont, Françoise. “Observations sur la série Of de Thèbes”, pp. 263-280. PDF (bibliographic information lacking)

24. Del Freo, Maurizio, Nosch Marie-Louise & Rougemont Françoise. “17. The Terminology of Textiles in the Linear B Tablets, including Some Considerations on Linear A Logograms and Abbreviations”, pp. 338-373 in Michel, C., Nosch Marie-Louise, eds. Textile Terminologies in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean from the Third to the First Millennia BC. Oxford: Oxbow Books. (Ancient Textile Series, Vol. 8). Oxford: Oxbow Books. ©  2010. xix, 444 pp. ISBN: 978-1-84217-975-8

25. Demsky, Aaron. Jacob’s Herds in Light of Ancient Near Eastern Sources. n.d. (undated). PDF (bibliographic information lacking) 

26. Driessen, Jan. “The Arsenal of Knossos (Crete) and Mycenaean Chariot Forces” pp. 481-498 in Acta Archaeologica Anensia. Monographiae 8, 1995, in Lodewijckx, Marc, ed. Archaeological and Historical Aspects of West-European Societies. Album Amicorum André van Doorselaer. Leuven: Leuven University Press, © 1996

27. Driessen, Jan, et al. “107 raccords et quasi-raccords dans CoMIK 1 et II”, in BCH, Vol. 112, 1988

28. Duhoux, Y.  Aspects du vocabulaire économique mycénien (cadastre – artisanat – fiscalité). Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert © 1976. 202 pp.
ISBN-10: 9025607128 & 13: 978-9025607128

29. Ibid. “Idéogrammes textiles du Linéaire B *146, *160, *165, et *166”, pp. 116-132 in MIN, Vol. 15, 1974

30. Duhoux, Y. “Mycenaean anthology”, pp. 243-393 in CMLB. Vol. I, no pagination.

31. Feinman, G.M. “Crafts, Specialists, and Markets in Mycenaean Greece. Re-envisioning Ancient Economies: Beyond Typological Constructs.” pp. 453-459 in AJA, Vol. 117, no. 3, 2013

32. Fine, John V.A. “The Early Aegean World”, pp. 1-23 in, Ibid. The Ancient Greeks: a Critical History. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ix, 720 pp. © 1983. ISBN 0-674-03314-0 (pbk.)

33. Finley, M.I. “The Mycenaean Tablets and Economic History”, pp. 128-141 in ECR. Vol. 10, 1957

34. Firth, R.J. “Re-considering Alum on the Linear B Tablets”, in Gillis, C. & Nosch Marie-Louise. Ancient Textiles: Production, Craft and Society: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Ancient Textiles, held at Lund, Sweden, and Copenhagen, Denmark, on March 19-23, 2003. Oxford: Oxbow Books. © 2007. 288 pp. ISBN-10: 1842172026 & 13: 978-1842172025

35. Firth, R.J. & Nosch Marie-Louise. “Scribe 103 and the Mycenaean Textile Industry at Knossos: The Lc(1) and Od(1)-Sets”, in MIN, Vol. 37-38, 2002-2003
  
36. Foster, E.D. “The Flax Impost at Pylos and Mycenaean Landholding”, pp. 549-560 in Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. Vol. 20, no. 6, 2011. ISSN 0939-6314
& e-ISSN 1617-6278

37. Foxhall, L. “Cargoes of the Heart's Desire: The Character of Trade in the Archaic Mediterranean World”, pp. 295-309 in Fisher, N. & Van Wees, H. eds. Archaic Greece, New Approaches and New Evidence. Duckworth: The Classical Press of Wales.
© 1998, reprint © 2008. 464 pp. ISBN 0715628097 & 978-0715628096 

38. García, Carlos Varias. “Festes i banquets a la Grièga antiga: orígens d’una tradició ininterrompuda”, pp. 517-532 in, Danés, J. et al. Estudis Clàssics: Imposició, Apologiao o Sedducció? Llieda, 21-23 octubre de 2005. © 2005
ISBN 678-84-690-9931-5

39. Ibid. “Industria y comercio en la sociedad Micénica”, pp. 11-37 in MINR, Número 16, 2002-2003

40. Ibid. La Metodología actual en el Estudio de los Textos micénicos: un Ejemplo práctico. pp. 353-365. PDF (bibliographic information lacking)

41. Ibid. “Observaciones sobre algunos textos gastronómicos de Micenas”, pp. 831-842 in, Aldama, Javier Alonso, et. al., eds. Stij a0mmoudiej tou Omhrou. Homenaje a la Professora Olga Omatos. Spain: Universidad del País Vasco. © n.d. (undated)

42. Ibid. “Un texto micénico singular sobre la industria textil de Cnoso: la tabilla Kn LN 1568”, pp. 442-446 in Zaragoza, Joana; Senmartí, Antoni González, edd. Homatge a Josep Alsina. Actes del Xè Simposi de la Secció Catalana de la SEEC. Tarragona, 28 a 30 de novembre 1990 

43. Godart Louis, Killen John T., et al. “43 raccords et quasi-raccords de fragments”, pp. 377-389, dans le volume I du Corpus of Mycenaean Inscriptions from Knossos. BCH, Vol. 110, 1986 

44. Ibid. “501 raccords et quasi-raccords de fragments dans les tablettes de Cnossos post KT-V”, pp. 373-410. PDF (bibliographic information lacking)

45. Greco, Allesandro. “Omologazione, integrazione, sostituzione: le procedure di  aggiornamento dei documenti inerenti alle greggi del palazzo di Cnoso (Standardization, Integration, Replacement: Procedure for Updating the Documents Pertaining to Knossos Flocks)”, pp. 217-246 in CRAN. (Centro di Archeologia Cretese, Università di Catania). Vol. 2., 2002

46. Ibid. Scribi et Pastori, Amministrazione et gestione nell’archivio di Cnosso. Athens: SAIA (Italian Archaeological School of Athens), Series: Tripodes (Archeologia Antropologica Storia). © 2011. iii, 732pp. ISBN: 978-960-98397-7-8

47. Gregersen, Marie Louise Bech. “Craftsmen in the Linear B Archives”, pp. 43-55 in Gillis, Carole, Risberg, Christian & Sjöberg, Birgitta, eds. Trade and Production in Premonetary Greece. Proceedings of the 4th. and 5th. International Workshops, Athens, 1994 and 1995. Paul Åströms förlag, © 1997

48. Gulizio, Joann. Mycenaean Religion at Knossos. Austin: University of Texas at Austin. (Phd. Thesis), August, 2011.
This dissertation addresses methodological issues in the archaeological and textual evidence for religion in Knossos (LM II-LM IIIB1). The economic focus of Linear B tablets means that there is limited information about religion. It is difficult to assess archaeological evidence for phases of cult practice at Knossos in light of the time line of palace administration. Thus archaeological and textual evidence appears in two temporal phases, allowing for a more accurate assessment of the evolution of religious beliefs and practices in the late Bronze Age culture of Knossos. While earlier Minoan shrines persist, they are incorporated into the pantheon of the new Indo-European deities at Knossos introduced by the newly-established Greek elite. Eventually, the epithets of several Minoan divinities often replace the Greek theonyms in ritual offerings, although Minoan shrines fade from use. Consequently, the nature of Mycenaean religious observances at Knossos represents a unique blend of both Minoan and Mycenaean religious beliefs and practices. 

49. Hammond, N.G.L. Chapter 2, “The Greek Mainland and Mycenaean Civilization”,
pp. 36-71 in Ibid. A History of Greece to 322 B.C. Oxford: Clarendon Press. xxi, 691 pp. Third Edition, © 1986. ISBN 0-19-873093-0 (pbk.)

50. Hiller S. “A-pi-qo-ro amphipoloi”, pp. 239-255 in Killen J. T., Melena, José. L. & Olivier J.-P., eds. Studies in Mycenaean and Classical Greek presented to John Chadwick, Salamanca, in MIN, Vol. 20-22, 1987

51. Hutton, William F. The Meaning of QE-TE-O in Linear B. pp. 105-131. PZN INT CANADA (University of Calgary, Department of Classics). nd. (undated). PDF (bibliographic information lacking)

52. James, S.A. “The Thebes tablets and the Fq series: a contextual analysis”,
pp. 397–417 in MIN. Vol. 37–38, 2006

53. Jones, D.M. “Land tenure at Pakijane: some doubts and questions”. pp. 245-249 in CAMB.

54. Killen John T. “The Knossos Ld(1) Tablets”, in MYCAa

55. Ibid. “The Knossos Nc Tablets”, pp. 33-38 in CAMB

56. Ibid. “Last year’s debts on the Pylos Ma tablets”, pp. 173-188 in SMEA.
Vol. 25, 1984

57. Ibid. “Linear B a-ko-ra-ja/-jo”,  pp. 117-125 in Morpurgo Davies A. & Meid W., eds. Studies in Greek, Italic and Indo-European Linguistics offered to Leonard R. Palmer on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 16. © 1976

58. Ibid. “The Linear B Tablets and Mycenaean Economy”, in Morpurgo, Davies A. & Duhoux Y., eds. Linear B: A 1984 Survey: Proceedings of the Mycenaean Colloquium of the VIIIth Congress of the International Federation of the Societies of Classical Studies (Dublin, , 27 August -1st September 1984). Louvain-La-Neuve: Peeters.
© 1985. 310 pp. ISBN 2870772890 & 9782870772898 

59. Ibid. “Mycenaean economy”, pp. 159-200 in CMLB. Vol. I. 

60. Ibid. “Some thoughts on ta-ra-si-ja”, pp. 161-180 in Voutsaki S. & Killen John T., eds. Economy and Politics in the Mycenaean Palace States. Proceedings of a Conference held on 1-3 July 1999 in the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge. Cambridge: (TCPhS Suppl. 27). ©  2001

61. Ibid. & Olivier, Jean-Paul. “The Knossos Tablets. A Transliteration”, pp. 292-294 in ANCL. Vol. 34, no 1, 1965

62. Ibid. Studies in Mycenaean and Classical Greek presented to John Chadwick, pp. 319-323 in MIN. Vol. 20-22, 1987

63. Ibid. “388 raccords de fragments dans les tablettes de Cnossos”,
pp. 47-92 in CAMB

64. Lane, Michael Franklin. 14. From DA-MO to DHMOS: Survival of a Mycenaean Land Allocation Tradition in the Classical Period? pp. 110-116 n.d. (undated). 

65. Ibid. “Landholding at PA-KA-JA-NA: Toward Spatial Modeling of Mycenaean Agricultural Estates”, pp. 61-115 in PASR. Vol 6. 2012.
ISSN 1974-0565 & ISSN elettronico 2037-738

66. Ibid. Linear B pe-re-ke-u, pe-re-ke and  pe-re-ko: Contextual Analysis and Etymological Notes. pp. 76-99. PDF (bibliographic information lacking)

67. Lejeune, M. “Chars et Roues à Cnossos: Structure d 'un inventaire”, pp.287-330 in Ibid. Mémoires de philologie mycénienne, lll. Rome, 1972, in Minos.
pp. 9-61. Vol. 9, 1968

68. Ibid. “Le récapitulatif du cadastre Ep de Pylos”, pp. 260-264 in CAMB

69. Ibid. “Sur quelques termes du vocabulaire economique mycenien”, pp. 77–109 in Bennett, E.L., ed. Mycenaean studies. Proceedings of the third international colloquium for Mycenaean studies held at “Wingspread”, 4–8 September 1961. Madison, Wisconsin  © 1964

Part B, Citations 70-138 to follow in the next post.

Richard

KEY POST! Introduction to the Complete Bibliography of 138 Citations for “The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B”

Introduction to the Complete Bibliography of 138 Citations for “The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B”, Presentation by Richard Vallance Janke at the 2015 Conference in the Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, Pultusk, Poland, June 30-July 2, 2015.

In the next 2 posts, I shall present my exhaustive bibliography of 138 items (79 citations in each of the two parts) for the talk I shall be giving on “The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B” at the 2015 Conference, “Thinking in Symbols” in the Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, Pultusk, Poland, June 30-July 2, 2015. It is so exhaustive that I doubt I have missed any sources of any significance to the topic at hand. Of course, the paper of the talk itself cannot be released at this time, as it is still under wraps.

Certain researchers past and present, above all Marie-Louise Nosch, have made significant contributions towards the realization of the General Theory of Supersyllabograms which I have just finalized this year, after a year of intensive research (spring 2014 – spring 2015). Previous researchers have sometimes come right up to the edge of a general theory correlating the single or multiple syllabograms they usually designate as “adjuncts” or “endograms” to the Linear B ideograms to which they are “surcharged” (i.e. attached), and which they invariably qualify. But all of these definitions are lacking in one sense or another, for the following reasons:

1. Although designated as (mere) “adjuncts” to the ideograms they invariably qualify, these associative single or multiple syllabograms (up to a maximum of 5!) are far more than that. Standing in as first-syllable abbreviations for words and even entire phrases in Mycenaean Greek, they play an absolutely critical rôle in significantly qualifying the ideograms to which they are attached, all the more so when the tablet on which they are found contains no text whatsoever, but only ideograms with these so-called “adjuncts”. But since these “adjuncts” invariably replace either Mycenaean words or (very often) entire phrases, they cannot be relegated to the status of simple adjuncts. In far too many instances, these single syllabograms encompass so much text that their inherent meaning as such turns out to be much more comprehensive and significant than that of the ideograms to which they are presumably attached. In other words, the single syllabogram(s) embodies/embody so much more than what would have otherwise been nothing but wasteful discursive text. So it appears that we should expediently and practically refer to as the ideogram as the adjunct, rather than the other way around.

On tablets with no text whatsoever and with 3 or more syllabograms performing this function, it is more than apparent that all of the single syllabograms functioning as the first syllable of a Mycenaean Greek word or an entire phrase replace so much discursive text that they literally cut down the amount of space used on the tablet in question by as much as two-thirds! Since the Linear B scribes at Knossos and Pylos in particular were real sticklers for saving as much space as they possibly could on what were (and are) extremely small extant tablets (rarely more than 15 cm. or 6 inches wide), they resorted to this stratagem so often (on at least 23% of the Linear B tablets at Knossos) that the practice is, if anything, of far greater importance to an accurate decipherment of those tablets on which they appear than was previously thought. It is for this reason that I have come to designate syllabograms playing this rôle as supersyllabograms, and certainly not as mere “adjuncts” or “endograms”, since that is patently what they are – supersyllabograms.

2. The designation of supersyllabograms as “endograms” is extremely misleading and quite inaccurate, since as many of these supersyllabograms precede as follow the ideograms to which they are attached. So “endograms” account for only half of supersyllabograms at best. Besides, what are we to call the supersyllabograms which precede the ideograms to which they are attached? Has anyone thought of that or even mentioned it in previous research? Not that I have ever seen, and I have read every single document (monographs, journal articles and articles in every past conference) I could lay my hands on. The reason for this lacuna is clear enough. Past researchers have focused solely on “adjuncts” or “endograms” related solely to the field of research in Mycenaean Linear B which is of primary and frequently exclusive interest to themselves. Even Marie-Louise Nosch, who has done an astonishing amount of truly remarkable research in this area, has restricted herself to the textiles sector of the Minoan-Mycenaean economy, as that is her primary field of interest. Fair enough.

Given this scenario, it appears to me that researchers past and present have been focusing exclusively on the trees or even sometimes, as with Marie-Louise Nosch, on whole clearings in forest. But none have ever concentrated on the entire forest, at least until last year, when I myself decided to ransack every single syllabogram on some 3,000 tablets (not fragments) from Knossos, in order to hypothesize, if at all possible, a general pattern to the use of supersyllabograms with ideograms. I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. So far, I have discovered that at least 33 of the 61 syllabograms plus one of the homophones (“rai” for saffron) frequently function as supersyllabograms. Under the circumstances, and given that so many scribes so often resorted to this strategy, I soon enough concluded that it was not only a standard convention in the compilation of some 700 tablets at Knossos, but that the supersyllabograms found on these tablets were almost invariably formulaic codes. And in ancient Greek – witness Homer alone - any practice which was both conventional and formulaic was always deliberate. No-one ever resorts to such strategies in any language, unless they have abundant reason to do so.

This is all the more true for the practices the Linear B scribes routinely ascribed to, given that they would do absolutely anything, if they possibly could, to save precious space on their tiny clay tablets. This too is another crucial factor past researchers have overlooked. Linear B scribes only recorded information which was absolutely essential to the precise compilation of what were (and are) after all statistical accounts and inventories. We can take the far-reaching consequences and implications of this conclusion even further. Have you ever seen a modern-day inventory which resorts to similar tactics to conserve precious space and to make the inventory as clear, precise and accurate as possible? Of course you have. As illustrated in the following two examples, the most efficient of modern inventories resort to the same tactics, the formulaic use of code abbreviations as substitutes for wasteful discursive text with predictable frequency – which is almost always: Click to ENLARGE each one with its relevant notes

In other words, just as abbreviations serve as default codes in modern inventories, supersyllabograms function pretty much the same way on the Linear B tablets. Supersyllabograms are in fact inventory codes for the Mycenaean Linear B words or entire phrases they replace. This revelation surely substantiates the claim I am now going to make: the Linear B scribes were far ahead of their time in the compilation of inventories and statistics. No other ancient language, including classical Greek and even Latin, came remotely close to this extremely advanced practice the Linear scribes so brilliantly and consciously contrived for their astonishing ability to create practical templates they consistently applied to inventorial management. And no-one until the Italian bankers in Renaissance was to revive the practice with equal skill. As for the standard practices of the Linear B scribal inventories, they are so remarkably alike modern 20^th. & 20st. Century practices that it is uncanny.

3. But there is more. Why previous researchers have not drawn attention to the fact that many supersyllabograms, especially in the field of textiles, neither precede nor follow the ideograms they qualify, but are almost invariably inside them, is beyond me. Once again, no one in any language resorts to any stratagem without solid practical and even logical reason(s). Such is the case with the textile “intragrams”, as opposed to “exograms” in Linear B, the latter of which invariably qualify pretty much all ideograms in the field of agriculture. Again, this raises the critical, hardly hypothetical, question, why. And again, there are substantive and strictly functional reasons why the Linear B scribes made this critical distinction – because they knew they had to. Supersyllabograms functioning as “exograms” are always associative, while those operating as “intragrams” are invariably attributive. The Linear B scribes made this fundamental distinction between the two sub-classes of supersyllabograms for the simple reason that they, as a guild, knew perfectly well what the operative distinction was which each of these types of supersyllabograms played on the tablets on which they were inscribed. The talk I am giving at the Conference in Pultusk between June 30 and July 2 2015 will make this perfectly clear.

4. I have no objection to the designation “surcharged” for “exograms” as supersyllabograms, because they are not only literally surcharged onto the ideograms with which they are always associated, they also figuratively surcharge the meaning(s) of these ideograms, in a sense somewhat akin to super-charged gasoline or petrol which beefs up engine performance in cars - or by symbolic association, something along those lines. But I am forced to object to the designation of “intragrams” as surcharged in the textiles sector of the Minoan-Mycenaean economies, for the obvious reason that they are both literally and figuratively not surcharged at all. Again, the scribes never resorted to “intragrams”, unless they were absolutely critical to an actual attribute, whenever required in a particular case, such as the frequent designation of colour for textiles. Ask yourselves, why would any scribe in his right mind write out the full name of the default colour white for linen, when he did not have to? He simply would not. On the other hand, the Linear B scribes did make use of an attributive supersyllabogram when they knew perfectly well that it was critical to the economic class status of the cloth so designated. For instance, purple cloth, designated by the supersyllabogram PU for Mycenaean Linear B pupureyo – a royal colour par excellence – was much more refined and far more expensive than the heavier and coarser plain white linen cloth (rino) spun for the hoi polloi (the lower classes). So they had to mention that for the sake of the “wanaka” or King (of Knossos or Mycenae) to whom this distinction was all too important, given that neither he nor his Queen no any of the princes royal would ever be caught dead wearing cheap cloth.

There is much more to this than meets the eye, as I shall clearly illustrate in the book, The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B, which is to appear sometime in 2016, if all goes well.

I would be truly remiss were I not to acknowledge the major contributions the French researcher, Marie-Louise Nosch, whom I have cited 15 times (!) in my bibliography, has made to fundamentally accurate definitions of supersyllabograms in the textile sector of the Minoan-Mycenaean economy. Although I happened upon all of her astonishingly insightful research articles only after I had deciphered 32 of the 34 supersyllabograms (the other two being beyond me, as well as her), the truly accurate and intrinsically logical conclusions she came to on her own back up my conclusions on the meanings of practically all the intragrams for textiles almost to the letter. This amazing co-incidence, if that is merely what it is, serves as solid circumstantial collateral evidence to substantiate my Theory of Supersyllabograms. Co-incidence? I rather doubt that. It is a given that researchers in any scientific field tend to strike their bearings in the same general direction in any age, including our own. Like Odysseus, we are all heading for the same shore. The most convincing conclusions which will eventually be drawn from the research we are all sharing in now are yet in the offing. But in my eyes one thing is certain. Everything we researchers in Mycenaean Linear B, as a community, are aiming for now is bound to make a ground-breaking, perhaps even profound, contribution in the near future to make the further decipherment of Linear B considerably much more accurate than any we have seen to date.

The Bibliography to follow in two parts (1-69 & 70-138) in the next two posts.

ADDENDUM: I shall be publishing this post & the next two in academia.edu very soon, prior to my presentation at the Conference in Pultusk, Poland, June 30 - July 2, 2015.

Richard

Translation of the Gezer Agricultural Almanac into Mycenaean Linear B: Click to ENLARGE

This is the first ever attempt to translate the Gezer Agricultural Almanac in Paleo-Hebrew (ca 925 BCE) into Mycenaean Linear B. My reasons for doing so are manifold:
1. While the text in Paleo-Hebrew is written in the proto-Hebrew alphabet, which for all intents and purposes is practically identical to the Phoenician alphabet, the translation is of course in the Linear B syllabary.
2. The Gezer Agricultural Almanac has no vowels, since Paleo-Hebrew, like the Phoenician alphabet, had none. On the other hand, the translation into Linear B, which is a syllabary, automatically guarantees that every single syllable contains a vowel.
3. The alphabetical text of The Gezer Agricultural Almanac takes up considerably more space than the translation into Mycenaean Linear B, since alphabetic scripts use up more space than syllabaries, even though syllabaries contain considerably more syllabograms than alphabets do letters. In the case of the Phoenician and Proto-Hebrew alphabets alike, there are 22 letters, all consonants. The reason why syllabaries take up less space than most alphabets is simple: each single syllabogram consists of a consonant + a vowel, whereas most alphabets must express consonants and vowels as separate entities. However, in the case of the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew alphabets, this distinction does not apply, since the number of consonants in the latter approximate the number of syllabograms in Linear B.
4. But the question remains, if this is the case, then why is the Linear B translation still noticeably shorter than the proto-Hebrew original? This is no idle question. There are three primary reasons for Linear B’s uncanny capacity to telescope long text into shorter. These are:
4.1 While alphabetic scripts, regardless of whether or not they contain vowels, and irrespective of their antiquity or modernity, are generally incapable of telescoping text into smaller entities, Linear B does this with ease, first by using ideograms, which appear on every single line of the Linear B translation you see here of the Gezer Almanac. I could have written out the text in full, but had I done so, I would not have reflected the spirit and the commonplace practice of Linear B scribes to replace long text with ideograms, because they were forced to save precious space of what were, without exception, very small tablets (most running to no more than 15 cm. wide, and only a few as wide as 10 cm.)
4.2.1 For the precise same reason, Linear B scribes also frequently resorted to replacing entire Linear B words, such as “rino” = Greek “linon” = English “linen”, the Mycenaean Greek word for both the raw product “flax” and the finished, “rino” with logograms. You can see the single syllabogram = logogram “NI” = “flax” on line 3, immediately preceding the ideogram for “meno” = “month”.
4.2.2 If this practice is a clever ploy, what are we make of the same procedure carried even further, when in line 7, the scribe (me) replaces the word for “fruit” = “kapo” in Mycenaean Linear B, with the very same word with the exact same number of syllabograms = 2, but by placing one (po) on top of the other (ka)! That way, the scribe uses the space for only 1 syllabogram while in reality writing 2. If this isn’t a brilliant ploy, I don’t know what is. But it goes even further. Although we do not see an example of this practice carried to its extreme in this translation, scribes even resorted to piling 3 syllabograms on top of one another! A prefect example of this is the Mycenaean word “arepa” = Greek “aleifa” = English “ointment”, consisting of 3 syllables. In this instance, scribes almost always wrote “arepa” as a logogram, by piling the syllabogram “pa” on top of “re” on top of “a”. Now that takes some gymnastics! In this case, the scribes used the space for 1 syllabogram to replace an entire word of 3 syllabograms. Talk about saving space! All of these clever little tricks are illustrated here: Click to ENLARGE

5. The scribes also replaced entire Mycenaean Greek words with supersyllabograms on about 27 % of all Linear B tablets. SSYLS save even more space than logograms and ideograms, in some cases, far more, since they can replace entire phrases in Mycenaean Greek. Yet, even without resorting to SSYLS in this translation, l managed to telescope the discursive alphabetic Proto-Hebrew text into a much shorter Linear B translation.

Now the most amazing thing about Linear B’s amazing capacity to shortcut text by telescoping it into the much smaller discrete elements, logograms, ideograms and supersyllabograms, is that the Linear B syllabary preceded both the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew alphabets by at least 4 centuries!

So who is to say that alphabets are superior to syllabaries? I for one would not even dare.

Richard

Happy Second Anniversary to Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae! Now the largest Linear B blog on the Internet

We are delighted to announce that Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae

reaches its second anniversary on May 1 2015.

What have we accomplished in the past two years? A great deal indeed. Here are the highlights.

1. The discovery, extrapolation, collation and classification of supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, of which there are 34 (to date) out of 61 syllabograms in Linear B, excluding counting homophones (with the sole exception of RAI = saffron).

2. We have entered into close partnership with The Association of Historical Studies, Koryvantes (Athens, Greece), here:

where we have been assigned our own category for posting on their blog,

WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THIS BLOG, AND URGE YOU ALL TO FOLLOW THE IMPRESSIVE RESEARCH CONDUCTED BY KORYVANTES.

3. As a direct result of 1. & 2. above, Richard, our blog moderator, has been invited to give his talk

at the Conference, “Thinking Symbols” (June 30-July 2 2015), sponsored by The Association of Historical Studies (Koryvantes), Athens:

at the Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, just outside of Warsaw.

His talk, and those of all other presenters at the Conference will be published by the University of Warsaw. The University of Warsaw also plans to publish the General of Supersyllabograms and its application to the translation of some 700+ Mycenaean Linear B tablets across the board, in a book to be titled, The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, to appear sometime in 2016.

4. In the past two years, Richard and his research colleague, Rita Roberts of Crete, have translated in excess of 100 Linear B tablets, most of them from Knossos, along with some from Pylos, Mycenae and Thebes.

5. Richard has compiled the following elements in his ongoing project to reconstruct as much as possible of Mycenaean Greek grammar from the ground up:
5.1 the complete table for the conjugations of the active voice, present, future, imperfect, aorist & perfect of Mycenaean verbs;
5.2 the table of adjectives and nouns ending in the archaic “eus” in the nominative singular.
5.3 Richard plans to continue with the compilation of Mycenaean Greek grammar throughout the remainder of 2015 and into 2016.

6. Richard has translated most of The Catalogue of Ships from Book II of the Iliad by Homer, and will finish off his translation this year (2015). This will be followed by his translation of Book I of the Iliad in its entirety (2015-2016).

7. We are in the process of compiling the largest Lexicon of both attested and derived Mycenaean Greek in Linear B ever to have appeared anywhere, in print or on the Internet. We have already finished with the draft of the first Section on Military Affairs, which is to appear on our blog and on the blog of The Association of Historical Studies, Koryvantes (Athens, Greece) sometime in the summer or autumn 2015. It is to be subdivided into several primary Sections, (1) Agriculture (2) Crafts, Trade and Commerce (3) Military Affairs (4) Domestic Affairs, including the production of vessels and pottery & (5) Religious Affairs. This is such a huge undertaking that it is unlikely that we will be able to complete it before 2018.

8. Richard has offered his services as Professor to Rita Roberts, Crete, who is now in her first year of university, working towards her three-year Bachelor of Arts in Linguists (BAL) in the field of Mycenaean Linear B. Both Rita and I can assure you that the curriculum is of the highest order and extremely demanding. Already, in her first semester of her first year, Rita has been tasked with the tough chore of translating several difficult Linear B tablets from Knossos on military affairs, and this is just the beginning! As far as we can tell, this online university undergraduate course, specifically focusing on Mycenaean Linear B, will be the first ever of its kind ever to have been offered worldwide. I am of course open to inviting others who are seriously committed to learn Mycenaean Linear B, but just as Rita has had to do, new students will have to first finish their secondary school level in Linear B before moving onto university studies. It took Rita two years to fulfill the requirements for a secondary school matriculation in Linear B. This and the full course of studies (secondary school and a bachelor’s degree) requires 5 full years of unstinting commitment to the mastery of Mycenaean Linear B. At the end of these five years, the student (Rita being our first) will possess the credentials to be an expert in the field.

9. We have begun posting on Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, having already translated 3 tablets in that syllabary. We have also made available for the first time ever the standard keyboard layout for Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, which you may download free at your convenience. We plan on continuing with posts on Linear C throughout 2016 & 2016, eventually tackling the famous Idalion Tablet of the 5th. Century BCE. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, the closest cousin dialect to Mycenaean Linear B, will play a significantly greater rôle than it presently does on our blog. Both Linear B and Linear C will be thoroughly cross-compared with the archaic grammar and vocabulary of the Catalog of Ships in Book II of the Iliad, the latter generally being considered as an indirect descendant of the Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot Greek dialects, at least in these two respects. This cross-comparative study will help us to properly situate the Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot Greek dialects in the diachronic time line of ancient Greek dialects.

10. We have begun a thorough-going investigation of the relationship between the Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B syllabaries, which are almost identical in most respects, the latter being derived from the former with other major Bronze Age scripts and alphabets, including the Phoenician and Proto-Hebrew alphabets, soon the Proto-Arabic, and any others which bear up well under comparison with Linear A & Linear B.

12. We have posted some information on Minoan Linear A, but it is not our intention to attempt to decipher this unknown language – at least for the next five years. However, certain aspects of Linear A itself are of prime importance to our concerns, especially its intimate relationship with Linear B, as well as its place in the development of ancient scripts in the context of 10. above.

13. We have begun exploring the possibilities for the application of Linear B & C to extraterrestrial communication. If this sounds wacky or even peculiar to you, think twice. NASA itself has already begun its own investigation of such intriguing prospects for Linear B and Linear C.

As the direct result of our unflagging commitments to these areas of research into Mycenaean Linear B, Arcado-Cypriot Linear C and several other areas relating to these, our blog has grown to be the largest on the entire Internet devoted to the study of Mycenaean Linear B. I had hope for 50,000 visitors in the first two years, but these were exceeded, as we have had over 51,000. We thank everyone from the bottom of our hearts for your interest in what is manifestly an extremely specialized and narrow area of interest in the vast sea of linguistics, ancient and modern, and we look forward to seeing more of you visit our site throughout our third year, May 2015-April 2016. I am confident that we shall exceed 100,000 visits by the end of our third year. With our gratitude. Richard

ALL OF THE ABOVE NICHES IN THE FIELD OF LINGUISTIC RESEARCH INTO LINEAR B, LINEAR C AND THEIRS APPLICATION TO ARCHAIC GREEK, ESPECIALLY IN THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPS OF BOOK II OF THE ILIAD, CAN BE DIRECTLY ACCESSED BY CATEGORY ON OUR BLOG, as seen here:

These are the primary concerns of our Blog, but there are others, which are intriguing to special interest groups. Our goals are ambitious but we mean to fulfill them.

At the same time, our Twitter account has attracted some 920 followers, compared with about 500 at the end of first year (May 1 2014). We have sent out over 13,600 tweets in the past 2 years. Click here to visit our Twitter account:

Our research colleague, Rita Roberts, now has over 380 followers on her Twitter account, here:

This makes for some 1,300 followers for us both on Twitter, a considerable number indeed, in light of the fact that the study of Linear B and the specialized interests in archaeology and similar arcane fields which Rita follows are rare birds indeed!

I also urge you to follow Rita’s superb blog, here:

Finally, we have set ourselves up on Google +, where you can find our page here:

We started up on Google + just a couple of months ago, and we already have 383 followers in our Circle.

Richard

The Famous Linear B Tablet, “Rapato Meno”, the Priestess of the Winds & the Goddess Pipituna, Knossos KN Fp 13

The Famous Linear B Tablet, “Rapato Meno”, the Priestess of the Winds & the Goddess Pipituna, Knossos KN Fp 13: Click to ENLARGE

This tablet from Knossos, one of the most famous Mycenaean Linear B Linear B tablets, was first translated by Prof. John Chadwick, who did a fine job of it. There have been several good translations since then, but all of them have failed to notice certain finer details in the text. This translation hopefully brings these details to the fore.

For instance, as I have pointed out in the notes at the bottom of my translation, the units of measurement are open to question. I find it both expedient and wise to rely on the estimates of Andras Zeke of the now defunct Minoan Language Blog, since he has always been a most thorough and conscientious researcher. My estimates, like those of every other translator, are just that. So take them with a grain of salt. Secondly, Professors Killen and Chadwick translated qerasiya as “augur”, and I accept their translation without reserve, as it fits the context very well. However, every single translation to date that I have run across fails to mention that the augur is female, which once again very important in the context of Minoan-Mycenaean religious practices, which seem to have been pretty much the exclusive province of women. In my forth note [4], I call attention to the fact that here the ideogram for “olive” may refer to an “olive tree”, and to those who would (loudly) object to this interpretation, we need only recall that the olive tree was sacred to the goddess Athena in classical Athens. The connection between Minoan-Mycenaean religious practices is indirect and elliptical. However, if we stop to consider legend has it that “...every nine years Athens should send seven of their finest young men and young maidens to Crete, as sacrifice to the Minotaur. When the hero Theseus heard about this practice, he volunteered to be one of the victims, killing the Minotaur, and freeing Athens from this grizzly duty”: from

it makes more sense to interpret this reference as being an olive tree. This raises yet another question. If, as it appears from the context of this tablet, the Priestess of the Winds was the priestess of Pipituna, there is probably a direct or indirect connection between this goddess and the later Greek goddess, Athena. They might even be one and the same, though this strikes me as being unlikely.

On a final note, we notice that the second reference to anemoiyereya is squashed up against the right side of this tablet, which is after all only 15 cm. or about 6 inches wide. No surprise there, given that almost all Linear B tablets are very small or tiny. This offers a perfectly sound explanation why the last reference to the offering by Utano (or whatever this name is, probably Minoan) to the Priestess of the Winds only gives us the units of measurement, but of what it does not say. Yet it is pretty much obvious that this too is an offering of olive oil, since that is the only commodity offered up on the rest of the tablet. On our bog, I have stressed a great many times the extremely common practice the Mycenaean scribes resorted to over and over again to save precious space on their cramped tablets. This is also the reason why they resorted to the formulaic use of single syllabograms as the first syllable of scores of very common Mycenaean Linear B words in the fields of agriculture, the military, textiles and vessels. People who regularly consult our blog already know that these are called supersyllabograms. Of the 61 Linear B syllabograms, 33 are supersyllabograms, while one homophone, rai = saffron is also in the same class.

In conclusion, the preceding observations have allowed me the latitude to bring a little more precision to the translation of Knossos tablet KN FP 13.

As a final aside, I for one find the use of Latin to reference the names of Linear B ideograms strange at best, and downright silly at worst. The words the ideograms replace are Greek; so the ideograms should be labelled in Greek, with an English translation for those who do not read Greek. Given that most people do not read Latin these days, what difference does it make? Little or none. For this reason, I myself always tag Linear B ideograms with their proper (Mycenaean or archaic) Greek names.

Richard

Quotations from The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, Presentation at the Conference, Thinking Symbols, Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, Pultusk, Poland, June 30-July 2, 2015: Part A

Quotations from The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, Presentation at the Conference, Thinking Symbols, Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, Pultusk, Poland, June 30-July 2, 2015: Part A



Alan Turing (1923-1954), a world-famous mathematical genius and cryptologist, was head of the team at Bletchley Park in England, which deciphered what was considered at the time to be the uncrackable Enigma Code that German Intelligence used throughout the Second World War for their secret military missions and operations, eventually all to no avail. It is he who said, “Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”
   
... let’s get straight to the point, and look at Slide A, which dramatically illustrates the universal rôle symbols play on physical signs, otherwise known as signage, in our hectic world today.

Slide omitted, to be displayed at the Conference only

Now you will notice that the international standard signage symbols we all my must rely on every day of our lives are of two kinds, (a) nominal (N), meaning symbols which replace the names of places, otherwise known as toponyms, which usually offer us static information & (b) verbal or kinetic (V), which replace actions we must take if we are to avoid unpleasant or disastrous consequences. Here on Slide A we see examples of both static and kinetic symbols or ideograms.

... we need to define in broad terms what a syllabary is, given that all of the signs on this tablet are syllabograms, so that we can interpret the Mycenaean city & settlement codes. This clears the way for a basic understanding of how syllabograms function. Like a script or signary based on ideograms, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics or Chinese ideograms, generally an earlier development than itself, a syllabary is a signary based on syllabograms, each of which consists of a single consonant + a single vowel up to a maximum of 5 vowels in a discrete series, as we see illustrated here in Slide J.

Slide omitted, to be displayed at the Conference only

Mycenaean Linear B, like its immediate predecessor, Minoan Linear A, has a D series, da, de, di, do & du; an N series, na, ne, ni, no & nu, and so on. Some syllabogram series are incomplete, for instance, the W series, wa, we, wi & wo, with four syllabograms & the Z series, za, ze & zo, consisting of three in Linear B. Minoan Linear A and the two archaic Greek pre-alphabetic syllabaries, Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C also have syllabograms for each of the 5 vowels. We can see now that a syllabary is generally considered to be the intermediate stage between even more ancient scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphics on the one hand, and the later Greek alphabet on the other, in so far as it contains both consonant + vowel sequences and the minimal set of 5 vowels, just as all alphabets do right on up from the various avatars of the ancient Greek alphabet to the Cyrillic for many Slavic languages, such as Russian and Ukrainian to the Latin alphabet, from which almost all modern Occidental alphabets are derived. Click to ENLARGE

Secondary School Graduation Diploma in Mycenaean Linear B for Mrs. Rita Roberts, Crete: Click to ENLARGE

Secondary School Graduation Diploma in Mycenaean Linear B for Mrs. Rita Roberts, Crete: Click to ENLARGE



It is my pleasure and honour to announce that Mrs. Rita Roberts, having satisfied all the scholarly requirements which qualify her for a Secondary School Graduation Diploma in Mycenaean Linear B, including mastery of:

1. the entire Linear B Syllabary, Homophones & Ideograms
2. translation of at least 25 Linear B tablets of intermediate to intermediate advanced level
3. her all-new, excellent translation of Pylos Tablet PY 1952 (Ventris)
4. mastery of all of the major supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B and with all the credits deemed necessary to proceed to the University Level of Mycenaean Linear B

is hereby granted her Secondary School Graduation Diploma with all its attendant rights and privileges.

Signed,

Richard Vallance Janke,
H.B.A. 1968 (Sir Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada)
M.L.S. 1975 (The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada)

Mycenaean Greece & Linear B, our NEW Circle on Google +

Mycenaean Greece & Linear B, our NEW Circle on Google + Click to VISIT & Join:



Welcome to Mycenaean Greece & Linear B, our new Circle on Google +, and the only one of its kind. We shall be posting a great many Linear B tablets, photos, illustrations, tables, charts, graphics, etc. here so you will not want to miss our great new Google + Circle, and I suspect that many of you will certainly want to join. We shall also be posting information, photos and the like on Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad by Homer, ancient East Greek dialects (Mycenaean, Arcado-Cypriot, Aeolic, Ionic & Attic), and any other information we deem  relevant.

So if you are at all interested in these areas of interest and research into ancient Greek studies, linguistic or otherwise, and ancient Greece itself, you will probably want to join our circle.

Thanks

Richard

Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, near Warsaw, Poland

Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, near Warsaw, Poland: Click to ENLARGE


This is the venue where I shall be giving my lecture on The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B between June 30 & July 2 2015. I am ready and raring to go!

Richard

Conference, “Thinking Symbols”, Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, University of Warsaw (June 30-July 2 2015)

“Thinking Symbols”, Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, University of Warsaw (June 30-July 2 2015):

Table of All 32 Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B for my Presentation at the Conference: Click to ENLARGE

As of spring 2015, I have discovered, isolated and classified a total of 32 supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, having found no new ones since autumn 2014. Let us review supersyllabograms, what they are, the 2 different types & how they are classified & sub-classified.

What Supersyllabograms are:

In Mycenaean Linear B, a supersyllabogram is almost always the first syllabogram only, in other words, the first syllable only of a Mycenaean Greek word or phrase. There are only three (3) exceptions to this operative principle. The 32 supersyllabograms account for more than 50 % of all syllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B. That this is a very significant subset of this discrete set of syllabograms goes without saying.

The 2 types of Supersyllabograms:

There are only two types of supersyllabograms:

(1) Independent supersyllabograms (i):

An independent supersyllabogram is one which stands alone, all by itself, on any Linear B tablet. There is just the one syllabogram, with nothing preceding or following it, except whenever several of them appear in a series, as on Linear B tablet Heidelburg HE Fl 1994. And even then, strictly speaking, they still stand alone, each one being a discrete entity naming only one thing, a city or settlement name.

Most independent supersyllabograms were deciphered,

(a) first by Prof. John Chadwick, who deciphered the syllabograms NI = suko (figs) & SA = rino (flax), and the homophone RAI = kanako (crocus or saffron) in his ground-breaking book, The Decipherment of Linear B (1959,1970), in which he divulged to the world the arduous road over several years to the decipherment of Linear B in 1952 by the brilliant cryptographer, Michael Ventris.

It is essential to realize that these three independent supersyllabograms alone are the only ones for which the single syllabogram symbolizing the Mycenaean Greek word they each replace is not the first syllabogram, i.e. the first syllable of that word, as we can clearly see with NI, SA & RAI. This being the case, the remaining 29 supersyllabograms of a total of 32 are, by default, the first syllabogram of the Mycenaean word or phrase each of them represents.

(b) The second person to identify independent supersyllabograms was Prof. Thomas G. Palaima, in his superb translation of Heidelburg tablet HE Fl 1994, here:

In this case, all 5 of the independent supersyllabograms, KO, ZA, PA, PU & MU are the first syllabogram, i.e. the first syllable of a Minoan or Mycenaean city or settlement name. While these 5 independent SSYLS appear in sequence, each one should and must be interpreted as standing alone in its own right.

There are thus a total of 3 + 5 = 8 independent supersyllabograms (i). However, it is absolutely essential to understand that some of these 8 SSYLS are also dependent (d).

I am obliged to point out that neither John Chadwick nor Thomas G. Palaima recognized or identified these 8 supersyllabograms as such, since after all, one of them (Chadwick) discovered only 3 syllabograms which fit this description, while the other (Palaima) hit upon only 5 more. In retrospect, we have to be honest with ourselves and admit that it would be unrealistic, if not downright disingenuous, to expect them to have isolated supersyllabograms in the first place, given that they only just happened to stumble upon these 8, all of which are independent SSYLS, and none of which fit into the default paradigm of the rest of the supersyllabograms, all of which are dependent (d). In a word, neither of them could conceivably have even identified a phenomenon one could call the supersyllabogram, because they did not find any others. And it was the others, of which there are so many, that were, as we say, the real McCoy.

(2) Dependent supersyllabograms(d):

A dependent supersyllabogram (d) is one which always appears as a single syllabogram, but which is also always immediately adjacent to (da) or inside (di) an ideogram. It is the dependent supersyllabogram I discovered early 2014, and which has given true meaning to the term as I have come to define it. The basic formula for the layout of the dependent supersyllabogram on any Linear B tablet is:

SSYLa (left) + ideogram (right) -or-
ideogram (left)+ SSYLb (right) -or-
SSYLc on top of an ideogram -or-
SSYLd under an ideogram -or-
SSYLe inside an ideogram.

If there is only one (1) dependent supersyllabogram (d) adjacent to only one (1) ideogram, that ideogram, upon which that SSYL depends, determines the exact meaning of the SSYL. Change the ideogram, change the meaning. In other words, the meanings of all dependent supersyllabograms (d) are determined by the specific ideogram to which they are adjacent. The meaning of any adjacent dependent SSYL must therefore be strictly contextual (dc).

More than one dependent supersyllabogram can be adjacent to one or more ideograms, and in any order. However, the order in which the SSYLS & the ideograms appear together is never random. It is always structurally contextual. Change the order, change the meaning.

Sub-classification of Dependent Supersyllabograms:

Dependent supersyllabograms are sub-classified as either associative (as) or attributive (at).

(1) Associative dependent supersyllabograms (as) are those which are immediately adjacent to the ideograms upon which they depend. An associative SSYL is one which informs of us of some external element, for instance, the factor of land tenure relating to the ideogram itself, or one which circumscribes its environment, especially in the livestock raising sub-sector of the agricultural sector. For instance, in the Table of All 32 Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B above, the supersyllabogram O adjacent to the ideogram for sheep + the number of sheep accounted for in the inventory of any particular tablet, informs us that the sheep are being raised on a lease(d) field, more specifically a usufruct lease field (i.e. a lease field which a farmer tenant cultivates for the use of his own family and village neighbours, with a taxation imposed by the overseer). In other words, the supersyllabogram O = onato (lease field) is associated with the raising of x no. of sheep.

(2) Attributive dependent supersyllabograms (at) always appear inside the ideogram which they qualify, never adjacent to it. They always describe an actual attribute (usually known as an adjectival function) of the ideogram. For instance, the syllabogram PO inside the ideogram for “cloth” is the first syllabogram, i.e. the first syllable of the Mycenaean word ponikiya = “purple”, hence the phrase = “purple cloth”. Likewise the syllabogram TE, when it appears inside the ideogram for “cloth” is the supersyllabogram for the Mycenaean word tetukuwoa, which means “well prepared” or if you like, “well spun”. Hence, the syllabogram TE inside the ideogram for cloth must mean one thing and one thing only, “well-prepared cloth”. I have discovered, identified & classified well over a dozen examples of associative supersyllabograms.

The first person to identify and correctly translate two of the most frequently occurring supersyllabograms was Chris Tselentis, who deciphered the two SSYLS ZE & MO on Knossos Tablet KN So 4439, in the appendix TEXTS of Linear B tablets of his excellent Linear B Lexicon. On this tablet, which is strictly military, these syllabograms each appear immediately adjacent to the ideogram for chariot wheel, ZE appearing after the ideogram, and MO before it. It was obvious to Chris Tselentis that, in the military context of this tablet, the syllabogram ZE could mean one thing and one thing only, “a pair of (wheels)”, while MO could only mean “a single wheel”. And he was bang on. Unfortunately, he had his hands full just compiling his comprehensive Lexicon, and so he never got around to a thorough examination of a large enough statistically significant cross-section of Linear B tablets, to ascertain whether there were any more like this one.

But there were – plenty more, in fact some 700 of 3,000 Linear B tablets I meticulously poured through from the corpus at Knossos. If it weren’t for Chris Tselentis in particular, or for John Chadwick and Thomas G. Palaima before him, I would never have followed my intuition to ferret out more examples of the same phenomena, only to be so richly rewarded for taking this decisive step in the first place in the winter of 2014. There was no guarantee that anything concrete would come out of my year-long investigations. But it did, to say the very least. The ultimate result of my painstaking search through 3,000 tablets from Knossos, and the meticulous research which ensued were to pay off in droves. The Table you see above is the true fulfillment of a hard-won struggle.

To read a detailed account of the function of dependent supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, please refer to this post:

Richard

POST 800: An Introductory Glossary of General Linguistics Terminology: Part B: H-P

POST 800: An Introductory Glossary of General Linguistics Terminology: Part B: H-P



NOTE: This glossary is ostensibly not comprehensive in any sense of the term, but it serves as a solid baseline introduction to linguistics terminology. 

This is our 800^th. Post in less than 2 years. 

H

habitual aspect: the imperfective aspect that expresses the occurrence of an event or state as characteristic of a period of time prior to the tense aspect of the same verb. Example:

Tense aspect: she lived here for some time (simple past = aorist in Greek) or she was living here for some time (imperfect aspect).

Prior to the previous aspect expressed above:
She used to live here (English). Languages such as ancient Greek & Latin cannot directly express the habitual aspect, which they must subsume under the imperfect.

heteronym: a word having the same spelling as another, but a different pronunciation and meaning. Examples: bow (weapon) & bow (to a King or Queen) + wind (atmospheric) & wind (verb to wind up). See also, homograph & homonym

homograph: a word that has the same spelling as another. Homographs differ from each other in meaning, origin and sometimes pronunciation. Example: bow (of a ship) + bow (to bend down) + bow (in archery, with a different pronunciation from the first two. See also, homonym 

homonym: A word that sounds or is spelled the same as another word but has a different meaning. Examples: down, light, mean, strike and also  bear (concrete, animal) & bear (abstract, suffering) + dive (plunge) & dive (cheap living quarters) + find (verb) & find (noun, discovery)

homophone: 1. A word which is pronounced the same as another word but differs in spelling and meaning, for example: carat, caret, carrot and karat. 

homophonous: having the same pronunciation. "cot" and "caught" are in some American accents, as are "there" and "they're".

hyperthesis aka long-distance metathesis = the metamorphosis of orthography from the source language, being older, and the target language, being more recent. Examples:
Latin miraculum > Spanish milagro  > English miracle
Latin periculum > Spanish peligro  > English, peril
Latin crocodilus > Italian cocodrillo > English crocodile
See also, metathesis 

hyponym: a hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic range is included within that of another (generic or umbrella) word, and which usually is more specific than the umbrella word. Examples: dog, hound, fox, wolf under their umbrella, canine + scarlet, vermilion, carmine & crimson are all hyponyms of red (their generic hypernym)

hypothetical mood: an epistemic mood that signals that the speaker evaluates a proposition as counterfactual, although possible. The subjunctive is a hypothetical mood in English (rare), French, German, Italian, Latin & Spanish, among many other languages. Greek has two hypothetical moods, the optative and the subjunctive. Examples: I should (would) like to meet her, she would like to meet you, they would like to live in Ottawa + If I were you, I should (would) not do that.   

I

ideogram: a symbol which represents the idea of something without indicating the sequence of sounds used to pronounce it. Examples include numerals, many Chinese characters, traffic signs, or in alphabetic languages or syllabaries, (a) graphic symbols such as & and @ + single alphabetic letter or (b) concrete symbols, either of which symbolize an entire phrase (nominal or verbal). Examples: (a) (alphabetic) H = hospital, P = parking & (b) a red illuminated circle = stop & a green illuminated circle = go (verbal) & a red cross = (international) red cross (nominal). In Mycenaean Greek, the graphic symbol is a syllabogram. Thus, O = onato (a lease field), KI = kitimena (a plot of land), KO = Konoso (Knossos), PA = Paito (Phaistos) & ZE = zeuko, zeukesi (nominative sing. & dative plural) (a pair of, a team of). These syllabograms, when single or used alone, are called supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B. As such, they stand in for or symbolize complete words or phrases in Linear B, as illustrated above.

ideograph = ideogram.

illative case: the case that expresses motion into or direction toward the referent of the noun it marks. Examples: Aminisode, Konosode (to, towards Amnisos, Knossos) in Mycenaean Greek.

indefinite pronoun: a pronoun that belongs to a class whose members indicate indefinite reference. Examples: a, anybody, no-one, someone in English. The indefinite pronoun -a- is inexistant in ancient Greek and Latin.   

inflection: in grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification or marking of a word (or more precisely lexeme) to reflect grammatical or relational information, such as gender, tense, number or person. The concept of a "word" in an inflected language only (such as German, Greek, Latin & Russian) is designated as being independent of its various inflections, but bound to them, is called a lexeme. The form of a word considered to have no or minimal inflection is called a lemma. An organized set of inflections or inflected forms of a given lexeme is called an inflectional paradigm. Examples: carmen = English, song (lexeme, nominative), carminis (bound inflection, genitive singular) & carminibis (bound inflection, dative plural)in Latin.

intension. See, connotation 

intonation: the variation of pitch when speaking. Intonation and stress are two main elements of linguistic prosody. Many languages use pitch syntactically, for instance to convey surprise and irony or to change a statement to a question. Such languages are called intonation languages. English and French are well-known examples. In rising intonation the pitch of the voice increases (over time) & in modern (not ancient) Greek, rising = acute accent); in falling intonation the pitch decreases with time (Greek = grave accent). In dipping intonation, the pitch falls and then rises & in peaking intonation, the voice rises and then falls (Greek = circumflex). 

K

Koine: the "common" Greek language, directly derived from the dominant Attic dialect of the fourth century BCE, that developed and flourished between 300 BC and AD 300 (the time of the Roman Empire), and from which Modern Greek descended. It was based on the Attic and Ionian dialects of Ancient Greek.

L

language associate: a person who helps you learn a language, provides you with data or information about a language or helps you with linguistic research. For instance, Richard Vallance Janke at this blog, Linear B, Knossos, Mycenae is the language associate of Rita Roberts. Synonym: teacher

lemma: 1. canonical (i.e. uninflected) form of a term, particularly in the context of highly inflected languages. 2. lexeme: all the inflected forms of a term.

lenitive language: a language in which lenis consonants are predominant. English is a lenitive language & the only lenitive language among the major Occidental languages: French, German, Italian, Romanian, Spanish etc. See also, semi-consonant, semi-vowel

lenis consonant: a “weak” consonant produced by the lack of tension in the vocal apparatus. Weak consonants tend to be short, weakly voiced or voiceless, aspirated, low, and the following vowel tends to be lengthened.  Examples: l, m, r (especially l & r) in English. See also, semi-consonant, semi-vowel  

lexeme: The abstract unit of vocabulary, roughly corresponding to the set of words that are different forms of the same lemma. 
lexical: 1. concerning the vocabulary, words or morphemes of a language 2. concerning lexicography or a lexicon or dictionary + lexicology: specialty in linguistics dealing with the study of the lexicon 

lexical word: a morpheme/word which has a dictionary meaning. Examples: cat, green, house, sell, take  

lexicon: 1. A dictionary that includes or focuses on lexemes. 2. A dictionary of Classical Greek, Hebrew, Latin, or Aramaic. 3. The vocabulary used by or known to an individual. (Also called lexical knowledge)

lexis: 1. The total set of words in a language. 2. The vocabulary used by a writer

lingual: 1.(phonetics) a sound articulated with the tongue 2. related to language or linguistics.

literal translation: a translation that follows closely the form of the source language. Also known as: word-for-word translation.

litotes: the use of a negated antonym to make an understatement or to emphatically affirm the positive. Examples: She is not unqualified for: she is somewhat qualified + It was not a great victory : It was a Pyrrhic victory -or- It was a partial victory. 

locative case: the case that expresses location at the referent of the noun it marks.  In ancient Greek, it is indistinguishable from the dative.

M

metathesis: from Greek "putting in a different order" = Latin transpositio is the re-arranging of sounds or syllables in a word, or of words in a sentence. Most commonly it refers to the switching of two or more contiguous sounds, known as (1) adjacent metathesis or (2) local metathesis. Examples = foliage > foilage + cavalry > calvary

mora: term used in traditional metrics to refer to a minimal unit of metrical time equivalent to a short syllable + also used in recent phonological theories of prosodic features. Long vowels are often considered to be bimoraic (double the length of a mora), while short ones are monomoraic. This would explain the difference in behaviour with respect to stress-rules between these two classes of vowels in quantity-(in)sensitive (ancient Greek) versus quality-sensitive (English) languages. 

moraic language: a language exhibiting a syllable weight distinction typically also has a vowel length distinction, and vice versa. The term "mora-timing" does not mean "moraic". In a mora-timing language, each mora takes approximately the same time to pronounce- thus a heavy (2-mora) syllable will take twice as long as a light one (See, mora above). This phenomenon is also called isochrony, and is mainly a phonetic one. Moraic is a phonological phenomenon, in which a language is sensitive to the heavy/light distinction, regardless of timing (especially in stress or accent). So a language could be moraic but not mora-timing. The two ideas are quite different. Examples of moraic Languages: English, German & modern Greek. Examples of mora-timing languages: Sanskrit, ancient Greek & Latin.

morpheme: the traditional approximate definition: the minimal unit carrying meaning. More precise but less informative definition: the minimal unit relevant to morphological and syntactic analysis. Examples: the English word -trees- has two morphemes = tree + s & the Greek word -apudosis- (delivery, attribution) has four.

N

nonce word: a word invented for the occasion. Synonym: neologism.

O

onomasticon: a book, list, or vocabulary of names, especially of people. One could say, "I looked  up the origin of her name" in an onomasticon.

onomastics: the branch of lexicology devoted to the study of names and naming.

onomatology: the study of the origins of names; onomastics.

P

patronymic: name acquired from one's father's first name. Some cultures use a patronymic where other cultures use a surname or family name; other cultures {like Russia} use both a patronymic and a surname.

philology: the humanistic study of historical linguistics. 

phonetics: the study of the characteristics of human sound-making, especially of those sounds used in speech.

phonology: the study of the sound systems of languages, and of the general or universal properties displayed by these systems.

polysemy: the concept that words, signs and symbols may have multiple meanings + association of a lexical item with different but related meanings. Examples: bright = brilliant, intelligent, sunny 

polysynthetic: said of a language, characterized by a prevalence of relatively long words containing a large number of morphemes. Typically, the morphemes are bound (i.e., they cannot stand alone as independent words). Examples of polysynthetic languages: German & Greek.  

pragmatics: the study of the use of language in context. Research into Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C relies heavily on pragmatics on this blog. Any attempt to decipher or translate Mycenaean Linear B (tablets), without taking context into consideration on an obligatory basis, is bound to fail. 

prefix: an affix which precedes the element it is attached to. Examples: -in- in -indiscreet & -un- in -unlikely-

progressive spelling”, as promoted by Roger Woodard et al. This practice inserts consonants where none exists in Linear B to agree with Greek words (e.g. pe-ma to (sperma) “seed”), on the premise that the “borrowed” phonetic system was inadequate to represent the language. Progressive spelling is characteristic of syllabaries such as Linear B & Linear C.


Richard

Photos of Michael Ventris (1922-1956) & Richard Vallance Janke (1945 – )

Photos of Michael Ventris (1922-1956) & Richard Vallance Janke (1945 - ): Click to ENLARGE each composite

Here is a composite of 2 photos, one of Michael Ventris (1922-1956) just before his tragic death in a car accident in 1956, and one of myself, Richard Vallance Janke, still younger, at age 23, upon my graduation for my first degree, Honours Bachelor of Arts in Latin and French (majors), English and German (minors) from Sir Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 1968.



I have no hesitation whatsoever in declaring that I consider Michael to be my patron saint, and that I pray to him instead of to God, because he is the greatest inspiration in my entire life. I shall do so until God informs me otherwise.

And here is another composite of myself, first as a Reference Librarian, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, taken at the age of 43 in 1988, and the second of a lovely couple and  myself at the age of 63, taken while I was on holidays in Quebec in the summer of 2008.



I will be using these photos for my talk on The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Linear B at the Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, University of Warsaw, Poland, June 29 – July 2, 2015.


Richard

Our Twitter Account is growing rapidly! 15 new followers in the past 10 days: Click to visit & follow us:

It no longer comes as any surprise that the number of followers on our Twitter account is growing as fast as it is. We had about 800 followers in December 2014, and now we are at 855. Some months we grow as fast as 25 new followers. This is an extremely encouraging sign with respect to the considerable attention our Twitter account is getting, and for this we have to thank our blog’s newly acquired position as the largest Linear B blog on the Internet... and all this in less than 2 years. Now that we are on the brink of making a newsworthy announcement to the world on a major breakthrough in the decipherment of Mycenaean Linear B and our participation as an invited speaker at the Conference, Thinking Symbols, at the Pultusk Academy of Humanities, University of Warsaw, June 30-July 2, 2015, it is more than likely that the number of followers we have will increase to beyond 1,000 by the end of 2015 at the latest. For a blog as specialized and as narrowly focused as ours is, that is quite a spectacular accomplishment. And for this I have only to thank the hundreds of supporters who have already been so kind as to follow us so closely.

In passing, I should like to point out that a large number of the most prestigious language and linguistics Twitter accounts, especially those devoted to Greek, ancient and modern, as well as several major international archaeological associations & archaeologists, are following us assiduously, as we are of course following them.

And if you want to learn modern Greek, you can pick up quite a lot of it on our account, since I have already retweeted hundreds of quotations from modern Greek Twitter accounts.

Richard

Associative Versus Attributive Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B: Appendix H

Appendix H neatly summarizes the rôle of supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B. Click to ENLARGE:

I wish to stress one thing in particular. There is a marked difference in associative supersyllabograms, which account for the greatest number of SSYLS in Mycenaean Linear B, and attributive supersyllabograms, which appear primarily in the textiles and vessels (pottery, amphorae, cups etc.) sectors of the Late Minoan III & Mycenaean economies.

Associative supersyllabograms inform of us of some element, usually a land tenure factor, which relates to the ideogram itself, or which circumscribes its environment, especially in the livestock raising sub-sector of the agricultural sector. For instance, the supersyllabogram O, which you see in this Appendix, plus the ideogram for sheep + the number of sheep accounted for in the inventory of any particular tablet, informs us that the sheep are being raised on a lease(d) field, more specifically a usufruct lease field (i.e. a lease field which a farmer tenant cultivates for the use of his own family and village neighbours, with a taxation imposed by the overseer). In other words, the supersyllabogram is associated with the raising of x no. of sheep. The scribe could have simply informed us that x no. of sheep were raised, and left it at that. But he did not. By adding just one syllabogram, in this case a simple vowel = O, he has given us a great deal more information on the raising of the sheep (rams & ewes) on this particular tablet. And he has done all of this without having to resort to writing it all out as text. Since it was critical for the scribes to use as little space as possible on what were (and are) extremely small tablets, the use of supersyllabograms as a substitute for wasteful text is illustrative of just how far the scribes were willing to go to save such invaluable space. They did not do this only occasionally. They did it a great deal of the time, and they always followed the exact same formula in so doing. Not only are syllabograms such as O (on a lease field), KI (on a plot of land) & NE (in their sheep pens) in the field of sheep husbandry associative, they are all what I designate as dependent supersyllabograms, since they are meaningless unless they are immediately adjacent to the ideograms they qualify. No ideogram, no supersyllabogram. Period.

To illustrate the radical difference between a Linear B tablet on which a supersyllabogram + an ideogram is used, and another on which the text is spelled out, take a good hard look at this comparison: Click to ENLARGE

This comparison between the real tablet from Knossos using only supersyllabograms and ideograms (left) and a putative one using text in full (right) is precisely the reason why so many scribes much preferred the former formulaic approach to inscribing tablets to the latter discursive and space wasting technique. A textual version of this tablet would have been twice as long as the actual tablet. Even if no one nowadays has ever managed to decipher dependent supersyllabograms until now, that cannot conceivably mean that the Linear B scribes did not know what they were, since otherwise, they would never have used them so liberally in the first place. In other words, using SSYLS for no reason at all is tantamount to a reductio ad absurdum. There are thousands of supersyllabograms found on 700 tablets from Knossos. They are there because all of the scribes, as a team or, if you like, as a guild, all understood each and every supersyllabogram to mean one thing and one thing only in its proper context. In other words, supersyllabograms are standardized and always formulaic. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Homer, who also heavily relied on formulaic expressions, though for entirely different reasons. My point is that formulaic language is a key characteristic of ancient Greek texts, right on down from Mycenaean times through to Attic and beyond. We should never overlook this extremely important characteristic of ancient Greek, regardless of period (1450 – 400 BCE).

Attributive dependent supersyllabograms always appear inside the ideogram which they qualify, never adjacent to it. They always describe an actual attribute (usually known as an adjectival function) of the ideogram. For instance, the syllabogram PO inside the ideogram for “cloth” is the first syllabogram, i.e. the first syllable of the Mycenaean word ponikiya = “purple”, hence the phrase = “purple cloth”. Likewise the syllabogram TE, when it appears inside the ideogram for “cloth” is the supersyllabogram for the Mycenaean word tetukuwoa, which means “well prepared” or if you like, “well spun”. Hence, the syllabogram TE inside the ideogram for cloth must mean one thing and one thing only, “well-prepared cloth”. I have discovered, identified & classified well over a dozen examples of associative supersyllabograms.

Neither type of dependent supersyllabogram, associative or attributive, was ever isolated and tabulated in Mycenaean Linear B until I systematically studied, deciphered and classified scores of them on some 700 tablets from Knossos.

Richard

Conference on Symbolism: The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B: Selected Appendices A-C

Since the presentation I shall be giving at the Conference, Thinking Symbols, at the Pultusk Academy, University of Warsaw, is under wraps until then, I am posting for your information just 5 of the 11 Appendices to that talk (3 in this post), to give you at least some idea of where I shall be leading the attendees at the Conference in the course of my talk. In this post, you can see the first three Appendices. The first one (Appendix A) illustrates the use of what I choose to call Modern International Superalphabetic Symbols, as you see here:

It is readily apparent from this appendix that we are dealing with modern ideograms, all of which are international standards, and which are recognized as such world-wide. For instance, everyone in the world knows that the first symbol or ideogram means “under copyright protection”, while the fourth means “no parking”.

Proceeding to Appendix B, we have:

The abbreviations in this appendix are so strikingly similar to what I have identified as supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B that it is immediately obvious to anyone seeing the latter for the first time can instantly correlate the former with the the city codes or supersyllabograms in Linear B, as seen here in Appendix C:

Clearly, the abbreviations for modern city codes, even though they consist of the first two letters only of the 10 city names are identical in structure and format to the ancient city names, represented by the first syllabogram, in other words, the first syllable in each, which we find in Appendix C. This astonishing co-incidence reveals something of the sophistication of Mycenaean Linear B taken to its limits.

It was in fact Prof. Thomas G. Palaima who first identified these city names (Knossos, Zakros, Pylos etc.) in his superb translation of Linear B tablet Heidelburg HE Fl 1994. What he failed to realize was that he had in fact discovered the sypersyllabogram, which I finally came to realize in 2014 was always the first syllabogram, in other words, the first syllable only of a particular Mycenaean Greek word, in this instance, a city or settlement name. In retrospect, we cannot blame him for this apparent oversight, because that is all it was, apparent. He never got around to a meticulous examination of the 3,000 relatively intact tablets from Knossos, which I took upon myself to carry through to its ultimate revelation(s). And what a revelation they proved to be, when in the course of over a year (2014-2015), I discovered to my utter astonishment that some 700 (23.3%!) of the 3,000 tablets I examined all had at least one supersyllabogram on them, and some as many as four!

Some of the tablets I examined had supersyllabograms only on them, and no text whatsoever. The question was, I had to wonder – and I mean I really had to wonder – what did they all mean? The answer was not long in coming. Within 2 weeks of identifying the first new supersyllabogram, I had already isolated & defined more than 10 of them!

When I speak of supersyllabograms, I do not mean simply city or settlement names. Far from it. These are just the tip of the iceberg, and they are atypical. There are at least 30 supersyllabograms in all, out of a syllabary comprised of only 61 syllabograms, in other words 50% of them. That is a staggering sum. Supersyllabograms range in meaning from “lease field” to “plot of land” to “sheep pen” to “this year” (among the first 10 I discovered) referring to sheep husbandry in the agricultural sector, from “cloth” to “well-prepared cloth” to “gold cloth” and “purple dyed cloth” in the textiles sector, and on and on. That this is a major discovery in the further decipherment of Mycenaean Linear B goes practically without saying. In fact, nothing like it has been achieved in the past 63 years since the decipherment of the vast majority of Mycenaean Linear B by the genius, Michael Ventris, in 1952-1953.

More Appendices to follow in the next post.

Richard

How to Insert Logograms and Ideograms into Linear B Text

Insertion of Logograms:

Now that we have learned how to type Linear B in a document, the only thing left for us to do is to insert logograms and ideograms as required into our text.

In Linear B, a logogram is either
(a) a homophone such as rai, which also means “saffron”
-or-
(b) a combination of two or three syllabograms, one on top of the other, which combine to form the word which they represent. Linear B scribes often resorted to this short-cut in order to save precious space on the tiny tablets they inscribed.

The procedure for each of these two different types of logograms is not the same.

For (a), it is simple. Since the logogram, such as rai for “saffron” is already a homophone, it is on the Linear B keyboard. So you just type it, as we see here:

(First switch from your default font to Linear B as per the instructions in the last post): Click to ENLARGE both examples

NOTES:
(1) right after you insert the logogram, you must then select Wrap – Wrap Through, otherwise the logogram will appear above or below the preceding word in Linear B, but not beside. In other words, the logogram must be anchored to the paragraph in which the Linear B word is found, or if there is no paragraph, immediately to the right of the Linear B word.
(2) You can easily see that the logogram for “ointment” is actually the Linear B word for ointment.

In the sentence, The Queen has wool, the logogram = the syllabogram MA with RE underneath = mare = wool. Note that the logogram is not spelled the same as the word for -wool = mari. For the logogram for honey = meri, see below.

Insertion of Ideograms:

The procedure for the insertion of ideograms is identical to method (b) above for logograms such as arepa, mari (above) & meri (below) for ointment, wool & honey respectively.

1 Insert (from the Insert Menu) - Picture – From File, as illustrated here in the introductory text to Pylos Tablet Py 641-1952 (Ventris): Click to ENLARGE

NOTE:
Right after you insert the ideogram, you must then select Wrap – Wrap Through, otherwise the ideogram will appear above or below the preceding word in Linear B, but not beside it. In other words, the ideogram must be anchored to the paragraph in which the Linear B word is found, or if there is no paragraph, immediately to the right of the Linear B word.

Richard

Learn How to Type Linear B FAST! – well, at least much faster than usual: Click to ENLARGE

Learn How to Type Linear B FAST! - well, at least much faster than usual: Click to ENLARGE



Typically, keyboard layouts for Mycenaean Linear B are so abstruse that they actually confuse us more than they help us. I hope to remedy this messy state of affairs with this brand new keyboard layout for Mycenaean Linear B which I have just devised, with its own mnemonics and other guidelines for easy learning. Here are the keys to this keyboard layout:

KEYS:

Your first time round, you must download & install the Linear B Font by Curtis Clark, here: Click to go to the site and download the font:



Once you have installed the Linear B Font, you can then proceed to type anything you like in Linear B, by following these steps in order. 

(a) First you must change your Font from your default (Times New Roman, Georgia etc.) to Linear B
(b) Next, you should increase the size of your Linear B font 2 points up from your default font size in (a). Thus, if you default font size is 12 points, you should set the Linear B font to 14 points. You may also need to set the Linear B font to BOLD if it does not appear clearly enough to your satisfaction. This is up to you.

(c) SYLLABOGRAMS:

Syllabograms: If you start typing any linear series of 5 q w e r t y keyboard keys from the left to the right, you will be typing the entire series of a particular group of syllabograms from [consonant + a + e + i + o + u], as illustrated in the examples here:

If you type A S D F G, you will automatically get DA DE DI DO DU. Try it!
If you type a s d f g, you will automatically get TA TE TI TO TU.
If you type Z X C V B, you will automatically get NA NE NI NO NU.
If you type z x c v b, you will automatically get SA SE SI SO SU.
Etc.

NOTE the mnemonics, DATA & NASA, for the syllabogram series DATA = DA... + TA... and NASA for the syllabogram series NASA = NA... + SA... Think about it for a second or two, and you will get it. From then on in, it will be a cinch for you to  type DA... from A... & TA... from a... (DATA) + NA... from Z & SA from z... (NASA). Anyway, it is for me. If you don ’t like using mnemonics (memory reminders, the string on an elephant ’s trunk), you can just skip this part.

The only exception to this is the series: q w e r t (lower-case LC), which gives you the 5 vowels in order: a e i o u.

Some series of syllabograms are incomplete. In these cases, you do not have to type as far across the keyboard. For example:

If you type Y U I O, you will automatically get QA QE QI QO
If you type y u i o, you will automatically get WA WE WI WO

Examples of actual Linear B text (Latinized):

If you type .Vv, you get the word, KONOSO (Knossos)
If you type hef, you get the word, PAITO (Phaistos)
If you type Ep, you get thew word, AIZA (goat)
If you type qXLe[, you get the word, ANEMOIYERIYA (Priestess of the Winds)
 

(d) NUMERICS:

These are easy. Once you are in Linear B, 1 = 1, 2 = 2, 3 = 10... 5 = 100 8 = 2,000 etc. The only thing you need to remember is how many times to press each number key to write a large number in Linear B, e.g. for 43,537, type: 0 0 8 7 5 5 5 5 5 4 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1    

(e) HOMOPHONES:

Some series (some of which are also incomplete) yield only homophones. For example:

SHIFT 1 2 3 4 5 = ! @ # $ % yield the homophones: ha nwa pu2 rai riya.
[ ] \ yield the syllabograms YE & YO + the homophone -two- & when shifted to upper case (UC)
{ } | yield the syllabograms ZE & ZO + the homophone -dwo- (lower case! LC)

You will be typing homophones very rarely; so you don’t really need to learn these keys. Just refer to the chart when you need to type homophones (at a ratio of some 100 syllabograms per homophone, i.e. 100:1)

CLOSING THE LINEAR B FONT & SWTICHING BACK TO YOUR DEFAULT FONT:	

(A) You MUST follow these steps after you have finished typing text in Linear B.
(a) SAVE your document immediately in .doc or .docx format!
(b) SWITCH to your default font (e.g. Times New Roman or Georgia) and reduce your font size by 2 points (also remove BOLD if you used BOLD to type in Linear B).
(c) You may now continue typing in your default font. If Linear B still appears, and your default font does not, you have incorrectly followed this procedure. 

TO SWITCH BACK TO THE LINEAR B FONT:

(B) You MUST follow these steps to switch to the Linear B font, after you have finished typing text in your default font (Times New Roman or...)
(a) SAVE your document immediately in .doc or .docx format!
(b) SWITCH to the Linear B font and increase your font size by 2 points (also add BOLD if you want your Linear B text to stand out).
(c) You may now continue typing in Linear B. If your default font still appears, but Linear B does not, you have incorrectly followed this procedure.

Simply alternate from (A) to (B) to switch back and from your default font & Linear B. DO NOT OMIT ANY STEPS!

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TYPE LOGOGRAMS & IDEOGRAMS USING THE LINEAR B FONT.

Oh, and don’ t forget to print out this template of the Linear B font, laminate it in plastic and pin it to the wall above your computer for quick reference!

I shall illustrate how to insert these in your Linear B text in the next post. 


Richard

Coriander in Linear B. How does it measure up? Big time! Click to ENLARGE

The translation of these three sequential * tablets is a straightforward affair ( * sequential because I have already translated KN 416). As I mentioned in a previous post, the Minoans & Mycenaeans at Knossos, Phaistos Lykinthos, Surimos, Pylos, Mycenae and elsewhere were crazy about coriander, because that is all they ever talk about on their inventory tablets referencing spices. The only thing that perplexed me at the outset on these tablets was the reference to crimson on tablets KN 417 L e 01 & KN 418 L e 11. I simply could not figure out why the total no. of grams for crimson were at variance with those for coriander. It is obvious to any experienced cook or chef that I know next to nothing about spices. This is unquestionably the reason why initially I could not figure out what the totals for crimson and coriander meant. I strongly suspected that the colour, crimson, was an instance of synecdoche, a literary device where the part represents the whole, in other words, the scribe is referring to a spice which is crimson coloured. Since coriander is green, the crimson spice must be another. That spice must be saffron, since saffron is vividly crimson in colour. So it appears our little conundrum is resolved. I freely admit I had to look these spices up on Google, then Wikipedia, just to confirm my suspicions, and thankfully, they turned out to be right.

So the two spices referenced on these tablets are coriander and saffron.

This is the last of our posts on the metric style measurement system used by the Linear B scribes at all of the locales mentioned above, and others besides.

Richard

Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B and Arcado-Cypriot Linear C

Tag: homophones

Prospectus on my Presentation, “The Rôle of Supersyllbograms in Mycenaean Linear B”, exactly one month from today, at the Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, just outside of Warsaw, Poland, June 30-July 2

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Bibliography (Part A: citations 1-69) for the Presentation, The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, by Richard Vallance Janke at the Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, Pultusk, Poland, June 30-July 2 2015

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Translation of the Gezer Agricultural Almanac into Mycenaean Linear B: Click to ENLARGE

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Happy Second Anniversary to Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae! Now the largest Linear B blog on the Internet

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The Famous Linear B Tablet, “Rapato Meno”, the Priestess of the Winds & the Goddess Pipituna, Knossos KN Fp 13

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Quotations from The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, Presentation at the Conference, Thinking Symbols, Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, Pultusk, Poland, June 30-July 2, 2015: Part A

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Secondary School Graduation Diploma in Mycenaean Linear B for Mrs. Rita Roberts, Crete: Click to ENLARGE

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Mycenaean Greece & Linear B, our NEW Circle on Google +

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Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, near Warsaw, Poland

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Conference, “Thinking Symbols”, Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, University of Warsaw (June 30-July 2 2015)

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POST 800: An Introductory Glossary of General Linguistics Terminology: Part B: H-P

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Photos of Michael Ventris (1922-1956) & Richard Vallance Janke (1945 – )

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Our Twitter Account is growing rapidly! 15 new followers in the past 10 days: Click to visit & follow us:

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Associative Versus Attributive Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B: Appendix H

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Conference on Symbolism: The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B: Selected Appendices A-C

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How to Insert Logograms and Ideograms into Linear B Text

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Learn How to Type Linear B FAST! – well, at least much faster than usual: Click to ENLARGE

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Coriander in Linear B. How does it measure up? Big time! Click to ENLARGE

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Tag: homophones

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