Tag: Linear B Tablets

An Archaeologist’s Perspectives on Offerings to the Goddess Potnia, by Rita Roberts, on Pylos Tablet PY cc 665: Click to ENLARGE

Linear B tablets reveal to archaeologists information about offerings made during religious ceremonies, such as we find with this tablet Pylos PY cc 665, found at Pylos Crete, listing offerings of rams and pigs to the Goddess Potnia. It seems from archaeological evidence that the main animals including pigs were transported as a whole carcass into the main Cultic Room, and the not so meaty parts were selected for burning, whereas their meaty parts were first consumed by humans and then thrown into the fire.

This is borne out by evidence of burnt animal sacrifices from the sanctuary of Agios Konstantinos, North East Peloponnese.

Rita Roberts, Archeologist, Herakleion, Crete

NOTE by Richard Vallance Janke: I learn something new everyday. I may be a linguist, but I am no archaeologist. So Rita, our resident archaeologist, now retired, who has lived in Herakleion, Greece, for years, and has worked right at the site of Knossos, serves as the perfect complement to myself, our resident linguist. I scarcely know how either of us could do without the other. We make the perfect team. I am sure you all can understand how very grateful I am that I met Rita less than two years ago, and how my teaching her Linear B, and her teaching me at least the basics of archaeology, have benefited us to the utmost. I know that I speak for Rita too when I say this. Click to ENLARGE:

Pylos Tablet PY cc 665: The Shepherd, Fresh Penis, Offers to Goddess Potnia… Click to ENLARGE (the Tablet, I mean, not the Shepherd’s Tool)

Pylos Tablet PY cc 665: The Shepherd, Fresh Penis, Offers to Goddess Potnia... Click to ENLARGE (the Tablet, I mean, not the Shepherd’s Tool)

When my esteemed colleague, Rita Roberts, sent me her latest translation of an extant Linear B tablet from Pylos, PY cc 665, little did she suspect, indeed, even less did I suspect what we were in for. Rita’s translation is the most commonsensical one a translator could come up with. The word NEWOPEO is almost certainly the name of the suppliant making an offering of 100 sheep and 190 pigs to the goddess, Potnia, one of the major Mycenaean deities, almost all of whom were feminine anyway. Potnia, otherwise called, “Potnia Theron” or Mistress of the Wild Beasts, has often been associated with Artemis, the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, but she may also be linked with Demeter Ceres, goddess of the grain harvest, as appears to be the case with the Mycenaean fresco in this collage: click to ENLARGE

Certainly the Minoans and Mycenaeans both relied heavily on their grain harvest, as did all Greek societies and city states, Crete, Cyprus, Athens, all the Athenian colonial cities, Corinth, Macedonian Pella, Syracuse etc., right on down through the Classical and Hellenic Eras, as indeed did Egypt and all other major ancient civilizations, including Rome, of course.

Apparently, the Minoan hierarchy of goddess and gods was matriarchal rather than patriarchal, although whether this was the case for the Mycenaean pantheon of gods we cannot say for sure. However, that being said, we can see right away that Rita Robert’s translation does great justice to the apparent significance of this important tablet as a religious votary, by translating NEWOPEO as the suppliant’s name. So far, so good.

But when I happened to take a closer look at the fellow’s name, I noticed at once that the first two syllables were the Linear B word for “new”, a very common word in Mycenaean Greek. So then, of course, the question is, what do the last two syllables mean? I was already suspicious of what the result would be even before I looked up a Greek word that would fill the bill, and sure enough my suspicions were confirmed, to a T. It meant what I thought it meant. Not only that, it cannot mean anything else in Classical Greek, if spelled the way it is in this fellow’s name in Linear B. The Mycenaean Greek word and its Classical Greek equivalent are one and the same. No doubt about it. “Penis”.

But is this so very surprising, given the Greeks’ obsession with the beauty of the male anatomy in all its parts, apparently, it seems, right on down from the Mycenaeans to the Hellenic Age and beyond? There is one splendid Minoan fresco of a fisherboy from Akrotiri (Late Cycladic 1, Late Minoan 1A) which does show a fellow nude. Sadly, however, his lovely penis has been effaced by the ravages of time. Here is this exquisite fresco: Click to ENLARGE

As for the ancient Greeks themselves (by whom I mean those from ca. 700 BCE to 100 BCE and beyond), they were utterly obsessed with the all-too prominent aspects of the male physique, given that to them, i.e. the Greeks, the male physiognomy of the gods and of their heroes held a supremely religious value, even beyond the equally enticing virtues of the female physique, divine (athanatos) or mortal (thanatos).

Onomastics & Personal Names:

Yet what about nomenclature? Would the ancient Greeks have been so daring as to give their men names like this? Certainly. Why not? Their pagan religion was saturated with imagery and images alike of fertility and sensuality, with a marked emphasis on the former, as were the religions of practically every ancient civilization right up to the Roman. No big surprise there to anyone.

Still, I will have to buttress this claim of mine with actual examples of racy Greek names, if I expect our readers to actually believe me. We needn’t look very far. Among the Greek deities, some of the most prominent bear names with distinctly sensual overtones: Pan, Greek name derived from the word pa-on, meaning "herdsman". In mythology, this is the name of a god of shepherds and flocks, who had the horns, hindquarters and legs of a goat; Herpes, god of prostitutes & cunning; Himeros, god of sexual desire (Himeros can be translated as “love or lust attack”); Eros, god of love and sexual desire; Pothos, god of sexual desire and longing; Ganymede, Priapus etc. And among mortals, Arsenios (Virile), Beelzeboul (Lord of Dung), Dioskouroi (Zeus’ boys!), Pythias (rotting!), Seilinos (moving back and forth in a wine trough), Zoroastres (he whose camels are angry) etc.

As for the plays of Aristophanes, they are riddled with obscene names, most of which of course are meant as parodies, but nevertheless...

Compare Rita Robert’s translation of this tablet (Pylos PY cc 665) to my own: Click to ENLARGE:

My version, which requires considerable knowledge of ancient Greek grammar in numerous dialects, relies on translating NEWOPEO in an entirely different manner, and in two different versions, (a) the first rendering this word as the present participle active of the Greek verb “to bring” & (b) the second referencing bringing tribute to Potnia by ship. The problem with my interpretations is that they overlooked the obvious, which Rita did not. Which of these three versions carries the most weight I leave entirely in your hands. Or perhaps all three of them have something going for them. One thing is certain: it is extremely unwise to fall into the trap of believing that there can only be one “right” translation for so many Linear B tablets, given that adequate context to clinch the matter is sorely lacking in the vast majority of them. I have mentioned this often on our blog, and shall continue to raise the point for the simple reason that a great many Linear B tablets admit of more than one interpretation, and often of more than two. In such instances, each translation has its own merits and weaknesses, which are subject to rigorous critical analysis by Linear B scholars worldwide... as indeed they should be, without exception.

Richard

My Twitter account completely updated, new header new photo, and new, wider perspectives: Click to ENLARGE

My Twitter account completely updated, new header new photo, and new, wider perspectives: Click to Visit:

I have just updated and completely revised not only the appearance but the contents of my Twitter account, to reflect my widely expanding interests as related, either directly or indirectly, to Mycenaean Linear B, Minoan Linear A, Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, ancient Greek etc. etc. I have posted a new header, which you see above, incorporating the Linear B word for Knossos, and part of the stunning dolphins fresco in the Queen’s Megaron at Knossos, which you can see here: Click to ENLARGE

As it now stands, in its short lifetime of less than two years, our Linear B (A & C) blog has become one of the primary Linear B resources on the entire Internet, with visits already running into the tens of thousands (an astounding figure for something as bizarre and esoteric as Linear B!). Soon approaching 40K, we expect at least 60K hits by our second anniversary, if not more. The reasons for this are obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in Linear B (A &C). Nothing is off-limits on our blog. Neither Rita Roberts, my research colleague, nor I, take anything for granted. We are both “doubting Thomases” to the core, casting doubt not only on translations of Linear B tablets by other Linear B researchers, but on one anothers as well, given that neither of us is in the least impervious to committing errors, sometimes egregious. Such errors must be drawn to our attention, come what may. If you are an expert in Linear B decipherment, and you do not like any translation either of us has made, feel free to give us a shout.

The other principal concerns and issues our blog frequently focuses on are:
1. keeping the Linear B syllabary right up to date. The syllabary chart most commonly used on the Internet is way out-of-date, and must be replaced by this one: Click to ENLARGE

2. the introduction of the completely new theory of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, of which there are at least 30 from the store of 61 syllabograms. We have plenty of posts on our theory on our blog. Rita Roberts and I shall be publishing a major research article on supersyllabograms sometime in 2015 or 2016. If tenable, it should prove to be a revolutionary step forward in the decipherment of the remaining 10% or so of the Linear B syllabary, its homophones, logograms and ideograms as yet undeciphered over the past 62 years since Michael Ventris successfully and amazingly deciphered the other 90%. Our research will be widely available in PDF format on the Internet, and although copyrighted, will be free for use by any Linear B aficionados. Here is an example of just a few supersyllabograms, all dealing with sheep, rams & ewes, the primary concern of Linear B scribes by a long shot: Click to ENLARGE

3. Progressive Linear B Vocabulary and Grammar, another all-new approach to the study of Linear B, whereby I intend to re-construct as much of the lost grammar of Mycenaean Greek as I possibly can. I have already completely mapped the active voice of both Thematic and Athematic verbs in Mycenaean Greek. Nouns, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions with cases are to follow in 2015. To view all posts on this topic, visit our PINTEREST Board, Mycenaean Linear B Grammar and Vocabulary:

4. Rita Roberts and I shall be constructing an all new English-Linear B Lexicon sometimes between 2016 & 2018, which will be vastly superior to the currently available Mycenaean (Linear B) – ENGLISH Glossary on the Internet, of which the less said the better, as it is riddled with at least 100 errors! I strongly dis-advise anyone using it. If you must use a Mycenaean dictionary, be sure to avail yourselves of Chris Tselentsis’ far superior Linear B Lexicon.

5. the all new field of the feasibility of the possible application of the Linear syllabaries, especially B & C but also, to a lesser extent, Linear A, to the emerging field of extraterrestrial communication, by which I mean serious research as undertaken by NASA: Click to read the entire PDF

and other space administration, research facilities and professional online sites, and not crackpot nonsense such as UFOs, alien abductions and the like. Here are a few comic strips just to make it clear exactly what I think of extraterrestrial crackpots: Click to ENLARGE

followed by this famous quotation by Werner Karl Heisenburg: Click to read the Wikipedia article on him:

These are just the 5 major ventures we are undertaking on our blog, but we do not shy away from anything whatsoever which advances our knowledge of Linear B in general and in particular.

My Twitter account has expanded its scope to include not only my primary pursuits, research into Linear A, B & C and ancient Greek, especially the archaic Greek of the Catalogue of Ships in book II of Homer’s Iliad, which I am in the process of translating in its entirety, as you can see here: Click to ENLARGE

but also the following areas of great interest to me:

1. posting of major research articles, not only in English, but in French and Italian as well, the latter two of which I shall translate into English whenever I deem it necessary for our blog readers;
2. ancient Greek vocabulary, but exclusively in the East Greek dialects, Mycenaean Greek, Arcado-Cypriot, Aeolian, Ionic and Attic;
3. Decipherment of ancient languages in general, insofar as these related, either directly or indirectly, to Linear syllabaries;
4. Cryptology, such as the Bletchley Circle project in World War Two, and the key rôle the brilliant genius, Alan Turing, the equal of Michael Ventris in intellect, played in the decipherment of the Enigma Code, especially as this astounding achievement relates to...
5. thorough investigation and in-depth analysis of the possible suitability of of syllabic scripts such as Linear A, B & C into extraterrestrial communication (NOT UFO’s, which are crackpot nonsense suitable only to... I will not fill in the blanks!);
6. astronomy, Mars, exoplanets etc. (not reflected on this blog, of course, except insofar as it may possibly relate to Linear syllabaries), linguistics in general, including translation from one language to another, especially between English & French, in which as a Canadian I am fluent, Latin & Greek and Italian, which I read very well & Spanish, fairly well. I have forgotten my Russian, which I learned 50 years ago, but I can still read the Cyrillic alphabet with no difficulty. Linguistics and translation posts on this blog must in some way be related to Linear syllabaries, but not on my Twitter account, where anything important about linguistics in general is just fine with me.

Richard

The Implications of the Linear B Geometric Syllabary for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Part 1 — The Biggest Bang you will ever have seen from this blog!… so far… stay tuned!

The Implications of the Linear B Geometric Syllabary for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Part 1 — The Biggest Bang you will ever have seen from this blog!... so far... stay tuned!

Before I go any further, allow me to state categorically that this message the Voyager Space Capsules launched in 1977 with one of their missions being to search out suppositional extraterrestrials, is primitive at best, and ludicrous at its worst. Click to ENLARGE:

As far as I can figure it out (which isn’t very much at all - not that it matters), the message on this disc is difficult even for most humans to interpret, unless they happen to be astrophysicists, mathematicians or some sort of scientific geek. Unless the reader is human, it is probably impossible to make to make head or tails of it. And I for one, even though I am human and hopefully intelligent, cannot even begin to imagine how any target extraterrestrial civilization could even begin to out how to play the damn thing, unless they had a record player (ahem, as if!), a device already obsolete even to us! One of the fundamentally flawed assumptions of this analog device is that you have to play it on a device the human race alone has invented. The very concept of playing an analog recorded medium could very well be completely impenetrable to even the most advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, who might find the whole thing so laughable they would toss it out “the window”, assuming they even had windows, which is a helluva stretch in and of itself.

In the Wikipedia article on this mission, we read this:

Voyager 1 and 2 both carry with them a golden record that contains pictures and sounds of Earth, along with symbolic directions for playing the record and data detailing the location of Earth.

This patently assumes that whoever or whatever intelligence eventually (!) receives this message will look a great deal like us (i.e. be anthropomorphic) and will think almost exactly as we do, and so will understand human music, and will be able to interpret the capsule’s human historical, photographic archives & over a thousand human languages... probably so much gibberish to our poor benighted recipients some countless millennia hence, assuming it arrives in one piece, if at all. So as far as I am concerned, this mission is paramount to a futile exercise in pipe-dreaming. Even in 1977, when I was only 32 years old, I considered the whole thing a complete waste of time, money and human resources. If anything is a near-perfect example of “thinking inside the box, with the lid closed and sealed”, that project had to be it. This will all become all too painfully obvious as we proceed through our discussion of the truly formidable, quite possibly even insurmountable challenges of interstellar communication. Of course, since then, in the past 37 years, humankind has apparently begun to grow up from mid- to late-adolescence, to burst the chains of the outer limits of human consciousness as it then manifested itself, and quite literally gone cosmic. We appear to be on the cusp of our next leap in human consciousness, and if it is indeed transpiring at this very moment in our history, we are in for one helluva roller-coaster ride, the likes of which humankind has never come close to imagining in the past, right up to and including the twentieth century.

Richard Saint-Gelais’ Survey of the Potential Implications of the Application of the Linear B Syllabary as a Cipher for Extraterrestrial Communication:

In the first of our two previous posts we introduced the proposals that Richard Saint-Gelais of NASA set forth in the potentially theoretical, if not quite yet practical, application of the Mycenaean Greek Linear B Geometric Syllabary to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In the second of these posts, I myself posited some of the assumptions, principles and hypotheses underpinning a search of such tremendous magnitude that it stretches the powers of human reasoning practically beyond its outer limits.

Still, history has repeatedly demonstrated that our intellect and powers of reasoning can be, and at certain junctures in the timeline of human evolution, are stretched another notch up the ladder beyond the presumptive limits of our previously adduced levels of abstractive powers, finally allowing us today, for the first time in human history, to think more and more, and more and more swiftly “outside the box” than ever before prior to the twenty-first century.

The Ancient Greeks Take the First Great Leap of the Human Intellect onto the Higher Plane of Abstract Reasoning:

The first great leap onto the purely abstract plane of reasoning was taken by the ancient Greeks, in two discreet stages:

(A) the complete overhaul of the Minoan Linear A syllabary into the Mycenaean Greek Linear B syllabary, which swiftly and unceremoniously tossed overboard the most complicated and abstruse Linear B syllabograms, homophones & ideograms (some 1/4 of some 300), in less than 50 years, an incredibly rapid turnover in terms of socio-linguistic change, which otherwise nearly always occurred at a snail’s pace in the ancient world.

But there is even more to this picture than we can possibly have imagined before the 1990s at the very earliest. Despite the proliferation of puissant supercomputers and the quasi-instantaneous communication afforded by the World Wide Web, a much better semiotic signifier for what it actually is than the word, “Internet”, which is significantly lamer, I say again, in spite of all these extremely recent massive technological advances at our disposal, the Minoan Linear A syllabary, which for a human language was already a quasi-geometric script complete with the base set of 5 vowels for the first time in history, has utterly defied any and all attempts whatsoever at decipherment since Sir Arthur Evans first excavated the ruins of Knossos in the spring of 1900. It just won’t budge a single centimetre. Now, if we are utterly incapable of deciphering a human language, Minoan in Linear A, even with all of our technological gadgets and goodies at our instant command, including The University of California Berkeley Campus’ newly conceived automated “time machine” to reconstruct ancient languages, Click to visit the site:

imagine how much more alarmingly daunting must be the gargantuan task of beginning to scratch even the surface of communicating anything sensible to any extraterrestrial civilization whatsoever. But is the task really all that hopeless?

Although the Linear B syllabary was used by the scribes at Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae, Phaistos, Thebes (in Greece) and in several other Mycenaean locales, almost solely for accounting and inventories, which function primarily on a concrete and semi-abstract level, the script itself, being fundamentally and almost exclusively geometric in nature, was by far the most abstract script ever developed in the ancient world until that time (ca. 1450 BCE). Geometric abstraction is also one of the outstanding characteristics of Minoan & Mycenaean architecture, as illustrated in these two examples:

Knossos: Click to ENLARGE

Here we can instantly isolate the perfectly Circular Frieze Motif shown here on one of the two buildings at Knossos, a motif which appears over and over on several Minoan and Mycenaean structures. Notice also that the other edifice is perfectly straight in every plane, including the then revolutionary liberal use of skylights for interior illumination. You can readily see that the building reminds us of the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), the first true pioneer in the advent of modern architecture. This is no accident. Lloyd Wright took much of his inspiration for the foundation of his architectural constructs from Japanese and, yes, Minoan architecture. Once again, this should not come as any surprise to anyone familiar with the amazing achievements of one of the most brilliant architects in the history of humankind, an architect whose applied principles fundamentally relied on the application of geometry to his buildings and structures.

Mycenae:

Even more astounding are the near perfect geometric proportions of the Mycenaean Tesoro Atreoyo (Treasury of Atreus), which the Mycenaeans constructed with astonishing mathematical accuracy hundreds of years before the great Greek mathematicians finally came round to working out the complex geometric and algebraic theorems underlying the elegant geometric proportions of this magnificent structure: Click to ENLARGE

SOURCE: Metron Ariston (Greek for “The Ideal Mean” (from: Liddell & Scott, 1986, pg. 442)

What can I say? The Mycenaeans were Greeks down to their very marrow.

As anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the Linear B syllabary can attest, its geometric elegance and economy is second-to-none.

Are Ancient Scripts Primitive?

When modern writers and the occasional deluded linguist refer to ancient scripts as “primitive”, as compared with so-called “modern” alphabets, which for Occidental languages (Greek & Latin) are ancient anyway, they do a great disservice to the former, propagating totally false misconceptions on that account alone. In point of fact, there is no such thing as a “primitive” script, which leads me almost inexorably to my next observation: if there are no primitive scripts, there are no modern, all scripts (ideographies, syllabaries & alphabets) ancient or modern being as sound as any other. It follows logically then that any and all future scripts as yet uninvented will also serve as well as, but no better than, the thousands of scripts humankind has dabbled in over the past 10 millennia at least, including any which we may devise for extraterrestrial communication. The implications of this factor alone are profound. They inform us that any language whatsoever we use for communication, terrestrial or otherwise is, and can only be, human, whoever tautological this may sound... or so it may appear.

Now, the implications of this scenario for the potential transmission of some sort of set of signals susceptible to possible decipherment by extraterrestrial intelligences are profound. My point is simply this: if the historical timeline in the (apparent) “evolution” of human scripts is not sufficiently impressive even for us to make a big deal out of it, and if the transmission of any one or more of humankind’s most mathematically elegant scripts, past or present – and eventually future – are deemed by some to be just the right recipe, then why not try them? What have we got to lose? Nothing... to gain? - cosmic communication = cosmic consciousness. Now there’s something to put in your pipe & smoke.

(B) Then the very same people, the Greeks, went plunging ahead, completely abandoning the Mycenaean Linear B syllabary for the even more elegant Greek alphabet, but significantly not casting aside the Arcado-Cypriot Linear C syllabary (even more geometrically economic than Linear B), which held its own right down to 400 BCE! No use re-inventing the wheel, or so the Arcadians and Cypriots believed. But, and here is the wringer. Now get this! The Linear C syllabary was no longer used merely for record keeping and inventory purposes, in fact, far from it. Its primary use was for publication of much more abstract legal and constitutional documents. Abstract geometric syllabary, abstract thought. That’s the next big leap forward. And the next: abstract geometric syllabary --> abstract communication --> abstract extraterrestrial communication.

What about the Greek Alphabet, and its Widespread Use for Algebraic Notation?

Now, of course, the Greek alphabet itself is not characteristically geometric, so we can pretty much eliminate it, and for that matter any other Occidental alphabet (Latin or Cyrillic) as suitable for interstellar communication. This includes our Arabic numerals, which you can be pretty much sure no extraterrestrial civilization would be able to distinguish from letters in an alpha-numeric system, since all characters in such a system would look the same to them, and almost certainly far too complex for them to take seriously.

We can also be pretty well assured that no extraterrestrial civilization, even if they too used alphabets, would have the faintest idea what human alphabets were supposed to be signifiers of. But does that really matter? My short answer is simply, not at all. If we were to transmit from the source (ourselves) for instance just these rectilinear & circular 10 Linear B symbols &/or 10 Linear C symbols – for a potential total of 20 — as simple signals and nothing more (10 supposedly being a universally recognizable number), all kinds of wacky scenarios are likely to transpire at the target (them, whoever or whatever they are).

Now, of course, since our target extraterrestrial civilization will not have the faintest idea what these symbols mean to us, as humans – if they see them as symbols as such at all – or whether or not they simply see them as geometric signals, the latter will do the trick just fine, thank you very much. So in this case, it does not matter a hill of beans which syllabograms from which syllabary we as the source civilization transmit to them, the target civilization, since they are going to interpret these 20 signals – if we decide to send that many – whatever damn well way suits them just fine, regardless of who we are, since they could care less anyway. All that would matter to them is that someone or some entity or entities from somewhere in our (meaning, their) galactic neighbourhood sent them a signal that meant something significant to themselves (the targets), though God only knows what. And why should we care any more than they do anyway? Come to think of it, they do not even have to live on a planet such as we construe it. If they do not, they might just as easily assume that whoever or whatever sent the signal would not live on a “planet” either. Any scenario is possible. So for this reason alone, if it were up to me to send the signal, I would simply mix-and-match Linear B & Linear C geometric signifiers any old way I felt like, and be damned the consequences... well, that might be a bit of an overstatement in case they turn out to be hostiles, we piss them rightly off and they invade us! But the chances of that ever happening are so extremely remote as to approach quantum zero.

Still, we have to admit that the Linear B & Linear C syllabaries have a helluva lot going for them. If anything, both are eminently suited for extraterrestrial communication, for the following reasons (as I see it):

1. What is the “Message” in the Extraterrestrial Communication Medium? What does it signify? Does it matter to “them”? Should it matter to us? Whose “Message” is it anyway? Woah!

As Richard Saint-Gelais correctly points out, any attempt on our part to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligences cannot, and must not, be based on what we as humans understand as being signifier(s) and signified, but rather on (hopefully) recognizable patterned sequences, by which I mean either digital (0 1), decimal or geometric, but not algebraic (see above). In fact, I posit that it does not matter a hill of beans whether signals of these three mathematical orders mean anything at all like what they clearly signify to us, but not clearly at all to our extraterrestrial compeers, other than what they signify to them, and in that light, applying reverse logic, almost certainly not to us. All that matters is that they, our extraterrestrial buddies, understand that the constructs mean whatever the hell they mean to them. If they do meaning anything, anything at all, then we will have established communication.

Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Extraterrestrial Conference:

Let us imagine a few ludicrous sounding examples. Say, for instance, we transmit a circle in the source signal, and our extraterrestrial friends at the target “read it”. Well, what if the circle we send is not abstract at all to them, but concrete only? What if they cannot even think on the abstract, connotative plane? Don’t laugh. Maybe to them the circle is just one of a thousand polka dots on one of their pet five-legged orgathonics with two heads and four arms, but no legs, just flippers instead. Again, take the straight line. Same scenario. If the language of that particular extraterrestrial civilization is concrete and denotative only, it would not matter how many straight lines we transmitted to them. They simply would not recognize them as such. But they would recognize them as something concrete, such as, for instance, a pole sticking in the ground.

2. The exact reverse scenario may just as easily obtain, namely that a particular extraterrestrial intelligence we sloppily target and by sheer accident hit (there is after all no other way we would hit them, if we ever could... imagine trying to hit the Earth with a pin-pong ball from 1,000 light years away!) uses a language or languages which are absolutely abstract and connotative, and not concrete and denotative at all. I hear someone shouting, “Eureka! We’re in luck!” Not so fast. To such a civilization a circle may be far more than just a circle or a straight line as we envision them. To them, a circle might automatically mean a sphere, if even their language is entirely three-dimensional on the abstract plane. Woops! As for a straight line, God forbid! It would at the very least probably be that naughty old straight line drawn out to infinity, and looping back in a circle to the point where it started to bite them in the conjectural ass. Then they would really get confused!

To them, a circle and a straight line might even be paramount to one & the same phenomenon, so I can hear them asking themselves, “Why would anyone or any entity such as ourselves bother sending the same exact symbol as two discrete symbols – unless of course they were stupid?” If that were the case, I suspect that they would not even bother communicating with us, targeting us with their far more intelligent signals, because they would (rightly) see us as utterly incapable of interpreting them, not having even the minimal intellectual resources to tackle their “message”, or rather I should say, the signals in their “medium”, whatever that happens to be. Your guess is as good as mine.

So we end up with at least two scenarios, and plenty more besides, I strongly suspect. Either our abstract geometric symbols are interpreted as signals of concrete objects alone or they are considered to be far too primitive for our hyper-intelligence recipients, who would probably just laugh them off as some sort of hopelessly dumb joke from the equivalent of what we would generously refer to as apes!

The Enigma Code:

3. There is yet another highly fruitful source for food for thought in the massively daunting challenge facing us in the apparently Quixotic search for potential solutions to the problem of extraterrestrial communication. This is, leaving aside the absolutely monumental achievement of the decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris, the astonishing work of another genius of decipherment in the mid-twentieth century. I speak of course of Alan Turing (1912-1954), who not only was the first person in history to actually correctly conceptualize the theoretical base of the digital computer, based on the 0-1 binary construct, but who successfully cracked both versions of the German Enigma Code in World War II (the earlier easier & later more difficult one). Click on his photo for his biography:

Now there is a term I can latch onto, Enigma Code. In fact, I fairly burst to leap on it, because I can think of no other term that more aptly exemplifies the fundamental precepts and hypotheses underlying the search for some way, any way, to communicate with any kind of extraterrestrial intelligence. It is no longer a question of us, or to put it bluntly, of the nature of our own human intelligence.

Speaking frankly, I for one do not believe it matters one jot what kind of intelligence is at the source and the target of extraterrestrial communication, provided that there is at least some common universal signal substrate which may (or may not) be susceptible to an interpretation, any interpretation of the source message by the target recipient, even if their understanding of what the “message” actually says (to them) differs drastically from what it means to us.

The only thing that matters at all is that the extraterrestrial target recipients of the signals we transmit are able to recognize a clearly repetitive pattern of sufficient variations on a “theme” to the point that it is intelligible to them (not us), in the fundamental framework of their own intelligence (not ours), however much it differs from our own human paradigm(s) for what we ourselves call “intelligence”. That is what I mean by a potentially universal signal, an Enigma Code which, although it remains an Enigma Code to our target recipients, is at least an enigma with a clearly recognizable pattern.

They certainly do not need to decipher it as we understand the principle of “decipherment” in human terms, any more than we need to actually decipher the Minoan language in Linear A to recognize highly repetitive morphemic and semiotic patterns and even oblique declensions, which we in fact do recognize as essential markers of human languages. But even a partial decipherment can serve well enough to convince us that we are on the right track. We know this because signifiers-signified are universal in human languages. Moreover, the entire Linear A numeric system has been successfully deciphered, and a great many toponyms we know in Linear B have (nearly) exact counterparts in Linear A.

Yet even if the fundamental construct of the intelligence of our extraterrestrial buddies contains neither the signifier “language” nor “decipherment”, their intelligence, if at least as advanced as ours (and that is not very advanced) will be able to derive some sort of “sense” from our “signal”, because for them, just as for us, the medium would be the message. The clue would be McLuhanesque, even if they could never have a clue what a McLuhan is. So the situation is far from hopeless.

The Enigma Machine:

At the crux of the problem, however, there is this: what is universal to human language constructs is almost certainly bound to be far from being universal even for any single target extraterrestrial “language”, let alone any number of them, whatever their intrinsic nature, it being almost certainly equally enigmatic to us. Ah the old double-blind scenario.

The Germans knew what their Enigma Codes meant, because they could decipher them by reverse extrapolation at the source. But until Bletchley Park and its brightest star, Alan Turing, could get a grip on it – and it took years of the most backbreaking analysis – it remained just what it was to the Allies, an Enigma Code. Still, they knew perfectly well that the code itself, however massively complex it was (and it was!) overlay relatively simple original military messages in perfectly intelligible German. They new it was an artificial human means of communication. And that was all they needed to know. Let us never forget that those clever bastards at Bletchley Park cracked the Enigma Code without the benefit of computers, which says far more for them than it does for us today!

A Universal Enigma Code for Extraterrestrial Communication?

“Are you completely bonkers?” I hear you protest. Not so fast. Yes, the irksome question still remains, and refuses to just go away in a puff of smoke: would any extraterrestrial communication system or “language”, if we must insist on calling it that, even be able to begin to crack a human Extraterrestrial Enigma Code we so blithely sent buzzing off into interstellar space at the speed of light, unless their communication system were in fact a “language” something along the lines of what we understand a language to be? Conceivably they might, but their “language” would have to be a language fairly approximating the universal construct of what we call human language for them to be able to do so. Otherwise... fill in the blanks. Rather, do not fill in the blanks. Firing off blanks does not kill anyone. Firing off blank “blank” messages does not “mean” anything to any higher intelligence which has no need of language as we understand it. In fact, they might even toss our medium, forget the “message” into the “garbage”, considering it as nothing more significant than “dog poop” or whatever they call “it”.

One thing is pretty obvious to me at least: sending a code which would be interpreted as an Enigma Code by some extraterrestrial civilization would probably be more like child’s play to them than vainly struggling trying to decipher what the silly messages on the Voyager spacecraft mean, simply because the latter are plainly and solely human, nothing more or less & next nothing else at all. But as I have said over and over, the “message” or more properly the signals we transmit cannot & must not be simply human in nature, they must at least make a stab at being cosmically universal, at least to one extraterrestrial civilization whose communication system bears attributes roughly equivalent to what we deem to call language – excuse me, human language. Oh and by the way, good luck finding it, because the odds are almost certainly stacked trillions to one against us.

4. The problem gets far more complex, if we just pause for even a moment and allow the scary realization to sink in that any signals we send at the source, particularly geometric, even if they are entirely abstract to us, may run the full gamut from concrete to semi-abstract to abstract and, yes, even beyond abstract and consequently beyond our ken. Just stop and consider for a second what would happen if we sent our silly geometric symbols to a four-dimensional extraterrestrial civilization? I cringe to think of it. And let’s not forget what I just said above: what if another three-dimensional extraterrestrial civilization interpreted absolutely all of our signals, even the two-dimensional, as three-dimensional only? Then there are nuances within nuances within nuances of every shade between these extremes. Beyond these scenarios I have just outlined, my mind simply explodes.

So I will end it there before it does.

However, stay tuned. There’s more, a lot more. I have scarcely begun. Stay tuned for more on extraterrestrial communication. And stay tuned for a possible breakthrough on an entirely new approach to the first baby steps in deciphering Linear A. We’re taking the ball where it wants to take us.

Richard

Astounding Discovery! NASA: Interstellar Communication & Linear B Part 2: The Geometric Economy of Linear B. This is a Mind-Blower!

For the original article by Richard Saint-Gelais, click here:

Before I even begin to address the possibilities of interstellar communication based on the fundamental properties of the Linear B script, I would like to refer you to a sequential series of very early posts on our Blog, in which I formulated the basic thesis that, in fact, the Linear B script for Mycenaean Greek is based on the fundamental principle of Geometric Economy, a highly unusual, if not outright exceptional characteristic of the Linear B central construct of a syllabary+logography+ideography:

And moving onto Numerics:

Extended Set: Linear & Circular:

Application of the Extended Set to Linear B Syllabograms and Supersyllabograms: Click to ENLARGE

Note that, even though Michael Ventris and Prof. John Chadwick, his intimate colleague & mentor, successfully deciphered some 90% of the Mycenaean Linear B syllabary, neither was aware of the existence of Supersyllabograms, of which there at least 30, all of them a subset of the basic set of Linear B syllabograms. Moreover, even though I myself hit upon the hypothesis and the principle that Supersyllabograms do indeed exist, some of them still defy decipherment, even at a human level, let alone extraterrestrial, which only adds further fuel to the raging fire that awaits us when we take even our first baby steps into the putatively impossible task of interstellar communications reliant on syllabaries similar to Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C. For my initial post announcing the existence of Supersyllabograms in Linear B and their profound ramifications in the further simplification of the syllabary, click here:

At the time I first posted these Paradigmatic Tables of the Geometric Economy of Linear B, I already suspected I was onto something really big, and even that the very hypothesis of the Geometric Economy of Linear B might and indeed could have potentially colossal ramifications for any operative semiotic base for devising altogether new scripts, scripts that have never been used either historically or in the present, but which could be successfully applied to dynamically artificial intelligence communications systems. However inchoate my musings were at that time that Linear B, being as geometrically economic as it obviously was, at least to my mind, might and could also apply to extra-human communication systems, i.e. communication with extraterrestrials, the thought did pass through my mind, in spite of its apparent absurdity. That is how my mind works. I have repeatedly asserted in this blog that I am forever “the doubting Thomas”, extremely prone not to believe anything that passes before the videographic panorama of my highly associative intellect. Put another way, I recall a fellow researcher of mine, Peter Fletcher, informing me that I had a “lateral mindset”. I had never considered it from that angle before, but even with this truly insightful observation, Peter had not quite hit the mark. Not only does my reasoning process tend to be highly associative and lateral, but also circular, with all of the tautological implications that carries with it.

I devised this paradigm chart of (approximately) rectangular syllabograms and supersyllabograms in Linear B to illustrate how such symbols could conceivably be transmitted to interstellar civilizations in the implausible hope that we might, just might, be able to transmit something vaguely intellgible, however miniscule, to such imagined aliens. But as you might easily imagine, even from a chart of only a small subset of the 61 syllabograms alone in Linear B (another herculean task not yet completed), the dilemma is fraught with almost insurmountable difficulties, even at the theoretical, conjectural level.

In fact, I am a firm believer in the precept that all human rational thought-process are in fact just that, tautological, which is the fundamental reason why it is so utterly perplexing for us as mere humans to even begin to imagine anything at all otherwise, i.e. to think outside the box. But we can if we must. Otherwise, any attempt to communicate on a semiotic basis with extraterrestrial intelligence(s) is simply doomed to failure. The reason is obvious: the semiotic ground and its spinoff framework of signifiers and signified of every single extraterrestrial intelligence (if indeed any such beast exists... see doubting Thomas above) is almost certainly and (inevitably) bound to be completely unlike, or to put it even more accurately, completely alien to any other. And this is precisely where we are on extremely slippery grounds. We may be skating on the surface of the ice, but the ice is thin and is bound almost certainly to crack, before any given extraterrestrial intelligence can even begin to decipher the semiotic framework of our own unique structure of signals, as Richard Saint-Gelais nicely points out in Chapter 5 of his study of the principles underlying the possible communication, however remote, with any single given extraterrestrial intelligence. I cannot stress this enough. The snares and traps we can so easily slip into far outweigh any practical framework even remotely potentially applicable to the (far-fetched) possibility of extraterrestrial communication. But this does not necessarily imply that such communication is impossible. Extremely improbable, yes, but impossible, no. See Infinite Improbability Drive in the Spaceship, Heart of Gold, Wikipedia:

If you have not yet read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, I urge you to do so, at least if you have a sense of humour as nutty as mine. I swear to God it will leave you laughing out loud.

But I have not yet done with the possibility, however, remote, of extraterrestrial communication. There is another ancient syllabary, the younger cousin of Mycenaean Linear B, namely, Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, of which the Geometric Economy is even more streamlined and considerably less complex than that of Linear B. I have neither the energy nor the time to even begin approaching that huge undertaking, but you can be sure that I shall eventually take a firm aim at the possibilities for extraterrestrial communication inherent in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, probably sometime in the winter of 2015. Meanwhile, I would like you all to seriously entertain this notion, which has fascinated me to no end for years and years, namely, that the Greeks, brilliant as they were, were far beyond their contemporaries, including the Romans, by inventing the Linear B & Linear C syllabaries, and consequently the ancient Greek alphabet, all of which sported at the very least the five basic vowels. The whole point is that no other Occidental or Centum ancient writing system prior to ancient Greek, had even dreamt of the concept of vowels – although of course, Oriental Sanskrit, the Satem Indo-European cousin of Greek, had done precisely the same thing! No huge surprise there either, given that the Sanskrit scribes and philosophers were as intellectually refined as the Greeks.

For my previous discussion of The Present and Imperfect Tenses of Reduplicating – MI – Verbs in Linear B & the Centum (Greek) – Satem (Sanskrit) branches of ancient Indo-European languages, click on this banner:

Now let’s take my assumption one step further. What I am saying, to put it as plainly as the nose on my face, is that the invention of the ancient Greek & Sanskrit writing systems was as enormous a leap in the intellectual progress of humankind as were the equally astounding invention of printing by the Germans & Italians in the early Renaissance, and of computers & the spectacular explosion of the space race in the latter part of the twentieth century, to say nothing of the swift global propagation of the World Wide Web from ca. 1990 to the present. Each of these intellectual leaps have been absolutely pivotal in the advancement of human thinking from concrete to abstract to, we might as well say it out loud, to cosmic, which we are already the cusp of. Three greatest historical revolutions in the expansion of human consciousness, without which we would never have even been capable to rising to the cosmic consciousness which is dawning on humanity at this very moment in our historical timeline.

But, here lies the real crux: without the first great leap the Greeks took in their astonishing invention of Linear B, Linear C & the Greek alphabet, neither of the next two revolutions in human thought could possibly have manifested themselves. But of course, all three did, because all three were inevitable, given the not-so-manifest, but intrinsic destiny humankind has always had access to to, however little we may have been conscious of it “at the time”. But what is time in the whirlpool of infinity? Apparently, not nothing. Far from it. Time is a construct of infinity itself. Einstein is the password. Given this scenario, cosmic consciousness is bound to toss us unceremoniously even out of the box. What a mind-boggling prospect! But someday, possibly even in the not too distance future, we will probably be up to it. We can only hope and pray that we will. It is after all the only way out of the ridiculously paradoxical conundrums which presently face us in the herculean task of communicating at all with alien intelligences.

Richard Vallance Janke, November 2014

Astounding Discovery! Look What I Found from NASA on Linear B! You’ll be amazed! PART 1

Click this banner to read the entire Chapter:

Once you open the NASA PDF file, just scroll down the Table of Contents to Chapter 5: Beyond Linear B. You will then need to continue scrolling until you reach page 79. You can then scroll page by page through the whole of Chapter 5. I am willing to bet this is going to be as mind-blowing a read for you as it was for me. Here are just a few tantalizing excerpts from Chapter 5:

Excerpts from Chapter 5, by Richard Saint-Gelais

pg. 81:
... the deciphering of coded messages or inscriptions written in extinct languages — may provide a fresh look at the problems involved.

pg. 82:
At first glance, the difficulties involved in the decipherment of coded messages or ancient scripts suggest a rather pessimistic view of the interstellar communication challenge, for if it took specialists many years to solve the enigma of writing systems devised by human beings... passim ... it seems unrealistic to imagine that our messages could be easily understood by beings whose culture, history, and even biology will differ vastly from ours. How can we be sure that some well-meaning interpreter will not misread our intended message?

On a semiotic level, the similarity between the three kinds of situations is readily apparent. Deciphering inscriptions in unknown languages or messages in secret codes implies coping with strings of signs without having any prior knowledge of the encoding rules, so recognizing these rules become one of the ends (instead of the means, as is usually the case) of the interpretive process. The decipherer of unknown languages tries to establish the phonetic and/or semantic value of symbols... passim ...

I use the word signal instead of sign because at the early stage of interpretation, decipherers must still identify the relevant semiotic units. They are confronted with signals — i.e., material manifestations of some kind (strokes on clay tablets, microwaves of a certain frequency) — that may be signs. A sign is more abstract in nature: it is a semiotic configuration that is relatively independent of the concrete signals that embody it because it is defined by a limited number of relevant features,...

pg. 89:
The second way is to think up self-contextualizing messages — or, in other words, self-interpreting signs. A self-interpreting sign is easier conceptualized than created. Let’s consider, for instance, the pictograms imagined by H. W. Nieman and C. Wells Nieman, which would be sent as sequences of pulses that correspond to the dots into which an image has been decomposed. In order to reconstruct the correct image, the recipients would need first to convert the linear signal into a bi-dimensional structure and then to interpret that structure to determine what it might signify or represent... passim ... Frank Drake imagined an easy and ingenious way to point to this, by making the total number of dots equal the product of two prime numbers, say 17 and 23, so that the transmitted message can be construed only as a 17-by-23-cell grid. Such a signal is as close as we may come to a message embodying an interpretive instruction. It assumes only a basic knowledge of prime numbers, which is not asking too much. So this instruction looks promising, but only insofar as the recipient deduces that the signal corresponds to a rectangular grid (See next post for more).

pg. 91:
We must remember that a message is composed not of one isolated sign but of (sometimes complex) combinations of signs, which may contribute to their mutual elucidation. This is precisely the idea behind Vakoch’s proposal of a sequence of frames, each of which would contain six distinct areas: one for the picture; four for different parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs); and one for the interrelationship between two successive frames (a meta-sign, then). Here we have a combination of icons (the shape of a human body, or of parts of it) and symbols: nouns for what is shown in the picture, adjectives for properties of that object (e.g., high, low, etc.), verbs for actions performed by the character between two successive frames, and adverbs for characteristics of that action (fast, slow). At first it may seem dubious that a recipient could establish a correlation between a given symbol and what it is intended to designate, or even that this recipient could identify it as a symbol and not as part of the picture. What may decisively help this eventual recipient is the mutual interpretation that parts of the message provide for one another ... passim... and the systematic interplay of repetition and variation between frames, which will give recipients the opportunity to make conjectures — abductions — that the subsequent frames may either confirm or inform... passim...

What we know of interpretation shows that this inability to control reception is always the case anyway, and that it is not necessarily a bad thing. A widespread conception of communication rests on the premise that successful reception of a message is one that recovers the meaning its sender meant to convey through it. But the history of the decipherment of unknown languages shows that things are never so simple, and that oblique ways of reading sometimes lead to unexpected breakthroughs. In his book on extinct languages, Johannes Friedrich points out that the direction in which a script should be read can sometimes be deduced from the pp. 92-93 (ff.) empty space at the end of an inscription’s last line. Here we have an index, a sign caused by its object: the direction of writing is concretely responsible for which side of the last line is left blank. But this is not so conspicuous a sign that it does not require a piece of abductive reasoning. Strange as it may seem, I see in this small example some grounds for hope regarding interstellar communication. We tend to conceptualize communication with extraterrestrial intelligences in terms of the successful transmission of intended meanings. But the production and reception of signs cannot be restricted to an intentional plane. An important feature of most indices is their unintentional nature.

Richard Saint-Gelais

Simplifying the Most Common Ideograms & Logograms for Students of Linear B

Simplifying the Most Common Ideograms & Logograms for Students of Linear B: Click to ENLARGE

One of my Linear B students pointed to me, just today, that it is difficult to remember all of the Linear B Ideograms, which hardly comes as a surprise, given that there are so many of them (well over 100). Ideograms often occasion confusion. With that in mind, I devised the chart which you see above, as a guide to the simplification of learning Linear B ideograms in general.

The situation is further bedeviled by the fact that there are also a few logograms in Linear B, which also have to be learned if the student is to be able to advance to the highest level of proficiency in deciphering and translating Linear B tablets. There is also at least one homophone, RAI, illustrated in the chart above, which very often means “saffron” in Linear B. Students of Linear B have to keep their eye out for the double function of the homophone RAI, which is either simply pronounced as such or is not a homophone at all, but the ideogram for “saffron”. It can be one or the other, but never both. The chart above includes all of the most common ideograms and logograms in Linear B, so if the student masters all of these, that in and of itself should prove to be a more than sufficient foundation for the decipherment of the vast majority of ideograms in Linear B. I should note in passing that the ideograms for “sheep”, “rams” & “ewes” account for more than 20% of a cross-section of 3,000 Linear B tablets with ideograms from Knossos which I have closely studied over the past year. But this does not alter the fact that ideograms for other animals and livestock also often appear on Linear B tablets. So the student of Linear B must stay alert, and not confuse the ideograms for one species for those of another.

I wish all of you who are students of Linear B the best of luck (although luck has nothing to do with it!) in learning this requisite set common ideograms and logograms.

I note in passing that this is our 500th. post, coming a mere two months after our 400th. Posts on our blog are literally taking off!

Richard

Rita Robert’s Translation of KN 409 X k 25: Delivery of Tribute to Kutaistos

Rita Robert’s Translation of KN 409 X k 25: Delivery of Tribute to Kutaistos: Click to ENLARGE

Here we have Rita’s first translation of a tablet considerably more challenging than any she has previously been saddled with. This is because both the words APUDOSI and OPERO are open to debate, for the same old same old reason Linear B researchers and translators always cite, namely, that Linear B vocabulary, more often than not, is ambiguous, especially where context is minimal, as is the case for this tablet. Some translators have, in the past, assigned the meaning, “attribution” to APUDOSI, which literally means, “giving unto”, but such a translation is unquestionably unsound, because it (pardon the pun, which I cannot resist) attributes an abstract meaning to APUDOSI. Not only is the abstract rare in the earliest stages of any language, in this instance, Greek, but the attribution (ahem!) of the abstract “attribution” renders the sense of this tablet absurd. Translators who persist in frequently assigning abstract meanings to attributed (A) Linear B words should beware of this practice, as it is bound to lead them into irresolvable impasses.

Now I am going to contradict myself flat out. OPERO, in this context, means either “debt” or “liability”. “What!” I hear you protest. “You have just made a fool of yourself.” Not at all. I this context, which is typical of the primary concern of Linear B scribes, namely, accounting and record keeping, this is indeed the very translation we would expect to see. Accounting and inventory records frequently have recourse to terms such as – account, debt, deficit, liability & total – and in keeping with this, Linear B tablets do make use of the abstract in this context, because they must. But this probably the only exception to the “rule”. There are no “rules” as such, anyway, and exceptions always pop up whenever anyone is foolhardy enough to make them. Of course, it is possible, and in fact even likely that other abstract words in other areas of the Minoan economy are liable to appear, and if and when they do, provided that their connotations are sound in the given context, I am the last person on earth to contest such translations. The area in which more such abstract words are likely to appear is that of sheep husbandry and rearing, accounting for some 20 % of all Linear B tablets.

There still remains one more possibility for the translation of OPERO = “tribute”, which is even more abstract than those cited above. But it fits the context, provided that we assume (as I am doing here, at least tentatively) that Kutaistos, Phaistos, Exonos and other Minoan settlements were as worthy of tribute as Knossos itself most certainly was. But it was more likely the other way around. Just as tribute came pouring into the Treasury of Delphi of Athens from the subject cities of her Empire in the 5th. century BCE, so must have the same occurred with Knossos. So there is even another translation which could be assigned to this tablet, which is after all a fragment:

Delivery of tribute from Kutaistos... (to Knossos) - missing because this is a fragment.

Recall that the genitive can be assigned the value “of” or “from”, let alone plenty of other values, context dependent. I deliberately omitted this translation from Rita’s work, because it is probably the most contestable of the lot. Other Linear B translators and research experts are sure to have plenty to say about this.

Richard

Translation of a Tiny Linear B Fragment Thebes TH Of 37, Spelt Granary & Bales of Wool

Introduction: Discoveries of the Cache of Linear B Tablets at Thebes:

First, some background on the Linear B Thebes tablets. This relatively small cache was unearthed at archaeological excavations in Thebes, Greece, according to the following timeline: the first 21 fragments were excavated in 1963–64; 19 more tablets & fragments were found in 1970 and 1972; but by far the largest find came from 1993 to 1995, when the archaeologist Vassilis L. Aravantinos discovered some 250 tablets, amounting roughly to 300 or 5% of the entire corpus of about 6,000 Linear B tablets and fragments. Of these, the first and by far the most substantial store, amounting to no fewer than 4,000 tablets and fragments, was unearthed by Sir Arthur Evans from 1900 to 1903 and again after the First World War, and followed by major digs from all other Mycenaean sites, Pylos being the next largest after Knossos, with over 1,000 tablets and fragments there alone.

The Theban tablets and fragments date to the Late Helladic IIIB period (ca. 1300-1200 BCE), contemporary with the finds at Pylos. Apparently, the Theban tablets date from roughly 1225 BCE, when the Kadmeion, the Mycenaean palace complex at Thebes, came to ruin.

Prof. John Chadwick, Michael Ventris’ closest colleague and confidant in the initial decipherment of Linear B, who outlived Ventris by scores of decades, himself identified three recognizable Greek divinities, Hera, Hermes and Potnia "the mistress", among the recipients of wool, and made a case for ko-ma-we-te-ja, the name of a goddess, elsewhere attested at Pylos.

The Significance of Linear B Tablet TH Of 37, as well as of the other Linear B finds at Thebes:

Though relatively few in number (about 300), the tablets and fragments from Thebes are significant for a number of reasons, not the least of which are: (a) by ancient standards for travel time, Thebes was located at a great distance from both Knossos and Mycenae. (b) In spite of this vast distance, the syntactical structure, orthographic conventions and the standard use of the entire Linear B syllabary varied very little, if at all, from Linear B from all the other administrative sites scattered all over Greece and Crete, as well as the outlying Cycladic islands and settlements. (c) The real clincher in this scenario is that Mycenaean Greek, unlike later Greek dialects during the historical period (ca. 800–400 BCE), which varied widely, was remarkably consistent and standardized regardless of where it was used. As “proof” positive of the cross-the-board structural linguistic uniformity of Linear B, regardless of where it was in use (Knossos, Mycenae, Pylos, Phaistos, etc. etc.) all we need to do is simply glance at Theban fragment TH Of 37 (let alone read it), to realize that in fact the consistency is overwhelming, right down to the precise disposition of syllabograms, logograms and ideograms on the tablets, which were also by and large of the same shape as well! And here it is (Click to ENLARGE):

May I stress emphatically that I do not lend any more credence to my own half-baked translations (pardon the obvious pun!), even when I come up with more than one alternative translation, and often as many as three, than to anyone else’s equally scholarly – and valiant, if not fanciful – attempts at translation. I am a doubting Thomas down to my core. I sincerely do not believe in any single over-riding theory of the “best of all possible worlds” when it comes to deciphering any Linear B tablet, except perhaps the most voluminous in which ample context tends to lay to rest all sorts of doubts about almost every word in the integral text. I say, “tends to...”, because even with the longest Linear B tablets, nagging doubts remain about not a few phonemes. All we have to do is compare the decipherments of even as few as three Mycenaean Greek linguists specializing in Linear B to witness these variations, however minor or (sometimes) significant.

And where context is minimal, as in this tablet, the decipherment becomes all the more problematic. Allow me to flag some of the more recalcitrant textual ambiguities on this particular tablet alone.

1. In a real, almost scary sense, all translations of Linear B, for all its inherent ambiguities, are tautological by nature, or plagued with circular reason. There is simply no way out of this impasse. But this is precisely the reason why any and all truly competent decipherments of Linear B tablets vie with one another for attention, and why the whole process of translating Linear B is such an exciting undertaking for us all in the first place. So much the better for all ongoing research ventures in the translation of Linear B, since the more versions of the same tablet (any tablet or fragment) we have, the more likely are we to eventually hone in at least a relatively stable translation with minor, if real, variations.

In fact, I think I would probably have to check myself into a lunatic asylum if I were to make the absurd claim that my translation, however competent or even brilliant, of any Linear B tablet or fragment, were better than another highly qualified translator’s, for the obvious reason that there is no way to check which version is “right” — whatever the blazes that is supposed to mean—unless the doctor is right at hand and on call. And here the doctor is the scribe who actually wrote the tablet in question, and only he can tell us what it really means. But he isn’t available for comment, being sadly dead for some 32 centuries. So we just have to put up with our bandage solutions, even when they do “heal” the text we have in front of us well enough. For this very reason, I never contest the translations my co-researcher, Rita Roberts, posts on our blog, because I was not the author of them, and so I do not and cannot know why she, in her sound judgement, opted for the choices she made. All I can do is come up with an alternative translation, if one is called for. More often than not, it is not. But if it is, that way we both stay clear of our respective asylums. What is good for the goose (Rita) is good for the gander (me), or for that matter any goose or gander.

2. When there is no evidence for an existing (attested A) word to be found anywhere on any extant Linear B medium, I am more than willing to search elsewhere, by which I mean in alphabetical Greek texts, the earlier the better, the best being The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad, which is written in the most archaic so-called Epic Greek, sharing as it does a number of grammatical features and even some vocabulary in common with Mycenaean Greek. One of the most outstanding is the archaic genitive in “oio” in the Iliad, which is, for all intents and purposes, the exact equivalent of the Linear B genitive in “ojo” or “oyo”, if you like. And I like “oyo” a lot better for the simple reason that I sincerely believe that the harsher j pronunciation such as we have in English was swiftly on its way out, already morphing into something like the much softer French j as in “je” (I). It is not far from from the soft “je” to outright “i”.

A similar phenomenon was manifested in Middle and Renaissance English, when the rough pronunciation of “r”, which still persists in practically every other Occidental Indo-European language, simply vanished in the Great Vowel Shift between 1350 and 1700 in England, when not only the English vowels ended up greatly softened, but also the labials “l” & “r” underwent the very same process, becoming semi-consonants or more accurately semi-vowels.

This is the same process which shifted the Mycenaean pronunciation towards something like French j as in “je”, not the much stronger English “j” at all! And this is precisely why I, like a few other Linear B scholars, much prefer “ya ye yo” over the more commonly accepted “je je jo”, for the simple but obvious reason that scholars speaking in English will almost certainly get the pronunciation wrong. Since English is after all by far the most common language used for research articles, both in print and online, regardless of scientific, linguistic, historical or literary discipline, we are far more likely to fall into this trap, even if we are not English speaking, as that is the way “j” is pronounced in English. You just cannot get around it, try as you might... unless of course you are French, and cannot pronounce “j” as the English do, but pronounce it as the French do... which just so happens to agree much more closely with the latter pronunciation, at least in my opinion. Otherwise, how can we explain the relatively swift transition from “ojo” to “oyo” to “oio” in Homeric Greek? I leave it entirely to you to decide for yourselves.

3. When early alphabetical texts are not available, the next best resource is the Liddell & Scott Greek-English Lexicon (1986), which after all includes many dialectical variants on the same word(s), quite a few of them (quasi)-archaic. And even in those instances where only latter-day Ionic and Attic orthography is to be found, we can still make a brave attempt (as I always do), to retrospectively re-construct much earlier versions of the word in question.

This is exactly what I have done on this tablet, where:

3.1 I had to rummage through Liddell & Scott to come up with a suitable translation for the first word in the first line of this tablet, QARIYA, which did not make any sense whatsoever, at least for the first half-hour of digging about. However, the most likely candidate finally popped up right in front of my nose. I decided that the translation I hit upon was a pretty good match with AREIZEWEI (dative singular), which I happened to translate first (3.2). The match is the Ionic form of the word for “granary”, which fits the bill very nicely.

Caveat: however, once again, I must warn you, this translation of mine is neither any better or any worse than anyone else who really puts the axe to the grindstone. This tablet is open to at least a few interpretations, for the simple reason that, in this case as in so many others, the Linear B text is more or less ambiguous – and here, unfortunately, more. Other experienced and expert Linear B translators will surely take exception to my translation. That is the healthy approach. I invite translators who disagree with my own version of this text to make their views known in the Comments section for this post. In fact, I welcome any criticisms, however tough, of any of my translations of Linear B tablets.

3.2 I merge two Ionic-Attic words into one so-called “Mycenaean” word, areizewei (areirawewei). Whether this word ever existed is open to hefty debate, but it might have, which is good enough for me. I have done this on several Linear B tablets, including the very last one in the post immediately before this one, in which I translated the famous Linear B tablet, Mycenae MY Oe 106. It is no mere accident that the clay figure of a boy appears in tandem with this tablet... because that is precisely what the Linear B scribe intended. We need to pay a lot more attention to everything that appears on any and all Linear B tablets and fragments, including attendant pieces such as this, because they must be there for a very good reason. If you read my previous post, all of this will come into sharp focus. On that tablet, I came up with a derivative [D] word (not attested [A]) for “a young boy”, transliterated here into Latin script = koroton, which in turn just happens to be an exact match with the Linear B KOROTO on this tablet. This phenomenon is identical to the Classical Attic paidion (a youngster). Since the word KOROTO is right in front of our noses on this tablet, then it does exist, and it does mean “a young boy”. What the blazes else can it mean, especially when that huge sketch of a boy is staring us right in the face? In fact, what the scribe who wrote tablet truly seems to be saying is that the boy is the primary subject of the entire tablet, which is precisely what I take it to mean.

PS in case you are wondering (which you probably are not), it took me 12 hours (!) to construct the illustration and to compile the text of this post, the longest time ever I have had to devote to any post. But for most significant explanatory posts I still spend between 4 and 8 hours. So I sincerely hope folks who read my posts really do appreciate all the bloody hard work I pour into them, and even, dare I suggest, flag all such posts with “Like”. And why not comment on them too? It won’t kill you, and certainly won’t kill me. Healthy debate, as I have intimated above, is the very sustenance of true research.

Richard

My Translation of lines 474-510 of “The Catalogue of Ships” in Book II of the Iliad

My Translation of lines 474-510 of “The Catalogue of Ships” in Book II of the Iliad: Click to ENLARGE

This is Part 1 of 9 Parts of my running translation of the “The Catalogue of Ships”, lines 474-815 in Book II of the Iliad. The cardinal aim of our translation is to underscore the close relationship between the most archaic vocabulary in the Iliad, almost all of which appears in Book II, and primarily in “The Catalogue of Ships”, with both of the earlier Mycenaean Greek & Arcado-Cypriot dialects. With this in mind, I expect to be able to regressively extrapolate derived (D) vocabulary in the Mycenaean Greek & Arcado-Cypriot dialects from archaic vocabulary found in “The Catalogue of Ships” in Book II of the Iliad. Derived vocabulary (DV) in Mycenaean Linear B and Arcado-Cypriot Linear C is not to be found on any extant tablets in either script. Vocabulary on extant tablets is designated as attested (AV).

I am quite convinced that it will be possible for us to derive a considerable number of Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot words, which are presently nowhere attested. This derived vocabulary (DV) should appreciably expand the corpus of Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot vocabulary in Linear B and Linear C respectively. My research colleague, Rita Roberts, and I expect to eventually be able to compile a truly comprehensive topical English-Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Lexicon, which may very well double the existing vocabulary in Mycenaean Greek, and supplement somewhat the already considerable vocabulary of Arcado-Cypriot, which appears in both in Linear C and in alphabetic Greek. Our Lexicon, which should appear in PDF sometime in 2016 will prove to be greatly superior to the Mycenaean (Linear B) – English Glossary, currently available on the Internet. This glossary should be consulted with the greatest caution and wariness, as it was so poorly proof-read that its entries in Linear B, alphabetic Greek and English are riddled with well over 100 errors. In fact, I would strictly advise anyone who is familiar with either or both Linear B & ancient Greek to double-check every single entry for errors. On the other hand, Chris Tselentis’ Linear B Lexicon, which can be downloaded in PDF format from the net, is a reliable source of considerable merit of Mycenaean Linear B vocabulary. It has the additional advantage of including a large number of eponyms and toponyms, which play a formative rôle on extant Linear B tablets, regardless of provenance.

Richard

Linear B Syllabograms, Logograms & Ideograms Compared with Modern Chinese Ideograms

Linear B Syllabograms, Logograms & Ideograms Compared with Modern Chinese Ideograms: Click to ENLARGE

While I know nothing of modern Chinese, and consequently cannot understand what any of the ideograms on this sign mean, I decided to compare either whole Chinese ideograms or components of them with their Linear B counterparts, simply to illustrate how similar writing systems from two cultures as remotely spaced both in time and space can and often do make use of very similar, and even occasionally almost identical strokes to create their characters. It so turns out that my own boyfriend, Louis-Dominique, took this photo just for me, when he was in China at the end of September and beginning of October this year (2014). I have no intention of analyzing any of the characters or ideograms in either Linear B or in Chinese, except in so far as I am able to translate those that are in Linear B. The photograph pretty much illustrates the similarities without need for further comment, but some similarities leap right out.

For our Oriental visitors who are unfamiliar with the first 2 scriptural phenomena, a syllabogram is merely a syllable consisting of one consonant followed by one vowel, as in YA, MO, NE, PO, QE, RE, SO & TO, all of which appear on the photograph. Logograms in Linear B & other syllabic scripts are a combination of two syllabograms, one superimposed on the other, as in MERI = “honey”, which appears in the previous post. In both Linear B & Chinese, an ideogram is an ideogram is an ideogram. There are almost 150 ideograms in Linear B, which is a considerable number, considering that Linear B is primary a syllabary. In fact, there are more ideograms in Linear B than there are both syllabograms and logograms!

To highlight just a few of the more remarkable similarities:
[1] Especially striking is the Linear B syllabogram RE [2] on the photograph, which looks exactly like the four signs, two on top and two underneath the Chinese ideogram at the far right top of the sign. It also appears upside down on the Chinese ideogram immediately underneath.
[2] Variants of the Linear B syllabogram MO appear as components 4 in Chinese ideograms, all tagged [9]. For those of you who are Chinese, if you refer yourself to the Linear B words tagged with [9] & [13], bottom left, you can actually see for yourself that the syllabogram MO closely resembles the ideogram component I have flagged.
[3] Likewise, a minor variant of the Linear B syllabogram TO [13] appears on one Chinese ideogram & in the Linear B word, bottom left. So that makes two components of Chinese ideograms incorporating elements strikingly alike Linear B syllabograms.
[4] The component at the centre bottom of Chinese ideogram [24] closely resembles the Linear B syllabograms PO & SO in the 2 counterpart Linear B sentences [24], bottom right.
[5] The Chinese ideogram component [19] looks exactly like the Greek alphabetic lambda (L), upside down. This is the sole instance in which a component of a Chinese ideogram looks like a Greek alphabetic letter rather than a Linear B syllabogram. Anyway, there are no L+vowel syllabograms in Linear B.

My whole point is simply this, that Chinese ideograms frequently use strokes which incorporate elements which are (almost) identical, primarily to Linear B syllabograms, and sometimes Linear B logograms or ideograms. Thus, a component of an ideogram in Chinese can either closely resemble or actually be almost identical to a Linear B syllabogram, which are two different scriptural phenomena in two entirely unrelated languages. Likewise, an entire Chinese ideogram, as for instance, that for “elephant” in the previous post can be, and in that instance, is practically identical to the Linear B logogram for “honey”. Finally, the Chinese ideogram for “month” is the mirror image of the exact same ideogram (“month”) in Mycenaean Linear B, again as seen the previous post.

Those of us who are Occidentals are going to draw own own conclusions reflecting the values of the West from the observations I have made above, while those who are Orientals will doubtless see things from a somewhat different perspective. I welcome any observations, comments or corrections from anyone fascinated by these correlations, especially from our Oriental friends who can translate the Chinese ideograms where these are (almost) identical to their Linear B counterparts. The stark differences in meaning can sometimes be hilarious, as for example in the previous post the logogram for “honey” In Mycenaean Greek looks almost identical to the Chinese ideogram which means “elephant”.

This phenomenon recurs in alphabetical scripts, where for instance, both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are offshoots of the Greek alphabet. While most letters in these three alphabets are strikingly different, a number of letters are (almost) identical. I do not intend to illustrate these (dis)similarities here, since we are not concerned with alphabetic scripts.

Richard

Chinese Ideograms Compared to Linear B Syllabograms, Homophones, Logograms & Ideograms

Chinese Ideograms Compared to Linear B Syllabograms, Homophones, Logograms & Ideograms: Click to ENLARGE:

Chinese (Oriental):

Each Chinese character represents a monosyllabic Chinese word or morpheme. In 100 CE, the famed Han dynasty scholar Xu Shen classified characters into six categories, namely pictographs, simple ideographs, compound ideographs, phonetic loans, phonetic compounds and derivative characters. Click on the banner below to read this entry in full:

Chinese Character Classification:

Pictograms:

Roughly 600 Chinese characters are pictograms (xiàng xíng "form imitation") — stylised drawings of the objects they represent. These are generally among the oldest characters. These pictograms became progressively more stylized and lost their pictographic flavor... passim...

Ideograms:

Ideograms (zh? shì, "indication") express an abstract idea through an iconic form, including iconic modification of pictographic characters. Low numerals are represented by the appropriate number of strokes, directions by an iconic indication above and below a line, and the parts of a tree by marking the appropriate part of a pictogram of a tree. Click on the banner below to read this entry in full:

The Relationship Between Minoan Linear A (unknown) + Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C (Occidental Greek):

Both Linear A, which was used to write the undeciphered Minoan language & Linear B, its immediate descendent, which was used to write Mycenaean Greek, shared character sets which were uncannily similar and in the case of a fair number of syllabograms, identical. However, given that Mycenaean Greek did not require anywhere near as many characters as had the Minoan language, Linear B, all for the sake of greater simplicity, abandoned a great number of the more complex Linear A syllabograms, homophones, logograms and ideograms as plainly extraneous. When the Linear B scribes devised the new syllabary, they simply tossed out everything from Linear B which was of no further use in representing early ancient Mycenaean Greek.

And we must never forget that these two syllabaries, Linear A and Linear B, its much simplified offshoot, were used to write two entirely unrelated languages. Because the first, Minoan, is undeciphered, we have no way of knowing to which class of languages it belongs, except that so far at least, it has utterly defied decipherment as anything like an Indo-European language. On the other hand, Linear B was used for early ancient Greek, which is an Indo-European language. The point I am trying to make is that these two syllabaries, which are so much alike not only in appearance but to a large extent in phonetic values, represent languages belonging to completely different classes. While the scripts look uncannily alike, the languages underlying them are entirely unalike. Conclusion: even scripts, in this case scripts which make use of a combination of syllabograms, logograms and ideograms by and large (nearly) equivalent, may easily represent languages which have nothing to do with one another.

The direct opposite scenario can, and does often occur. Linear B and Linear C used completely different syllabaries to write two extremely closely related dialects of the same language, ancient Greek, the first, Linear B for Mycenaean and the second, Linear C, for Arcado-Cypriot. No two dialects in ancient Greek are nearly as closely related as are these two, not even Ionic and Attic Greek. In the majority of cases, in fact, although morphemes (words) in Linear B & Linear C of course look completely unalike in their respective syllabaries, their phonetic values, far more often than not, sound & are (almost) exactly the same, because they are phonetically (practically) one and the same Greek word. Moreover, Arcado-Cypriot was written using both Linear C and the Greek alphabet. Same document, different scripts. So in Arcado-Cypriot, regardless of the script, the words (morphemes) and their phonetic values are identical. Moreover, in a great many cases, any given Greek word written in Linear B, Linear C or in alphabetical Greek in either of these two germane dialects is, plainly and simply, the (exact) same word. This phenomenon is of vital, if not critical, significance to the translation of tablets composed in Linear B and in Linear C alike into alphabetical Greek. Phonetically, the results can often be astonishingly alike, if not identical, for all three scripts (Linear B, Linear C & alphabetical Arcado-Cypriot).

A Comparison Between Chinese Pictograms/Ideograms and Linear B Syllabograms, Homophones, Logograms & Ideograms:

Any attempt to make sense of any comparison between the ideograms of an oriental language such as Chinese and those of a script used for an Occidental language, in this case, Linear B for Mycenaean Greek, may seem to be an exercise in utter futility. Yet, in some senses, it turns out not to be so. This is quite clearly demonstrated in the chart of only 10 ideograms for Chinese words, compared with 10 similar looking syllabograms, homophones, logograms and ideograms in Linear B. The point I am trying to make here is simply this: as far as the assignation of ideograms is concerned, even languages as disparate and as geographically distant from one another as Mycenaean Greek and oriental Chinese, often end up using ideograms which either look almost exactly the same or are uncannily similar in appearance, even though the morphemic values underlying them are almost always completely unrelated, which goes without saying. Or does it?

B. Same Ideogram, Same Meaning (a Rare Bird indeed, but...):

In one case and one case only, the ideogram for “month” in Chinese is the exact mirror image of the same ideogram in Linear B! Can this be so surprising, that the Chinese and Linear B scribes alike took the cue for the symbolism for the ideogram, “month”, from the exact same astronomical phenomenon, the moon? Of course not, given that almost all ancient societies had recourse to the lunar, not the solar, month.

I have made no effort here to compare the Linear B & Chinese ideograms in the chart above with the ideogram for “month” in any other ancient language, undeciphered or not, but of course there are scores of languages based either completely (ancient & modern Chinese, Korean & Japanese) or partially on ideograms (such as Linear A & B, but not Linear C). Rummage through as many of them as you like and you are bound to turn up ideograms very similar to those for “month” in both Linear B & Chinese. In a sense, this striking similarity is in part accidental, since anyone can use any symbol even remotely resembling the moon for “month”, yet at the same time, chances are good that people speaking languages as geographically and linguistically remote as ancient Mycenaean Greek and (ancient or modern) Chinese can and will come up with practically the same ideogram. This phenomenon of (striking) similarity in the appearance of ideograms between two entirely unrelated languages will (in the very rarest circumstances) result in the same meaning, but even then, of course, the pronunciation will be utterly different, because it must be. The ideograms for “month” in Linear B & Chinese look like mirror images of one another, but their pronunciation is totally alien, the Linear B for month being some variation on the Greek, “mein”, the Chinese being “yuè”.

Same Ideogram, (Almost Always) an Entirely Different Meaning:

Of course, the obverse also holds true. Take one look at our chart above, and you can see right away that the very first ideogram in the Linear B column looks almost identical to its Chinese counterpart in column 1.1. Yes, they look like kissing cousins. But they mean something entirely different. This can come as no surprise to anyone familiar with linguistics.

C. One is an Ideogram, the Other is Not!

C.1 A Chinese Ideogram looks like a Logogram in Linear B:

Of course, in the vast, vast majority of cases, ideograms which look the same from one language to another almost always mean something entirely different. But there is more. The first example we see in the Linear B column is not an ideogram at all, but a logogram composed of two Linear B syllabograms, ME & RI, the one superimposed on the other. In other words, what is an ideogram in one language (Chinese) is not an ideogram at all in another (Mycenaean Greek), even though they look almost identical, as is the case with our first example in the chart above, the logogram for MERI “honey” in Linear B, which looks almost identical to the ideogram in Chinese for “elephant”!

C.2 A Chinese Ideogram looks like a Combination of Syllabograms & or Homophones & or Logograms in Linear B:

Referring to Linear B entries 4. 6. & 7. in our chart above, we see that we have the syllabograms JA, SA & TE respectively. JA looks quite similar to the Chinese ideogram for “eye” (4.2) and SA + TE again like “sheep, ram” (10.2). Now of course, things get really messy, because Linear B uses two (2) ideograms, one for “ewe”, another for “ram”, and Chinese only one for both, with absolutely no resemblance between the Linear B & Chinese. This of course is the scenario for practically all syllabograms, homophones, logograms and ideograms on the one side (Linear B) and the ideograms on the other (Chinese), say 99.9 %. What is true for Linear B and Chinese is also true of any two languages which either use pictograms and ideograms almost exclusively (Chinese) or ideograms in combination with other signifiers such as syllabograms, homophones & logograms (Linear B).

Conclusion:

Many of you are surely asking, “What on the earth is the point of this, if not an exercise in futility? Why even bother with it?” The answer is simple enough: why climb a mountain? - because it is there. A great many researchers specializing in comparative linguistics are fascinated by just this sort of thing... which is why I brought it up in the first place. But there is another reason, even more compelling than this, which I shall reveal to you in our next fascinating post, before we have done with this topic once and for all.

Richard

Rita Robert’s Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 1115 E c 315

Rita Robert’s Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 1115 E c 315: Click to ENLARGE



Rita’s comments on her translation:

By consulting the huge Tselentis Linear B Lexicon, I found the place name Kytaistos where the 81 rams and 20 ewes were kept. I intuitively inserted “There is a total of”, because this would normally appear on a Linear B Tablet itemizing the number of animals or items. But of course, on this tablet as with so many others, the scribe omitted this because of the necessity to save space on such a small area. 

Rita Roberts

Comment by Richard:

Here is yet another of Rita’s successful translations of moderately difficult Knossos tablets using ideograms (in this case, those for ram & ewe). Since Rita always excels at what she does and now that Rita has fully mastered this level of translation, she is moving onto advanced decipherment, which is going to present a lot more challenges to her.

Without further ado (or maybe with it!) let’s all wish Rita Happy Birthday with her WIPO & EREPATO!

Without further ado (or maybe with it!) let’s all wish Rita Happy Birthday with her WIPO & EREPATO! Click to BLOW UP, eh...

I simply have not the faintest idea (though if I did, I probably would faint!) who designed this cluttered Birthday Card, but they must have been high on mushrooms, marijane or some kind of hallucinogen, eh. OMG! And the notes! They fairly shout at us, Hey READ ME, why don’t you, anyway, eh! (eh being Canajun for A, ha ha!, and since I am a Canajun, I know what THAT means, eh!... so do all other Canajuns, a few Brits, a few Aussies & a few Kiwis, but no Yanks, who for some bizarre reason insist on saying, HUH?, which unlike EH! sounds kinda stupid, eh!). I don’t know about YOU, but I am going to fly to Herakleion (& if you don’t know where that is or you are American & don’t know anyway, FORGET IT, EH!)

So have a wonderful, stupendous, hyper-terrific, copacetic, ecstatic, far out, flighty, spacey, what planet are YOU from?, Plan 9 1/2 from Outer Space etc. etc. etc. Birthday, eh, Rita.... because WIPO simply does not have the graphic skills, let alone writing skills, to cobble together another Birthday Card like this for at least another year, eh. Anyway, it IS one astonishing CARD, totally unique on this little planet of ours full of HUGE ELEPHANTS and little WIPOs, don’t you think, eh?

Yours most sincerely trying with all my might to avoid any nearby EREPATOS! Oh and of course Rita will have to Translate this great card for us, because no Canajun in his or her right mind would even dream of translating it, except for a million Euros... hint, hint, Rita, eh.

Ton ami canadien (Canajun eh!) Click to ENLARGE, even if no-one has ever seen an enlarged beaver! They sure would not like that, and might nibble your finger nails off if you tried!

Richard EH!

The moment we’ve all been waiting for. This is it! Ideogram for “horse” IQO + Our First Supersyllabogram = ZE, “a team”: our First Concrete Example = “a team of horses”

The moment we've all been waiting for. This is it! Ideogram for “horse” IQO + Our First Supersyllabogram = ZE, “a team”: our First Concrete Example = “a team of horses”

I honestly believe that this is the first time ever since Michael Ventris' successful decipherment of Linear B in July 1952 that a major step may have been taken in the further decipherment of those elements of Linear B which, at least until now, have been entirely recalcitrant to any meaningful decipherment. I have spent the past half year ploughing through 3,000+ tablets & fragments of the Scripta Minoa Catalogue of some 4,000+ fragments and tablets unearthed by Sir Arthur Evans between 1900 & 1903, with further excavations to follow in later years, prior and subsequent to World War I. This irreplaceable precious treasure trove of the largest collection of Linear B fragments ever discovered is available online in its entirety at Heidelberg University, Germany, here:

I fully expect that I will eventually be able to extract hundreds of examples all told of the potentially widespread use of an Ideogram immediately preceded or followed by a Syllabogram, and always in one of these two specific, invariable orders. In other words, we are speaking of a “formulaic phrase”, though of course, since the Linear B word in question is not spelled out in syllabograms as it “normally” would be, we are not strictly speaking of “phrases” here, but of a formulaic expression of an Ideogram immediately preceded or followed by a Syllabogram in every single instance, without exception, or as we choose to define it, a Supersyllabogram.

Almost from the outset I was astounded to discover the recurrence of the exact same sequence of an Ideogram + Syllabogram no less than seven (7!) times on only two pages of the Scripta Minoa, i.e. pages 144 & 146. This formulaic expression of the Supersyllabogram ZE (plus a single instance of the SSY MO), I must underline, was only the first of scores and scores of Supersyllabograms I have since unearthed in several categories of tablets and fragments from the Scripta Minoa. My discovery of our very first Supersyllabogram in May of this year (2014) was, to say the very least, a real eye opener. For certain Linear B expressions compounded of a single ideogram invariably followed or preceded by the same syllabogram, which have utterly defied decipherment to date, suddenly became accessible for decipherment. The astonishing thing is that the very first two of these expressions involves the Linear B ideogram for IQO = horse + the syllabogram ZE, and always in the exact same order in every single instance, as you can judge for here yourself:

7 Linear B Tablets & Fragments from Knossos Illustrating the Use of the Supersyllabogram ZE = a team (of horses) Click to ENLARGE:

All this was almost too good to be true. But when I fell upon even more of these expressions for the second instance of the ideogram for “horse”, I could scarcely believe my eyes. But there it was, plain as the nose on my face.

Now, as you can see at once for yourselves from the first example of these seven fragments of Linear B, the ideogram(s) – 1 or 2, as the case may be – are always in the precise same order and always, without exception, immediately followed by the syllabogram ZE. But what, you are obviously asking, is that single syllabogram ZE supposed to mean? All by itself, it would mean precisely nothing. But in this specific, particular and often recurring formula, I originally deduced that ZE always meant “a halter” or “a yoke”, but I was dead wrong.

An esteemed colleague of mine, Ms. Gretchen Leonhardt, who is also a highly competent decipherer and translator of Linear B tablets and fragments, soon enough set the record straight for me, convincing me beyond a shadow of a doubt that, in fact, the Supersyllabogram in the specific context of military matters could mean one thing and one thing only, “a pair of” (wheels etc.) or “a team of” (horses), and absolutely nothing else.

Moreover, further research on my part has confirmed Ms. Leonhardt’s hypothesis beyond question. Chris Tselentis, near the end of his excellent Linear B Lexicon, has provided us with numerous examples of very well known Linear B tablets to illustrate the various problems which so often arise in our attempts to decipher or translate Linear B tablets and fragments. Among these tablets there is one which cracks the case wide open. Here it is:

And Tselentis got it right bang on. He correctly translates the ideogram for wheel + the syllabogram ZE + the number 3 as “three pairs of wheels”, and this in spite of the fact that he did not quite get it right with the rest of the text. But no-one is perfect, so we can simply let that go. Anyway, I have corrected his own translation as illustrated above.

All that follows is my original text from May 2014, revised wherever necessary to reflect several new revelations on supersyllabograms since then:

In the previous post illustrating Thomas G. Palaima's expert translation of Heidelberg Tablet FL 1994, we saw that he interpreted – and as it turns out, correctly — the syllabograms KO ZA PA PO & MU as being just the initial syllable of – and again, I must lay particular emphasis on this observation – the names of major Minoan/Mycenaean centres. Is this just a fluke? Far from it. The precise point is this, why would expert Linear B scribes bother with spelling out over and over the names of these cities and sites with all their syllabograms when “Everyone (meaning among all of us scribes) knows perfectly well that the first syllabogram, in other words, the first syllable alone, and nothing else, tells us in no uncertain terms that this is is the name of one of our important Minoan/Mycenaean centres, and if you cannot see that, you must be blind.” (So they say, the scribes).

We do well to keep this firmly in mind: the Linear B scribes never inscribed their tablets for us, they did so for themselves and for the specific, sole function of annual accounting in the context of their own society. Nothing could be more obvious. That is the whole point to this marvellous adventure of deciphering ancient scripts! This was not only the lifetime mission the great Michael Ventris laid out for himself — it was nothing short of the love of his life. And since I love his work so dearly, can you be even remotely surprised that I will do absolutely anything to be able at last to decipher scores of of previously undecipherable Linear B tablets to honour his name?

Recasting this phenomenon as a general “rule”, Linear B scribes appear to have frequently resorted to using the first syllabogram, in other words, the first syllable alone of (sometimes long) place names, instead of wasting their time writing them out in full. Makes perfect sense to me. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Not only are the full Linear B spellings of place names treated in this manner, but also several other key components of the Minoan/Mycenaean socio-economic infrastructure, including agriculture, crafts, household matters, trade, and of course, religious affairs. I shall amply illustrate this frequently recurring phenomenon in the coming months. In a nutshell, my premise is this: single syllabograms on fragments and tablets, which have defied decipherment to date, can in fact be contextually deciphered in a manner which makes perfect sense, no matter how you look at it, just as Thomas G. Palaima has so clearly illustrating in his masterful translation of Linear B Tablet Heidelberg FL 1994.

The fact that so many Linear B fragments and tablets, and I mean everywhere they have been found, and not just in Knossos, are liberally peppered with single syllabograms either immediately before or after the ideograms they modify must signify something of real import to us in the further decipherment of Linear B. Why?... well, because the Linear B palace scribes knew perfectly well what they were doing, which is to say, what they were writing, why they wrote it the way they did, and especially how they wrote it, when they consciously and deliberately so often had recourse to single syllabograms. This practically begs the question – what on earth were they up to? Precisely this: they used the first syllabogram only, in other words the first syllable of vitally important Linear B words, which would otherwise have had to be spelled out, thereby wasting valuable space on what are for the most part, very small tablets measuring no more than 15-20 cm. at most. In other words, they were making liberal use of shorthand (at least as we would call it), and liberally using it thousands of years before we in the modern world finally cottoned onto it again in the late nineteenth century. Clever bunch of lads, weren't they?

But, oh no, the Linear B scribes weren't even satisfied at stopping there. After all, “If we are going to use shorthand with initial syllabograms alone, why not go whole hog and use formulaic expressions of an ideogram (or even more than one ideogram!) + a syllabogram (or even more than one syllabogram!), and always in the same precise order, in other words, as a formula. Sound familiar? That is precisely what Homer did over and over and over in the Iliad? Co-incidence. I am now beginning to sincerely doubt that.

So I have to ask, what is a big chunk of the corpus of Linear B if not, in essence, shorthand, pure and simple. And if this is the case, we have some serious rethinking to do about the very nature of Linear B. It may even mean going back to the drawing board in the re-decipherment of a considerable number of Linear B tablets and fragments. What a mind-boggling prospect! But, hey, sounds like fun to me. To put a fine point on it, this is going to be a truly daunting challenge, if we are to really get at the nitty-gritty of accurate contextual decipherment. This is something we can no longer afford to ignore.

Why Supersyllabograms are What They are:

Allow me to explain why I call such syllabograms “Supersyllabograms”. It is really quite straightforward. Since such syllabograms always and invariably consist of the first syllable alone of an entire Linear B word, they must perforce be shorthand. Take this premise just one little step further, as I have in fact done and fully demonstrated in the table of 7 (almost) identical formulaic expressions of the syllabograms (chariot) + IQO (horse) + ZE in every single instance, and what do you get? - none other than the entire phrase, “a pair of chariot wheels” (since after all, chariots need two wheels, as if...) or, alternatively, whenever horses are involved, “a team of horses”. That is one big mouthful for 1 little ideogram + one little syllabogram in a standardized, invariable formula. The whole point is that these formulae recur so often on the Linear B fragments and tablets in the Scripta Minoa as to make it virtually impossible to ignore them, except at our own peril born of a frustratingly annoying inability to make any sense whatsoever of such expressions. Yet, as I shall illustrate many times over in the next year or so, such expressions not only exist, but recur very frequently on Linear B fragments and tablets, regardless of provenance, whether from Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae or anywhere else... (some original text erased, no longer being relevant).

Add all of these components together, and what do you get? ... the Supersyllabogram, a new term I have had to coin, simply because it fits the bill to a tee. And there you have it. At least for now.

More to come. Much much more. I welcome and strongly encourage feedback and especially criticism of my basic premise here, and of its theoretical soundness or lack thereof, for otherwise, none of us can or will make any further headway in the eventual decipherment of a huge chunk of the Linear B corpus. But somehow, intuitively and through the process of inductive logic, I truly believe I am onto something, possibly even something big where the decipherment of large portions of Linear B “texts” - an inaccurate term if ever there was one, should my theory prove substantially sound.

And to test my hypothesis against reality, which I am ethically and honour bound to do, I shall convey all of this information to Prof. Thomas G. Palaima, Prof. John G. Younger and to every other major Linear B scholar or researcher whose name comes to mind. If any of you who are reading this post, or know of anyone who is just such an expert, please identify the same to me immediately. And, if you yourself are a truly enthusiastic student of Linear B in any way, shape or form, please do not hesitate to contact me, or even better, to comment, in favour, against or neutrally, on this (potentially) ground-breaking post on our blog.

Cheers

Richard

All 9 Supersyllabograms for Amphorae & Vessels in Mycenaean Linear B

All 9 Supersyllabograms for Amphorae & Vessels in Mycenaean Linear B – Click to ENLARGE:



Of the 9 supersyllabograms for amphorae & vessels in Mycenaean Linear B, only one (1) is derived (D) = SORO (ancient Greek = soros) or “urn for the ashes of the dead” or “funerary urn” (Liddell & Scott, 1986, pg. 643). The rest are all attributed (A) on Linear B tablets, regardless of provenance. But this is the only entry in Liddell & Scott which closely matches amphorae, vessels, pots & urns, and it is so convincing that I feel quite sure it is the correct interpretation in this specific context.

Following are two Linear B fragments which nicely illustrate the use of the supersyllabograms RO (crooked) & DI (dedicated to Zeus) Click to ENLARGE:



This concludes our review of supersyllabograms related to amphorae, vessels, pots & urns in Mycenaean Linear B.

It has become apparent to me that at least half or possibly even the majority of basic syllabograms and at least one logogram (for MERI = honey) are supersyllabograms. If this turns out to be the case (as I am quite sure it will), these results will serve to confirm my underlying hypothesis that the Mycenaean Linear B syllabary is shorthand to a considerable extent, given also the Linear B has around 100 ideograms as well, so many of which either contain attributive supersyllabograms inside them or have as many as three (3!) environmental supersyllabograms either preceding (proclitic) or following them (enclitic). 

Richard

Rita Robert’s Excellent Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 1198 E x 205 “Tanaposo the shepherd”

Rita Robert’s Excellent Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 1198 E x 205 “Tanaposo the shepherd” Click to ENLARGE:

I really have very little to say about this very fine translation Rita Roberts has made of Knossos Tablet KN 1198 E x 205. Now at the final stage of the Advanced Level of learning Mycenaean Linear B (Level 5), Rita has come very far indeed since she first started learning Linear B from me some 19 months ago. She has a true knack for intuiting what any Linear B tablet is really saying, in spite of the fact that the Minoan scribes at Knossos were notorious for omitting everything but the most essential information, given that they inscribed their tablets solely for inventorial purposes for the palace administration, and that, in so doing, they all knew perfectly well what each of their colleagues was saying, since they all adhered to the same code, so to speak, for tallying inventories. Inventories, after all, have to be standardized, and composed consistently across the board; otherwise, they are useless.

Moreover, Rita has swiftly mastered the knack for intuiting the difference between Mycenaean vocabulary & Mycenaean names. She knew perfectly well that Tanaposo could not be a common Mycenaean word, but that it had to be a name. It matters little whether or not the word was later to enter standard Greek vocabulary. She even explains how that came about.

She also correctly divined Tanaposo’s rôle as a shepherd, and correctly assumed that, since he was a shepherd, he had to be tending to his flocks... hence her excellent translation. In a word, the difference between a fair or a good and an excellent translation of any Linear B tablet consists in just this ability, to be able to coax out of the tablet what the Linear B scribe must have actually meant it to say. And I think she has it pretty much bang on.

Richard

A Female Slave Brings Honey to be Poured into an Amphora (Knossos Tablet KN 713 M a 01) Click to ENLARGE:

This is an intriguing little Linear B fragment. Although the actual Linear B text is sparse, with the logogram MERI for “honey” and the ideogram for “amphora” clearly taking precedence over the Linear B word DOERA for “slave”, we must not and we dare not underestimate her essential rôle in the “script” for the play, so to speak, of this fragment. What fascinates me to no end is the fact that the logogram MERI is no closer to the ideogram for “amphora” than to the Linear B word for “slave”. This surely must imply something of the intent of the scribe who wrote this tablet (or fragment). And I think it does. It implies the notion of action, which can only be realistically rendered into Greek (if the Linear B text were used instead of the logogram MERI alone) as an active verb, and in this case, that verb would almost certainly have to be “to bring”, followed by the infinitive of the verb “to pour” or “to be poured”, in other words two verbs in succession!

This is precisely one of the paramount features or characteristics of Mycenaean Greek as it actually appears (or not!) on so many Linear B tablets. I have stressed this over and over again on our blog, and I shall never tire of doing so. Since supersyllabograms, ideograms and logograms, taken together as a phenomenon, should be interpreted as being abbreviations or better yet, shorthand, for actual Mycenaean words in Linear B, and since they occur so very frequently on Linear B tablets, regardless of provenance (Knossos, Pylos, Phaistos etc.), it would be unwise to ignore them, and downright obtuse to dismiss them as minor factors in the decipherment and translation of Mycenaean Greek. In fact, the precise opposite scenario obtains.

As Gretchen Leonhardt, another highly adept translator of Linear B, has frequently pointed out to me, what is the point of deciphering Linear B tablets, if we do not use our imaginations in endeavouring to unveil, as it were, the actual intent of the scribes who wrote them in the first place? Failure to do so simply suggests we are wasting our time even bothering to translate the tablets in the first place.

However much I disagree with Ms. Leonhardt’s fundamental assumptions and hypotheses over how to go about using one’s imagination bent to this exacting task (my own views being almost diametrically opposed to hers), I completely agree with her notion that the Linear B tablets, at least those in which shorthand techniques take marked precedence over Linear B text, must be deciphered with a generous dose of imagination. Otherwise, they simply defy decipherment at all.

This is precisely why I have invented the concept of “supersyllabograms”, in an informed and logically driven attempt to account as fully as possible for the huge textual gaps which riddle so many Linear B tablets, again regardless of provenance. Taking this approach to the decipherment of Linear B tablets consisting mainly of logograms, ideograms and supersyllabograms clearly justifies the kind of translation I came up with for this particular tablet alone. And trust me, I myself, Rita Roberts and Gretchen Leonhardt all take the same approach to translating such tablets, even though Rita and I share approximately the same perspective on what a viable translation should look like, as opposed to Ms. Leonhardt, who views decipherment based on this technique through an altogether different prism. So be it. Ainsi soit-il.

Again, as my colleague, Rita Roberts, stresses in her translation of another Linear B tablet (which we shall be posting very shortly),

... clay tablets were so small that it was impossible to write every detail on them. However his fellow scribes would have known and understood what he meant, they certainly would not have thought about future readers, as they were concerned only with the current fiscal year,...

I could not have put it better. The Linear B scribes compiled their annual fiscal inventories for the sole use of the palace administration, period. It ends right there. Any thought of preserving the tablets for future generations would never have even entered their minds. So before we even dream of translating any Linear B tablet whatsoever, whether or not it sports plenty of text, we had better make sure we are putting ourselves in the head space of the scribes themselves, in so far as this is possible. It is scarcely easy to do so, in fact, it is downright mind-boggling, given that we are separated from their own civilization by over 35 centuries (!), so that any attempt to try and get into their frame of mind is bound to be fraught with hazards galore. But this does not mean we should not try.

So here we have it. As far as I am concerned, this tablet does in fact mean:

The female slave is bringing honey to be poured into an amphora.

And why not? Plenty of professional Linear B translators are bound to object to our somewhat more imaginative approach to translating Linear B tablets with little text, but plenty of ambiguous logograms, ideograms and supersyllabograms, or any combination of these, but when they do, I expect them to come up with translations of their own which are likely to hold as much water as ours, when they are held up to the scrutiny, not only of the Linear B research community at large, but of folks who neither know Greek, ancient or modern, nor Linear B, but who are more than intelligent enough to decide for themselves what they decide any particular tablet means, thank you very much.

Richard

The Various Kinds of Vessels (Amphorae, Pots etc.) in Linear B with their Supersyllabograms (SSYs)

As with any category of common ideograms in Linear B, whether it be livestock (primarily and almost always sheep, rams and ewes, (i.e. on over 20 % or 700 + on all 3,000 Linear B tablets from Knossos I have closely examined), other livestock (cows, bulls, goats, billy goats and she goats etc.), horses, textiles & vessels, among others we have not yet posted on this blog, a large number of ideograms are either preceded or followed by a single syllabogram or contain the single syllabogram inside them.

This single syllabogram we call a supersyllabogram since it is always the first syllabogram, hence, the first syllable of a specific Linear B word of which it is, for all intents and purposes, the Linear B abbreviation. Another way of interpreting this phenomenon is to view each and every supersyllabogram as a kind of shorthand for specific Linear B words, shorthand which the Linear B scribes frequently resorted to to save valuable space on the very small clay tablets they were obliged to write on.

One of the primary considerations to keep firmly in mind is that, with the sole exception of the SSY NE, which always means “new”, regardless of category, identical syllabograms standing in as supersyllabograms never mean the same thing from one category to the next. Allow me to illustrate with a few examples. For instance, the SSY PE for sheep, rams & ewes and other livestock always = PERIQORO, the Linear B word for the ancient Greek “peribolos”, which means “an enclosure”, or more accurately in Mycenaean Greek, “a sheep pen” or “cattle pen” etc., and nothing else whatsoever. In this category, vessels, the sypersyllabogram A = “amphora(e)” is as plain as the nose on your face.

Cross-correlation of the ostensibly “same” supersyllabogram yields predictable results. As illustrated by Linear B Tablet Heidelburg HE FL 1994, all of the SSYs are toponyms, each corresponding to the name of a single Minoan or Mycenaean city or settlement. For instance, the SSY PU = Pylos. On the other hand, the SSY PU in textiles has an entirely different meaning = PUKATARIYA, “a kind of cloth”. Likewise, on the Heidelburg tablet, PA = Palaikastro, whereas in textiles it means PARAKUYA “died textiles or cloth”, and nothing else.

Supersyllabograms for Vessels, Amphorae, Libation Vessels etc – Click to ENLARGE:

There are only 3 supersyllabograms for vessels, A, NE and PO, as illustrated above. A & NE are self-explanatory. As I have frequently pointed out, NE is the one and only SSY which never changes meaning across categories. It always means NEWO (masc.) or NEWA (fem.) = “new”. On the other hand, the supersyllabogram PO for vessels initially posed a problem for me. It was an enigma. What on earth could it mean? My first reaction was to run to Liddell & Scott, 1986, where I found the obvious entry (to me at any rate), “poteos-a-on”, meaning, of course, “drinkable”. Yes, I exclaimed, Eureka! It has to be that. No. No way. Why? Unfortunately, the SSY PO does not simply refer to water, wine or even water turned into wine, or wine or anything else we would consider as “drinkable” as opposed to “undrinkable” or polluted. Sorry. Unfortunately, it is also & frequently, at that, applied to to “honey”, and honey is not exactly what we would refer to as “drinkable”. It is a bit too sticky for that!

Now what? I despaired. But, wait, hold on a sec. Before I could even think twice, the solution leaped right into my mind. That’s it! I (somewhat triumphantly) exclaimed. The SSY PO clearly refers to “a libation to POtiniya”, perhaps the most famous of all Minoan goddesses. Now, since the Minoans were a matriarchal society, at least in so far as deities were concerned, this had to be it. But no, not quite. There is another possibility, which we cannot and must not overlook. PO could just as well refer to “a libation to POseidon”, written as POSEDAO in Linear B. OK, that suits the bill just fine. But which one is it? To my mind, at least, given the marked propensity of Minoan religion for female deities, I expect the odds are something like 70/30 for POTINIYA. Take your pick. If you are macho, you will probably go for Poseidon. Otherwise, the rest of us will likely opt for Potiniya.

And there you have it.

One final note. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Linear B scribes appended the logogram MERI for “honey”, sometimes to the left of the ideogram for “amphora”, sometimes to the top left, and sometimes squarely on top of it. It seems really bizarre to me. There two possible explanations for this. Either (a) they did not care where they put the logogram MERI, since it was after all rather complex and clumsy to write anyway or (b) they did care, because they intended the logogram to have a different meaning in relation to the ideogram for “amphora”, depending on where the logogram MERI was located relative to the ideogram. But what these alternate meanings are we cannot really say. I can at least hazard educated guesses. It seems to me that when the logogram MERI is directly to the left of the ideogram for “amphora”, that amphora is used solely for wine, and nothing else. This interpretation fits neatly with my other translations of similar SSYs which precede or follow their ideogram, especially in the field (pardon the pun) of sheep. When MERI appears to the top left of the ideogram for amphora, this may mean that wine is being poured into the amphora, whereas when MERI appears at the top of the ideogram for amphora, it may mean that the amphora has just been filled to the top. But who knows? I am probably getting a little too specific for my own good. If a Linear B scribe were to come back from the dead as a revenant, he would probably laugh me out of the room for these so-called “explanations” or on the other hand, he might not, and instead say something like this, “Hey, man, you got it bang on”. Fat chance of that.

Richard

The Newly Unearthed Minoan Winnie the Pooh Tablet (from Knossos? I wish it weren’t)

The Newly Unearthed Minoan Winnie the Pooh Tablet (from Knossos? I wish it weren’t) Click to BLOW UP TO ELEPHANT SIZE if you dare!:

I really don’t want to say anything more about this astonishing tablet, except to say that I can’t believe Rita and I found it last Hallowe’en while all the other archaeologists in Herakleion were either out trick or treating with their better halves, or sitting morosely in Greek bars sipping, of all the disgusting things, Retsina! Rita pleaded and begged and pleaded again for me to re-bury it, but I would have nothing of it, informing her in no uncertain terms that this was the Linear B find of the century, if not the entire millennium, given that it is so incredibly unlike any other Linear B tablet she and I have ever, ever, ever seen... let alone anyone else. How it came to be is anyone’s guess, though I do believe that the scribe’s signature, WIPO, is a dead giveaway. Plus, although he had no brains, Minoan Winnie the Pooh was a clever little bugger, riding into the city market, no less, on an ELEPHANT, no less, just to make sure everyone (especially the already burnt-out scribes!) got the hell out of their way... or else... or else what I cringe to imagine. And although our “scribe’s” scratches and scrawls are almost illegible, even for Linear B, which is almost illegible most of the time anyway, only this time round far worse, the text is utterly charming in the extreme, once you can figure out how to decipher it.

I wonder how many elephants he has. I wonder whether or not he shares (at least one pot of) honey with his elephants. I suspect he has to, unless he also wants to get squashed underfoot. I wonder why the scribes just don’t give up, toss in the towel (though there probably no towels as such in ancient Knossos), and run off in all directions screaming like maniacs (which is what they would have been by this time!). I wonder why Rita and I ever decided to keep this silly tablet, except that maybe, just maybe, we want to set the entire Linear B research community, and especially Linear B translators, on their heads, aghast at this new, entirely unexpected and entirely earth-shattering tablet... earth-shattering, not because there was another one of those nasty earthquakes at Knossos when it was composed, but because elephants really do shatter the earth when they come stomping by or, worse yet, stomping into the scribes’ HQ.

This is of course the primary reason why so many Linear B tablets were never unearthed by Sir Arthur Evans in the first place, since the poor bloke was entirely oblivious of the Elephantine Factor (see shattering above). It is almost certainly a historical given that Minoan Winnie the Pooh ordered his pet elephants to destroy as many tablets as they could on any subject but honey pots and honey amphorae, except that the stupid elephants got it all the wrong way around, and destroyed thousands upon thousands of honey-pot and honey amphorae tablets, upon which the entire Minoan economy depended for its survival. When I rummaged through 3,000 + tablets from Knossos, I could find only 7 or 8 honey-pot tablets (and fragments, of course, given those elephant feet!), a horrific loss to posterity, especially to all those honey-sweet Pooh Bears who have lived on this lovely earth of ours since then, Winnie Ille Pooh, the Roman Pooh, Winnie Lou Pou, the Provençal Pou, and so on and so forth, all the way up to Winnie the Pooh today.

What a terrible loss indeed! Small wonder that the Minoan economy collapsed in a heap of rubble! Those meany ole’ scribes just didn’t get it! Their entire economy was stuck on honey. No honey, no economy. Poof, no Knossos!

Richard

Tag: Linear B Tablets

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