Tag: LinearB

TBP spring 2015: English — Mycenaean Linear B Lexicon of Military Affairs A — cargo (Draft): Click to ENLARGE

Here you see the very first draft of the English — Mycenaean Linear B Lexicon of Military Affairs, covering only the entries from A to cargo. Moreover, in this draft, only the English, Linear B and latinized Linear B are given, whereas in the final version of the English — Mycenaean Linear B Lexicon of Military Affairs, when it is published, each entry will contain:

English — Mycenaean Linear B + latinized Linear B + archaic ancient Greek + modern Greek

In other words, what you see here is only the SKELETON ENTRY for each word you see in this draft of the Lexicon.

The actual English — Mycenaean Linear B Lexicon of Military Affairs will contain at least twice as many words as found in the first draft, of which this is only the first part. For the moment, all words here are derived only from the:

MYCENAEAN (Linear B) — ENGLISH Glossary

- with numerous corrections, since this glossary is replete with errors and unreliable.

KEY:

(AME) = attested Linear B word from the MYCENAEAN (Linear B) — ENGLISH Glossary
(D) = derived Mycenaean Linear B words, not found anywhere on any Linear B tablets
NOTE: indicates that the original MYCENAEAN (Linear B) — ENGLISH Glossary entry is erroneous.

* The special use of “WE” as the final syllabogram of SOME Mycenaean Linear B words:

Many Mycenaean Linear B ending with “WE” indicate that “WE” as the last syllable of such Mycenaean words is actually the consonant “S”, for the plural form. I have deduced this from several Linear B entries from several sources. This is the one and only instance in Mycenaean Linear B where a syllabogram, i.e. “WE” can also be construed as the consonant “S”, but only at the end of a word to indicate its plural. There are many examples of this phenomenon in Mycenaean Linear B: for instance, in this draft,

TARAWANUWE = beams (plural)
So also:
APOREWE = amphorae or amphoras (plural)
KAKEWE = coppersmiths
KERAMEWE = workers of ceramics.

If this strikes you as peculiar, or even peculiar to Mycenaean Linear B, it is not. In fact, this phenomenon is far more common in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, in which several syllabograms ending in “E”, such as ME RE (especially) SE & TE append the “E” as a filler vowel. Moreover, it is always a silent “E”. When these same words are written in the Arcado-Cypriot alphabet instead, the silent “E” disappears.

WARNING! With the aforementioned exception, “WE” as the last syllable of any Mycenaean Linear B usually means “WE”.

** is a special note on declension...

What is the English — Mycenaean Linear B Lexicon of Military Affairs?

When it is published in the spring of 2015, the English — Mycenaean Linear B Lexicon of Military Affairs will be at least twice as long as the first draft, which is already 10 pages single-spaced.

The English — Mycenaean Linear B Lexicon of Military Affairs is also the first section ONLY of the much more comprehensive English — Mycenaean Linear B Lexicon, which we will publish sometime in 2017-2018, and which will be modeled to some extent on Liddell & Scott, Greek-English Lexicon. The full Lexicon will also contain the following sections:

AGRICULTURE
ARCHITECTURE & TOWN PLANNING
COMMERCE, ECONOMY & TRADE, including MARITIME AFFAIRS
HOUSEHOLD AFFAIRS
MILITARY AFFAIRS
RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS
EPONYMS
TOPONYMS
PARTS OF SPEECH (adjectives, nouns, adverbs, verbs, prepositions & conjunctions etc.) + NOTES on CONJUGATIONS & DECLENSIONS where applicable

The final English — Mycenaean Linear B Lexicon (2017-2018) should run to at least 150 pages, possibly as many as 200. There will be nothing even remotely like it in print, online or in PDF format.

When it is finally published, our English — Mycenaean Linear B Lexicon will be by far the largest Mycenaean Linear B lexicon, dictionary or glossary ever published in print, online or in PDF. It should at least double the current Mycenaean vocabulary of some 2,500 Attested (A) words to 5,000 or even as much as 7,000 Attested (A) and Derived (D) words, from the following sources, in order of precedence:

(a) Attested (A) Mycenaean Linear B vocabulary;
(b) Mycenaean Linear B vocabulary Derived (D) from Attested (A) Mycenaean Linear B vocabulary;
(c) Mycenaean Linear B vocabulary Derived (D) from Arcado-Cypriot Linear C or Arcado-Cypriot alphabetic vocabulary. Arcado-Cypriot takes precedence even over (d) because of all ancient Greek dialects, no two are more closely allied than are the Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot. They are in fact “kissing cousins”. Even Ionic and Attic Greek are much less intimately related.
(d) The most archaic Greek found only in The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of The Iliad.

NO OTHER ancient sources will be considered, as almost all other ancient Greek dialects arrived on the scene too late for serious consideration for the derivation (D) of Mycenaean Linear B vocabulary.

Richard

SHARP rise in VISITS to our blog in January 2015: from an average of ca. 3,500 in the autumn of 2014 to 5,000 this month: Click to ENLARGE the BANNER:

SHARP rise in VISITS to our blog in January 2015: from an average of ca. 3,500 in the autumn of 2014 to 5,000 this month: Click to ENLARGE the BANNER:



This is a lot for something as esoteric as Mycenaean Linear B.  With our profoundest gratitude and thanks.

We have even more great news coming very soon! We have had a major breakthrough which very few Internet sites are privileged to receive. Keep posted. 


Richard and Rita

FIVE SECOND STORIES: Theseus and the Minotaur & many more hilarious stories!

FIVE SECOND STORIES: Theseus and the Minotaur & many more hilarious stories!
 
Theseus and the Minotaur: Click to ENLARGE:



Robert Clear does have a very clear name after all.

And click on this BANNER to go to his Blog where you can find his wonderful story:



You will note that I have added the Mycenaean Linear B Greek & ancient Greek for some of the key words in this wonderful story. What truly amazes me is that Robert translated “Minotaur” correctly, as “mino” = small + “taur” = bull, although the spelling of “mino” in Mycenaean Linear B is usually “meno”, but that is fine with me. If it makes Robert and all of his readers happy, that is all that matters.

So I hope you like it as much as I do.

Also, Robert Clear’s home page is here: Click on the BANNER: 



He has plenty more 5 second stories on his home page. His 5 second stories are very funny, and some of them hilarious. My personal favourites are:

ELECTRO HENS
ETIQUETTE, HOW IT WORKS
A HYENA, a cross between a cat and a dog! (absolutely hilarious! I should get one. I already have 4 cats)
CEDRIC is convinced that everyone thinks he is DULL. 


Richard

Haiku: “peri rimeni Aminisi anemo paidio pasi” = “all around the port of Amnisos the wind is everyone’s child”

Haiku of Amnisos in Linear B, ancient Greek, English and French =
Haïkou d’Amnisos en linéaire B, en grec antique, en anglais et en français

Click to ENLARGE

This is the one haiku in Linear B which appeals to my sensibilities more than any other I have composed en Mycenaean Greek. The reason is simple: the Linear B of this haiku, which anyone can read in its Latinized version beneath the original in Linear B, has an entrancing rhythm, a melody about it that truly appeals to the ear, evoking a light sea breeze wafting around the sunny harbour of Amnisos. The language of the haiku is simple and direct. The alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia are almost Italianate and so very appealing. In a word, I love it.

I elected to use the miniature Minoan frieze of the harbour of Thera, rather than a frieze of Amnisos, for its exquisite beauty.

I sincerely hope you love it as much as I do, and that you will tag it with LIKE. I would also appreciate your comments.

Thank you

Grâce à sa musicalité innée qui se déroule si aisément à travers les lignes, ce haïkou est assurément celui qui plaît à mes sensibilités avant tous les autres que j’ai jamais composé en grec mycénien. La version du haïkou en lettrage latin de l’intégral en linéaire B a un charme tout particulier, une mélodie qui nous hante l’oreille, comme si une brise maritime légère s’élèvait sur le havre ensoleillé d’Amnisos. Son langage est simple et direct. Il y en a une allitération, une assonance et une onomatopée quasi italiennes qui s’y harmonisent si parfaitement. En un mot, je m’en raffole.

Au lieu de choisir une fresque d’Amnisos, j’ai pris la frise miniature minoenne du havre de Thère, grâce à sa beauté exquise.

J’espère donc qu’il vous plaise autant qu’à moi, et que vous l’évalueriez selon sa qualité poétique. Je serais également reconnaissant de vos commentaires, si’il y en a.

Richard

Our own Page in PARTNERSHIP on Koryvantes, The Association of Historical Studies (Greece)

Our own Page in PARTNERSHIP on Koryvantes, The Association of Historical Studies (Greece)

Click here to visit our own page in our professional partnership with Koryvantes, Koryvantes, The Association of Historical Studies:



Koryvantes has done an extremely professional job of designing our page on his magnificent site, and we hope we have done the same for his Association on ours, here:



We URGE all of our visitors to visit Koryvantes, The Association of Historical Studies, in Greece, as often as possible, since their research into ancient Greek warfare and weaponry is of the very highest order. Koryvantes discusses Greek warfare and weaponry from all historical eras, right down from the Mycenaean to the Byzantine, accompanied b magnificent illustrations of Greek warriors and weapons. His site is a must see! 

Koryvantes is a MAJOR contributor and attendee at numerous International Conferences and Meetings all over Europe!

Richard

The Famous “Dolphin Fresco” at Knossos on Papyrus! Minoan Literature? Did any Exist? Religious? Military?

The Famous “Dolphin Fresco” at Knossos on Papyrus! Minoan Literature? Did any Exist?

Click to ENLARGE

Here you see a magnificent reproduction of the famous “Dolphin Fresco” at Knossos reprinted on Papyrus, which I purchased for the astonishing price of 10 euros while I was visiting the site on May 2, 2012. The colours on this papyrus version are so vibrant no photograph can fully do justice to them. Nevertheless, the photo turned out wonderfully, and if you would like to use it yourself, please feel free to do so. I even framed it to enhance it.

Papyrus in Minoan/Mycenaean Crete?

The very idea of reprinting one of the amazing Knossos frescoes onto papyrus may seem blasphemous to some, but certainly not to me. It raises the very astute question: did the Minoans, writing in Linear A or in Linear B, ever produce any literature as such? Consent is almost unanimous on the Internet and in print – No! They did not write any literature. But not so fast! It strikes me as peculiar - indeed very peculiar – that a civilization as advanced and sophisticated as that of Knossos, in both the Minoan Linear A eras (Middle Minoan – early Late Minoan) and in the Mycenaean Linear B era (Late Minoan), may very well have had a literature of its own, for these reasons, if none other:

(a) Creation Myths:

Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, the Hittites and other proto-literate civilizations, at least had a religious literature, whether or not it was composed on papyrus (as with Egypt), here at Wikipedia:

The sun rises over the circular mound of creation as goddesses pour out the primeval waters around it

or on baked clay tablets, as with the Babylonians, here:

The Enûma_Eliš Epic (Creation Myth) ca. 1,000 lines long on 7 tablets:

Proemium:

When on high the heaven had not been named,
Firm ground below had not been called by name,
When primordial Apsu, their begetter,
And Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all,
Their waters mingled as a single body,
No reed hut had sprung forth, no marshland had appeared,
None of the gods had been brought into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies determined--
Then it was that the gods were formed in the midst of heaven.
Lahmu and Lahamu were brought forth, by name they were called.

the famous Sumerian Myth of Gilgamesh on 7 Tablets here:

and the Sumerian & Akkadian Myths, including that of Gilgamesh, here:

Akkadian Gilgamesh:

(b) The implications of the astounding achievements of the highly advanced Minoan Civilization for a putative literature of their own:

Just because the Minoans, writing in Linear A or in Linear B, left behind no literature as such on their administrative inventory tablets, does not necessarily mean that they never wrote any literature at all. That strikes me as bordering on nonsensical, since Knossos always had the closest economic and cultural ties with Egypt and with all of the other great civilizations contemporaneous with her. Egypt, above all, set great store on the inestimable value of Knossian, Minoan and Mycenaean artifacts such as gold, in which the Mycenaean artisans were especially gifted, lapis lazuli, of which the finest quality in the entire known world issued from Knossos; Minoan & Mycenaean pottery and wares, which again were of the most splendid designs; Minoan textiles and dyes, again the finest to be found, and on and on. In fact, the Minoans were rightly renowned as the among the very best dyers in the entire known world.

But why stop there? Why should such an obviously advanced civilization as the Minoan, with its understanding of the basic principles of hydraulics, quite beyond the ken of any other contemporary civilization, and with its utterly unique airy architecture, based on the the most elegant geometric principles, again quite unlike anything else to found in the then-known world, not have a literature of its own? To me, the idea seems almost preposterous.

The question remains, if they did have a literature of their own, it too was most likely religious in nature. But on what medium would they have written it down? - certainly not on their minuscule tablets, as these were so tiny as to virtually exclude the composition of any religious literature such as that of the origin of mankind (very much in currency at that era in the other civilizations mentioned above). Again, the Minoan scribes writing in Linear B used their tiny tablets solely for ephemeral annual accounting and inventories. Still, I can hear some of you objecting, “But the Babylonians and other civilizations wrote down their creation myths on tablets!” Fair enough. Yet those tablets were larger, and they were deliberately baked to last as long as possible (and they have!), quite unlike the Minoan & Mycenaean ephemeral administrative tablets, which were never baked. And, as if it isn’t obvious, one civilization is not necessary like another, not even in the same historical era. This is especially so when it comes to the Minoan civilization – and to a very large extent to its cousin, the Mycenaean, versus all others at the time, since clearly the socio-cultural, architectural and artistic defining characteristics of the former (Minoan/Mycenaean) were largely very much at odds with those of the latter, (Egypt, Babylon, Assyria etc.), much more ostentatious than the Minoans... except for one thing...

We are still left with the question of medium. If the Minoans, writing in Linear A and later in Linear B, did have a literature, and let us assume for the sake of argument that they did, which medium would they have used? Before I get right down to that, allow me to point out the Knossos was, as it were, the New York City of the Bronze Age, the metropolis at the very hub of all international trade and commerce on the Mediterranean Sea. All you need to do is look at any map of the Mediterranean, and you can see at a glance that Knossos was located smack dab in the centre of all trade routes to all other great civilizations of her day and age, as we quite clearly see on this composite map: Click to ENLARGE

Is it any wonder that no-one was particularly bent on attacking her, or any other city on the island of Crete, such as Phaistos, since after all everyone everywhere strictly depended on Knossos as the very nexus of international trade? No wonder the city was never fortified. This pretty much how Knossos looked at her height: Click to ENLARGE

No walls or fortifications of any kind in evidence! That alone is a very powerful indicator of the critical commercial value of Knossos as the very hub of international commerce in her era. But more than anywhere else, the archaeological evidence powerfully evinces a very close trade relationship between Knossos and Egypt, since Minoan jewelry, textiles, pottery and wares have shown up in considerable amounts – sometimes even hordes - in Egyptian archaeological sites. The Egyptians clearly placed extreme value on Minoan goods, as exquisitely crafted as they were. So what? - I hear you exclaim.

So what indeed. These major trading partners each must have had something to trade with the other that the other was in desperate need of. And in the case of Knossos and the Minoans, the Egyptian commodity they would probably have needed most of all would be, you have it, papyrus. The Cretan climate was not dry enough for them to produce it themselves. So they would have had to rely exclusively on Egypt for what was, after all, one of the most precious commodities of the entire Bronze Age.

If we accept this hypothesis – and I see no reason why we should not at least seriously entertain it – then the Minoans may very well have used papyrus and ink to record their religious literature. There is some evidence, however second-hand and circumstantial, that they may have composed religious texts, and possibly even a religious epic, on papyrus.

This evidence, although only secondary, if we are inclined to accept it as such – is the high incidence of the names of Minoan and Mycenaean deities and priestesses, and even of religious rites, on the Linear B accounting and inventory tablets from Pylos, over all other Minoan/Mycenaean sites. Why on earth even bother mentioning the names of so many gods so frequently on minuscule tablets otherwise dealing almost exclusively with anything as boring – yet naturally economically vital - as statistics and inventories of livestock, crops, military equipment, vases and pottery, and the like? There was nothing economically useful about religious rites or babbling on about deities. So why bother, unless it was a matter of real significance to the Minoans and Mycenaeans? But ostensibly, it was. Chuck economics, at least where religion is concerned, they apparently believed. This cannot come as any surprise in the ancient world, and of course, in the Bronze Age itself, where religions and superstitious beliefs were rampant, playing an enormous and absolutely essential rôle in virtually every civilization, every society, great or small. This composite of Minoan/Mycenaean deities, which were were found in droves on every single Minoan/Mycenaean site, makes this blatantly obvious: Click to ENLARGE

(d) The implications of a putative Minoan & Mycenaean military literature in The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad:

Given this scenario, I am seriously inclined to believe that not only did the Minoan and Mycenaean scribes writing in Linear B (leaving Minoan Linear A aside for the time being) keep track of religious rites, and possibly even compose a creation myth of their own on papyrus, but that they may very well have also written down a stripped down written version of their oral military epic, their own story of the Trojan War, and if so, the most accurate version of the events of that war. Their original history of the Trojan war would have almost certainly been much more factual than the version of The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of The Iliad, which must have been derived from it, had it existed. This would go a long way to explaining why the Greek of The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of The Iliad is written in the most archaic, and the most-Mycenaean like Greek in the entire Iliad – not to say that Mycenaean Greek does not appear elsewhere in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, because, surprise, surprise, it most certainly does.

There is one passage in The Catalogue of Ships which really brings this sort of scenario to the fore. I refer specifically to lines 645-652, which read as follows in the original Greek and in my translation: Click to ENLARGE

It is passingly strange that Homer bluntly states, in no uncertain terms, that Knossos and Crete were major contributors to the Achaean fleet in the Trojan War, since everyone these days, archaeologists and literati alike, assume without question that Knossos fell long before the Trojan War (ca. 1450-1425 BCE). So who is right? Homer? - us? -anyone? How on earth can we resolve the blatant discrepancy? We cannot, nor shall we ever. But the fact remains that this extremely important passage in The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of The Iliad leaves me quite unsettled. Since Homer is obviously convinced that Knossos and some 100(!) Cretan cities did figure prominently in the Trojan War, where on earth did he get his information from? I for one believe it is quite conceivable that rewrites on papyrus of some Minoan documents from Knossos and possibly even Phaistos may still have been in existence when Homer wrote the Iliad, or that at least stories of their prior existence were still in circulation. If you think correlatively as I always do, this hypothesis cannot simply be dismissed out of hand.

For my in-depth discussion of this very important question, please refer to this post:

(e) If the Minoans and Mycenaeans wrote some sort of religious and/military literature of their own on papyrus, there is absolutely no evidence that they did!

This leaves us with only one final consideration. If the Minoans and Mycenaeans actually did compose documents on papyrus, where are they all? The answer to that stares us in the face. While the scribes would have taken great pains to assiduously preserve documents on papyrus in dry storage while the city of Knossos was still flourishing, these same documents would all have rotted away entirely and in no time flat, once Knossos and the Minoan civilization had collapsed. Crete was not Egypt. Egypt’s climate was bone dry; the climate of Crete was, and still is, Mediterranean. Ergo, the whole argument against the Minoans and Mycenaeans ever having had a literature of their own, composed on papyrus scrolls is de natura sua tautological, as is the argument they did. 50/50. Take your choice. But since I am never one to leave no stone unturned, I much prefer the latter scenario.

NOTE: This post took me over 8 (!) hours to compile. So I would appreciate if at least some of you would tag it LIKE, comment on it, or better still, reblog it!
For all the intense work Rita and I put into this great blog of ours, it often shocks me that so few people seem to take much interest in some of our most compelling posts. I am merely letting you know how I feel. Thanks so much.

Richard

MAJOR Announcement! PARTNERSHIP with KORYVANTES: Association of Historical Studies: A World-Renowned Historical Greek site: Click to visit KORYVANTES:

MAJOR Announcement! PARTNERSHIP with KORYVANTES: Association of Historical Studies: A World-Renowned Historical Greek site: Click to visit KORYVANTES:



KORYVANTES: Who we are

“KORYVANTES”, The Association of Historical Studies, is a Cultural Organization, researching and applying experimentally the Military Heritage of the Greeks from the Bronze Age to the late Byzantium.

“Koryvantes” has participated in Academic conferences of Experimental Archaeology (University of Warsaw 2011, Academy of Pultusk 2012, University of Belgrade 2012, Organization Exarc / Denmark 2013 ), while our studies have been published in academic literature (British Archaeology Report Series) and Special International Journals (Ancient Warfare Magazine ).

“Koryvates” has participated in International Archaeological Festivals (Biskupin / Poland 2011 , Lyon / France , 2012 ) and International Traditional Archery Festivals ( Istanbul 2013 Amasya 2013 , Biga 2013 , Kiev 2013) , presenting high quality shows to thousands of viewers.

“Koryvantes” has participated in major international TV Productions (History Channel, BBC2, BBC 4, ITV), on the thematics of warfare and culture of ancient Greece.

Since 2008, we have spearheaded research and the practical study of Greek Warfare at an international level, reconstructing and testing weapons, armour and fighting techniques of 3,300 years of Greek History.

The Major Concerns & Areas of Research of our Site are: Experimental Archaeology, Academic Research, MYCENAEAN EQUETA, Archaic Hoplite, Classical Hoplite, Byzantine Vandon, Traditional Archery, 33 Centuries of History (CAPS for MYCENAEAN EQUETA by Richard Vallance Janke) Click on this banner to visit ALL CATEGORIES:



For photos of people arrayed in the armour of the Mycenaean Equeta, Click on this photo to visit the page:



Text minimally revised by Richard Vallance Janke to reflect Canadian English. 

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For more information on the KORYVANTES, visit WIKIPEDIA: Korybantes



You may also visit KORYVANTES on Twitter here:



and follow them if your are a student, researcher, professor or an aficionado of Mycenaean History and Linear B, Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, ancient Greek Military History, and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. I fully expect that KORYVANTES will be profoundly interested in my translation of the entire Catalogue of Ships, which I expect to finish by spring 2015.

KORYVANTES IS WITHOUT QUESTION THE MOST IMPORTANT PARTNER SITE LINEAR B, KNOSSOS & MYCENAE HAS EVER PARTNERED WITH! We shall be reblogging a great many posts from KORYVANTES, and we are certain that they shall be doing the same with many of ours.

English-Myceneaen Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Greek Lexicon:

My research colleague, Rita Roberts and I, shall soon be compiling the first major LEXICON of our all-new, extremely comprehensive English-Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Greek Lexicon which is to be published in its entirety sometime in 2018. When it is published, it will be by far the largest and most comprehensive Linear B & Linear C Lexicon on Mycenaean Linear B and the first ever on Arcado-Cypriot Linear C ever published.  Published FREE in PDF format, it is bound to at least double the currently attested (A) Mycenaean vocabulary of some 2,500 words, logograms and ideograms to at least twice that many attested (A) and derived (D) lexical entries, to at least 5,000, if not 6,000 – 7,000 words.

The Military section of this Lexicon is to be published first, meaning that KORYVANTES, The Association of Historical Studies, will benefit fully from the largest vocabulary of Mycenaean Linear B Military Terminology ever assembled online or in print. It will be published on its own sometime later this year as a prelude to our full lexicon, under the title, An English-Mycenaean Linear B/Mycenaean Linear B-English Lexicon of Military Terminology (PDF).      

Richard

Surprise, surprise! What rôle does Formulaic Language play in Linear B Tablets, and does it have anything to do with Homer’s archaic Greek?

Does that surprise you, if you are a Linear B translator? It surprised my translator colleague, Rita Roberts, and myself, for quite some time – well over a year. But not any more. There are two inescapable reasons why we have been able to come to the conclusions we have reached. These are:
(a) that the Linear B scribes very frequently used what Rita and I call supersyllabograms, a term which describes a peculiar phenomenon common to only a subset of syllabograms which have defied decipherment for the past 63 years since 1952. We shall be deciphering almost all of the 31 supersyllabograms, a substantial subset of the full set of 61 syllabograms (over 50 %). Only a very few supersyllabograms still defy decipherment, at least for us, but someone in the near future may find the keys to even those ones. Enough of that for now. We will be publishing our complete peer-reviewed research paper later on this year. So folks will just have to wait.
(b) that the Linear B scribes very often left unsaid (i.e. omitted) from their tablets what was perfectly obvious to them (see my Comments on Knossos tablet M 10 E x 233 below for the full text), since they all assiduously followed the same strict guidelines for transcribing accounts and inventories, and all used the same formulaic language for their transcriptions. To visualize how all this directly influences Rita Roberts’ methodical and accurate translation of Knossos Tablet M 10 E x 233, click on this image of the tablet to ENLARGE it:

From the red outline to the right, you can see that I have filled in the rest of the missing section of this Linear B tablet. I am confident that the tablet in its entirely did in fact look almost exactly as you see here, because there is only 1 ideogram (for ram) only partially missing, while the word, SURI on the second line is clearly the Mycenaean place name, SURIMO, or in Greek, Syrimos. Since this tablet is clearly all about an offering TO the god Dikataro (dative!) or Zeus, and no one in their right mind would sacrifice more than one ram or animal to any of the gods, livestock being indispensable to their livelihood, it follows that one ram and one ram only was sacrificed to the god. Ergo, there cannot possibly be much more on the truncated right side of this fragment than the outline in red I have tacked on to its end.

Does Formulaic Language in Mycenaean Linear B Tablets Have Anything to do with Formulaic Archaic Greek in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey?

Surprise, surprise. It does. And so does Arcado-Cypriot in its alphabet or in Linear C.

My Hypothesis runs as follows.

If this premise does not hold water for some translators of Linear B, recall that Homer also heavily relied on formulaic phrases. He appears to have picked up that habit, not only from the Mycenaean Greek scribes who preceded him by 400-600 years, but also from the Arcado-Cypriot scribes, who wrote in the Linear C syllabary and in the Arcado-Cypriot Greek alphabet at the very same time as he was composing the Iliad – a fact that all too many historians and linguists completely overlook.

Recall that Linear C had already evolved from the almost exclusively accounting and inventorial syllabary (Linear B ) to a literary one, with many of their tablets simultaneously composed in both Linear C and in alphabetic Arcado-Cypriot Greek. The lengthy legal document, the famous Idalion tablet, ca. 400 BCE, was one such tablet, written in both Linear C and alphabetic Greek. But Linear C had been in constant use from ca. 1100 BCE (long before Homer!) non-stop all the way through to ca. 400 BCE, when the Arcado-Cypriots finally abandoned it in favour of the Greek alphabet alone.

My point is simply this: I for one cannot believe that Homer was not even remotely familiar with documents in the Arcado-Cypriot alphabet or possibly even in Linear C, because there were plenty of them around at the time he wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey (if he did). So even if he was not at all familiar with Mycenaean Linear B, he certainly must have known about, and may very well have read documents in Arcado-Cypriot. But that is not all. In spite of the fact that he almost certainly did not know Linear B, being familiar as he most likely was with the vocabulary and grammar of Arcado-Cypriot meant that he automatically had some inkling of Mycenaean Greek. Why so? - simply because of all the ancient Greek dialects (archaic or not), no two were more closely related than Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot, not even Ionic and Attic Greek – not by a long shot. This alone implies that even if Homer consciously knew nothing about Mycenaean Greek, its vocabulary and grammar, unconsciously he did, because every time he borrowed formulaic language from Arcado-Cypriot, he was in effect borrowing almost exactly the same vocabulary and phrases from Mycenaean Greek.

But there is more – much more – to this than superficially meets the eye. Homer was in fact very familiar with Mycenaean society, and with Mycenaean warfare, because he mentions both so often in the Iliad, especially in The Catalogue of Ships in Book II, and even occasionally in the Odyssey, that is obvious to all but the most recalcitrant translators of ancient Greek that he frequently resorts to Mycenaean vocabulary, phrases and even grammar (especially for the genitive and dative cases), even if he is not conscious of it. It stares us in the face. To illustrate my point, allow me to draw your attention to the numerous instance Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot vocabulary and grammar in just one of the serial passages of Book II of the Iliad I have already meticulously translated into twenty-first century English. Click to ENLARGE:

Now if you compare my scholia on the word, thalassa, on line 614 with the Linear B tablet below from Knossos, you can instantly see they are one and the same word! Since Linear B had no L+vowel series of syllabograms, the scribes had to substitute the R+vowel syllabograms for Mycenaean words which would have otherwise begun with L. Also, Linear B never repeats consonants, as that is impossible in a syllabary. Similarly, Linear B was unable to distinguish between variants of consonants, such as we find T & TH in the Greek alphabet. So the Mycenaean tarasa is in fact equivalent to the Homeric thalassa, given that on Linear B fragment KN 201 X a 26:

t = th, r = l & s = ss, hence tarasa = thalassa, down to the last letter.

Anyway, for the time being, I rest my case. But with respect to the relationship between formulaic language in Mycenaean Linear B and Arcado-Cypriot, whether in Linear C or alphabetic on the one hand, and Homer’s use of formulaic language on the other, there is more to come on our blog this year – much more. It is highly advisable for all of you who are experienced translators of either or both Mycenaean Linear B and Homeric Greek to read all of my translations in series of the entire Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad, wherein he uses the most archaic Greek in all of the Iliad. Otherwise, you may experience some difficulty following my thesis on formulaic language and the hypotheses upon which it is based.

As for the rest of you folks, who are not translators, but who frequently read the posts on our blog, just enjoy and assimilate the essentials, and forget the rest, because all of the technical stuff I delve so deeply into doesn’t matter anyway unless you are a translator. Still, you may be asking, why delve into so much detail in the first place? Great question. It is all for the benefit of our fellow translators and decipherers, to whom we absolutely must address so many of the posts on our pointedly technical blog. Nevertheless, our blog is open to all to enjoy and read, as far as each of you wishes to take yourself. As I said just now, keep what you like and leave the rest. You will always learn at least something truly valuable to yourself. Otherwise, why would you be a regular visitor to our blog in the first place?

Keep posted.

Richard

Our Twitter Followers up to 801 Jan. 2015 from 500 Jan. 2014! With our thanks – Richard

Our Twitter Followers up to 801 Jan. 2015 from 500 Jan. 2014! With our thanks - Richard 

Here is my own Twitter account: Click to visit



If you too wish to follow us, we would be most obliged. Given the esoteric nature of Mycenaean Linear B, Arcado-Cypriot Linear C & Minoan Linear A, it is a wonder we have so many followers.

Here is the Twitter account of my research colleague, Rita Roberts: Click to visit



This means that between us, we now have 1164 followers. That really pleases me.

Richard

Ideal Demands for ZERO-TOLERANCE in Accounting & Inventories from Mycenaean Greece, to Classical Athens, Imperial Rome, the House of Medici and beyond – References to Wikipedia Articles & Several Illustrations

Ideal Demands for ZERO-TOLERANCE in Accounting & Inventories from Mycenaean Greece, to Classical Athens, Imperial Rome, the House of Medici and beyond – References to Wikipedia Articles & Several Illustrations

Inventorial Accounting Demand for ZERO-TOLERANCE Applied to the Translation of the Tricky Linear B Tablet KN 1507 E d 231 by Rita Roberts: Click to ENLARGE

Our working hypothesis for Rita carefully considered translation of Knossos tablet KN 1507 E d 231.

Before proceeding to the genesis of our hypothesis for a realistic and practical translation of this very tricky Linear B tablet, allow me to inform you all that Rita is now being confronted with mind-bending challenges in the decipherment of really difficult Linear B tablets. Had I known this when I initially assigned Rita this tablet and the next one to be posted, I would have surely left them for her first year of her university level curriculum. However, as it turns out, the fact that she had to force herself to stretch her logical powers of observation to the extreme means that she is more than ready to rise to the even more daunting challenges facing her in the next month or so, when she finally embarks on her first year of university level studies. The fact that she was eventually able to translate this tough tablet, the two of using working together, speaks to her mastery of Linear B, which is already very considerable.

Working Hypothesis:

Since Linear B is first and foremost an accounting language for Mycenaean Greek, in other words, a subset of this archaic Greek dialect, we should expect that all accounting and inventorial records would have to be completely accurate, both with respect with line items and with total, zero-tolerance in arithmetical calculation in any Linear B tablet in this sphere, and that means something like 90-95 % of all tablets in Linear B, regardless of provenance. While there are quite a few tablets dealing with religious matters, meaning that in that case Linear B cannot be considered as an accounting subset of Mycenaean Greek, but must be construed as a religious affairs subset of the dialect, we leave this aside for future consideration.

Meanwhile, there are critical problems with not only this tablet, but plenty of others in the sphere of inventorial accounting, which simply must be addressed, and if possible, resolved. Based on the criteria our hypothesis for accounting and inventories demands in any society in any historical era, we should take into consideration several eras in succession, from the most ancient Babylonian through Egyptian, Mycenaean, the Athenian Treasury at Delphi: 507-470 BCE (Wikipedia) - a reasonably efficient financial system

and Roman Imperial Finances, the aerarium or state treasury under Augustus Caesar (62-14 BCE) and beyond (an exceedingly inefficient and corrupt financial system):

Roman Finance: Wikipedia (Click on the cameo of Augustus Caesar):

to those of the Middle Ages, and above all else, the much more efficient accounting and banking procedures established by the Medici family in Florence in the 14th. And 15th. Centuries AD. ALL THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS WERE IN UNIVERSAL CONFORMITY IN EVERY HISTORICAL ERA, because they were not. This is especially true of the late Medieval era and the early Renaissance, when the sloppy Medieval accounting procedures in most European nations other than Italy seriously clashed with the extremely efficient banking system of the Medici in Florence.

The House of Medici (Wikipedia): Click on their Coat of Arms - ZERO-TOLERANCE Banking System

In fact, it was the Medici who invented the modern system of banking. Further developments and refinements ran through to the establishment of the Exchequer in Renaissance England: Click on the image of Thomas Cromwell - corrupt financial system

Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540) Chancellor of
the Exchequer under Henry VIII (1533-1540)

and Ministries of Finance in the Renaissance and the 17th.

Superintendent of Finances
(France: 1561-1661) - reasonably accurate

and 18th. centuries

Comptroller General of Finances
(France: 1681-1791) - extremely corrupt

on to the rigorous banking system of the late nineteenth and early 20th. Centuries to the most modern stock market software systems, it is patently obvious that they all should ideally demand the following basic criteria:

(a) line items in accounts and inventories must be completely accurate, and precisely named, down to the most specific details;
(b) line and summary calculations cannot and must not contain any errors whatsoever. Zero tolerance;
(c) accounting and inventorial procedures must be completely standardized across the board, from one site to another, from one city to another and one nation to another, regardless of historical period. Otherwise, the accounting system in place in that historical era collapses for lack of complete conformity. And all too many did! See above. We know that Mycenaean Linear B was consistent across the board, regardless of the site were the scribes used it, whether Knossos, Phaistos, Pylos, Thebes, Mycenae or elsewhere.
(d) Accounting systems, if they are be at all effective and rendered zero-tolerance, must be subject to audit, regardless of the historical era in which they are in use. Rita Roberts and I are convinced that such an auditing system was securely in place in Minoan/Mycenaean society in which Linear B was the standard language of accounting and inventory.

This is the administrative palatial accounting and inventorial system which Rita and I believe was operative in the Minoan/Mycenaean era when Linear B was the standard accounting language. Regardless of site, Knossos, Phaistos, Pylos, Thebes, Mycenae or elsewhere, it would appear that the administrative palatial accounting and inventorial offices were configured as follows:

The Efficient Audited ZERO-TOLERANCE Minoan + Mycenaean Palatial Office of Inventories and Accounting:

There was a large administrative palatial accounting and inventorial office (or room, if you must insist), especially at the metropolis of Knossos (pop. ca. 55,000), in which a relatively large number of scribes (possibly 10-40) ranged themselves for their daily work along a very long table or tables, all of them on the same side of each table, for the simple reason that each of the scribes must have had each of his tablets audited, either by the scribe to his left or right, or by both, to ensure zero-tolerance for line itemization and mathematical accuracy. If scribes had been seated on opposite sides of their table or tables, it would have been much more difficult to audit one another’s inventorial tablets, as they would have had to pass their work across the table(s), thereby adding to the risk of error, when zero-tolerance is demanded. That would have been an unacceptable scenario. Think of it this way: would anyone in their right mind nowadays allow for any deviance from the standardized international online stock market system? Never! Likewise, the Mycenaean system must have been based on the same general principles, and the pretty much the same specific accounting criteria put into practice. Otherwise, the system would have collapsed. Such a system makes perfect sense, especially for Mycenae an Greeks who were, after all, Greek. The ancient Greeks were notorious for their insistence on accuracy and logic, right from the outset, all the way through to the rise of their astonishingly consistent philosophical systems in the age of Plato and Aristotle, and far beyond.

Zero-Tolerance on any Linear B Inventorial Accounting tablet based on the template of Knossos Linear B Tablet KN 1507 E d 231:

Given the strict criteria for Mycenaean accounting procedures we have proposed above, Knossos Linear B Tablet KN 1507 E d 231 must stand up to scrutiny down to the very last detail. But there are problems with it which immediately leap to the fore. The scribe has scratched out, i.e. erased all the text to the left of the and below the number 2 (if it is the number 2). What does this tell us? If we assume our hypothesis is correct, and we are pretty much convinced it is, it tells us a great deal. First, it tells us that he was aware he had made a gaffe, and a big one at that. But how did he become aware of this? He was audited by another scribe or scribes, and according to the standard office procedure we have outlined above, by the scribe to his left or right, or by both of them. Take your pick. But the principle of zero-tolerance must apply. Perhaps he fell asleep at the switch after a long day slogging through numerous accounts, and writing down inventories on at least 5 tablets. Very demanding and exhausting work. Any accountant, past or present, can tell you that. However, if the standard practice was for fellow scribes to audit every single tablet they inscribed, zero-tolerance would prevail.

So the next step in our decipherment of this extremely tricky tablet (one among countless hundreds or thousands in any given fiscal year or “weto” in Mycenaean Greek) is to make a supreme effort to put ourselves in the same place as any Linear B scribe having to make a full inventory of anything anywhere in the Mycenaean Empire, and not only that, to assume one of our fellow accounts has caught us out and put us squarely on spot. Let us imagine the conversation:

Scribe A (the fellow who inscribed this tablet, KN 1507 E d 231) to Scribe B:
Well, I am done with this tablet. It is the end of a long day, and I am getting very tired. I may have made a mistake. Audit it.

Scribe B:
Hmmm. Let’s see. (reads the original figures on the tablet). Good gods, you wrote the same number for both the rams and the ewes! 38! That seems a remote possibility. Yes, you do look tired, and I can hardly blame you. What is the number of ewes? We have to get it right.

Scribe A:
Oh my gods, it is just 2 ewes! How could I have missed that!

So he scratches out all the Linear B numeric strokes for tens, i.e. 3 horizontal strokes & 6 for units (vertical strokes), leaving the number 2 (2 vertical strokes). Voilà. The calculation is completely accurate. We have zero-tolerance.

Scribe B:
Good! It is fine now. Maybe we should go for a beer or two as soon as work is over, which is pretty soon.

Scribe A:
Great Idea!

To all our VISITORS: it took me 6 HOURS to compile this complex post. Please show your appreciation by tagging it with LIKE, assigning the number of STARS it deserves, or even re-blogging it!

Richard

Thank you so much, Adonis Koryvantes, for not only inviting me to join your blog, but for allowing me to be an author
Fantastic new Blog on the Internet all about #ancient #Greek #warriors & #weapons including #Mycenaean. You simply HAVE to check it out! Richard
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Announcing Another Breakthrough in Linear B Decipherment since 1952: The Decipherment of Linear B Supersyllabograms: Part A: Prof. Thomas G. Palaima’s Translation of Heidelburg Tablet HE Fl 1994

Announcing Another Breakthrough in Linear B since 1952: The Decipherment of Linear B Supersyllabograms: Part A: Prof. Thomas G. Palaima’s Translation of Heidelburg Tablet HE Fl 1994

Introduction:

Since the successful decipherment of Mycenaean Linear B by the genius cryptographer, Michael Ventris, in 1952, some 10 % of Linear B has defied decipherment. Why? That is the very question which has haunted me ever since I began learning Linear B in the winter of 2012. Although I have made enormous strides since then, and have effectively mastered Linear B, and have made significant inroads to learning the Linear C syllabary, in use from ca. 1100- 400 BCE for the Arcado-Cypriot dialect, the closest cousin to Mycenaean Linear B, that remaining 10 % of Linear B as yet undeciphered remained an elusive mystery to me until the spring of 2014, when something altogether unexpected and extraordinary happened.

It was this.

By early 2014, I had a pretty solid grasp of the syllabary. However, certain elements and aspects of Linear B still mystified me. I encountered considerable difficulty mastering some of the ideograms, especially those which appeared in one and the same series, such as the numerous ones for vessels and military affairs, some of which seemed rather too vague for my taste. Why this vagueness? Were the Mycenaean scribes sloppy in their usage of ideograms? I found that notion extremely hard to swallow.

On the other hand, the fact that some 10 % of the Linear B syllabary had stubbornly resisted decipherment in the 63 years since Michael Ventris had cracked the script left some reason for hope. I was convinced that the key for the eventual decipherment of at least a discrete subset of the remaining 10 % of undeciphered Linear B, if such a thing were ever possible, lay hidden somewhere beneath the surface of that elusive 10 %. The fact that no one in the past 63 years had ever bothered to ask this very question seemed utterly inconceivable to me. Yet I was quite sure that we had all overlooked something absolutely critical to the decipherment of a good chunk of the remaining 10 % of Linear B still apparently out of bounds. I was also persuaded that, however small or large the “missing link” was, it did in fact constitute a discrete logical block of Linear B, itself conditioned by clear “rules”, in other words, by an underpinning logically sound hypothesis that simply had to hold water. But what that hypothesis could possibly be utterly escaped me.

As an inventorial script for Mycenaean Greek, Linear B demands precision:

If anything, the Linear B scribes at Knossos, Pylos, Phaistos, Mycenae, Thebes and elsewhere surely must have been aiming for precision in their recording of inventories, which I knew by then was the primary reason why they kept records in Linear B in the first place. Yet, in spite of the need for complete accuracy which inventorial accounting demands, most of the tablets which I translated seemed anything but precise. Text in Mycenaean Greek actually written out in full, word by word, was more the exception than the rule. Regardless of provenance, more was left unsaid on the majority of Linear B tablets than was expressly transcribed. How could this possibly be, in light of the absolute prerequisites of accounting systems, ancient or modern: (a) the totally accurate transcription of line items and (b) zero tolerance for errors in calculation? I was stumped.

The tablets were, if anything, even more abstruse and more susceptible to various plausible interpretations, often at odds with one another, than anyone should have realistically expected. Scribes routinely replaced complete words and even phrases in Mycenaean Greek with single logograms and ideograms, and what was still worse, they frequently – indeed all too often — inscribed single syllabograms all by themselves on hundreds and hundreds of tablets, especially in the Scripta Minoa series from Knossos. I failed to grasp why the Linear B accountants could be possibly be so careless – sloppy, if you like – in transcribing their accounts onto the tablets. It simply made no sense to me. Stumped as I was, I let sleeping dogs lie, all the while continually haunted by the commonsense notion that accounting records cannot and must not be inaccurate, and perfectly aware that the Linear B scribes, who were, first and foremost, accountants, would not and could not have committed that cardinal sin.

Something was surely amiss, not in the methodology of their accounting procedures or in the way they transcribed their inventorial accounts onto the tablets, but in our understanding, in other words, in our interpretations of them in the twenty- and twenty-first centuries. Note that I say interpretations, plural, rather than interpretation, singular. But to the Linear B scribes themselves, who all used the same repetitive formulaic accounting language (Linear B), there was only one possible interpretation for each inventorial category (agriculture, industry and crafts, trade, military, religious etc.) What that was we can and shall never precisely know. But we can and we must make a supreme effort to get as close as we possibly can to the actual content the Linear B scribes routinely conveyed to one another with an unerring formulaic consistency in their inventorial tablets, from geographic location to another, Knossos, Phaistos, Pylos, Mycenae etc. In this light, I stress and stress again, the Linear B scribes never intended to compile their inventorial accounts for anyone else but their palace administrations, and at that, for the current fiscal year or “wetos” (running year) only. So it is our responsibility to master as much of their accounting language (Linear B) as we possibly can. Until 2014, the logical substrate or template, if you like, of their accounting system had been lost to us, but that was soon to change. I knew it had to. But I could not figure out how to even begin to take a stab at a workable approach to the irksome dilemma staring me in the face.

What the proverbial “missing link” was in this mysterious apparent paradox, I could not even begin to guess, until...

Prof. Thomas G. Palaima’s Translation of Heidelburg Tablet HE Fl 1994:

In the early spring of 2014, as I was rummaging through as many of the major Linear B tablets online that I could lay my hands on, I fortuitously stumbled on the one you see here: Click to ENLARGE

and to my utter astonishment, I discovered something quite unexpected and very peculiar in its text. And it was this discovery that set me on the scent for the trail that was eventually to lead me straight to the key to the decipherment of that mysterious block of Linear B which had eluded decipherment for the past 62 years.

If you are to benefit fully from my discussion of Prof. Palaima’s article, A Linear B Tablet from Heidelburg (PDF), I strongly urge you to download it from References & notes [1] at the end of this article.

5 Single Syllabograms in a Row!

Since Prof. Thomas G. Palaima has done a superb job of translating this tablet, there is no point in re-translating it. But there is one critical point in Prof. Palaima’s astute translation to which I would like to draw to your undivided attention. It occurs on the fifth line of this tablet, where we find 5 single syllabograms in a row. This struck me as a singular occurrence, in both senses of the word. Why one earth would this scribe – or for that matter – any Linear B scribe – use single syllabograms in a row, rather than spelling out all of the words in Mycenaean Greek on a tablet in Linear B, as we might have expected? Was this not the routine scribal practice – to spell out every word and phrase on every tablet? Until I ran across Heidelburg Tablet HE Fl 1994, that is what I had rather blithely assumed to be the case, in spite of my misgivings to the contrary, even in the face of my own conviction that one should never rely on assumptions, since they were bound to disappoint, sooner or later. Assumptions are, in a word, made to be disproved. And before I knew what had hit me, the assumption I had made that the scribes always wrote out in full all the Mycenaean words in Linear on all of their tablets crumbled in a flash before my eyes. This discovery would eventually prove to have profound implications for the 4,000 + tablets in Linear B at Knossos, Phaistos and elsewhere in Crete and for the 1000 + more from Mycenae, Pylos, Thebes and elsewhere in the Mycenaean Empire outside of Crete itself.

What was going on here? Until I ran across this critical tablet, I had never seen any Linear B tablet containing not just one or two, but several single syllabograms in a row, which if spelled out as word, meant nothing at all. Yet, one glance at the contiguous placement of these 5 syllabograms in a series on Heidelburg Tablet HE Fl 1994 made one thing perfectly clear to me. They did not constitute a single Mycenaean word, but were in fact merely the first syllable of a series of Mycenaean words. But what words? And in what context? At least as far as Thomas G. Palaima was concerned, that context was clear enough. As soon as I saw his translations of these single syllabograms, I agreed with him at once, and I still do... only far more so, and not simply because of their function in the specific context of this tablet in particular, but for reasons generic.

As we can see from his translation, Prof. Palaima correctly concluded that all of these syllabograms were the first syllable only of the names of 5 Mycenaean cities and settlements, which he was able to rattle off with no effort at all: KO = Konoso, ZA = Zakoro, PA = Parakastro, PU = Puro & MU = Mukene in Linear B (which I have transcribed in full in the illustration above), or as they would appear in English orthography corresponding to their ancient Greek alphabetic names: Knossos, Zakros, Palaikastro, Pulos & Mukenai.

I thought I could let sleeping dogs lie. But I just couldn’t get it out of my head. The dogs awoke over and over, startling me awake in the middle of the night. There dawned on my the sneaky suspicion that in fact there was far more to this apparently stray phenomenon than I could ever have suspected. I simply had to pursue the trail this tablet might put me onto, if any there was. Here was a phenomenon which was much more significant than what it looked like superficially. In fact, I swiftly became convinced that this tablet had handed me the master key I was looking for. Although, as it was soon to turn, it was not the master key, but merely the key to one of the “rooms”, it was one of the several keys for which I was eventually to find the master key. To say that I was excited by this discovery is an understatement.

And so, by May 2014, I decided to take the next step, which was to prove instrumental in my search for what were then merely syllabograms as the first syllable of 5 Mycenaean toponyms. Although I call the new term by its name in the subject line of this post, I am leaving it undefined in the text of this post, as I do not wish to run ahead of myself. It would just add to confusion for you, my readers. So please be patient.

One thing I can tell you is that by August 2014 I had rummaged through no less than 3,000 of the Scripta Minoa tablets from Knossos. The shock I got from this thorough-going investigation of so many Linear B tablets was to revolutionize my perception of what the Linear B syllabary was all about, as we shall see in the next post, Part B of our Search for our Subject,“ Supersyllabograms” [2], to come online sometime later this month or in early February 2015.

Each successive part of our investigation into the phenomenon of supersyllabograms will add more and more clarity to their meaning and the immense implications they will prove to have on the whole notion of what Linear B is all about. I cannot yet say how many parts (A,B,C... ). I shall need to lay out the entire Theory and Practical Applications of Supersyllabograms to the Linear B Syllabary, but rest assured that when we come to end of our search, you will know everything you need to know about them, and you will end up as astonished as I was in early 2014, when you too finally come to realize that they, supersyllabograms, are the very key to the decipherment of at least 5 % of the 10 % or so of Linear B which has remained recalcitrant to interpretation in the 63 years since Michael Ventris first cracked the vast majority of the syllabary in June-July 1952.

In effect, what we are proposing is the first major step forward in the further decipherment of Linear B since 1952, a breakthrough which is bound to have a profound impact on our current and future understanding of the script.

REFERENCES & NOTES:

[1] Palaima, Thomas G. A Linear B Tablet from Heidelburg (PDF)

[2] A point in passing: as it was eventually to turn out, supersyllabograms are never logograms, as I had erroneously assumed when first I posted this tablet with the table of Mycenaean settlements on this blog. But I have left it as is, to illustrate that one’s initial assumptions can often be way off the mark.

[3] The successive Parts (B, C, D...) to this article will all be found under the Category, SUPERSYLLABOGRAMS, third entry in at the top of this page.

© by Richard Vallance Janke 2015 (All Rights Reserved = Tous droits réservés)
This post, either as a whole or in part, cannot be reposted, or republished on the Internet or in any other media format (in print, on UTube etc.) without the express permission of the author.
Reblogging is permitted, but I would greatly appreciate full acknowledgment of authorship.

Knossos Tablet KN 1171 E k 232, “A foal and sheep at Phaistos” by Rita Roberts

Knossos Tablet KN 1171 E k 232, “A foal and sheep at Phaistos” by Rita Roberts: Click to ENLARGE

The difficulty in any translation of this famous Linear B tablet lies solely with the rôle the foal plays, i.e. with his relationship to the sheep inventoried here at Phaistos. The key to this relationship might lie in the supersyllabogram PA preceding the ideogram for sheep (8) on the second line of the tablet. The problem with the SSY PA is that, even though it is attested (A) on several Linear B tablets dealing with sheep husbandry, there exists no translation for it in any current Mycenaean Greek-English glossary or lexicon, either online or off. Thus, although the SYY PA itself is attested (A), its meaning is lost to us, i.e. unattested. The only way to recover it, if this is even possible, is to attempt to derive it. I went to great lengths to try and decipher the SSY PA last year, but I came up with mixed results. I tried finding a Homeric Greek word which might fill the bill, but I could not. I tried to ferret out a correlative word in Linear C and in alphabetic Arcado-Cypriot, but again I could not. Finally, I had no choice but to have recourse to Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (1986), in which I found several possible candidates for a complete Mycenaean word beginning with the syllabogram PA, of which the supersyllabogram might the first syllable. You can read the results of my exhaustive research on this elusive supersyllabogram in this post here:

In that post, I deduced that there could only be 6 possible meanings for the supersyllabogram PA, and of these, only 3 really looked like what the linear B scribes must have meant it to stand for. The problem is that we do not know which meaning (if any of these 6 at all) the scribes actually assigned to the SSY PA. In fact, none of the potential meanings I assigned to PA in the original post can possibly account for the relationship between the foal and the sheep on this tablet, which in turn can only mean one of two things: either (a) since the meaning of PA with respect to the foal on this particular tablet cannot be determined, this casts doubt on the 3-6 meanings I assigned last year or (b) there is another meaning which can be assigned that suitably correlates “foal” with “sheep”. But even in the latter case, we are still left high and dry, reverting to the first option (a). Thus, I am forced to conclude that the meaning of the supersyllabogram PA must remain unconfirmed until further notice, or until such time as a Linear B tablet is unearthed with confirms with certainty the semantic value of the SSY PA.

The other difficulty with the SSY PA which haunts me is the fact that it appears on the second line of this tablet, at some remove from the word PORO or “foal”. This may very well imply that the scribes did not intend that there should be any direct relationship between the little foal and the sheep on this tablet. I am more inclined to this hypothesis than to attempt to force the word PORO to relate to the sheep in this context. If this is the case, then one of the the putative meanings I assigned to the SSY PA in 2014 may eventually still very well stand the test for validity. It is vital to understand that all supersyllabograms can mean one thing and one thing only in any particular context on Linear B tablets. We shall just have to wait and see whether or not future finds of Linear B tablets will yield the actual semantic value of PA. But even if we did know what the SSY PA meant in the context of sheep husbandry, this would still leave us high and dry with respect to the rôle played by the foal, because of its physical distance from the SSY PA on this tablet. So the mystery remains sealed.

It is therefore pointless to attempt to try to translate the supersyllabogram PA on this tablet or on any other Linear B tablet on which it is found – and there are several. However, I must emphasize again: the Linear B scribes all knew perfectly well what the SSY PA meant. It is only we who do not.

Richard

Linear B “To all the gods… ” There is much more than meets the eye in Rita Roberts’ Astute Translation

Linear B “To all the gods... ” There is much more than meets the eye in Rita Roberts’ Astute Translation: Click to ENLARGE

Now that Rita has been translating tablets from Linear B into English for well over a year, she has come to learn quite a few tricks of the trade, and is well aware of the numerous pitfalls that beset translators of Mycenaean Greek, who can and all too often do fail to “read” everything that the scribes meant to convey, leaving unsaid what they all knew perfectly well they actually were saying to one another, regardless of inventorial context. This phenomenon occurs over and over on the majority of Linear B tablets, and always for the same reason: the scribes were forced to save as much valuable space as they possibly could on a very small, cramped medium, the Linear B tablet. They quickly became extremely adept at finding clever little shortcuts around the problem of cramming as much essential – versus inessential - information as they could into the little space afforded them.

What Rita has assumed in the specific context of this text, which happens to be uncharacteristically religious for Linear B, is just this: the text does not merely read, “to all the gods oil 1”. That is a patently ridiculous, semantically stripped translation. This would be tantamount to an inventory nowadays stating something silly like, “for the car oil 1”, when we really mean,“1 refill can of type XX oil for our car.”

She is fully aware that the Linear B scribe who wrote this text was actually saying much more than that. The scribe was able to telescope or abstract the full content of his message into just 2 Linear B words + 1 ideogram + the numeral 1. So what exactly was he saying? Today, we no longer know, nor can we. But rest assured that all his fellow scribes knew exactly what he was saying, because they all followed the same “script”, consisting of the same formulaic, usually partial, phrases; the same logograms and ideograms; and the same supersyllabograms repeated over and over, from Knossos to Phaistos to Pylos to Mycenae to Thebes, you name it, anywhere where Mycenaean Greek was written down in Linear B. The Mycenaean Greek as composed in Linear B was by far the most uniform ancient Greek script, because it was an inventorial language, and nothing more, in other words, a finely telescoped subset of the Mycenaean dialect. No one has ever seen the Mycenaean dialect per se actually written out in full sentences, paragraphs and documents, because it never was. I repeat, Linear B is a small statistical inventorial subset of Mycenaean Greek. To view it any other way is tantamount to forcing it far beyond its clearly defined, restricted boundaries, and to twist it into something it was never meant to be, i.e. a dialectical script.

However, just because we can no longer really be sure nowadays what the formulaic language the Minoan/Mycenaean scribes actually conveyed in each and every specific context (agricultural, textiles, military, religious etc.), this does at all not imply that we cannot hazard various tenable reconstructions of their original intent... because in fact we can. In some cases, the underlying full context lies closely enough to the surface that only a few, possibly as many as four, truly tenable translations are likely to arise. That is the case with this tablet. Rita and I discussed at some length the putative meanings that could possibly be assigned to this text, and we could only come up with four. These are:

(a) Rita’s own translation, “To all the (our) gods an offering * of one gift of oil.”
(b) “To all the (our) gods one vessel (vial) of oil.”
(c) “To all the (our) gods an offering * of one vessel (vial) of olive oil.”
(d) “To all the (our) gods a gift of one vessel (vial) of oil.”

OMITTED: any of these words: our, offering, gift, vessel, vial, olive oil & anyway, just who are “all the gods”! The scribes all knew. We don’t. Too bad. Tough.

The reason for the insertion of the Mycenaean Linear B word, * APUDOSIS * (offering) is transparent enough. It was frequently used on Linear B tablets in contexts just such as this, and so, if omitted, it can still be supplied. Secondly, the oil used by the Greeks was almost always olive oil, which of course had to be contained in some type of vessel. There are well over 20 Linear B ideograms for vessels. But why mention the vessel when (as I am sure any scribe would have told you) it is obvious to any idiot that you put olive oil in a vessel. Omit what it obvious to “everyone” (us scribes) & save lots of space. Great! Ergo... one thing is pretty much certain. At least one of the translations above has to be almost spot on, regardless of word order, which does not amount to much more than a hill of beans in Mycenaean Greek anyway, given that as much is left unsaid as is spelled out.

In our next post, we shall discuss in greater detail the profound implications this methodology of interpretation has on the decipherment and translation of practically all Linear B tablets right acrossthe board.

Richard

Je suis Charlie – in French, English & Greek + 11 modern languages & 3 ancient Greek dialects!

Je suis Charlie - in French, English & Greek + 11 modern languages & 3 ancient Greek dialects!



I beg you, please be sure to RETWEET this, folks! As a polyglot Canadian, fluent in English and French, conversant with both modern languages and ancient, especially ancient Greek, with some 20 dialects under my belt, including Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, I hope to reach not only everyone alive now, but as many of our ancestors as possible. I do this out of love for all the millions upon millions of people who have been slaughtered by warmongers, manaics, religious fanatics & terrorists, past, present and... God forbid... future!

Je vous prie de tout mon coeur de faire des RETWEETs de ce message des plus urgents! Tout en étant canadien parfaitement bilingue, je suis également polyglotte, connaisseur de plusieurs langues modernes et anciennes, dont une vingtaine de dialèctes grecs tels que le mycénien en linéaire B et le chypro-arcadien en linéaire C. Dans ce but, j’espère communiquer ce message de solidarité bienveillante à tous ceux qui sont encore vivants autant qu’à tous nos ancêtres, dont d’innombrables millions qui ont perdu la vie, tous massacrés par des bellicistes, des maniaques, des fanatiques religieuses et des terroristes d’antan, de nos jours et... à Dieu ne plaise ... incontournablement à l’avenir.

Richard Vallance Janke,
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

An Easy Guide to Learning the Linear C Syllabary for Arcado-Cypriot & a Plea to our Followers

An Easy Guide to Learning the Linear C Syllabary for Arcado-Cypriot & a Plea to our Followers: Click to ENLARGE

I have just spent 3 hours compiling this Easy Guide to Learning the Linear C Syllabary for Arcado-Cypriot. There is nothing like it on the entire Internet. I have obviously done this for the benefit of those of you who wish to learn the syllabary, and for those of you who are already familiar with it, but who would like to see for yourselves just how elegant the geometric economy of Linear C is, even in comparison with Linear B for Mycenaean Greek. Linear C contains only syllabograms, whereas Linear B has 61 syllabograms, numerous homophones, logograms something like 100 ideograms, which makes for a much more challenging learning curve. In fact, Linear C represents the final step in the two syllabic scripts (B & C) before the various avatars of the ancient Greek alphabet were adopted ca. 800-700 BCE. And we must remember that the relative simplicity of Linear C allowed it to last from ca. 1100 BCE to at least 400 BCE, since the Arcadians and Cypriots could see no real reason to abandon what was after all a very easy syllabary for the Greek alphabet, although they did start using the Greek alphabet alongside the syllabary by about the seventh century BCE. The Idalion Tablet, for instance, is composed in both Linear C and in the Greek alphabet, the latter acting as a check on the accuracy of the Linear C syllabograms, and in turn, as we shall see later on this year, as a check on the Linear B syllabograms as well, facilitating more accurate translations of tablets in the latter syllabary.

Michael Ventris & Prof. John Chadwick were fully aware of the urgent need for cross-correlation of the values of the Linear C syllabary used for writing Arcado-Cypriot Greek as a check on the correctness of the Linear B syllabary for Mycenaean Greek. We must always keep in mind that of all the ancient dialects, no two were more intimately related than the Mycenaean and the Arcado-Cypriot, which were in fact, kissing cousins, much more closely related even than Ionic and Attic Greek. Here is what Prof. Chadwick so aptly points out in The Decipherment of Linear B (Second Edition) Cambridge University Press, © 1970:

“The conclusion was already advanced that the new dialect was most closely related to Arcadian and Cypriot, as had been predicted...” (pg. 78) & again, “We know not only that the Mycenaeans were Greeks, but also what sort of Greek they spoke. They were not Dorians,... passim... But at least we can say that linguistically their nearest relatives were the Arcadians and Cypriots, and next to them the Ionians.” Thus, any attempt to correlate the East Greek Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot dialects with the West Greek Dorian dialect is bound to prove a failure.

I WOULD LIKE TO NOTE IN PASSING THAT, AFTER ALMOST TWO YEARS OF MARKED SUCCESS WITH OUR BLOG ON THE INTERNET, ALMOST NO-BODY EVER TAGS OUR POSTS WITH “LIKE” OR FAVORITES THEM, OR FOR THAT MATTER EVEN BOTHERS TO RETWEET THEM MORE THAN A COUPLE OF TIMES, ALL THIS IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT THERE IS NO RICHER SOURCE FOR SO MANY ASPECTS OF MYCENAEAN LINEAR B, ARCADO-CYPRIOT LINEAR C & THE TRANSLATION OF THE ENTIRE CATALOGUE OF SHIPS IN BOOK TWO OF THE ILIAD ON THE INTERNET. That this is a huge disappointment and source of discouragement to both myself and my research colleague, Rita Roberts, is an understatement, to say the very least. I sincerely hope that our devoted followers and other folks involved in research into Linear B & C will rectify this sad state of affairs all through this year, 2015.

Thank you

Richard

Rita Roberts’ Translation of Knossos Tablet K 1092, Rams at Eksonos & Sygrita

Rita Roberts’ Translation of Knossos Tablet K 1092, Rams at Eksonos & Sygrita: Click to ENLARGE

Rita Roberts, my Linear B student who is now at the advanced stage of learning Mycenaean Greek, and I had quite a field day discussing the implications of various interpretations which might be lent to this tablet in translation. What especially intrigued me was the possibility that one could interpret the toponym Eksonos as meaning “outside the belt”, where “belt” refers to a belt of arable agricultural land. Rita, who lives near Heraklion and Knossos in Crete, put me onto this scent, as she explained to me that even to this day sheep are raised on non-arable land in Crete and Greece, which makes perfect sense when you come to think of it... except that, being Canadian and living in the “Great White North”, the idea never crossed my mind. It takes a native to know the lay of the land. As soon as she said that, I instantly recognized the possibility of parsing Eksonos into the Greek preposition “eks” + the genitive adjectival “zonos” (of a belt), which may or may not have been current in Mycenaean Greek. The point is that Prof. John Chadwick and other Mycenaean Greek researchers since have often enough noted that Mycenaean toponyms and eponyms can sometimes be parsed into Greek words which, taken together, make semiological sense. Interpretations such as this are of course susceptible to plenty of criticism, because there is no real evidence that the Mycenaeans and Minoan scribes who worked for them were necessarily conscious of such connotations. But the idea is intriguing nevertheless.

Once you accept the notion that Eksonos has this notion built-in, then you can extrapolate this meaning to other Minoan/Mycenaean sites for sheep husbandry on pasture land, which is why we did this for Sygrita on this tablet. Anyway, whether or not the toponym Eksonos carries this connotation with it, sheep were raised in antiquity and are still raised today in Greece (let alone pretty much anywhere else in the world) on non-arable land, which is to say, outside the fertile agricultural belt for crops.

On the other hand, we should probably not read too much into (or more like it, out of) the tablets, since that sort of practice can and often does lead to mis-interpretations. Still, since Linear B is by and large a shorthand script for Mycenaean Greek, the tiny size of the tablets necessitating such drastic shortcuts, it is by no means inconceivable that the scribes, who knew perfectly well what the tablets meant to themselves, and who could care less what they might mean to future generations, given that the tablets were devised for annual accounts only, and nothing more than that, did not see any need to bother with explaining away the contents of their ephemeral annual accounts, destroyed at the end of every “wetos” or fiscal year. Prof. John Chadwick himself, in his ground-breaking book, The Decipherment of Linear B (Cambridge University Press, © 1958), makes this perfectly clear, when he notes:

By contrast there are several mentions in the tablets of ‘this year’ (toto wetos), ‘next year’ (hateron wetos) and ‘last year’s’ (perusinwos). These phrases would be meaningless, unless the tablets were current only for a year. This seems to imply that at the beginning of every year the clay tablets were scrapped and a new series started. (pg. 128, italics Chadwick’s)

and again, that Linear B “is rather like shorthand; the man who wrote it would have little difficulty reading it back...” to other scribes, “But a total stranger might well be puzzled, unless he knew what the contents were likely to be.” (pg. 131, italics mine).

I can easily carry Prof. Chadwick’s conclusions one step further. I can now assert with confidence that a great deal of Linear B is precisely that, shorthand, and in fact far more of it is shorthand than has been assumed until now. Logograms and ideograms play a significant rôle in the frequent application of shorthand to Linear B. But supersyllabograms, which are an entirely new phenomenon which I myself discovered only last year, come into play and in a much bigger way than logograms and ideograms, as we shall soon enough see this year. There are in fact so many supersyllabograms (31) that it astonishes me that no-one actually isolated them in the past 64 years since the successful decipherment of some 90 % of the Linear B syllabary by our dear friend, the genius, Michael Ventris, in June 1952.

PS I invite anyone who is adept at translating Linear B tablets to contest our rather unusual translation of this one, since after all, we may have strayed too far from the proverbial aurea mediocritas, “the golden mean”, just as the splendid Roman poet, Horace (65-27 BCE) characterized it so long ago:

Auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit, tutus caret obsoleti sordibus tecti, caret invidenda sobrius aula. “Whoever cherishes the golden mean is sober, safe and secure from the filthiness of a mansion fallen into disrepair, and free of palace intrigues.” (Translation mine)

Richard

Happy New Year in Greek, Linear B, Linear C, English, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian & German
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Happy New Year in Greek, Linear B, Linear C, English, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian & German! Click to ENLARGE:



Richard and Rita
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Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae 2014: The Year in Review and then some, our new blog, Transcendence and The Singularity, in 2015

Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae 2014: The Year in Review and then some, our new blog, Transcendence and The Singularity, in 2015

Although our blog is only 20 months old, it has assumed a prominent rôle as one of the Internet’s primary resources on current research into Mycenaean Linear B and much more besides. We are also the fist and foremost source for the ongoing study of Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, for which until now very few adequate resources have existed on the Internet. We have carefully classified our blog into several main Categories, which appear right at the top of the Home Page of our blog, as you see here: Click to ENLARGE


The Categories of PRIMARY concern to ourselves and, we hope, to all of us worldwide who are deeply committed to the furtherance of research into Mycenaean Greek & Linear B, as well as into Arcado-Cypriot and Linear C, are highlighted in UPPER CASE. This does not imply that the other Categories are not important. They are. It is just that we devote less of our time and resources to them than to the PRIMARY Categories. 

In our first full year of operation, 2014, we set out to reach certain goals, and we are pleased to announce that we have attained or exceeded them all.

These are prioritized as follows:

1. The theory and practical implementation of the new theory of SUPERSYLLABOGRAMS in Mycenaean Linear B. While Prof. John Chadwick, Michael Ventris, Prof. Thomas G. Palaima and Chris Tselentis were all aware of the existence of supersyllabograms in one form or another, and while the latter three had each isolated certain instances of their appearance in Linear B, none of them actually “defined” them as such, since none of them was aware of all of the practical applications of supersyllabograms in Linear B, of which there are three, as we shall soon enough see in 2015. It is my intention to publish, in concert with my research colleague, Rita Roberts, a full-length research article in PDF format, The Theory and Applications of Sypersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, sometime in 2015, probably no earlier than the summer, as we fully intend to have it peer-reviewed by at least 2 of the world’s leading experts or institutions intimately involved with Linear B prior to publication, among whom we can hopefully count on Prof. Thomas G. Palaima, Chris Tselentis and the Heraklion Museum: Click to ENLARGE


2. The translation of as many extant Linear B tablets as we could reasonably hope to handle, without over-stretching our human resources. There are two translators of Linear B on our Blog, my now advanced student of Linear B, Rita Roberts, and myself. Between us, we have managed to translate into English scores of Linear B tablets from Knossos, four from Pylos, and one each from Mycenae and Thebes. You can review all of our translations for yourself by clicking on the Categories SCRIPTA MINOA for tablets from Knossos and Tablets for Linear A, B & C tablets and fragments from anywhere else.
   
3. Throughout the spring of 2014, I also began reconstructing the grammar of Mycenaean Greek from the ground up, successfully building complete verb conjugations for the active voice in all of the these tenses of both thematic and athematic verbs: present, future, imperfect, aorist & perfect, leaving other tenses aside for reasons which will be made clear later in 2015: Click to ENLARGE


I intend to continue with the reconstitution of derived forms for the declensions of nouns and adjectives, and for the use of cases with prepositions, including the early instrumental case which fell into disuse by the time alphabetic Greek came to the fore in the eighth century BCE.

4. We also believe that a successful decipherment of Minoan Linear A may be around the corner (i.e. within the next five years or so), for reasons which will become apparent with the creation of our new blog, TRANSCENDENCE, as of early 2015:


The title of our new blog is, of course, based on the movie of the same name, Transcendence & The Singularity, 2014, starring Johnny Depp and Rebecca Hall. Our new Blog is to serve as an international online forum for the sharing of novel ideas, new theories and advances in the following areas of scientific research now dominating the world scene: the implications of the Curiosity Project on Mars and of the search for exoplanets for the potential and probable discovery if life elsewhere in the universe; the active involvement of NASA, other major international Space agencies and organizations in extraterrestrial communication; the emergence of cosmic consciousness beyond our earthly sphere of knowledge for the first time in human history and, of course, the search for the practical application of artificial intelligence and its implications for human affairs in all spheres of life, with reference to the likelihood that the well-touted Singularity will occur sometime in our century, possibly as early as 2025-2030, more likely around 2040-2050. These will be our primary concerns on that blog. It is not so much a question of I myself sharing my own knowledge, pitifully limited as it is, of these critical advancements in the sphere of our scientific knowledge-base as of seeking as much input and as variegated feedback from the scientific and technological community worldwide, as well as from amateurs such as ourselves, on these amazing developments now sweeping over the planet.

5. Concurrent with the creation of our Blog, Transcendence and the Singularity, we shall be pursuing the possibilities for the practical application of Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C on this blog to extraterrestrial communication, a project which is already well underway here under the rubric, NASA at the top of our home page. Click on the NASA banner to read more about this truly fascinating research project:



6. We shall also be taking our first steps towards the compilation of the most comprehensive vocabulary of Mycenaean Linear B ever yet developed, A Topical English-Mycenaean Greek Lexicon. We intend to double the Mycenaean Greek lexicon of some 2,500 attested (A) words currently known to 5,000 attested (A) and derived (D) at the very minimum, with a large number of derived (D) words regressively extrapolated from these sources in descending order of priority:
(a) the extant vocabulary of Arcado-Cypriot, in both Linear C and in the alphabetical Arcado-Cypriot dialect, since this dialect is more closely related to Mycenaean Greek than even Attic Greek is to Ionic;
(b) The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of Homer’s Iliad, in which we find the most archaic Greek after the Arcado-Cypriot dialect, a Greek which still contains a number of grammatical elements left over from Mycenaean Greek. I shall have translated the entire Catalogue of Ships into English before the end of winter 2015 as the framework or template, if you like, for the regressive extrapolation of derived (D) Mycenaean Greek;
(c) from the rest of the Iliad and (d) from the early Aeolic, Ionic and Attic dialects, prior to the fifth century BCE. I must lay particular stress on the fact that Mycenaean Greek vocabulary can only be derived (D) from these dialects alone, since all are East Greek dialects, right on down from Mycenaean to Attic Greek. Mycenaean Greek words emphatically cannot be derived (D) from West Greek dialects such as the Doric, as these are not directly related to it.

Richard

The Implications of the Geometric Economy of Linear C versus that of Linear B

I have compiled here a geometric analysis of the Geometric Economy of the Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Syllabary: Click to ENLARGE

If you are already familiar with Mycenaean Linear B, you will quickly realize that the Linear C syllabary is even more streamlined for its geometric economy than is Linear B. The Linear C syllabary consists of only 5 geometric shapes: the dot, the straight line, the circle, the tear & the oval, even fewer than we find in Linear B.

The implications of this further streamlining are clear enough, even superficially. Since the Linear C syllabary simply abandoned all logograms, homophones and ideograms once and for all, it is in fact a much more elegant syllabary than its forebear, with only 56 syllabograms versus the 61 we find in Linear B (leaving aside the 100+ homophones, logograms & ideograms cluttering up the latter). Mycenaean Linear B in turn has considerably fewer syllabograms, logograms and ideograms than Minoan Linear A. With only 56 characters, the Linear C syllabary is the simplest syllabary, ancient or modern. Compare this count with the number of letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, as in Russian = 32, and we can readily see that Linear C has taken the practical application of a syllabary about as far as it can be.

We shall be returning to a more in-depth cross-correlation of the Linear B & Linear C Syllabaries early in 2015, when we shall be discussing their potential application to extraterrestrial communication, reflecting our own developing perspectives on an article on this very topic recently written for NASA by Prof. Richard Saint-Gelais. To read that post, please click on this BANNER:

Richard

Tag: LinearB

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