Comprehensive Architectural Lexicon, Knossos & Mycenae (Part A)

Comprehensive Architectural Lexicon, Knossos & Mycenae (Part A):

Since I have been posting scores of photos of the magnificent Third Palace of Knossos, Late Minoan IIIb (ca. 1450 BCE), I have decided to compile an Architectural Lexicon in 2 parts. This is the first. The vocabulary is relatively straightforward, with a few minor exceptions:
1 Decorated with spirals. The Minoans at Knossos and the Mycenaeans went crazy decorating many of their lovely frescoes and their walls with spirals.
2 Bathtub. You might be wondering, why on earth would I add this word?... because bathtubs were an integral part of room architecture, i.e. of the bathroom. The people of Knossos in particular were very clean. They even had an advanced hydraulics driven piping and drainage system, the likes of which was never again repeated until ancient Rome. And the Romans, unlike the Minoans at Knossos, made the terrible mistake of constructing their pipes of lead, leading to widespread lead poisoning. The Minoans used ceramics... nice and clean. Clever. No surprise there.
3 Mantles! Isn’t that what people wear? Well, yes, but they could also be used to decorate the top of windows, I imagine. Or maybe it is just my imagination. Correct me if I am wrong.
4 The word erepato, which is the equivalent of the Homeric Greek elefantos never means ivory either in Mycenaean or in Homeric Greek!
5 Crocus? - of course! ... used all over the place in the lovely frescoes!
6 Circles were likewise universal on the building friezes. And with good reason. They are geometrically perfect, a typically Greek characteristic.

Linear B tablet KN 641 R j 02, textiles painted red

Linear B tablet KN 641 R j 02, textiles painted red:



Linear B tablet KN 641 R j 02 repeatedly refers to textiles painted red (3 times) and apparently to textiles painted purple, once only. The word Oapapa appears to be a woman’s name (very likely Minoan), which suits the context quite well. The word kekareareiyo, in the genitive case, also appears to be a type of cloth,  given that it is (probably) followed by the word POpureya (right-truncated after the initial syllabogram PO), meaning that whatever type of cloth it is, it is not purple. The word papeya = farpeia on line 4 is also almost certainly a type of cloth, since it is painted red. The units of textiles referred to are most likely rolls or skeins. Several place names are mentioned, so the textile industry for dying cloth is apparently widespread. The peculiar thing is that the toponyms are all minor place names.

Linear B tablet KN 777a K b 01 & the wheat (and barley) harvest

Linear B tablet KN 777a K b 01 & the wheat (and barley) harvest:



Linear B tablet KN 777a K b 01 deals with the wheat and barley harvest at Knossos, without specifying the amount of the barley harvest, and then goes on to enumerate the wheat harvests alone at Amnisos and Phaistos. We note that the toponyms go by their ethnic names. So I have deemed it appropriate to translate their names as “by the farmers of”... + locale. I find it very suspicious that the scribe has chosen to allot 100 + hectares to every single locale. Bizarre. Maybe he was high on something. But of course, I doubt that. The only alternative explanation that I can think of is that the palace administration at Knossos capped the wheat harvest at each of these milieux. Otherwise, the total amount of wheat produced would have filled the granaries (presumably at Knossos) to the bursting point.

Linear B tablet KN 847 K j 61, wheat production at Knossos for one lunar month

Linear B tablet KN 847 K j 61, wheat production at Knossos for one lunar month:

Linear B tablet KN 847 K j 61 deals with wheat production at Knossos for one month (we do not know which month). Soanobotos is the wheat farmer. Note that the ideogram for “month” looks like the moon, which is scarcely surprising. The output of wheat at 12 hectares for this particular month is in line with the extent of wheat production we might expect from the large expanse of fields surrounding a city as large as Knossos (population ca. 55,000). It is absolutely critical to understand that, in ancient times as in modern in the Mediterranean basin, the production of wheat could not have extended through every month of the year. Far from it. That is par for the course in any civilization, ancient or modern. The second point, which stage of production are we dealing with here? This tablet does not make it at all clear. Is is spring and are we dealing with the sowing of wheat? Or is it autumn, and the harvesting of wheat. My bet is decidedly in favour of the latter scenario. Now it is more than likely that harvesting of wheat was spread over two months at most, since the autumns are warm in the Mediterranean. So we can expect that something in the order of the number of “hectares” = 12 for this month, let’s say it is lunar “September”, would be repeated for the next month, lunar “October”, though probably on a somewhat lesser scale, let’s say 8 hectares. That would yield a crop of 20 “hectares” harvested for the current year. Pretty decent, I would say. Not only that, we must keep firmly in mind that this crop is only that of Soanobotos, who is only 1 of God knows how many farmers at Knossos. There could have been as few as 20 or as many as 50. No one knows for sure. So the wheat crop harvested at Knossos alone could have run to 240 hectares at a conservative estimate. Just about right on target for such a large city. If a conservative estimate for both of the lunar months is taken into account, the harvest runs to 400 hectares! We’ll never know, but it is always worthwhile conjecturing, and in any case, the wheat crop at Knossos would have had to be pretty substantial.

Pylos tablet Eo 269, wool carding and the production of wheat

Pylos tablet Eo 269, wool carding and the production of wheat:

Pylos tablet Eo 269 wheat crops

Pylos tablet Eo 269 deals with both wool carding and the production of wheat (wheat crops). The person responsible for wool carding is Aktaoios, who is the owner of a settled plot of land. Note the emphasis on “settled”. The family lives on the land and off it. Aktaoios would therefore appear to be a well off farmer-land owner. The first occupation mentioned is wool carding, which implies the presence of (a lot of) sheep, even though sheep are not specifically mentioned on this tablet. With reference to the wheat crop, while we do not know exactly how much wheat the “unit of measurement” refers to, for the sake of convenience, let us say it is something like 1 hectares or 1 acre or something along those lines. It clearly was something along those lines, but no actual “proof” of the size of measured land upon which wheat was grown in Mycenaean times survives, as is to be expected. So we make an approximation. In any case, it is a lot of wheat, and he and his family would have had to do a lot of seeding to bring in such a rich crop. The Minoans and Mycenaeans (here at Pylos) appear to have been real experts at growing wheat, as it is often mentioned in large quantities on Linear B tablets from both Knossos and Pylos.

Linear B tablet K 1248, Knossos, a special case

Linear B tablet K 1248, Knossos, a special case:

Linear B tablet K 1248 at Knossos presents us with a special case, in so far as it contains two new independent supersyllabograms, RU and KA. KA = kameu, which refers to the owner of a kama, a unit of land, which in turn is for all intents and purposes, synonymous with kitimena = a plot of land. This makes such perfect sense in context that it appears almost incontestable. And it also makes sense that the supersyllabogram KA, the owner of a unit or plot of land must be an independent supersyllabogram, because the owner is not necessarily directly linked to the sheep. Any kind of livestock might be present on his land at any given time. Moreover, the the unit or plot of land as such is independent of whatever livestock or, for that matter, crops which might turn up there. Now the tablet further clearly implies that KA = the owner of a unit of land because he is called by name, Kirinetos. He must be quite a wealthy farmer or superintendent of lands because he owns a lot of sheep (95) at one place (unnamed) and five more at Tuniya, which apparently is a minor outpost, given the small number of rams there. On the other hand, it is very difficult to establish whether or not he also owns a unit of land at Rukito = Lykinthos, since using a supersyllabogram, in this case, RU, to replace a toponym, is completely atypical. In fact, I reserve serious doubts that indeed RU refers to a place name. The only reason I selected it (Rukito) is that this is the only entry in Chris Tselentis' Linear B Lexicon which fits the bill. But it is a pretty poor excuse for the full word represented by the independent supersyllabogram RU, and so we must take it with a serious grain of salt. I have tried my best.

Linear B tablet KN 349 J b 12, delivery of olive oil to Lykinthios (or Lykinthos)

Linear B tablet KN 349 J b 12, delivery of olive oil to Lykinthios (or Lykinthos):



Linear B tablet KN 349 J b 12 displays the standard, formulaic text for delivery of anything, in this case, olive oil. In addition, the destination, “to Lykinthios” (or “Lykinthos”, a major island in the Mycenaean Empire) is designated. Had the olive oil been delivered to Knossos, no destination would have been specified, as the Linear B scribes all took it for granted that any tablet mentioning delivery of any livestock (especially sheep) or any commodity (coriander, spices, olive oil etc.) without any mention of the destination was that it was Knossos by default. There was no point in their mentioning Knossos, since after all it was the capital of the Empire, and by far the largest city in it (pop. 55,000+, a huge city for the Bronze Age).

Linear B tablet KN 851 K j 03, olive oil at Knossos

Linear B tablet KN 851 K j 03, olive oil at Knossos:



The text on this Linear B tablet is broken off. If indeed epikere means “at the top of a honeycomb”, which is very doubtful (although the word partially fits with the Classical Greek word for “honeycomb”, then whatever the “i” is the termination of in the first line appears to be the vessel in which the honeycomb is stored. Linear B ama is almost the exact equivalent of its Classical Greek counterpart, and in this context means “along with”, indicating that the honeycomb (if that is what it is) is stored along with the wheat (if that is what the syllabogram means) and if not, along with something right-truncated beginning with ZO, but we cannot say what, and finally along with olive oil in 46 amphorae, where the amphorae are almost certainly of the type shown in the illustration above, in other words, huge amphorae or pithoi, which were in widespread use for the storage of olive oil at the Third Palace at Knossos, Late Minoan III, ca. 1450 BCE, just as this tablet makes abundantly clear.

So the running translation goes something like this: something at the top of a honeycomb (?) stored  along with wheat and olive oil in 46+ amphorae. I say 46+ because the number is right-truncated and could be anywhere from 46 to 49.

Severely damaged tablet on textiles, KN 1530 R t 01

Severely damaged tablet on textiles, KN 1530 R t 01:

KN 1530 R t 01 textiles damaged

Because Knossos tablet KN 1530 R t 01 on textiles is so severely damaged, it is impossible to make any sense at all out of lines 1 & 2, while only the right side of line 3 makes any sense, in so far as it clearly sets down 11 units of textiles and (apparently) a liability, if that is what the supersyllabogram O means in this context, i.e. O = opero = liability. Line 4 is muddled on the left side. It is difficult to establish whether or not the word on the left side, which is partially missing, is a person’s name, but if it is, and we insert “i” as the missing letter, then we have Waisio in Linear B or Waisios in Archaic Greek. The middle part of this line is garbled. The word kitano means “a terebinth tree” and seems out of place in this context, unless the pistachio from this tree is used to create a pale green dye for the cloth. The right side of line 4 makes sense, in so far as it clearly sets down 11 units of textiles and (apparently) a liability, if that is what the supersyllabogram O means in this context, i.e. O = opero = liability.

Linear B tablet Knossos KN 683 Sh 01 dealing with textiles and onyx

Linear B tablet Knossos KN 683 Sh 01 dealing with textiles and onyx:

Linear B tablet Knossos KN 683 Sh 01 deals primarily with textiles, but it covers a lot more ground than just that. The textiles mentioned are (a) wehano, a Linear B word for “a type of textile”, but since this word is archaic Mycenaean Greek, we do not know exactly what kind of textile it refers to. We do know that it is a kind of cloth, but that is as far as it goes. (b) The next type of cloth mentioned is mare (in Linear B = “wool”. Next comes the really surprising mention of onyx = onuke in Mycenaean Linear B! Female interior decorators are not only working on both types of cloth, but on the onyx too! Wow! The question is, what are they decorating that requires both two kinds of cloth (one wool) and onyx as well? That is a mystery to me. And they are using an awful lot of wool (9 rolls at 2 units of weight each, probably something along the line of kilograms), in other words something like 18 kilograms or so. And it is hardly surprising that, with the use of 2 types of cloth and of onyx, this interior decorating, whatever it is, is going to be expensive to the potential buyer, which is why the ladies in question wish to make it perfectly clear that there is a question of debts to be paid. No payment, no decorations. Nada. Nothing surprising there. Ancient capitalism at its best.

I actually found this tablet not only quite a challenge, but a real beauty at that. There is a great deal more information to be found on it than on most Linear B tablets. That is what makes it so intriguing.

Linear B tablets on wheat: KN 849 K j 72

Linear B tablets on wheat: KN 849 K j 72:



This tablet is rather more challenging. The Linear word beginning with pera on the first line is right-truncated; so we do not know what word or phrase it is supposed to represent. Upon consulting Chris Tselentis’ excellent Linear B Lexicon, I discovered only one Linear B word which fit, and that is peraakoraiya, which means “in the further provinces”. It is plausible, I suppose, but rather unlikely. However, it is possible, even likely, that Linear B pera is not truncated at all, and that it is therefore the preposition for “beyond”... but beyond what? It just so happens that, as with everything else in the agricultural sphere, the Minoans and Mycenaeans raised their sheep and livestock and cultivated their crops on Linear B kitimena = “plot(s) of land”. So a better translation would be, “Wheat is being cultivated beyond the confines of this particular plot of land”, in other words, in an adjacent plot. That makes quite a lot of sense to me.

Linear B tablets on wheat: KN 36 K c 33

Linear B tablets on wheat: KN 36 K c 33:



This is a typical Linear B tablet from Knossos dealing with wheat.

Latin quotes in Linear B: Part E (Tacitus, Livy, Seneca)

Latin quotes in Linear B: Part E (Tacitus, Livy, Seneca): 
 


Translations:
Sine ira et studio. (Tacitus) Without animosity and without favouritism.
Periculum in mora. (Livy) There is danger in delay.
Homo sit naturaliter animal socialis. (Seneca) It would appear that man is by nature a social animal.
Licentia poetica. (Seneca) Poetic license.
Si vis vacare animo, aut pauper sis oportet, aut pauperi similis. (Seneca)
If you wish to grow in spirit, it is advisable you be poor, or to look like you are.

Latin quotes in Linear B: Part D (Ovid, Virgil, Cicero, Catullus)

Latin quotes in Linear B: Part D (Ovid, Virgil, Cicero, Catullus): 
 


Translations:
Materiam superabat opus. (Ovid) The workmanship was superior to the subject matter.
Forsan miseros meliora sequentur. (Virgil) Hopefully better things will eventually befall the wretched.
Malum quidem nullum esse sine aliquo bono. (Pliny the Elder)
There is no evil without its being offset by some good.
Summum ius, summa inuria. (Cicero) The highest the law, the worst the injustice.
Odi et amo. (Catullus). I hate and I love.

Latin quotes in Linear B: Part C: Virgil and Julius Caesar

Latin quotes in Linear B: Part C: Virgil and Julius Caesar: 



Translations:
Equo ne credite. Do not put your faith in the horse. (Virgil)
Nimium ne crede colori. Do not rely too much on colours. (Virgil)
Paulo maiora canamus. Let us sing of rather greater matters. (Virgil)
Timeo Danaos. I fear the Danaans. (Virgil)
Divide et impera. Divide and conquer. (Julius Caesar)

New MAJOR Category, * PARTNERS * added here

New MAJOR Category, * PARTNERS * added here:



We have just added the new Category, * PARTNERS *, which is the very first Category on our site, because it links you to all other Classical Greek & Latin sites which are in partnership or are associated with Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae. For the time being, there are only three major sites in this Category, but as we invite more and more major Classical sites on the Internet, it will grow rapidly. All you need to do is hover your cursor over * PARTNERS * and the 3 sites which are already there will display. Simply click on the name of the site you wish to visit.

Famous quotes from Latin authors in Linear B: Part B

Famous quotes from Latin authors in Linear B: Part B



Translations:
amabalis insania = adorable insanity
Mater saeva cupidinum = the savage mother of avarice
Nil esse in summa, neque habere ubi corpora prima = in the sum of all things there exists nowhere an abyss, nowhere is a realm of rest for primal bodies.
Cuius, uti memoro, rei simulacrum et imago = An image of it, like an idea, as I recall (to  mind)...

New feature on Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae: famous quotes from Greek & Latin authors in Linear B

New feature on Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae: famous quotes from Greek & Latin authors in Linear B:

We begin this new “column” with our first 6 translations of quotes from Latin authors, because it is much easier to transform Latin into Linear B, given that Latin words primarily contain a lot of consonants immediately followed by vowels, which is a prime characteristic of a syllabary such as Mycenaean Linear B. The only caveat is that Linear B words always end in a vowel, whereas Latin vocabulary, which is declined, often ends with consonants. But the oblique cases in Latin very often end with vowels, which makes it much easier to translate Latin quotations than Greek into Linear B. The only real problem other than the complete absence of terminal consonants in Linear B is that there is no L series of syllabograms (la, le, li, lo, lu) but only an R series (ra, re, ri, ro, ru), which must make do for all words in Greek or Latin which contain syllables beginning with the consonant L. Examples of quotations as illustrated here make this quite clear:



The translations of each of the Latin quotes are as follows:

de rerum natura = on the nature of things
Senatus populusque Romanus = the Senate and the People of Rome
aura popularis = a popular breeze (gossip)
Causa causarum miserere mei. = May the causes of causes have mercy on me.
Cicero pro domo sua. = Cicero prefers his own home.
  
The Linear B translations are a pretty good match with the Latin quotations, n’est-ce pas?

Invitation to join The Premier Network of Major Classical Greek and Latin sites on the Internet:

Invitation to join The Premier Network of Major Classical Greek and Latin sites on the Internet:

Linear B, Knossos and Mycenae



is spearheading a major initiative to bring together and co-ordinate a brand new  Premier Network of Major Classical Greek and Latin Sites on the Internet, which will be comprised of as many major Classical sites as we can reach in the next few months, in order to build a research network unlike any other yet seen on the Internet, apart from academia.edu itself. To date, our site and Koryvantes, the Association of Historical Studies









and a major European Institute of Archaeology, in anticipation of their acceptance of membership. Our strategy is to ask as many major Classical sites that we can reach ourselves to join in our new Network, and then in turn to appeal to those new members who have already joined up to contact other key sites with which they are closely linked or in partnership with.

Our eventual goal is to establish a new LINKS page on each of the participating sites to all other sites in the Network, which is to be multilingual, if at possible. Since LBK&M is a Canadian site, we hope to call our network:

The Premier Network of Major Classical Greek and Latin sites on the Internet = Le premier réseau des sites les plus importantes des études classiques grecques et latines.

And we are of course open to adding the title in other languages as well.

Knossos tablet KN 1280 E m 222, 10 ewes, 10 lambs and 40 sheep in a sheep pen

Knossos tablet KN 1280 E m 222, 10 ewes, 10 lambs and 40 sheep in a sheep pen:



Knossos tablet KN 1280 E m 222 deals with 10 ewes as mothers of 10 lambs, and also with 40 rams in a sheep pen. The supersyllabogram PA = pauro in Linear B or pauros in ancient Greek, also parvus in Latin = “small” or “little”, hence a small sheep is naturally a lamb. As if. Unfortunately, although the supersyllabogram PA occurs on no less than 38 Linear B tablets in the sheep husbandry sector of the Minoan/Mycenaean economy, there is no attested word corresponding to this supersyllabogram anywhere in the Mycenaean Greek lexicon. So I had to make an “educated guess”. Well, actually more than just educated. After all, the ancient Greek word pauros = Latin parvus = “small” or “little” eminently fits the bill. So I chose it, just like that. It is possible that this SSYL does not mean “lamb”, but I rather doubt it, especially in light of the fact that the number of lambs on this tablet is exactly equal to the number of ewes. 10 mothers, 10 lambs.

Tag: Linguistics

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