Tag: Linguistics

Ancient Greek is Polytonic, but Mycenaean Greek in Linear B is not & How to Deal with the Whole Blasted Mess

Ancient Greek is Polytonic, but Mycenaean Greek in Linear B is not & How to Deal with the Whole Blasted Mess: Click to ENLARGE

Peering at this (apparently) complex chart of ancient Greek polytonic orthography, you are liable to want to jump off a cliff or at least take a valium. I know I did when I first learned ancient Greek, and to be quite frank, I still do have a great deal of difficulty remembering where stressed or unstressed accents (especially when subscripted) are supposed to fall, either on the first syllable or on one of three final syllables, which are linguistically stylized as antepenultimate (third last syllable), penultimate (second last syllable) & ultimate (last syllable), just to drive us even crazier. We can blithely (and safely) ignore these totally unnecessary definitions and just say last, second last & third last syllable, so that ordinary folks like you and me can understand what on earth all those linguists are on about.

And I am the first to admit that, even though I learned ancient Greek all on my own (auto-didactically), and have learned to read it very well after 15 years, I always was and still am far too lazy to be bothered learning the niceties of all those polytonic “rules” anyway, because all you need to do, in order to write ancient Greek, is to look up the word you want to write in an excellent Greek dictionary, of which by far the best is Liddell & Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (1986), grab the correct polytonic accents from the entry, et voilà! And I know darn well right that plenty of folks do precisely this, because who can be bothered with silly details like that if in fact you already know the word for which you want to check its polytonics. This is above all true for those of us who have read plenty of ancient Greek texts, from at least Books I & II of Homer’s Iliad, several prominent ancient Greek poets such as Sappho (above all others), Anacreon & Alceus, historians such as Herodotus & Xenophon (ridiculously easy to read & my first introduction the ancient Greek), Plato, Strabo, Plutarch etc. etc. (all of whom I have read extensively, plus many other authors in several ancient Greek dialects – another maddening distraction, at least for the first five years or so). It is in fact the dialects, of which there at least 10 major ones, all of them treating polytonics in their own quirky way, which really mess things up! Trust me.

Add to this the incontestable fact that ancient Greek has far more polytonics than any Occidental language, ancient or modern, and you can see exactly what I mean. Even French, which sports plenty of accents, is a cakewalk in comparison. As a Canadian, I speak and read French fluently, and I can and do remember precisely where any accent falls on any French word, all this in spite of the fact that French has a number of accents – though far, far less than ancient Greek.

And if you wish to write any text in ancient Greek, you just do the same thing (look it up) and copy it from the dictionary. This makes life a lot easier for those of us who are obliged to write ancient Greek. Another suggestion: if you need to write a whole sentence or a whole paragraph of some ancient Greek author, just go to a site like Perseus Digital Library:

look up the author and subsequently the passage you want to transcribe, and then copy and paste it into your word processor, simple as that. Well, not quite as simple as that. You have to make sure that you have first set your font to SPIonic (the best there is for most dialects – but not all – in ancient Greek), to make sure that it turns out as Greek in your word processor. Otherwise, all you will see is nothing but garbage.

This situation gets far more frustrating for those of us who can also read and write Minoan Linear A (even if no-one has a clue what it means), Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C (all of which, thank God, have no polytonics!). Now if you wish to set the exact Greek equivalent of any Linear B text, for example, if you do not do as I advise, it will take you hours and hours just to type a few sentences. Who needs that like a hole in the head? Not me, let me tell you.

But of course our chart above serves to save you hours and hours of totally needless fooling around with ancient Greek diacritics. Just print it out, laminate it if you like, and pin it on your wall. Then you can gaze at it in stunned awe any time you like.

Even without doing this, it takes me hours and hours to create a chart such as the one you see above. That one took me four hours! So I really would appreciate it if folks who visit our blog actually get this, and at least tag each post they really find fascinating with the number of STARS they would rate it as (top of the post) & LIKE (bottom of the post). Please! It makes Rita, my colleague and myself very happy to know you care.

Best,

Richard

Cross-Correlation of Linear A with Linear B Syllabograms. Does it all add up or not? What is Linear A? What if? We need to take a long hard look at this.

Let’s take a look at this cross-comparative table of Linear A “syllabograms” which look (almost) identical to their Linear B counterparts, and let’s generously assume that they all have the same phonetic values in both syllabaries. Why not? Almost everyone has anyway. Click to ENLARGE:

Still, ever since I first started comparing the Linear A with the Linear B syllabary, I found myself seriously questioning how and, more significantly, why most ancient language linguists specializing in these two scripts have assumed that, just because deciphered syllabograms in Linear B all bear a specific phonetic value, consequently the so-called “syllabograms” - if indeed all are just that, syllabograms – ought to or, if we push the envelope, must have the same values in Linear A. But, being the doubting Thomas I am, I have serious reservations about the hypothetical premises underlying such a tailor-made assumption.

My reasons are several:

1. Since the Minoan language is completely undeciphered, and contains considerably more syllabograms, logograms & ideograms (or whatever else) than Linear B, how can we be reasonably sure that even those characters (whatever they are) in Linear A, which look (almost) identical to their Linear B counterparts, are in fact identical? Given that the Minoan language has stubbornly evaded any attempt whatsoever at decipherment, what is plainly unproven is just that, and nothing more. The fundamental assumption almost all researchers espouse, who posit value for equal value in both scripts as being unquestionably “correct”, is open to serious cross-examination. In the face of lack of scientific evidence, supportive or even partially supportive, this cannot possibly be confirmed with any degree of reasonable accuracy. I for one simply cannot accept on faith alone the hypothesis that comparison of specific values of a known syllabary should inevitably lead to the conclusion that in all instances A=A, B=B etc. Far from it. This is not to say that there is still a high probability that what strongly looks like a syllabogram in Linear A exactly corresponding to a known syllabogram in Linear B is in fact the same syllabogram in both scripts. I am more than willing to concede that in all probability A in Linear A is A in Linear B etc. But there is simply no way of proving this; so we have to take the whole matter with a grain of salt.

2. Now if it ever turns out that evidence can be forwarded that even a few of the so-called “syllabograms” in Linear A which look exactly like their counterparts in linear B are in fact syllabograms, but with entirely different phonetic values or, in the worst case scenario, not syllabograms at all, such a turn of events would throw a huge wrench into the fundamental premise, widely espoused by the community of linguists specializing in Linear A and Linear B taken together, that they form a contiguous continuum. And that would be very bad news for future attempts at deciphering the Minoan language. Again, I stress, I am not at all saying that the current widely espoused theory is in essence wrong. In fact, it is probably I who am wrong, possibly even completely out of step. But there still remains a possibility, however slim (and I for one do not think it is that slim), that there are likely to be real problems with cross-correlation of Linear A characters (whatever they are) with their so-called counterparts in Linear B. In the meantime, I am more than willing to reserve judgement on this question, and to follow the herd, with this caveat, that I remain and shall always remain the doubting Thomas, until and unless I can be even somewhat assured that the presumed cross correlations can stand the acid test as they are.

3. Now what really makes me wonder what on earth is going on with “everything is fine just as it is, so why reinvent the wheel?” is this. Some researchers already assign different phonetic values to the “same” characters in Linear A. That is worrisome in and of itself. Take for instance that the so-called syllabograms TE, TU & SI appear in more than one way in Linear A. Yes, it is true that the one version of TE looks a lot like the other. But when we come to TU & SI, things get positively messy. To illustrate my point, take a look at this chart: Click to ENLARGE

Yes, a great many researchers delving into Linear A will say, “Well, that is to be expected. The script was bound to evolve over such a long period of time – more than a millennium.” Fair enough. But the difficulty remains that, whereas Linear A was apparently in use from ca. 2500-1500 BCE, neither Linear B nor Linear C evolved in any real sense, even though the former was in continual use from ca. 1600-1200 BCE & the latter from 1100-400 BCE (a much longer period!).

Given the considerably longer timeline for Linear A, it is more than likely that the appearance and possibly even the phonetic values of certain characters was bound to change. This sort of scenario falls neatly in line with the significant changes Egyptian hieroglyphics underwent over their long history. The fact that Linear A is a much earlier script than either Linear B or Linear C lends further credence to its apparent fluidity. After all, the English alphabet changed dramatically over a relatively shorter timeline (ca. 700 AD – 1500 AD), some 300 years less. On the other hand, Linear C did not change at all over 700 years, almost as long as the evolution of the English alphabet. So I am not quite sure what to make of all this, except to say, once again, I remain the doubting Thomas.

4. Is the Linear A Syllabary strictly a syllabary, or does it contain Hieroglyphics as well?

Linear A has considerably more characters (syllabograms, homophones, logograms and ideograms, if indeed all of these are just those) than Linear B, which again raises the question, which characters are syllabograms, which homophones, which logograms and which ideograms. There is simply no way to substantiate which are which. Again, the monster rears its ugly head. Since there are quite a few more “ideograms” - if that is what they really all are – in Linear A than in Linear B, what on earth can the ideograms in Linear A which have no counterparts in Linear B possibly mean? And I have to ask out loud, are they even all ideograms, or could some of them even be hieroglyphics? This is no idle matter. Let us not conveniently “forget”, or more to the point, blithely brush aside the fact that the Linear A syllabary was immediately preceded by an even earlier Minoan script with one particularly telling characteristic:

Most early writing systems have their origins in iconographic systems and likewise Cretan Hieroglyphs most likely evolved out of non-linguistic symbols on seal stones from the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BCE. Cretan Hieroglyphs was the first writing of the Minoans and predecessor to Linear A.

And again:

The first written scripts of the Minoans resemble Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Phaistos Disk which is now exhibited in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum and dates back to 1700 BC, is an example of such (a) script.

And again:

Minoan Hieroglyphic Scripts: The earliest Minoan writing is the Cretan hieroglyphic script used on seal stones and clay accounting documents (Packard 1974). This early syllabic script evolved by 1900 BC during the Middle Minoan period, and was used through the destruction of the Minoan palaces ca.1450 BC.

Oh, and for your enlightenment – and mine too, here are a few examples of early Cretan-Minoan hieroglyphics: Click to ENLARGE

Now isn’t this just a mind-bender? One of the Cretan-Minoan hieroglyphics [2] is identical to its Linear A counterpart (whatever it is), while the first Cretan-Minoan hieroglyphic [1] is flipped right side up in Linear A. The other two [3] & [4] are (almost) identical, except for degree orientation. But the most astonishing thing is that [3] = the syllabogram DA in Linear A & B and TA in Linear C, lasting with very little change for 2,100 years! (2,500 BCE – 400 BCE). In other words, what began as a Cretan-Minoan hieroglyphic gradually transformed into a syllabogram, at least in the later development of Linear A, and again as a syllabogram in both Linear B & Linear C. TA in Linear C is in fact the exact same syllabogram as DA in Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B, since Arcado-Cypriot Linear C has no D+vowel series.

Now, let’s just carry my novel hypothesis to its all but inexorable conclusion. What if just a few of the hieroglyphics in the pre-Linear A hieroglyphic scripts just happened to slip into Linear A, without anyone caring much either way? If the earliest Linear A scribes still found it convenient to continue using even a few of the earlier Cretan-Minoan hieroglyphics, why wouldn’t they? After all, when the Linear B scribes devised their syllabary for Mycenaean Greek, they swiped scores and scores of characters, syllabograms and ideograms lock-stock-and-barrel from Linear A without even thinking twice of it. So here is my hypothesis, for what it is worth – and that may very well be something – what if... again, I say, what if some of the Linear A characters are still hieroglyphic? Well, there is one sure way to test this hypothesis, and that is to directly compare, i.e. cross-correlate, every last character in the Linear A syllabary with the hieroglyphics in its immediate predecessor, the Cretan-Minoan hieroglyphs... which is exactly what I intend to do. But it does not even end there.

Has anyone ever bothered to compare the total number of Linear A characters – whatever they are – with the total number of Egyptian hieroglyphics, though there are plenty of the latter? If not, why not? Well, don’t worry, because I intend to do just that as well. Now, if even two or three Linear A characters turn out to look (almost) exactly like certain Egyptian hieroglyphics, of which the phonetic values and the meaning are already known to us, we may be onto something, though I hasten to add that this does not at all mean that the Minoan language is related in any way to the Egyptian, or even that the similar characters in Linear A are still hieroglyphics. Dangerous assumption.... though of course they very well may be. Confused? That’s OK too, since confusion is the first step towards scepticism, and scepticism in turn the next step on the path to investigation.

Richard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Richard

Completely Revised Mycenaean Linear B Basic Syllabograms, with 3 New Syllabograms JU (or YU), QA & ZU, Raising the Total from 58 to 61 with 1 less Homophone

Completely Revised Mycenaean Linear B Basic Syllabograms, with 3 New Syllabograms JU (or YU), QA & ZU, Raising the Total from 58 to 61 with 1 less Homophone: Click to ENLARGE the Full Linear B Syllabary Revised 2014:

NOTE! If you are using the standard chart of the Mycenaean syllabary currently available on the Internet, which looks like this:

you should discard it at once and replace it with our new Table of the Full Linear B Syllabary Revised 2014, as the former is completely out-of-date and inaccurate.

Until recently, almost all charts of the Basic Syllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B accounted for only 58 syllabograms, but this number falls short of the actual total of 61 Syllabograms. In fact, there are three syllabograms which are unaccounted for in almost all previous charts of the basic syllabograms, these three (3) being JU (or YU), QA & ZU. The chart above does account for ZU. Both YU and ZU, although attested (A) on all extant Linear B tablets and fragments, regardless of provenance, are extremely rare, so we need not fuss over them.

How did the Mycenaeans Pronounce the J series of Syllabograms (JA, JE, JO & JU)?

The syllabogram JU (or YU) appears to be accurate. Of course, you are bound to ask me, “Why all this fuss over the Mycenaeans’ actual pronunciation of the syllabograms in the J+ vowel series?” Good question. Actually, the distinction is highly significant. If those of us who are allophone English speakers pronounce the syllabogram JE, it is inevitable that it is going to sound exactly like “je” in our word “jet”. However, I contend that this was almost certainly not the way the Mycenaeans would have pronounced it. They would much more likely have pronounced the entire J series of syllabograms (JA, JE, JO & JU) very much the way the French do today, as in “je” (I) or “justement” (precisely or exactly). If you are allophone English, there is really no way I can tell you how “j” sounds in French. But if you go to this site, you can hear it for yourself (scroll to the bottom of the light blue table):

Listen carefully. You can easily enough tell that the sound of the consonant “j” is much softer in French than it is in English. That is the whole point. As languages progress forward through their historical timeline, the pronunciation of certain letters changes. Sometimes, consonants actually end up as vowels. This is precisely what happened to the soft “j” in Mycenaean Greek. By the time of Homer, it had glided to the vowel “i”. Thus, the genitive singular masculine “ojo” in Mycenaean Greek was now pronounced “oio” in Homer’s Iliad. Now, the real problem here is simply this: when did the pronunciation start to imperceptibly shift from that soft “j” to the much softer vowel “i”? This question is in no way academic, but a reflection of the actual historical process of the gradual transformation, or glide (if you like) from soft “j” to the vowel “i”. Given that Mycenaean Greek was the predominant Greek dialect almost everywhere in Greece from at least 1600 BCE until ca. 1200 BCE, the glide may have already been almost complete by the latter date. But we have no way of really knowing.

However, I am one of many Linear B researchers and translators who believe this is indeed what happened, even as early as four centuries before Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey (if ever he wrote it at all, rather than merely reciting aloud). So at least some of us prefer to list the J series of syllabograms (JA, JE, JO & JU) as the Y series (YA, YE, YO & YU), in our belief that the glide from the soft “j” to the purely vocalic “i” pronunciation of this series of 4 syllabograms was already well under way towards the end of the Mycenaean era. It is far more likely that the earlier soft “j” held sway in Knossos before its final demise ca. 1450-1425 BCE, so the choice of which pronunciation you personally prefer is entirely arbitrary. I have no problem being arbitrary myself. Take your pick.

Why QA, Previously Classified as a Homophone Only, Should Properly be Considered a Syllabogram and Not a Homophone:

The renowned Linear A & Linear B researcher, Prof. John G. Younger, was the first to recognize QA for what it is, a syllabogram. As Chris Tselentis makes it abundantly clear in his well-conceived Linear B Lexicon, he considers QA to be a syllabogram, and not a homophone. As he is Greek, he is in a much better position to have at it than those of us who are not Greek, which of course means almost all of us. This small extract from his Lexicon’s alphabetical list nicely illustrates the point – Click to ENLARGE:

Linear B Syllabogram QA in the Linear B Lexicon by Chris Tselentis

In his comprehensive Linear B Lexicon, Chris Tselentis places QA immediately after PTE and right before QE, which is precisely where it belongs alphabetically in the Linear B syllabary. To classify QA as being only a homophone is to strip it of its actual true value, which is patently unacceptable. Unfortunately, the primary chart, “Proposed Values of the Mycenaean Syllabary”, which is the one practically everyone studying Linear B resorts to, is inaccurate & totally out-of-date on two vital counts.

[1] The new syllabograms (actually not so new), JU & QA are missing from that chart.
[2] Past Linear B researchers and translators, from Michael Ventris through to his colleague, Prof. John Chadwick, were mistaken in their interpretation of the syllabogram QA as a homophone only. Since it is now known that in fact QA is an attested syllabogram (A), the previous phonetic value Ventris, Chadwick et. al. assigned to it is neither here nor there. In order not to confuse Linear B students and researchers, I cannot be bothered rehashing its former value. This in no way detracts from their splendid work in the successful decipherment. It just took a number of decades for later Linear B researchers to finally realize that there was (and is) more to this little beastie than was previously believed to be the case.

Since the Linear B syllabary has no syllabogram to account for either a B+ vowel or G+vowel series, QA, QE, QO had to stand in for both “ba, be, bo...etc.” & “ga, ge, go...” in Mycenaean Greek.

If you still wish to read an early, but truly excellent, extensive study on the conjectural pronunciation of of a great many syllabograms, download the PDF file, The Linear B Signs 8-A and 25-A2 (Remarks on the Problem of Mycenaean Doublets), by Antonín Bartonek, translated by S. Kostomlatský (1957). This study clearly illustrates the then current belief that PA2, i.e. QA, was strictly a homophone... a belief which has not stood the test of time. In Fact, Prof. John G. Younger, one of the most esteemed Linear A & Linear B researchers of our time, has this to say about the Mycenaean pronunciation of QA.

John G Younger’s reassignment of PA2 to QA. Click to ENLARGE:

If you click on the Title Banner for Prof. Younger’s site below, you will be taken there, where you can view both the Linear A & B Grids. Scroll down to near the end of the page to view his complete chart of the Linear B grid.

Richard

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

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

Chinese (Oriental):

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

Chinese Character Classification:

Pictograms:

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

Ideograms:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion:

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

Richard

Twitter Hash Tags #HashTags to be Used to Search Linear B, Linear A & Linear C

Twitter Hash Tags #HashTags to be Used to Search Linear B, Linear A & Linear C: Click to ENLARGE:

What is a Hash Tag #HashTag #hashtag?

Strange as it may seem, so many people with Twitter accounts or using Twitter, and other boards, such as PINTEREST etc., do not know what a Hash Tag means. First of all, it looks like this: #HashTag #hashtag. Secondly, it can be defined simply as

[A] the Google Search term, Subject or Topic or, more generally, the Area of Interest you as a Twitter account owner wish to get people to search for your #HashTag or search term you should input in any Twitter message you send to anyone, to ensure (at least to some extent) that anyone searching will find something almost exactly matching those topics of specific concern to both you and them or...

[B] for someone who simply wishes to search a #HashTag #hashtag for the very same reason(s).

Issues and Problems with #HashTag #hashtag Hash Tags to Keep in Mind:

Before I proceed, allow me to explain: I am a professional librarian (MLS, Master of Library and Information Science, University of Western Ontario, 1975) and so I can safely say, in this sole instance, that I actually do KNOW what I am saying.

(1) Hash Tags (#HashTag #hashtag) can only find exactly what you wish folks to find in your + anyone else’s Twitter account if they exactly match your Google Search Term or Subject, and I mean exactly. And even then there will be false hits, as is always the case with stupid Google and equally stupid computers! For instance, the only #HashTags #hashtags which guarantee you will find Tweets on Linear A, B & C are: #MinoanlinearA, #MycenaeanLinearB, #supersyllabograms, #ArcadoCypriotLinearC & #Mycenaean Greek. Supersyllabograms exist in Linear B alone, and so if you use that search term you are guaranteed to get a lot of Tweets bang on for Linear B.

The only ones which will return a high hit rate for Linear A, B & C are: #LinearA #LinearB & #LinearC + the other hash tags in the 80-90% range. However, the problem with these 3 Google Search terms is Google itself (big surprise, eh!). Not only will you find ALL #LinearA #LinearB & #LinearC, i.e. on Linear A, Linear B & Linear C, you will also find ALL on Linear A, Linear B & Linear C. What! Don’t be ridiculous! - you say. But this is no laughing matter. It just so happens that there are there are three (3) areas of advanced mathematics which use the exact same hash tags! Click Wikipedia banner for the article on Linear Algebra:

Wikipedia:

Linear algebra is the branch of mathematics concerning vector spaces and linear mappings between such spaces.

So be forewarned!

(2) If you use Hash Tags (#HashTags #hashtags) which reasonably closely approximate what you wish folks to find in your + anyone else’s Twitter account (70-80%), you can use slightly less specific Hash Tags (#HashTag #hashtag) such as: #AncientGreek #ancientgreek #ArcadoCypriot. The problem here is that the first two will pick up anything having anything at all to do with Ancient Greek, while the last one will still pick everything on Linear C (#LinearC), but will also pick up everything on the ancient Greek Arcado-Cypriot dialect! Since Arcado-Cypriot was written both with the Linear C syllabary and with the ancient Greek alphabet, you see the problem.

(3) If you Hash Tags (#HashTag #hashtag) dealing with ancient linguistics specifically concerned with Ancient Greek & closely related subjects, you will get all the Tweets on these topics! Now we are into the 1,000s! Your search will include all of the subjects above in [1] (80-90%), but you will also have to rummage through 1,000s of Tweets just to get 200 or so Tweets on anything in [2] above (70-80%). However, this is still an extremely useful way of approaching the dilemma, because that is what it is. Since so many people do not use #hashtags on Twitter, they will resort instead to writing out Linear A, Linear B, Linear C etc. in full for anything in (1) or (2) above. So you are bound to see anything in [2] above in the full text of many Tweets here for that reason. This is called a contextual search, and it is quite useful, but only if you have exhausted all your options in [2] above.

(4) Some useful #hashtag search terms at level [2] (80-90%) above are: #Minoan #Knossos #Mycenae #Mycenaean #Pylos #Phaistos #syllabary #syllabicscripts #syllabograms #logograms #ideograms #AncientGreek #HomericGreek. But you will get a lot of false hits, because, for example, ideograms are the default script for so many oriental languages, Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc., but which account for only a little more than half of all the characters in either Minoan Linear A or Mycenaean Linear B.

(5) Anything less specific than all of the search terms in [1][2] & [3] will lead to disastrous results.

(6) Twitter Hash Tags #HashTag #HashTags #hashtag #hashtags must be input as follows:

[a] There must be no spaces or extraneous punctuation between all of the words in the hash tag! So for example #MycenaeanGreek or #mycenaeangreek will find Tweets on Mycenaean Greek, but #Mycenaean Greek will chop off the word Greek, seeing it only as a word in the Tweet. In other words, ##Mycenaean Greek will find absolutely anything with #Mycenaean as a #hashtag. Another example: #ArcadoCypriot will find everything on Arcado-Cypriot, whereas #Arcado-Cypriot again chops off Cypriot, searching only #Arcado, an almost useless search, since hardly anyone would index a Tweet with that bizarre search term!

[b] Twitter #HashTags #hashtags are CASE-sensitive so unfortunately you will have to use both UC & LC search terms, no matter how accurate they are. For example, if you want absolutely everything on #Mycenaean Greek you have to input #MycenaeanGreek & #mycenaeangreek, since so many people on the Internet cannot be bothered with CAPS.

[c] If no one on Twitter has ever used a search term you are the first to use, i.e. to invent, such as my - #Supersyllabograms #Supersyllabogram #Supersyllabograms #supersyllabograms, no one will find your Tweets on that subject for quite some time, because at first no on knows what the hell a supersyllabogram even is, as if!... However, as time goes on, if your invented search term proves to be a big hit or big deal on the Internet, folks will begin to cotton on, and will start using it as a search terms. But this can take months, a year or years, so be patient. I recently searched – supersyllabograms – on Google, a term I invented a year ago, and found 3 pages of Google hits, all bang on because there are no synonyms for it whatsoever. So I am making progress, turtle-like, but what the heck eh...

Richard

Brief Glossary of Linguistic Terms Used in Chapter 13, Mycenaean Greek, of A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, by E.J. Bakker (2014)

Brief Glossary of Linguistic Terms Used in Chapter 13, Mycenaean Greek, of A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, by E.J. Bakker (2014) Click to ENLARGE Snapshot of the Beginning and End of this Chapter:

Ablaut = The Indo-European ablaut is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language that has significantly influenced both ancient and modern Indo-European languages. In English the strong verb sing, sang, sung and its related noun song illustrate this shift in vowels.

Consonant cluster = a consonant cluster or consonant blend is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, the groups /spl/ and /ts/ are consonant clusters in the word splits & /psy/ in psychology, psychiatry etc.

Diaeresis = two adjacent vowels, in adjacent syllables, not separated by a consonant or pause and not merged into a diphthong & pronounced as a unit (one sound) as in “aisle” “aesthetic” or “oil”, i.e. pronounced separately, as in “coincidental” or “intuitive”.

Enclitic = a word pronounced with so little emphasis that it is shortened and forms part of the preceding word, e.g., n't in can't + Proclitic = a word pronounced with so little emphasis that it is shortened and forms part of the following word, for example, you in y'all (American slang only).

Eponym = a name or noun formed after a person's name. For example, the Odyssey is from the name Odysseus, and the Ames Test, which tests for carcinogens, from its inventor, Bruce Ames. It is back-formed from "eponymous", from the Greek "eponymos" meaning "giving name".

Grassmann's law = a dissimilatory phonological process in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant in the next syllable, the first one loses the aspiration.

Intervocalic = an intervocalic consonant is a consonant between two vowels in the middle of a word. Intervocalic consonants are associated with lenition, a phonetic process that causes consonants to weaken and eventually disappear entirely.

Haplography = (from Greek: haplo- 'single' + -graphy 'writing') is the act of writing once what should be written twice. For example, the English word idolatry, the worship of idols, comes from the Greek eidololatreia, but one syllable (lo) has been lost through haplography, and endontics loses one vowel from endodontics (do). Note that these vowels, which are later lost in almost all ancient Greek dialects, are almost always present in Mycenaean Greek.

Isogloss = also called a heterogloss is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature. Major dialects are typically demarcated by groups of isoglosses. For instance, isoglosses in West Greek dialects, such as Doric Greek, are considerably different than those in East Greek dialects, such as Mycenaean, Arcado-Cypriot, Aeolic, Ionic & Attic Greek.

Lexical diffusion = is both a phenomenon and a theory. The phenomenon is that whereby a phoneme is modified in a subset of the lexicon, and spreads gradually to other lexical items. For example, in English, /u?/ has changed to /?/ in good and hood but not in food. The related theory, proposed by William Wang in 1969, is that all sound changes originate in a single word or a small group of words and then spread to other words with a similar phonological make-up, but may not spread to all words in which they potentially could apply.

Morph =a word segment that represents one morpheme in sound or writing. For example, the word infamous is made up of three morphs – in-, fam(e), -eous--each of which represents one morpheme.

Morpheme = an abstract unit of meaning, whereas a morph is a formal unit with a physical shape.

Phoneme = any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat or o in cot, con, core.

Prevocalic = occurring immediately before a vowel.

Psilosis = Psilosis is the sound change in which Greek lost the consonant sound /h/ during antiquity. The term comes from the Greek psilosis ("smoothing, thinning out") & is related to the name of the smooth breathing (psilei), the sign for the absence of initial /h/ in a word. Dialects that have lost /h/ are called psilotic.

Syncretism = the discrete identity of distinct morphological forms of a word, such as verb conjugations, and declensions of nouns, adjectives, pronouns etc. (mostly) in inflectional languages like Greek & Latin. In Attic Greek, nom. logos (word) changes to logou in the genitive & in Latin, nom. rex (king)changes to regis in the genitive.

Toponym = a place name, e.g. Knossos, Mycenae, Pylos, Lasynthos, Zakros etc.

Richard Vallance Janke, Oct. 6 2014

Initial Confirmation for Strong Evidence of the Extremely Close Relationship Between the Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot Dialects and Their Vocabulary & the Profound Implications for Linear B Research and Translation

Initial Confirmation for Strong Evidence of the Extremely Close Relationship Between the Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot Dialects and Their Vocabulary & the Profound Implications for Linear B Research and Translation – Click to ENLARGE:

This chart of only six (6) words, the same in the Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot dialects, make it painfully obvious, with the possible exception of the word for “city”, which is nowhere attested in Linear B, and hence open to serious doubt, that their vocabulary is, in the vast majority of cases, almost virtually identical. Once I have mastered Linear C by early next year (2015), I shall be able to translate the famous Idalion Tablet, which you see here:

This tablet, which is very long, and in splendid condition, being cast in bronze, is a legal decree composed in the fifth century BCE. Although its publication comes much later than the fall of Mycenae ca. 1200 BCE, it is well known that the Arcado-Cypriot dialect was written in Linear C as early as 1100 BCE, a mere 100 years later (!) than the sudden disappearance of Linear B, even though there are no extant documents from that time. The vital point here is that neither Mycenaean Greek nor Arcado-Cypriot underwent any significant changes at all during their primacy, the former between ca. 1600 & 1200 BCE, the latter between 1100 & 400 BCE. They remained almost virtually unchanged, the latter in spite of the Dorian invasions around 1200-1100 BCE, which had no visible effect whatsoever on either Arcado-Cypriot or its slightly older forbear and kissing cousin, Mycenaean Greek, both firmly encamped in the family of East Greek dialects. Dorian Greek was an entirely different kettle of fish, being strictly a West Greek dialect. Linguists, experts in ancient Greek dialects, have confirmed this over and over throughout the twentieth century into the twenty-first. In fact, the consensus is universal on the extremely close bond between these two East Greek, proto-Ionic dialects, because how on earth can it be otherwise? An orange is an orange, and a tangerine is a tangerine. They are both in the same class. But Dorian, a West Greek dialect, is no more related to our East Greek cousins than an apple is to either an orange or a tangerine. Yes, they are both fruit, but that is where the similarity ends.

If you are in any doubt over the extreme similarities between Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot, I refer you to this post:

which you should read in its entirety. In it, two eminent linguists in ancient Greek, virtually agree on every single point, even though they are writing 60 years apart, the one, C.D. Buck, in 1955, and the other, E.J. Bakker, whose intensive study of the ancient Greek dialects was just released this year (2014). This is the consensus pretty much across the board. It is extremely difficult, if not downright impossible, to divorce these two dialects from one another. If anything, there is only annulment between West Greek Dorian, and East Greek Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot. The former, which only gained the ascendancy in its own sphere of influence, the Peloponnese, after the Dorian invasions ca. 1200 BCE, had virtually no effect at all on Mycenaean Greek, simply because that is impossible, Mycenaean Greek having predated Dorian Greek by at least 400 years! Besides, Mycenae fell either before the Dorians arrived on the scene, or because the Dorians themselves destroyed their civilization.

But even this latter scenario is highly improbable, for this sole reason if none other. Since all of the Mycenaean cities collapsed at the same time (give or take a few years), I have to seriously question how the Dorians could possibly have toppled all of them, when for instance, Thebes, in far-flung north-eastern Greece, was so far away from the Peloponnese that they, the Dorians, would have had to trek all across Greece just to get there. An improbability, if not an impossibility, considering the horrendously difficult conditions for long distance travel in those days, even – or should I say – except at a snail’s pace.

Once I have mastered Linear C, which is going to be very soon (early 2015), I shall translate the entire Idalion tablet, and at least 3 other Linear C tablets into English, and even supply the alphabetical Cypriot text of the tablet. Oh, and by the way, if anyone questions the even tighter relationship between the northern Arcadian dialect on the Peloponnese, and its far-flung sister, Cypriot, on Cyprus, in the south-east Mediterranean, think again. With the exception of a few piddly differences, they are virtually identical, all the more astonishingly that their locales are so far apart (See travel in the ancient world above). But it does not end there. Mycenaean Greek & Arcado-Cypriot, both East Greek dialects, are even more similar than Ionic & Attic Greek! That is one tough act to follow.

There is at least one modern researcher and translator of Linear B tablets who attempts to correlate Mycenaean with Doric Greek vocabulary, and at that, quite frequently. This is a dangerous path to pursue, fraught with hazards from which it would be difficult, even in the best of scenarios, to extricate oneself without becoming mired in blatant contradictions leading inexorably to a reductio ad absurdum. I have the greatest respect for this linguist, who has roundly criticized me and soundly corrected me on at least three of my more dubious, if not down-right silly translations of Linear B tablets, and for this I am truly grateful.

Yet to pursue a path that will lead nowhere but to an irresolvable impasse seems very much like Don Quixote’s tilting at windmills. While I applaud, though with some serious reservations, this person’s highly imaginative approach to deciphering Linear B, the methodology is bound to turn all Linear B research on its head, and to largely invalidate the corpus of Linear B translations to date almost in its entirety... let alone the astonishing achievements of Michael Ventris in the first place. I am certainly not advocating that any researcher-translator of Linear B cannot do precisely that, but if he or she does, that person will have a heck of a lot of explaining & justifications to advance, and above all, will have to provide proof-positive (no loopholes please!) that his or her hypotheses or, if you like, entire theory, flies or crashes. Not only that, such a translator would have to convince the vast majority of contemporary linguists expert in Linear B decipherment and translation that such a drastic shift in the tectonics of the translation of Linear B does in fact constitute a truly significant, meaningful revolution in our understanding of the script and of the East Greek dialect, Mycenaean Greek, which is its underpinning.

I sincerely believe that my own research, which goes in the exact opposite direction, directly correlating the (striking) similarities between a relatively large cross-section of Mycenaean vocabulary in Linear B and Arcado-Cypriot in Linear C (I expect at least 100-200 words), will serve to throw a huge wrench into any approach which attempts to correlate Mycenaean East Greek in any significant way with Dorian West Greek, and which is highly likely to invalidate said approach once and for all. Of course, my approach, my hypotheses, my theory and my methodology must also stand the test of sound critical appraisal from the international community of Linear B linguists. If my theory does not pass muster with the majority of Linear B experts, so be it. There it ends.

As an aside, allow me to point out that I shall be pursuing a very similar route starting in October, and continuing on through the end of this year and probably beyond, as I translate the entire Catalogue of Ships from Book II of the Iliad, the very section of that astonishing Epic in which Homer makes frequent use of the most archaic Greek in the entire Iliad. This translation will confirm (because all others have to date) that a strong correlation also exists between his archaic Greek, almost certainly harkening back to at least the ninth century BCE, if not beyond, and Mycenaean Greek, upon which it is firmly founded. That exercise, in and of itself, will serve just as well as the present on Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot, to confirm that Mycenaean Greek has strong bonds, not only with Arcado-Cypriot, but with the most archaic Greek in the Iliad. And it does not end there either. If confirmation is pending between the close affinity of Homer’s archaic Greek and Arcado-Cypriot, that circumstance alone will only serve to strengthen my hypotheses, and the theory underpinning them, as outlined above. I sincerely believe and confidently trust it will.

Richard

Is that 11 or 7 New Supersyllabograms (5 SSYs Deciphered) for the Textile Industry in Ancient Knossos?

As with sheep raising and husbandry, the area of the Minoan agri-economy at Knossos to which the Linear B scribes devoted far and away their greatest attention (some 700 or 20 % + of the 3,000 or so tablets I closely examined from Scripta Minoa), supersyllabograms were also frequently used on tablets concerned with the textile industry and cloth.

First of all, a bit of a review for those of you who do not know what a supersyllabogram is. A supersyllabogram, which is a term I recently coined to describe this very common phenomenon on so many Linear B tablets, is simply the first syllabogram, in other words, the first syllable of the Linear B word it represents. Linear B scribes resorted to this practice so often that there can be no doubt that they did so to effect shortcuts to save precious space on the clay tablets, which were after all (very) small. This practice, in addition to that of the frequent use of ideograms to stand in for entire Linear B words makes it quite clear (at least to me) that a good deal of Linear B is in fact shorthand, and the earliest occurrence of it in human history, not to be outdone until the invention of modern shorthand under various guises from 1588 onwards, until the arrival of the ultimate system invented by Pitman in 1837. So once again, the Minoan civilization was far ahead of its time, as I have so often pointed out in other respects on this blog.

As it stands now, my research colleague, Rita Roberts, and I have discovered 14 supersyllabograms, as follows:
1. 7 in the area of sheep husbandry, of which 5 are deciphered with a moderate to high degree of certainty (O, KI, PE, ZA & NE), one for which the putative meaning is tentative at best (PA) and one undeciphered (SE). Click this banner to see all 7 supersyllabograms in the area of sheep raising:

2. For military matters, 1 deciphered supersyllabogram (ZE)
3. For religious matters, 1 deciphered sypersyllabogram (DI), with a fair to moderate degree of certainty &
4. 11 (or just 7?) supersyllabograms in the area of the textile industry (or cloth production), of which 5 are deciphered with a moderate to high degree of certainty (NE, PA, PU, TE & WE), and 1 of which the meaning is very uncertain because the supersyllabogram itself looks almost, but not quite, like the syllabogram SA. The 5 remaining supersyllabograms, of which 4 are variations on WE, and the last is ZO, are all presently unintelligible. If we consider WE & its 4 variations as actually only 1 plain supersyllabogram (WE) with 4 variations, this reduces the number of SSYs for cloth and textiles to 7, which to my mind is more reasonable than 11.

Here are the supersyllabograms for the textile and cloth industry (Click to ENLARGE):

I have decided to decipher all those that I could before posting tablets illustrating each deciphered SSY in the area of textiles and cloth production in the Minoan economy at Knossos, so that when I do post the tablets, it will be a lot easier for you to cross-reference to the chart above & find the exact meaning for whichever of the 5 deciphered SSYs I post tablets. For the time being, here are two tablets, one with the blank ideogram for cloth or textiles, which means precisely that and no more, and one with the SSY TE inside the ideogram for cloth or textiles. The syllabogram TE notably modifies the meaning of the ideogram for cloth or textiles. Here we see two Linear B Tablets on the textile industry, the one on the left with the blank ideogram for cloth, period, the one one the right with the syllabogram TE inside it: Click to ENLARGE:

I recently posted another more complete Linear B tablet using the SSY TE for cloth or textiles, here (Click to see the post):

Taken all together, the supersyllabograms in each category would add up to a total of 16, except that NE & PA are common to sheep raising and the textile industry, but — and I must lay particular emphasis on this — an entirely different meaning obtains for the SSY PA for sheep husbandry and its equivalent for textiles. NE means the same thing for both areas of the Mycenaean agri-economy (sheep raising and textiles). Since NE & PA appear twice in two categories, this reduces the number of supersyllabograms we have discovered to date to 14, of which we have managed to decipher 10 with a moderate to high degree of certainty, the rest either being highly uncertain or simply unintelligible (for the time being).

The 14 supersyllabograms we have so far discovered are then, in alphabetical order: DI KI NA NE O PA PE PU SA TE WE ZA ZE ZO. This is an astonishing turnout, given that there are only about 55 syllabograms all told (give or take, depending on whose charts you consult), not counting the homophones. The fact that we have already confirmed that fully 14 or over 25 % of 55 syllabograms are supersyllabograms speaks volumes to the commonplace use the Linear B scribes made of them as shorthand. Taken in conjunction with well over 100 ideograms, the 14 supersyllabograms appear to lend a good deal of credence to my hypothesis that Linear B was a shorthand to a significant extent. This characteristic Linear B shares with virtually no other ancient script, except perhaps Linear A, but since the latter is undeciphered, we have no way of knowing.

But believe it or not, we still have not accounted for all of the supersyllabograms discovered to date. Thomas G. Palaima actually found and easily deciphered 5 supersyllabograms for the names of Mycenaean settlements and cities on Linear B tablet Heidelburg HE FL 1994. These SSYs are KO for KONOSO or Knossos, ZA for ZAKORO or Zakros, PA for Palaikastro (or Phaistos), PU for PURO or Pylos & MU for MUKENE or Mycenae. This bumps our total back up to 16, in alphabetical order: DI KI KO MU NA NE O PA PE PU SA TE WE ZA ZE ZO, accounting for fully 29 % of all Linear B syllabograms. We cannot blame Prof. Thomas G. Palaima for not recognizing his 5 syllabograms as such as supersyllabograms, since after all there were only 5, so there was no need to isolate them as a phenomenon in and of itself. Yet with the discovery of a further 11 of these little beasties, the situation has entirely changed. They simply have to be isolated, defined and classified, unless we wish to be bogged down in a hopeless quagmire of meaningless syllabograms. And that simply will not do.

Rest assured that there are more supersyllabograms to come, as we have not yet surveyed all the tablets in other areas of the Minoan/ Mycenaean civilization in all its aspects from the cross-section of about 3,000 we minutely examined from Scripta Minoa. Once we have closely examined all 3,000 or so tablets for every possible occurrence of supersyllabograms, we shall compile a complete chart of them. We should be able to complete this task before the end of this year, all things being equal. Once we have accomplished our goal, we shall then post (a) a complete chart of all the supersyllabograms in each category, with duplication or triplication whenever the same SSY is used (with different meanings!) in two or three categories & (b) a revised table of the Basic Values of the Mycenaean Syllabary widely available on the Internet with all of the supersyllabograms in BOLD.

Such a revised table of the basic Linear B syllabograms in Mycenaean Greek is bound to make waves in the Linear B research community. Whether or not my theory of supersyllabograms as a phenomenon in Linear B is, if you like, correct, partially correct, or just wishful thinking and a bunch of hogwash is entirely up to the international Linear B research community at large to decide for themselves over the next few years. Yet I remain quite confident that there is more to this little mystery than meets the eyes. I shall have more to say on the marked difference between supersyllabograms which appear either before or after the ideograms to which they refer (as with all the SSYs for sheep raising) versus those which are invariably inscribed inside the ideograms which they modify. These two classes of supersyllabograms are not the same, as we shall soon see. Richard

Just released & a Must Read! A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language by Egbert J. Bakker (ed.) © 2014

A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language Paperback – January 28, 2014, by Egbert J. Bakker (Editor) ISBN-13: 978-1118782910 (hard cover) ISBN-10: 1118782917 (paperback) Edition: 1st $50! Click to ENLARGE:

with an extensive review in: Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Click the banner to read the review:

Here is an extract from that review to whet your appetite:

“But whatever one might think of companion volumes, this is a useful book. It boasts a wide range of generally high-quality essays by a parade of eminent scholars. Perhaps its most praiseworthy feature is the clarity and accessibility of many of its contributions, which makes them ideal starting points for the non-specialist. We will no doubt be assigning several of these chapters in our classes.”

The Significance of A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language in Contemporary Research into Ancient Greek Linguistics:

This new book, representative of the latest linguistic research into the ancient Greek language, may very well become a definitive classic in its own right. It is all the more relevant as it contains an entire chapter on Mycenaean Greek and Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot and Linear C, confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt my own firm contention that Arcado-Cypriot as a Greek dialect is intimately allied with its slightly older cousin, Mycenaean Greek. What Egbert J. Bakker to say about the close bond between the Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot dialects deserves to be quoted verbatim:

“Mycenaean is clearly, therefore, an East Greek dialect, along with Attic-Ionic and Arcado-Cypriot...” (pg. 198) and again, “Mycenaean is therefore a dialect related to Arcado-Cypriot - not unexpected, given the geography - but not necessarily to be identified as the direct ancestor of either Arcadian and Cypriot. The precise relationship between the three is difficult to determine. Presumably the Arcadians were the descendents of speakers of a Mycenaean-like (page 199) dialect who took to the hills when the Dorians invade the Peloponnese, while the Cypriots were émigré cousins.”

Recall what C.D. Buck had to say about the Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot dialects way back in 1955, in his equally impressive, then cutting-edge, linguistic study of ancient Greek, The Greek Dialects:

And, of course, just to be certain we have the whole picture clearly in focus, we must also include Mycenaean Greek and early Arcadian as proto-Ionic, both of which dialects held sway “prior to the great migrations” (of the Dorians)...

and you can easily see that not much has changed in the past 50 or so years since its publication and the release of A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language by Egbert J. Bakker, in our overall perspectives on the intimate relationship between the East Greek dialects, Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot dialects, as I was at great pains to stress in a post on this very same issue just a few days ago, when I myself echoed the opinions of both these esteemed scholars, as follows:

“Astonishingly (and for my purposes, very conveniently) these two proto-Ionic dialects are as closely allied as their natural descendents, Ionic and Attic Greek, which rose to prominence some 5 centuries after Linear C first popped up out of the clear blue.”

Need I say more? - except to assert unequivocally that my own research into the intimate bond between the Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriots will go far beyond merely this consideration, as I shall soon delve deeply into the close relationship between (at least some) Mycenaean vocabulary in Linear B and Arado-Cypriot in Linear C, the implications of which should prove profound for a greater understanding of Mycenaean Greek per se. Keep posted.

Richard

20 Greek Words in the Arcadian Dialect Translated into Tentative & Actual Linear B

20 Greek Words in the Arcadian Dialect Translated into Tentative & Actual Linear B: (Click to ENLARGE):

As I just did in our previous post with a much larger vocabulary of the Cypriot dialect, from which I extracted as many putative or hypothetical Linear B concrete and semi-abstract words as I could, leaving purely abstract words aside (as they almost never appear in in Linear B in Mycenaean Greek), I am providing 20 hypothetical Linear B equivalents to everyone on our blog or on the Internet fascinated by the near intimate relationship between the Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot dialects, written in Linear B and C respectively, with a vocabulary in the Arcadian dialect, somewhat briefer than that I posted for the Cypriot.

By way of introduction, I should like to draw your attention to some highly pertinent facts. In his ground-breaking exhaustive survey of all of the ancient Greek dialects, C. D. Buck, in The Greek Dialects (a), has this to say about the relationship of the Arcadian and Cypriot dialects, which are fact but minor variants on the same dialect (all italics mine):

“No two dialects, not even Attic and Ionic, belong together more obviously than do those of Arcadia and the distant Cyprus. They share in a number of notable peculiarities which are unknown elsewhere. See 189 and Chart I. This is to be accounted for by the fact that Cyprus was colonized, not necessarily or probably from Arcadia itself, as tradition states, but from the Peloponnesian coast, at a time when its speech was like that which in Arcadia survived the Doric migration. This group represents, beyond question, the pre-Doric speech of most of the Peloponnesus whatever we choose to call it... passim...

... There are in fact notable points of agreement between Arcado-Cypriot and Aeolic (see 190.3-6 and Chart I,) which cannot be accidental... passim... and there are certain points of agreement with Attic-Ionic...”

C.D. Buck’s comments pretty much speak for themselves. But it is extremely important to stress the very intimate relationship between Arcado-Cypriot Greek (being the natural conflagration of the Arcadian and Cypriot dialects into one almost seamless continuum) on the one hand to Aeolic and Attic-Ionic on the other, all of these dialects inclusive falling squarely within the orbit of East Greek, as we move chronologically forward in time. On the other hand, along the same timeline, only in reverse chronological order, we can confirm that (proto-)Arcadian and Mycenaean Greek also unquestionably belong to the same class of ancient Greek dialects, namely, the East Greek. This is precisely why I choose to term both Mycenaean and (proto-)Arcadian as proto-Ionic, since that is in fact what these dialects were.

In this perspective, we need to add one more critical comment, again quoting directly from C.D. Buck (although he and I would certainly mirror one another, if we either of us were to say this, even without knowing the other one had. He did say this, and I do.) So allow me to steal the words right out of his mouth, in the sure realization that this is precisely what I, and for that matter, all linguists worldwide would say about the relationship between the ancient Greek dialects would assert... save for a few lone renegades, whom I won’t even bother with, as it is a waste of my breath and our time. C.D. Buck has this to say:

“The most fundamental division of the Greek dialects is that into the West Greek and the East Greek dialects, the terms referring to their location prior to the great migrations. The East Greek are the “the old Hellenic” dialects, that is, those employed by the peoples who held the stage almost exclusively in the period represented by the Homeric poems, when the West Greek peoples remained in obscurity in the northwest. To the East Greek belong the Attic and Aeolic groups... passim... And to the East Greek (dialects) also belong the Arcado-Cyprian.” And, of course, just to be certain we have the whole picture clearly in focus, we must also include Mycenaean Greek and early Arcadian as proto-Ionic, both of which dialects held sway “prior to the great migrations.” Here C.D. Buck is referring specifically to the great Doric invasion of the Greek peninsula ca. 1200-1100 BCE or thereabouts.

The following summary can be drawn with relative ease from C.D. Buck’s linguistic analysis:
1. The division between the East Greek dialects, among which we count the Arcado-Cypriot (subsumed by its slightly different Arcadian and Cypriot variants) plus the Aeolic, Ionic and Attic dialects, as representative, there being others as well... and the West Greek dialects, under the generic, Doric, is clear and distinct. Never the twain shall meet.
2. Since Mycenaean, proto-Arcado-Cypriot and its later metamorphoses, Arcadian and Cypriot, are all in the same dialectical class, i.e. East Greek, any consideration of the function(s), historical rôle and influences of any and all of these dialects in particular play, must be decisively distinguished from the rôle the Doric dialects played, since the former were all firmly in place and fully operative all over the Greek peninsula well before the Doric invasions ca. 1200-1100 BCE. In fact, in the case of Mycenaean Greek, that dialect held sway for at least 300 years prior to the Doric invasions, so that any putative influence or impact of the latter on the former is de facto impossible.
3. The proto-Arcado-Cypriot dialect is clearly the younger cousin of Mycenaean Greek, as is its later evolution into literary Arcado-Cypriot (Arcadian/Cypriot) as found on the Idalion tablet (fifth century BCE). This fact alone serves to reinforce beyond a shadow of a doubt that Doric Greek could have had no influence on Mycenaean Greek any more than it did on Arcado-Cypriot, as both of the latter were, as C.D. Buck underlines, the “the old Hellenic” dialects. Thus, the intimate relationship between Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot doubly reinforces the total exclusion of Doric influences, however meagre.
4. It naturally follows from 3., as day follows night, that documents composed in Mycenaean Linear B and in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C are soundly ensconced in the framework of the very same class of ancient Greek dialects, the East Greek.

Henceforth, in this blog, any discussion of the intimate relationship between the Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot dialects and of the application of their respective scripts, Linear B and Linear C is firmly set in the framework of this hypothesis, which bears extensive historical linguistic evidence mitigating strongly in its favour.

A few final comments are in order with respect to the actual Linear B correlatives of Arcadian words in the vocabulary above. These observations revolve around the methodological process of cross-correlation between Arcadian documents, in this case in alphabetical Greek, with those in Linear B. What we have already discovered, to our great astonishment and delight, even without taking the requisite step of a thorough methodology of cross-correlation, as discussed at length in our previous post on the relationship between Cypriot and Mycenaean Greek, is that at least one of the words in Linear B extracted from this vocabulary of Arcadian, and very probably two, are clearly and indisputably real attested (A) Linear B words. They are, of course, the Linear B for “and” (QE) and for “girl” (KOWA).

By extension, we may as well add a third, “boy” KOWO, since it is simply the masculine of the former. KOWA appears both in Linear B and in Linear C, and is therefore, by default, attested (A) in both.

This is a rare jewel of a find, and to my mind, it is the very first instance of actual confirmation of any word in the vocabulary of Linear B & C common to Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot. This in effect constitutes our very first, albeit baby, step in the cross-correlation of Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot vocabulary by means of a tried-and-tested linguistic methodology. How many Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot will eventually (nearly) match up, whether scores, some or just a few, I cannot possibly predict right now. But it is certain that we shall eventually be able to compile at least a small vocabulary of equivalent Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot words, and as soon as we can (b), I shall be sure to let you know. Such a vocabulary will prove of inestimable value in going a long way to confirming attested Linear C = derivative Linear B words (ALC+DLB), as explained in the previous post.

NOTES:

(a) Buck, C.D. The Greek Dialects. London: Bristol Classical Press, © 1955, 1998. ISBN 1-85399-566-8. xvi, 373 pp.
(b) sometime in 2015 or at the latest, early 2016.
(c) All italics mine.

A Short Vocabulary of Arcado-Cypriot in Alphabetic Cypriot, with Numerous Putative Linear B Transliterations

A Short Vocabulary of Arcado-Cypriot in Alphabetic Cypriot, with Numerous Putative Linear B Transliterations (Click to ENLARGE):

... and a cry for help! You will have to read this entire post thoroughly if you expect to be able to assist me in any way with this prodigious project.

Preparatory to our in-depth study of the Arcado-Cypriot Linear C syllabary, it is probably wise for us to give you a clear idea of exactly how Linear C words actually look once they have been transliterated from the Linear C syllabary into (in this case) Cypriot words in alphabetic Greek.

A few comments are in order. The first thing you will notice is that I have translated many of the Cypriot words in alphabetic Greek straightaway into their putative Linear B counterparts, and not from their original C. There are two reasons for this, the first unavoidable, as there is no font available for Arcado-Cypriot Linear C. What a drag! And there is no way on earth that I am going to drive myself nuts trying to write all of these words in Linear C.

The second reason is eminently practical and linguistically sound (I sincerely hope). Because my eventual goal in the study of Arcado-Cypriot Linear C is not simply to learn the syllabary, which would be nice in and of itself but hardly necessary, unless I simply had to learn it for an ulterior reason. Unfortunately — or more to the point, fortunately — I have no other choice but to learn it since I am roundly obliged to read the famous legal decree in Linear C, the Idalion Tablet, illustrated here:

Why obliged? I must learn it if I wish to cross-correlate any and all words in Linear C on the Idalion tablet, which have an exact or near exact match, or a very similar counterpart in Mycenaean Linear B. This exercise could conceivably be characterized as regressive extrapolation from a later Greek dialect, Arcado-Cypriot and its syllabary (Linear C) to an earlier, Mycenaean Greek and its own (Linear B), although to term the extrapolation as regressive is a bit of a misnomer here, since only one century or so separates these two East Greek proto-Ionic dialects, from the fall of Mycenae ca. 1200 BCE & the sudden disappearance of Linear B from the scene to the equally sudden, dramatic appearance virtually out of nowhere of its younger cousin, Arcado-Cypriot and its syllabary (Linear C). Astonishingly (and for my purposes, very conveniently) these two proto-Ionic dialects are as closely allied as their natural descendents, Ionic and Attic Greek, which rose to prominence some 5 centuries after Linear C first popped up out of the clear blue.

Don’t think for a moment that Linear C was to fall by the wayside as precipitously as did its slightly older cousin, Linear B. Not for the world. Linear C in fact tenaciously held its own for at least 700 years (!) after its first appearance ca. 1100 BCE, i.e. until at least 400 BCE, when the Cypriots finally caved in and accepted the (by then) standardized Greek alphabet for Attic Greek. And it does not even end there. The Cypriots cherished the Idalion tablet in Linear C as one of the key documents of their society and its literature, and above all, as a legal document of the highest import. So of course, they translated the whole thing word-for-word, from the Linear C of Idalion tablet, much larger than any in Linear B, and a tablet cast in bronze, no less, into the Greek alphabetic version... for their descendants who would no longer be able to read Linear C, once it fell into disuse almost as abruptly as had Linear B.

The preservation of this invaluable and priceless historical literary heritage was absolutely de rigueur to the Cypriots. As a result, the bronze Idalion has survived 2,500 years virtually intact and in very fine condition, unlike so many Linear B tablets, which were all cast in clay, and furnace fired, saved only by the lucky (for us!) happenstance that Knossos burned to the ground ca. 1450 BCE, charring and hardening some 4,000 tablets and fragments, while being unceremoniously buried by the huge volcanic eruption of the Thera volcano... or at least as many historians believe to have happened in that particular timeline. As a mere Linear B linguist, who am I to question the chronology of the Thera eruption, whether it was (reputedly) ca. 1600 or 1500 or 1450 BCE? Besides, it suits us linguists just fine, thank you. We gladly accept 1450 BCE or thereabouts as the time of the eruption, since that is when so many Linear B tablets got buried, along with almost all of the 55,000 or so inhabitants of the city of Knossos... a horrible tragedy for them, but a real stroke of good luck for us. Makes you think of Pompeii. But I am rambling.

As I mentioned above, Linear C held its own for 7 centuries, as the preferred literary script for the Arcadians and Cypriots, alongside the Greek alphabet, and no one thought anything of it. It worked fine, so that was that. No point re-inventing the wheel.

In fact, for my own purposes, one of the three primary missions of our blog, that of cross-correlating every single Linear C word on the Idalion tablet for which there is an exact, near exact or very similar counterpart in Mycenaean Linear B is obligatory, whether I like it or not. So as I always say, I might as well like it and have fun. The over-riding purpose for this unavoidable exercise will become crystal clear to our blog members in the next few months. Just hang in there, folks.

Still, for the time being, I have done a big favour to everyone who is the slightest bit fascinated by the extremely close relationship of these two proto-Ionic East Greek dialects, Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot Greek, by extrapolating the (exact?... hardly!) Linear B counterparts of a great many concrete and semi-abstract words in the alphabetic Greek vocabulary we see above, entirely skipping the absolute requirement of first cross-correlating the actual Linear C words on the Idalion tablet and any other Linear C tablet I can lay my hands on with their Linear B counterparts, before attempting to cross-correlate the Linear B words with the alphabetical counterparts of the Linear C words.

In other words, for the time being, I have reversed the process, flipping it on its head. I must emphatically stress, however, that this is not even remotely a valid experimental approach to the exercise. To clearly illustrate my point, there are two approaches, the first being largely invalid, the second being largely valid. Please understand, and do not forget, that every single one of the Linear B words you see in the vocabulary above is entirely derivative (D), and nothing more, if it even qualifies as that.

1. (as I have done the extrapolation from the Greek alphabet directly into Linear B, illustrated above), entirely missing the obligatory steps:

Linear B words < -------------- (from) the same words in alphabetic Greek)

versus

2. Extrapolation from the vocabulary in Linear C on the Idalion Tablet and any other, first from Linear C into its alphabetic counterpart, and then regressively extrapolating every single word on the Idalion tablet from its Greek alphabetic version directly into its (putative) equivalent in Mycenaean Linear B, and then taking the final third step of double-checking my translations of every single word transliterated into Linear B, by cross-correlating the Linear B versions with their original Linear C counterparts and (yet again) with their alphabetic counterparts in the Cypriot alphabet (which differs somewhat from the Attic), like this:

From the Linear C words --------------> to the same words in alphabetic Cypriot Greek --------------> to their (putative) counterparts in Linear B, then reversing the entire process: Linear B --------------> Linear C --------------> alphabetic Cypriot,

as a confirmation that I have not made any egregious errors, and if necessary (as is certain to be the case) to repeat the entire process all over again,

Linear C --------------> alphabetic Cypriot Greek --------------> (putative) Linear B, (flip) Linear B --------------> Linear C --------------> alphabetic Cypriot

This procedure is far sounder than the first, which hardly qualifies as a procedure at all. However, 1. above is surely better than nothing, as it gives those of us who are really familiar with Linear B a bit of a handle on what the Cypriot words in this vocabulary might look like in Linear B. I say, might, because the second approach, which is linguistically sound, is the only way to confirm or at least to firm up the (putative) Linear B words you see in the Cypriot vocabulary above.

Every single one of the Linear B words flagged in this Cypriot vocabulary is entirely derivative (D), and not attested (A) in any way whatsoever. Any (close) match with an attested Linear B word (A), i.e. an actual Mycenaean word on any extant Linear B tablet is entirely accidental and fortuitous. This means that even if any of the words I have transliterated from the Cypriot vocabulary using (the sloppy) method 1. above look like (real) words in Linear B, their validity as attributed Linear B words cannot be confirmed in the least. After all, the so-called Linear B words I have cross-correlated with their alphabetic counterparts in this vocabulary are merely astute guesses, nothing more. So it would be inadvisable, if not downright stupid, to assume that in fact any of the Linear B words you see in the vocabulary above are in fact really exactly the same as any real, i.e. attested (A) Mycenaean word in Linear B, even if they look identical. There is simply no way to confirm this, unless we follow the strict methodology in 2. above, and there is no way I can do that right now. I have not even mastered Linear C. It is going to take quite some time, probably six months to a year, so don’t hold your breath.

On the other hand, I would be only too happy to receive feedback from my fellow Linear B translators on whether or not any of my guestimates of (putative) Linear B words is potentially well-grounded or just some fanciful notion I have cooked up in my head. So why not share what you have cooked in your head, so that I can compile a list or alternatives for each word. That way, when I finally get around to completing exercise 2. above, we shall all know which version(s) of any so-called Mycenaean word in Linear B any of us have cooked up really can be cooked and please our linguistic palates. One of 4 things is bound to happen with each derived (D) word in Linear B at the end of our research:

1. one of the versions of any word in Linear B in this vocabulary will prove to be correct (but whose we cannot say yet) or
2. one of the versions of any word in Linear B in this vocabulary may prove to be a reasonable candidate as a derived (D) Linear B word or
3 none of the versions we have cooked up will amount to anything but a hill of beans or
4 one (or possibly even more than 1) of the versions of any derived (D) Linear B word will prove to be (a near) exact match with its Linear C counterpart, in which case that word can be reclassified as derivative Mycenaean, attested Linear C, as follows: word (LBD+LCA). Such a word will come a long way from being merely derivative (D), and a long shot at that, to being a sure candidate for a Mycenaean word that probably did exist, even though it is not attested on any Linear B tablet or fragment. But, since it has proven to be attested on the Idalion tablet or any other in Linear C, we have at least a half-confirmation or better that there is a high probably that this word was Mycenaean. So at the culmination of this long process, while none of the so-called Mycenaean words in Linear B we have successfully cross-correlated with their Linear B counterparts can strictly be classified as attributed (D) in Mycenaean Greek, several, possibly even a great many will, I trust, be classified as partially derivative (D), and partially attributed (A), but only if they are definitely attributed (A) in Linear C (not in alphabetical Greek!) These words will then be classified as LBD+LCA, and tentatively added to the vocabulary of Mycenaean Greek, pending confirmation from future archeological finds. To my mind, such confirmation from attested (A) vocabulary on new tablets or fragments in the future is one heck of an exciting prospect, because even if 2 or 3 words match up perfectly with newly discovered attested (A) Mycenaean words, that circumstantial evidence alone will set in actual context some of my own discoveries of certain LBD+LCA words which match up (almost) perfectly with newly discovered Mycenaean words. What an exciting prospect indeed!

And there you have it, my methodology in a nutshell. If anyone can find any way(s) to improve on this methodology any time in the next six months or so, fire away. Please do not be shy, even if you are just learning Linear B. It would be disastrous for this project if the methodology were full of loopholes. There is no real way I can determine this for myself, because I am looking at it subjectively from the inside out, whereas any of you can at least lend some objectivity to the procedure by helping me iron out the bugs. If you do not come forward, there is simply no way I can be sure I have got this down pretty much pat.

Thanks so much.

Richard

The Queen (Wanakasa) is wearing a new dress for her wedding to the King (wanaka) at Knossos! (Click to ENLARGE):

The Queen (Wanakasa) is wearing a new dress for her wedding to the King (wanaka) at Knossos! (Click to ENLARGE):



This tablet is one of the more straightforward among those we have been posting with the new ideograms, in this instance the two new ideograms for “cloth”, the blank one which of course simply means  “cloth” & the one with TE inside it, which means “finely spun cloth”. The only thing I really need to comment on here is the word TUNANO, which apparently means “(a kind of) dress”, but no one seems quite sure about that. Anyway, what really strikes me about this bizarre word is that it is highly unlikely it is Greek. It could be Minoan, but don’t quote me on that! I checked Dr. John Younger’s excellent all-inclusive repository of Linear A tablets and fragments (there are far far fewer of these than Linear B tablets), and I ran several variants on a search for (something like) TUNANO, but got nowhere. So it would be rash to say the very least that this word is Minoan, but on the other hand...

What do you think?  All comments, no matter silly they may seem to you, are more than welcome. After all, no one knows anything about Linear A, so no matter what any of us says, it is either going to sound silly or not, depending on who you are. So who cares anyway?

Oh and BTW, let me know why the right hand side of this tablet is blank. HINT: WETOS or the running year, i.e. the name the Linear B scribes for the fiscal year. Leave your comment and I will tell you what I think the reason is... which is probably right.

 PS we have just reached and passed our 400th. (!) post on our blog, a mere two months after we passed our 300th. That is one heck of a lot of posts for a blog that is only 17 months old. And the number of posts is growing steadily with each passing month. At this rate, we will pass 500 posts before the end of 2014, and very likely 650-700 by our second anniversary at the end of April 2015. Quite an achievement, if you ask me.  Richard

EREPATO in Mycenaean Greek. Is this the word for “ivory” or “slain in war”? Extensive Circumstantial Evidence for the case against the latter

Here we have Gretchen Leonhardt’s translation of Knossos tablet KN V 684 (Click to ENLARGE):

From the very outset, when I ran across Ms. Gretchen Leonhardt’s highly unusual, irregular translation for the Mycenaean Greek word in Linear B, EREPATO (here latinized for most folks visiting our blog, who cannot read Linear B), my first reaction was to be totally confused, bordering on dazed. I just couldn’t wrap this decidedly esoteric translation around my head. I was stumped. Was Ms. Leonhardt on to something no other researcher has even remotely entertained as a possible translation of EREPATO in the past 62 years since the decipherment of Linear B by the brilliant Michael Ventris? OK, I thought, I will give her the benefit of the doubt, but when my own doubts starting piling up one on top of the other, the benefit of the doubt simply vanished in a puff of smoke. I hasten to add that my doubts as a Linear B researcher and translator, hopefully as adept as Ms. Leonhardt most certainly is, over her newly coined decipherment of this one word alone are founded, not on mere speculation, but on truly practical, experimental and logical factors which together conspire to cast serious doubt on, if not almost certain evidence strongly mitigating against such a translation.

To put a fine point on it, either one or the other of our translations, but not both, can reasonably be said to be close to the mark if not on it.

My reservations are based on the following factors impinging on Ms. Leonhardt’s highly imaginative – and I stress, imaginative – decipherment of EREPATO, and subsequently on the huge impact her translation has on the entire text, warping the meaning of the tablet way out of kilter. Since I have spent months on end ruminating over her translation, I have come up with more and more practical and/or logical objections to it, and there are many. So please bear with me. These are:

[1] Given the minimal context surrounding the word EREPATO on this tablet, it would seem, at least on the surface, that Ms. Leonhardt is perfectly justified in entertaining a newly coined translation that makes sense, once it passes closer scrutiny. So where context is minimal, I must grant Ms. Leonhardt the prerogative to translate this word as she sees fit.

However, there is one Linear B tablet from Pylos containing the very same word, EREPATO, in which context is not minimal at all, but extremely precise. And here it is Click to ENLARGE:

I posit that in the context of the Pylos tablet, bearing on craftsmanship alone, EREPATO can mean one thing and one thing only, “ivory”. Certainly not “slain in war” or “slain by Ares” or more properly “slain by Ares in war”, unless the translator of the Pylos tablet consciously sets out to radically change the meaning of almost all the other words, to force them to conform with his or her pet decipherment of just one single word on the Pylos tablet. But this is patently a very risky, if not outright dangerous, route to pursue, since it is bound to warp huge chunks of Mycenaean vocabulary way out of joint, the more and more one relies on it and pursues it to the exclusion of most if not all other impinging factors for any and all Linear B tablets one intends to translate.

In this light, I would like to ask Ms. Leonhardt if she truly believes the Pylos tablet, of which the context is very precise, namely, the fine craftsmanship of chariot wheels, can be rendered any other way than it has already been. Is it even possible, let alone feasible and – I fear I must say it again - practical or logical to pursue this method of decipherment of this particular tablet?

With all this in mind, I really have no other choice but to invite her to do precisely that, i.e. to decipher this detailed tablet as she sees fit, and to come up with a really convincing alternate translation. When I say “convincing”, I certainly do not mean to me alone (even if it does convince me, even partially) but convincing as a practical alternative substantial version to the community of Linear B translators at large of the very kinds of things Linear B scribes were so bent on tallying, almost exclusively in the domain of inventories or statistics.

[2] This brings us right to our next point, the overarching rôle of inventory keeping and statistical analysis which the Linear B scribes were fixated on, to the exclusion of practically any other consideration, almost without exception. I can hear Ms. Leonhardt proclaim, “But my translation is an inventory.” Fair enough. But here lies the rub... an inventory of precisely what? To her mind, it seems pretty obvious – to a strictly military matter. But it is surely in this regard that the entire translation, let alone the rendering of EREPATO as “slain in war” or “slain by Ares” simply crumbles to pieces. And here is why. It is not a question of tabular context at all, since Ms. Leonhardt has frequently informed me that, to her mind at least, context is not an over-riding factor in the decipherment of any Linear B tablet. Again, fair enough. I’ll buy that, at least for the time-being.

But what Ms. Leonhardt has failed to seriously take into account is the level or frequency of occurrence of Linear B tablets specifically and solely concerned with military matters as their primary focus. And I hate to say this, there is not one single tablet or fragment in the 3,000 (give or take a few) that I have meticulously examined from Scripta Minoa that deals with anything like something as specific as Ms. Leonhardt’s translation, relating - and I emphatically stress – to sweeping up the spoils of war from the battlefield. Not even remotely. But there is more, a lot more to take into account.

[3] In my recent exhaustive statistical analysis of the occurrence of the primary, over-riding concern of the huge cross-section of 3,000 of the Linear B tablets out of some 4,000+ (i.e. 75 %!) I closely examined from Knossos, I was astonished to discover that no fewer than 700+! or 20 %+ of all of them put together deal exclusively with sheep, rams and ewes, and nothing else. Here are the published results of my survey of sheepish tablets (pardon the pun!) Click to ENLARGE:

In fact, the pre-occupation of the Linear B scribes with sheep at Knossos and everywhere else is nothing short of obsessive. Once we get past sheep — I stress again — every other agricultural, economic area of Minoan society, in short, any and all concerns otherwise addressed by the Linear B scribes, at least at Knossos, all come a very distant second to sheep. The Linear B scribes were utterly obsessed with sheep, and the reason is obvious. Sheep raising and husbandry was squarely at the heart of the Minoan/Mycenaean economy. It was, plainly put, the underpinning of their entire socio-economic platform. Now, what really amazes is that not even the consideration of wool, which is the end-product of sheep raising, plays anywhere near the rôle as do the sheep themselves on the 3,000 tablets and fragments I examined. There are only about 100 tablets or 3.3% zeroing in on wool in the entire inventory of 3,000. The situation gets worse and worse, even where other areas of the agricultural economy are concerned, which is after all the real underpinning of Minoan society (however huge the sheep subset is). This includes all other livestock, pigs, bulls and cows etc. regardless. These tablets and fragments account for something like 50 or a mere 1.65 % of all Linear B media.

When it comes to military matters, the situation is positively dismal. Of the 3,000 tablets and fragments at Knossos, only about 125 or a little over 4% deal with military matters whatsoever, all inclusively, from top to bottom, leaving nothing out, including the inventory of chariots as such, some 25 or about 0.8%, and then falling dramatically where the tablets and fragments deal specifically with things such as chariot wheels in working order or in need of repair, chariot bodies (5 as far as I can recall), horses etc. etc. And of all the tablets specifically dealing with military matters, there is not a single one which zeroes in on gathering the trophies and spoils of war. Not one.

Why is this so? Well, I think one of the reasons for this state of affairs is that Knossos itself was a peaceful city, rarely, if ever involved in any wars (except when conquered by the Mycenaeans, if it ever was in the first place), to the extent that it was unwalled and practically undefended. Granted, even if we still allow for Ms. Leonhardt’s highly imaginative translation, the Minoan Linear B scribes at Knossos would have inventoried the spoils or war only for their Mycenaean overlords (if that is even who they were) and for no other reason. Inventories of the actual spoils of war would be of such little concern to the scribes at Knossos that the whole business would have amounted to nothing more than a hill of beans, if that. Yet nowhere else than on this single tablet KN V 684, if we are to grant Ms. Leonhardt’s translation the benefit of the doubt, are military matters the subject of any great concern on any Linear B tablet, except for fixing broken wheels and chariots and boring things like that.

Come to think of it, practically everything the Linear B scribes so loved to inventory (at least at Knossos, where by far the greatest trove of extant tablets is found) sounds crashingly boring to us nowadays. But I put it to you, are not all inventories boring, even ours today? Yet the sole purpose of the Linear B tablets (with paltry exceptions few and far between) was to keep inventories on absolutely everything pertaining to the Minoan agri-economy. I have to say I was not prepared at all for their overwhelming obsession with sheep to the exclusion of so much else in their social fabric. In fact, I was astonished. But there you have it. Boring, yes, but to the Minoan scribes at Knossos, absolutely essential to the smooth functioning of their entire economy from top to bottom. Unfortunately, concern for inventory keeping for military matters was practically at the bottom of the barrel.

Such statistical evidence, if we are to put our faith in statistics, and in the case of Mycenaean Linear B literacy, there is nothing else to rely on, greatly mitigates against the possibility, even remote, of the decipherment Ms. Leonhardt attributes to KN V 684.

So what does this tablet really say? Linear B translators, including myself, decipher it as follows (give or take a few picayune variations). This is my own translation, which in fact Ms. Leonhardt challenged to me decipher (Click to ENLARGE):

As you can see, it is just another boring inventory, in this case of smashed ivory, as opposed to the perfectly intact ivory on the Pylos tablet. But that is what inventories always are, nothing more or less, dull as concrete. This does not mean that they are not significant! They are in fact the only real-time indicators of the Minoan agri-economy we have to go on. I say, thank God the Minoan scribes at Knossos were hell-bent on inventories. The reason is apparent. The King or “wanax” of Knossos and his own subalterns, the overseers of the scribal community, positively demanded it.

[4] I am far from finished. Regressive extrapolation of archaic Greek vocabulary from the Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad, where the most archaic Greek in the entire Iliad appears, backwards to Mycenaean Greek actually seems to confirm (if we are to accept the premise of regressive extrapolation, and I do) that the word EREPATO in Mycenaean Greek is the exact counterpart of “elephantos” in Homer, which meant only one thing, “ivory” and not “elephant”. If you want to assign it the meaning of elephant too, that is fine with me. But in the context of the Pylos tablet above, that translation is silly. Given the strict application of “ivory” to EREPATO, I am strongly inclined to reject Ms. Leonhardt’s hypothetical “slain in war” or “slain by Ares” out of hand.

[5] And there is even more. In the entire lexicon of the extant Mycenaean vocabulary, there are almost no abstract words. This cannot come as the least surprise, since after all the entire purpose of keeping records in Linear B was to inventory everything and anything the Minoan scribes were obliged by their overseers to keep track of at all cost. The very presence of several words for overseer in Mycenaean Linear B (wanaka = king, damokoro = village overseer or mayor, qasireu = viceroy, korete = governor, opidamiyo = accountable village administrator, rawaketa = general & tereta = master of ceremonies, among others) serves to firmly underscore this phenomenon.

Unfortunately, however, Leonhardt’s “slain in war” or “slain by Ares” flirts almost too closely, if not actually crossing the line, with the semi-abstract. In and of itself, this factor again mitigates against her translation of EREPATO.

[6] But it does much more than just that. It practically invalidates her entire translation, from top to bottom, because she makes the whole thing hinge exclusively on one word only, EREPATO, as she envisions it. The result is that her translation warps the meaning of the integral text of KN V 684 way out of whack.

What particularly disturbs me is the summative, indirect way she translates the tablet. She does not translate it word by word, but instead comes up with a summary, an ideal translation as she envisages it, “I envision the scribe, or another person, roaming the battlefield to loot bodies and to gather... passim... (Greek words omitted) ‘lost things on the ground’ detritus such as weapons, armor and personal items.” OK, let us take a good hard look at this translation, which strikes me far more like a quotation from Homer than an inventory.
(a) Why on earth would a Minoan scribe working exclusively at Knossos, just doing his job, which was solely to keep inventories, be wandering around in a battlefield to loot bodies and to gather detritus? This fanciful scene stretches my powers of reason beyond credulity. And since the Linear B tablets are concerned only with statistical inventories, and nothing else whatsoever, why would the scribes even bother to mention booty they themselves might have pilfered off some bloody battlefield (which, as I say, they never would have done), let alone from soldiers slain by Ares? What on earth did Ares have to do with looting battle fields?... and here I mean, in the scribe’s own mind, not mine. Probably bugger all, if you don’t mind my saying (and even if you do, I am just having a bit of fun). By the way, the word Ares does not appear in Tselentis’ huge Linear B Lexicon.
(b) Can we really imagine that some bloodied, possibly injured, messenger or soldier from the battlefield would come barging into the office of a bunch of bureaucratic scribes half bored out of their skulls to report such esoteric, if not insignificant, information to them? They would either have been horrified at the intrusion, and summarily kicked him out or laughed at him. Not a pretty picture.
(c) Such a herald or messenger would have been completely illiterate (analphabetic), and a member of a lower stratum of Minoan society. The scribes were the only literate people in that society, apart (possibly) from the nobility, and their sole function was to serve their overseers without question, not to kowtow to their own subalterns.
(d) Now here the waters get really muddy. Why does Ms. Leonhardt tell us that she envisions, i.e. imagines this entire scenario, when all we are asked for is a straightforward decipherment and translation of what is ostensibly an inventory, period? The whole exercise of decipherment and translation of Linear B tablets cannot and must not be the demonstrable result of some imagined or fanciful notion of what the tablet appears to say to the mind of the translator, but instead must be the ostensible result of a thorough-going practical, logical contextual and, if at all possible, cross-correlated analysis of any and all tablets referring to any single Mycenaean word one wishes to translate. Otherwise, the whole exercise invalidates itself in a hopeless cycle of purely hypothetical, tautological reasoning, even if it is reasoning at all. Poetry is fine, as poetry. I am a frequently published poet myself. But inventories are as far removed from poetry as a stone is from God.

[7] Compare my own crushingly boring translation with Ms. Leonhardt’s, and you will instantly observe the multiple practical and eminently logical processes I followed to arrive at the run-of-the-mill inventory of smashed ivory that I did. First off (a) given the sparse context of KN V 684, it was even pretty much impossible to verify that EREPATO meant “ivory”. So we had to have recourse to another extant tablet, if such exists, which provides plenty of sound context for the very same word... which is precisely what I did by digging up the Pylos tablet illustrated above.

And guess what? It means “ivory”. Period.

I put it to you that of our two translations, taken as a whole, one or the other must be right, but certainly not both.

I repeat: given the fact that Mycenaean words are almost exclusively concrete, preference for a concrete over an abstract translation of any Mycenaean word on any Linear B medium must take overwhelming if not absolute precedence over the (semi-)abstract. In fact, I would be willing to posit the relatively sound hypothesis, that translation of any Mycenaean word as semi-abstract or an abstract is fraught with so many difficulties, contradictions and loopholes that it is a risky venture at best.

Unfortunately, Ms. Leonhardt’s translation of EREPATO suffers from all of these defects, and because of this, it in turn tinctures the connotation of all the other words she translates, even though her translations are technically correct. The real issue here is that she has taken all of these concrete words, which admit only of denotation, and turned them on their heads, so that taken all together, as an ensemble, as a sentence, if you like, they end up transformed into semi-abstracts with inherent connotations, thus essentially violating their own concrete meaning. It is a flat-out contradiction in terms. This, I venture to say, is a decided step backwards in the decipherment of any medium in Mycenaean Greek written in Linear B. Just read her translation, and you can immediately see that it is the product of her own imagination, rather than of a thorough scientific, linguistic analysis of the actual text, based on such principles as (a)(absence of) context, (b) cross-correlation to contextually (more) precise Linear B media in which context sets the matter aright; (c) with the Idalion tablet in the slightly younger cousin dialect of East Greek Mycenaean Greek, Arcado-Cypriot, composed in Linear C and (d) regressive extrapolation from the Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad, and other similar procedures.

[8] There still lacks but one final step, which is bound to nip in the bud the matter of the precise meaning of a great many Linear B words once and for all, and that is to resort to cross-correlation between Linear B tablets in Mycenaean Greek and Linear C tablets in Arcado-Cypriot. There are several reasons to adopt this strategy, which I cannot as yet do, as I am still trying to master Linear C, yet another syllabary, which bears no physical resemblance to Linear B, but for which the values of almost every single syllabogram and every single word are either practically identical with their Linear B counterparts, or very similar to them. The fact of the matter is that East Greek proto-Ionic Mycenaean Greek and Arcado-Cypriot are as closely related and as strikingly similar as are Ionic and Attic Greek some five centuries later, give or take.

And there is more. Not only was Arcado-Cypriot written in Linear C (almost exclusively for about 700 years, from ca. 1100 – 400 BCE), it ended up being written solely in the Greek alphabet from ca. 400 BCE onwards, for reasons which we shall not enter into at this time. What happened then goes without saying. All of the Arcado-Cypriot Linear C tablets, including the extremely long famous Idalion tablet, a legal proclamation, were translated into alphabetical Greek. All of the vocabulary on the Idalion tablets and others instantly leaped into clear focus.

The impact of this revolutionary development on the completely accurate translation of the entire vocabulary of the Idalion tablet is enormous. Once we know the precise meaning of the 100s of words on this tablet it is but one small step for man and one huge leap for mankind to cross-correlate the precise meaning of each and every Arcado-Cypriot word which has an exact or close match to its Mycenaean counterpart (and these are in the clear majority), to settle once and for all time the precise denotation of a large number of concrete Mycenaean words, the meaning of which is currently somewhat or seriously ambiguous or in doubt. I can at least assure Ms. Leonhardt that EREPATO is not one of those words, so she is safe on that account... at least for that word, but not for any exclusively concrete Mycenaean word which I successfully match up with its Arcado-Cypriot counterpart. And rest assured, there will be plenty. I do happen to know that the word for “physician” in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C and Mycenaean Linear B (iyate) is practically identical. So no matter how much any Linear B translator struggles to decipher it otherwise, he or she is bound to fail by default. In anticipation of a counter argument I suspect Ms. Leonhardt will advance, that plenty of words on the Idalion tablet are bound to be (semi-)abstract, given that it is a legal decree, I have only this to say. I simply would not even bother to take these words into account, as they would perforce invalidate my own procedure of cross-correlation. A rose is a rose is a rose. I hasten to add that I have read the Idalion tablet in the Arcado-Cypriot Greek dialect.

I am astonished that for the last 62 years no Linear B researcher, expert in decipherment or translator has even bothered to take into consideration the extremely close relationship between these two pre-Ionic East Greek dialects in order to extract the precise meaning from a (large) number of concrete, denotative Mycenaean words, just as one would extract a tooth, let alone that anyone would take the next obvious step, take the trouble to learn Linear C, read the Idalion tablet in both Linear C and in Greek, and methodically have at it, surgically analyzing and cross-correlating every single concrete word on the Idalion tablet that (nearly) matches up with its Mycenaean Linear B equivalent.
This is precisely what I intend to do, to lay to rest any lingering doubts about the meaning of (hopefully) a substantial number of Mycenaean words, and again to cross-correlate the results of these translations to a great number of other (similar) Mycenaean words, based on the orthographic conventions & the syntactical structure (so often identical) of both of these dialects. Once we have the alphabetical version of any concrete Linear C word matched with its Linear B counterpart, it is but one small step to applying the same or similar orthography to its Mycenaean equivalent, let alone to firming up the precise meaning of the word in both dialects. This is going to be hard work, but a lot of fun, because I am more than just reasonably certain the overall results will shock the daylights out of the Linear B research community.

For the time being, I am not going to bother targeting Ms. Leonhardt’s heavy reliance on the West Greek Doric dialect, which bears little resemblance to the East Greek proto-Ionic dialects, Mycenaean Greek and Arcado-Cypriot, since this factor does not directly impinge on the validity or lack thereof of the translation in the context of the methodology by which we are here considering it. This analysis will have to wait until a later post, as it also will require my strictest attention to most of the vocabulary Ms. Leonhardt translates on at least one Linear B tablet.

Richard

The New Linear B Ideogram TE: PARWEA = “well prepared, ready” … Another Nut Cracked: Knossos Tablets KN 552-557

The New Linear B Ideogram TE: PARWEA = “well prepared, ready” ... Another Nut Cracked: Knossos Tablets KN 552-557 (Click to ENLARGE):

With the introduction of the new supersyllabogram/ideogram TE “well prepared, ready” in the context of the logogram for “wool”, the translations of these 5 tablets is pretty much straightforward. This is the first time we are confronted with a supersyllabogram inside an ideogram. There are many others. While the basic ideogram for “cloth” is blank, almost all others contain some syllabogram inside the ideogram. For instance, when the ideogram for “cloth” contains the sypersyllabogram TE inside it, the meaning of the ideogram is immediately altered to reflect the meaning of the entire word beginning with the syllabogram. Once again, Tselentis comes to the rescue.

It just so happens that the one and only Linear B word beginning with TE in his Linear B Lexicon which can possibly apply to cloth is TETUKOWOA, alternately spelled TETUKOWOA. It means “well prepared” or “ready”. This fits almost like a glove with the logogram “cloth”. The further we delve into new supersyllabograms, the more their tentative translations are firmed up. Since we first tentatively deciphered the supersyllabograms KI = KITIMENA (plot of land), MA = MARE (wool), ONATO (lease field), NE (new or young), PA (lost sheep, recovered or found? - very doubtful), PE (enclosure, sheep pen) & ZA (this year) in the context of “wheat”, not “wool”, the evidence appears to be confirming the semantic values consonant with the context, where context is defined as a specific area of the Minoan/Mycenaean agri-economy, trade and artisanship etc., such as sheep raising and husbandry, the underpinning of their entire social fabric. Tablets focusing directly on sheep raising and husbandry account for over 700 or 20+ % of 3,000 Linear B tablets at Knossos, for which I compiled complete statistics. This is an enormous sampling (75 %) of all 4,000 tablets at Knossos, so its accuracy is probably within the range of less than + / -.05 %. All other areas of the Minoan/Mycenaean agri-economy, trade and artisanship etc. fall a distant second to sheep raising and husbandry, including shearing the sheep for wool!

Since the supersyllabogram PE was spelled out as PERIQORO on just one Linear B tablet, we can be almost certain it means “enclosure or sheep pen”, regressively derived from the entry in Liddell & Scott, 1986, pg. 547, for “periobolos” (which is the Greek spelling of this very word) = compassing, encircling, and more specifically an enclosure. Since Mycenaean Greek consists almost exclusively of denotative, concrete nouns, I believe we can safely derive the Mycenaean for this word as enclosure. Additionally, the further back one goes in the historical timeline of pretty much any language, the much more likely the concrete/abstract and abstract meanings of words devolve retrospectively into the concrete alone.

It is but a small step from defining PERIQORO as “enclosure” to an even more remote definition “sheep pen”. This is precisely what I have done, in the confidence that the Mycenaean meaning of the word is highly likely to be “enclosure” and even “sheep pen.” Reversing the historical process to the normal chronological timeline, we note that languages do in fact evolve from the purely concrete to concrete/semi-abstract and finally to concrete/semi-abstract/abstract. For ancient Greek, this process starts with the Mycenaean proto-Ionic dialect and continues unbroken through Arcado-Cypriot to Ionic to Attic Greek. In this process, languages have a strong tendency to abandon the very earliest concrete values in their vocabulary, and replace them with less specific concrete meanings, as for instance in the case of the putative original Mycenaean PERIQORO sheep pen & enclosure to the Attic, enclosure alone, sheep pen having vanished in the dark recesses of the distant past. However, nothing in this process detracts from the definite possibility, even probability that the original Mycenaean, PERIQORO, does mean “sheep pen”, especially in light of the fact that sheep raising and husbandry was at the core of Minoan/Mycenaean society. The remarkable preeminence of sheep husbandry simply serves to reinforce the notion that PERIQORO means, not only enclosure, but also sheep pen. There you have it, the justification for the conclusions I have reached.

Now, taking my cue from the sypersyllabogram PE, I discovered, to my astonishment and delight, that the semantic values of the next 2 syllabograms I was able almost immediately to decipher, i.e. O, KI as ONATO (lease field), KITIMENA (plot of land), for the simple reason that (again) in the context of sheep husbandry alone, they practically leaped from Tselentis right in my face. Sure enough, when I came around to decipher almost 100 tablets with these 3 supersyllabograms, PE, O & KI, they all fit the context of sheep husbandry like a glove. Moreover, the Linear B scribes frequently used them in combination, 2 and even 3 together, so that, for instance, a tablet with all three of these SSYs (PE, O & KI) strung together in front of the ideogram for rams, ewes or sheep, still makes perfect sense. For example, O + KI + PE + 25 rams turns out to mean, “25 rams in a sheep pen (enclosure) on a leased plot of land”. Once the process of decipherment of syllabograms got up its steam, it swiftly yielded 16! more sypersyllabograms, of which we have either tentatively or pretty much firmly defined 12. And many more are yet to be investigated. I suspect that something like 25-30 syllabograms are also supersyllabograms! This startling discovery, if it ultimately proves to stand the test of further linguistic research, is nothing short of revolutionary where the decipherment of much of the remaining residue of Linear B which has defied decipherment to date.

This is nothing short of amazing! It very much appears to confirm my hypothesis that Linear B is in large part shorthand, which makes it utterly unlike any other ancient script. Shorthand, as the Linear B scribes appear to have practised with gusto, did not resurface in such complexity until the 19th. century AD!

None of this surprises me in the least, given the sophistication of Minoan/Mycenaean society. Take for example the fact that the Minoans at Knossos mastered the fundamentals of hydraulics to construct a water conservation and plumbing system that was never repeated in any ancient civilization, and did not resurface in such complexity until the end of the 19th. century (yet again!). What is going on here? I leave it to you to decide for yourself, but as far as I am concerned, the notion the commonly accepted notion that the Minoan/Mycenaean civilization during the extended period of dominance of Linear B (ca. 1450 – 1200 BCE) was prehistoric borders on the absurd. Flatly put, their civilization was not prehistoric, but proto-historic. And there lies a truly significant gap. It is but a small step from a proto-historic to a historic civilization.

Richard

CRITICAL POST! Basic Guide to the Arcado-Cypriot Linear C syllabary compared with Mycenaean Linear B & the Intimate Relationship Between these Two Dialects

CRITICAL POST! Basic Guide to the Arcado-Cypriot Linear C syllabary compared with Mycenaean Linear B & the Intimate Relationship Between these Two Dialects (Click to ENLARGE):

The Linear C Syllabary used to write in the Arcado-Cypriot is entirely different from Linear B (except for a very few syllabograms, Linear C LO = Linear B RO, C NA = B NA, C PA = B PA, C SE = B SE & C TA = B DA, which look similar to or the same as their Linear B counterparts, but almost certainly by accident). It is very important not to be confused by the fact that Linear B has only a R+ vowel syllabogram series, while Linear C has only a L+vowel series, because in fact they are the very same series. Recall that the Japanese cannot pronounce a pure L or pure R. The same phenomenon occurs with the Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot dialects, but only half way. The Mycenaeans could not pronounce the consonant L, which clearly explains why they only had the R syllabary series, which had to make do for both L & R + the vowels a e i o u, while Linear C had the exact opposite problem, where the L syllabary series had to make do for both L & R + the vowels a e i o u. Again, a slight variation of the same phenomenon occurs with the Arcado-Cypriot T syllabary series, which which had to make do for both D & T + the vowels a e i o u, because the Arcado-Cypriots apparently could not pronounce the consonant D. Compare with Mycenaean Greek Linear B, which has both the D & T syllabogram series, for the simple reason that the Mycenaeans could pronounce both of these consonants, while apparently the Arcado-Cypriots could not.

All of this boils down to two things: (a) that the Linear B & Linear C syllabaries are entirely unrelated in appearance alone & (b) that, in spite of this, the syllabograms in both Linear B & Linear C all represent precisely the same consonants & vowels, in spite of minor differences in pronunciation (cf. above). This means that once you have learned the syllabograms for both Linear B & Linear C, the underlying morphemes or words must be (almost) the same in both dialects, again with minor differences in pronunciation. For instance, the word IYATE (or IJATE) has the exact same meaning in both dialects = “physician”, in spite of the fact that the syllabograms in Linear B bear no physical resemblance to those in Linear C. Note that there are no logograms or ideograms in Linear C. The scribes simply did away with them as spurious.

But this has no effect whatsoever on the phonemic values of the syllabograms in both dialects & in both syllabaries, which are almost always identical, except in those cases where pronunciation in one dialect prohibits the exact same pronunciation in the other, as explained above. Yet even where the pronunciation differs in each of these dialects, this difference is of no real consequence.

Take for instance, this. Any possible ambiguity in the meaning of the word, IYATE, in Mycenaean Greek, has now been resolved once and for all, and simply vanishes. I happen to know this for a fact, because I took the trouble to learn and read the Linear C version of this word in Arcado-Cypriot, which just so happens to be identical to its Linear B counterpart. And in case anyone chooses to protest, “But how can you be sure that the Linear C word does mean ‘physician’?” The answer to that is as plain as the nose on my face. The Idalion tablet was translated, word-for-word, from Linear C into alphabetic Greek in the fifth century BCE. Problem solved. No hay más problema nada. The ambiguity is resolved once and for all. It simply vanishes. You can see where I am going with the ball.

The Historical Evolution of the Scripts used for Arcado-Cypriot and their Impact on Semantic Meaning in Mycenaean Greek:

It is absolutely essential to understand four things about the Arcado-Cypriot dialect before we proceed any further. These are:
[1] The Arcado-Cypriot dialect is the younger cousin of the Mycenaean Greek. They are both East Greek Proto-Ionic dialects as closely allied to one another as the much later Ionic and Attic dialects were. The implications of this extreme similarity are bound to be nothing short of definitive where the clarification of (much) more accurate definitions of Mycenaean words is concerned. More on this below.
[2] In spite of everything that almost all historians in ancient history and linguists specializing in ancient linguistics have been asserting since the successful decipherment of Linear B in 1952, that writing in ancient Greek fell by the wayside for something like four centuries after the demise of Linear B ca. 1200 BCE, nothing could be further from the truth. The gap is not four centuries, as is commonly supposed, but only about one. This is readily demonstrated by this chart:

Revised Timeline for Written Greek (Linear B - Linear C - Greek Alphabet) — Written Greek, Linear B, Cyprriot Syllabary, Linear C, Homeric Greek, Classical Greek

As can be instantly seen, Linear C came to the forefront ca. 1100 BCE, a mere 100 years, give or take, after the disappearance of Linear B from the scene. If we must insist on categorizing Mycenaean Greek as prehistoric, we are bound to fall into a trap from which we cannot extricate ourselves. Allow me to explain. Let us assume for the moment that Mycenaean Greek and its syllabary are prehistoric. But what about the Linear C syllabary? Can it be considered as prehistoric? The answer to this question is a flat no. The Linear C syllabary was in continuous use from ca. 1100 BCE to ca. 400 BCE, when the Arcado-Cypriots finally caved into the preeminence Attic Greek was then assuming all over the Greek-speaking world, and finally abandoned Linear C.

However, and this is the key to the entire mess, if Linear C was a historic script (as it mostly certainly was), then at the very least Linear B should more properly designated proto-historic, and along with it, Mycenaean Greek itself. Several historians nowadays have already adopted the position that indeed the entire Minoan/Mycenaean civilization, when Linear B was their sole script, was proto-historic, and not prehistoric. The label prehistoric can only be applied to civilizations for which we have no deciphered written record. This applies to pre-Mycenaean Crete and Knossos, since Linear A, the script the Minoans used for their as yet undeciphered language was in use. Until Linear A is deciphered (if it ever is), we really have no choice but to regard the Minoan civilization prior to the advent of Linear B as prehistoric.

However, to put a fine point on it, it is questionable at best to regard the Minoan/Mycenaean civilization as actually historic, while it is probably sound to call it proto-historic. Here is why. While Linear B was almost exclusively used for statistical inventory keeping, which might best be categorized as proto-literate, Linear C, on the other hand, was a literate script, since the Arcado-Cypriots used it, not for statistical inventories (far from it) but for legal documents and decrees. In other words, with the advent of Linear C, we enter into the age of Greek literacy, in which words begin to acquire significant connotative, abstract value, as opposed to merely denotative or concrete. If we accept this hypothesis, and I for one no longer question it, then the historical gap between proto-literate Linear B used for Mycenaean Greek and literate Greek, of which the earliest exemplar was Linear C for Arcado-Cypriot, is indeed only one century and not four.

Linear C was a huge step forward from Linear B. One of the principal underlying characteristics of these two scripts is that one (Linear B) is almost totally denotative and concrete, whereas the other (Linear C) is both denotative and concrete, and connotative and abstract. In a nutshell, this means that Linear C is without a doubt a historic script, whereas Linear B is not (quite). This is why some historians and linguists specializing in ancient history choose to call Mycenaean Greek and its script, Linear B, proto-historic. You can definitely count me among them.

[3] Now comes the clincher, the one factor that decisively favours Linear C as a historic script for writing ancient Greek. I have already addressed it. When Linear C was finally abandoned by the Arcado-Cypriots ca. 400 BCE, they did not simply cast aside all their documents in Linear C from the previous 8 centuries (!), which would have been completely insane, but did something quite remarkable instead. Since to them the famous Idalion tablet, which was actually composed in the fifth century BCE at Cyprus (yes, the script spread that far!), they knew they simply had to preserve the original in Linear C. The Idalion tablet is not a product of early Linear C, centuries earlier, when it first came to the fore.

Since this tablet was an extremely important legal decree, they not only left it intact in Linear C, but they also translated the entire thing into alphabetic Greek. Given that the text on the Idalion tablet is completely intact and much, much longer than any text on any extant Linear B tablet, the implications of its translation into Greek on the Arcado-Cypriot vocabulary are enormous, in fact, potentially revolutionary, as we shall momentarily see. Here is the Idalion tablet:

Now we arrive at the very last step in our analysis of Linear C as a historic Greek script, and of the Idalion tablet itself as the primary source emblematic of the script itself. The very fact that the Cypriots who wrote the thing in Linear C in the first place considered it absolutely essential to translate it in its entirety into alphabetical Greek speaks to their over-riding concern that the extremely significant content of this precious tablet be preserved both in Linear C and in the Greek alphabet. In other words, the Linear C (original) version of the Idalion tablet was as essential to defining the literary heritage of their advanced culture as was its Greek translation. It was a treasured document to them in every sense of the word. But why translate it into alphabetical Greek when they could easily read it in Linear C? — the answer sticks out like a sore thumb — for their descendents, who within a couple of generations would no longer be able to read Linear C at all. But that fact does not in the least detract from the fundamentally extreme historical significance of the actual tablet.

I am not finished. Since Michael Ventris successfully deciphered Linear B in July 1952, no translator of ancient scripts, in this case, syllabaries, has ever bothered cross-correlate the vocabulary of Mycenaean Greek composed in Linear B with the vocabulary of Arcado-Cypriot in Linear C and — I hasten to underscore — as well as in alphabetical Greek in the 4th. century BCE, a mere century after its composition. It simply flabbergasts me that no-one has.

Since the Proto-Ionic East Greek dialects, Mycenaean Greek and Arcado-Cypriot are as closely related as Ionic is to Attic Greek, the necessity of cross-correlating the vocabulary of the slightly younger dialect with that of its forebear, Mycenaean Greek, becomes imperative. Another highly significant point: while Linear C started out as a proto-Ionic dialect, most probably largely denotative and concrete like its immediate predecessor, Linear B, not only did it change but little over the span of eight centuries, but it actually ended up being a quasi-Ionic historical dialect by the time the Idalion tablet was composed in Linear C in the sixth century BCE (and probably well before that). So then, if the same script is both proto-historic and historic, this begs the question, which is it? I leave it up to you to decide, but as for myself, it is both at the same time, even though it was proto-historic for the first few centuries (how many I cannot determine) and subsequently historic from the sixth century onwards. But where do you draw the line? Well, that is up to you, I suppose, but I don’t see any point in the exercise, because it ended up as historic. Simple as that.

This is precisely the reason why I intend to master Linear C, and to read the entire Idalion tablet — I stress gain — in both Linear C and in Greek. In fact, I have already read it in alphabetic Greek, so I am very familiar with its legal contents. Now here comes the cruncher. Since we know exactly what every single word means in the alphabetical translation of the Idalion tablet, we also know precisely what every single word, word-by-word, means in the original Linear C. The implications of the bilingual text are nothing less than immense, and I would dare say, revolutionary where Mycenaean Greek and especially its syllabary, Linear B, are concerned.

The reason is obvious. For the time being, we are unable to zoom in on the precise meaning of a great many Mycenaean words, let alone decide between one interpretation of their meaning and another or still yet others, because of the (so-called inherent) ambiguity of the phonetic values of so many of the Linear B syllabograms. I cannot delve into this quagmire in this post. There is simply no way to do so without doubling or tripling the length of our discussion.

However, in our blog, I have several times addressed the issue of the ambiguity of every syllabogram in Linear B which can be interpreted in more than one way. You can refer to those posts for a thorough analysis of the ambiguous nature of the Linear B syllabary. I have even published complete charts of every possible variation of all the vowels and every syllabogram affected in each and every one of the aforementioned posts.

But that is not our primary concern here. It is rather this: given that the alternate pronunciations for each vowel and for all of the apparently ambiguous syllabograms in Linear C have been largely resolved thanks to that timely translation of the Idalion tablet into alphabetical Greek, cross-correlation of alternate values, where applicable, between Arcado-Cypriot and Mycenaean Greek, which are after all cousins, is bound to resolve, once and for all, the actual alternative values of all the vowels and a great many, if not the majority of syllabograms in the latter, at least for shared vocabulary. That this constitutes a huge step forward in the generic clarification of a large chunk of Mycenaean vocabulary almost goes without saying.

For the past 62 years, too many — I would even venture to say — far too many Mycenaean words have been open to multiple interpretations, some of which are very likely to be plain wrong. But cross-correlation of every single word on the Idalion tablet, the meaning of which we definitely know beyond a shadow of a doubt, with any and all Mycenaean words that are found to be (almost) the same as their counterparts on the Idalion tablet is bound to resolve a great many ambiguities in Mycenaean Greek once and for all. This is why I have unequivocally decided to do what no translator-researcher in Linear B has ever bothered to do to this day, and that is to master Linear C to the same extent as I have Linear B, and to set out on the road to resolving as many of the ambiguities of the Linear B script as I possibly can. And I know I eventually shall.

I have not the faintest idea why practically all researchers and translators specialized in ancient history have never bothered to learn Linear C, but if anyone who visits our blog has done so, I beg you get in touch with me and let me know, because I shall need all the help I possibly can muster even to lay the basic groundwork for such an enormous undertaking. My aim is nothing less than to take the astonishingly comprehensive accomplishment of Michael Ventris and his mentor, Dr. John Chadwick, one major step further, and to resolve as many of the ambiguous remnants of Linear B as I possibly can — or should I say, we possibly can, if there is anyone out there in outer space who is willing to come to my rescue. What I fear more than anything else is that there are unquestionably so very few individuals who can read Linear C. If that is so, then may God help us, as I have the implicit faith He or She will.

This post took me 8 hours to compose. Please tag it LIKE if you like it.

Richard

Bid a Warm Welcome to Ourselves & Our Friends on Twitter & their Linear B Sites

Here are a few links to our collegial sites, first for Rita Roberts and myself on Twitter. For each site you wish to visit, simply click on its banner:

Rita Roberts:

Richard Vallance Janke:

You may very well want to sign up with Rita and me on Twitter, because between us we are following at least 1,500 Twitter accounts, a great many them archaeological or on ancient linguistics, often relating specifically to Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, the ancient Cycladic, Cypriot, Cretan and Mycenaean civilizations, among others directly related to them, as well as other contemporaneous civilizations such as ancient Egypt, Syria etc. Although we follow well over 2,000 Twitter accounts between us, the overlap is certain to be considerable, which is why I have given an estimate of 1,500. If you are not already a member of Twitter, I really do advise you to do so, if not for these reasons: (a) you will automatically be able to pick up your own followers from the approximately 1,500 Rita and I already follow. (b) by so doing, you will help widen the Twitter community already focused on our very own concerns, as noted above (c) you will hopefully become an active member of the international Twitter community focused on the same issues as ourselves. And even though Linear A, B & C and related archaeological disciplines are esoteric, to say the least, Richard already has over 600 followers, and Rita over 300. Even with considerable overlap, our followers may very well exceed 700 in all. Note that, unlike Facebook, which I loathe, Twitter is not greedily invasive on personal privacy.

Also of great interest to our community are our shared Pinterest boards. which I strongly urge you to join. All the images posted on our blog, Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae are posted here:

where you will be able to view and download at your leisure any images, illustrations, charts etc. etc. directly related to early Cretan & Minoan hieroglyphics, Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, and any and all ancient scripts of possible interest to you as a researcher or translator. I, Richard, am by far the primary contributor to this board, which already has over 750 pins to date, but if you join, I will be delighted to invite you to post your own images directly related only to the ancient scripts mentioned here:

where you will find any and all images, photos and artwork of Knossos, Mycenae, the Minoan/Mycenaean civilizations, and plenty of other illustrations of related interest. Rita Roberts is the moderator by default of this amazing board, since she has posted the vast majority of images there (almost 900 pins to date). I leave it to her to take care of this board, as I simply do not have the time to do so.

and Ancient Sea People, which Violet Shimmer Love just recently invited me to join. The overlap between Violet’s board and Knossos & Mycenae, Civilizations and with Mycenaean Linear B, Progressive Grammar & Vocabulary is not considerable, so I really do encourage you to subscribe to Ancient Sea Peoples as well.

We also have just invited aboard our newest member, Gretchen E. Leonhardt, here at Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae. Here is her site:

Gretchen is a linguistic specialist of the highest order who has been studying, deciphering and translating Linear B for well over a decade. I for one know that I will often need to rely on her to clarify matters related to Linear B with which I am unfamiliar. Although her approach to the decipherment and translation of Linear B is very much add odds with my own, this is of little consequence, as we all know that I encourage truly scholarly debate and differences in points of view and theoretical constructs, in the sure knowledge that everyone who is adept with Linear B has his or her own unique contribution to make, and that no one is in competition with anyone else. Anyone who visits our blog can decide for him- or herself which translations of Linear B tablets and fragments he or she prefers, whether they be those of myself, Rita Roberts, Gretchen Leonhardt or of absolutely anyone else who becomes a new member in the future. Or if you are like me, you may prefer to entertain the merits of any and all translations of the same original tablet or fragment, or to cull from them those elements which you find most to your taste, should you yourself wish to post translations of the same originals. No translator of Linear B, no matter how competent or advanced, has a monopoly on the “best” translations of Linear B originals, since as we all know, Linear B texts can – and more often than not – are very ambiguous.

And of course, we must not forget about Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B, Dead Languages of the Mediterranean, one of the Internet’s most prestigious primary resources, here:

As new key sites related to Linear A B & C come to light, I shall of course add them to our list, so that you may decide for yourselves which ones you really wish to take an interest in.

On a final note, ours is an extremely busy Blog, having seen tens of thousands of visitors in only a year and a half, so I would greatly appreciate it if member contributors and authors would take this into account, as I can sometimes easily feel overwhelmed. I believe it is called burnout when it goes over the top. That is just the way I am.

Richard

Our Translations of Key Linear B Translations now on Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B, Dead Languages of the Mediterranean

Our Translations of Key Linear B Translations now on Minoan Linear A  & Mycenaean Linear B, Dead Languages of the Mediterranean (Click the logo to reach them):



This is a significant, indeed pivotal step forward for us as a primary resource and international site into exhaustive research, decipherment and translation of Mycenaean Linear B tablets, regardless of provenance (Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae, Phaistos etc.) We are immensely proud to have been invited to play an active rôle in such a leading international resource as this.  Any and all researchers truly committed as proponents of the true linguistic import of Linear B should seriously consider playing a contributory rôle to this key resource into Mycenaean Greek.

Illustrative of our ongoing contributions in translation to Minoan Linear A  & Mycenaean Linear B is this comment, posted on our almost complete decipherment of Linear B tablet Mycenae MY Oe 106: 


 
Scroll to the bottom of the page for my comment.

Richard

The First Ever Almost Complete Translation of the Famous Linear B Tablet MY Oe 106 (Mycenae)

The First Ever Almost Complete Translation of the Famous Linear B Tablet MY Oe 106 (Mycenae) Click to ENLARGE:

My translation of this famous Linear B was a hard slog, to say the very least. I had to rummage through Chris Tselentis’ fine Linear B Lexicon and through scores of entries in Liddell & Scott, 1986, to be able to come within sight of a translation which would make complete sense in context, and after hours of meticulous searching, I finally came up with the translation you see here. I think it not only rings true, but that it flies.

There are several critical comments I must make on my translation. In case anyone is wondering why I translated KOROTO as “young boy”, you needn’t look very far. This is why that picture of a boy appears to the right of the tablet. The scribe must have deliberately put it there to make damn certain that his fellow scribes and literate Mycenaeans knew perfectly well what the main thrust of this tablet is, namely, that we should put the emphasis squarely on the “young boy” as subject. He is the driving force behind all this wool business going on here. This is precisely why I am quite convinced that KOROTO is in fact an archaic Mycenaean neuter word for young boy. Of course, the daughter mentioned here cannot be his daughter! She is someone’s daughter, and I would bet my bottom dollars that she is their mother.

Moving on, we run smack dab up against the single syllabogram RE. We must not be deceived. It is not untranslatable. In fact, the direct opposite is true. Why on earth Linear B translators have not seen this phenomenon in the past 60 years is quite beyond me. I know perfectly well that single syllabograms are all over the place on Linear B tablets, because in the 3,000 odd Linear B tablets I have meticulously examined in Scripta Minoa, there are hundreds of tablets and fragments sporting single syllabograms. Two questions immediately leap to mind. First of all, why on earth would the Linear B scribes at Knossos, Mycenae, Pylos and elsewhere resort to inscribing single syllabograms on so many tablets (100s is a heck of lot of tablets!) unless they meant to. I think it goes quite without saying that that is precisely what they meant to do. Secondly, what on earth are these single syllabograms? Believe it or not, we have practically beaten this subject to death on our blog, and if you are really itching to know what they are (and if you are a Linear B translator, scholar or researcher, may I suggest you should be), then you ought to visit our blog and read the scores of posts which not only define what they are, viz. supersyllabograms, but provide scores of examples of Linear B tablets from Knossos which sport them, especially tablets referring to sheep, rams and ewes. Tablets on sheep constitute fully 20% and then some of all 3,000 Linear B tablets I closely examined from Knossos, far surpassing Linear B tablets on any other area of Minoan civilization (economic, agricultural, industrial, military, you name it). This of course raises another inescapable question. Why, why such an overwhelming number of Linear B tablets on sheep alone – even far surpassing all other livestock, crops etc. etc. - ? This is one critical question, and it demands answers. I have provided some myself, but it is up to the research community at large to fully investigate this phenomenon and in depth, so that within a few years we can really account for supersyllabograms... because they will not simply go away.

Now, as for that very long name, Toteweyasewe (and I truly believe it is a name, the name of the young boy), I would be willing to bet it is a Minoan, and not Mycenaean name. Have you ever noticed how many Linear A words are very long, many of them in excess of 5 syllables? I have. There is something going on there too, a factor which we must clearly take strictly into account if we are ever to even approach even a partial decipherment of Linear A. Another peculiarity I have noticed about Linear A tablets versus Linear B ones is that the majority of the former are vertical rectangular in shape, while the majority of the latter are horizontal and usually only 1-4 lines long. The longer Linear B tablets, of course, have to be rectangular as well, as if...

What does the sypersyllabogram RE mean? It was almost ridiculously easy for me to find that out. Consulting Tselentis once again, I discovered that the one and only Mycenaean Greek word beginning with the syllabogram RE that could possibly fit this context, i.e. that of wool, is REPOTO, which means “fine or thin”, and it fits the context beautifully. Given that the repertoire of Mycenaean vocabulary on extant tablets and fragments in Linear B is quite thin, amounting to no more than 3,000 words at the very most, I think we can pretty much rely on this translation of the supersyllabogram RE, because nothing else fits the context, period.

And, in case you are wondering how I discovered supersyllabograms in the first place, you need only to refer to the very first post in which I discuss the two Linear B tablets from Knossos, one of which gave the whole show away. The scribe actually spelled out the entire word on one of the tablets, and then used only the supersyllabogram on the other, thank you very much. To keep you all on tenterhooks, I am not going to tell you here which tablets these were, but point you to the ground-breaking post which goes right to the core of the matter. That post is titled, A Major Milestone in the Further Decipherment of Linear B – the Supersyllabogram Defined, here:



One thing I will tell you is this. The supersyllabogram O means ONATO, a leased field & KI means KITIMENA, a plot of land. These two are plastered all over tablets on sheep. There are plenty more. We have deciphered at least 8 of them, but the rest elude us... for the time being.

Richard

Hey, Honey, the Linear B Ideogram MA+RE for MALI = wool

Hey, Honey, the Linear B Ideogram MA+RE for MALI = wool (Click to ENLARGE):



While the ideogram for the Mycenaean Greek word for “wool” in Linear B is quite straightforward, being as you can see the syllabogram RE superimposed on the syllabogram MA, there is one thing about it which stumped me for quite a long time. Why on earth would the Linear B scribes at Knossos and elsewhere substitute the syllabogram RE for RI to superimpose on MA, when obviously the word is spelled MARI in Linear B? On the surface, there does not seem to be any good reason for them to have done this, except that if we recall that the Linear B scribes were real sticklers for practicality, amongst other things, it really does not come as much of a suprise to me now that they substituted RE for RI, given that it is, to put it plainly, a simpler syllabogram to superimpose on MA than RI is. I have no idea whether or not that was their reasoning when they assigned this logogram, or ideogram, if you like, to symbolize the Linear B word for wool (MARI) other than the explanation I have just given here, which is consistent with the scriptural economy the Linear B scribes were so fond of.

I of course welcome any and all conjectures as to why they would have done this. One thing is clear: it was not a decision based on boring old reason, but rather on practical application, a factor which was always uppermost in the minds of the Linear B scribes, a clever gang if I ever saw one.

There is another quite cogent reason why the Linear B scribes went for MARE instead of MARI for wool, and that was, quite simply, to clearly contradistinguish it from the extremely similar logogram for honey, MERI, as illustrated here so that you can immediately see the difference for yourself (Click to ENLARGE):


This second explanation makes even more sense than the first.

The text of these two tablets, consisting as it does of logograms and ideograms alone, is quite clear, and warrants no comment.   


Richard

Tag: Linguistics

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