SITO = “wheat” again, this time on a contextually considerably clearer fragment (Click to ENLARGE):Unlike the previous Linear B tablet sporting the ideogram for wheat = SITO in Linear B (transliterated into Latin script), which was a pure headache for me from beginning to end, I dare say I found this particular Linear BC fragment from Knossos much easier to decipher, or more to the point, to unravel. As it turns out, even the missing portions of the text were practically handed to me on a silver platter, well, at least almost. Even in the first line of this fragment, the presence of the feminine singular adjective for “planted or cultivated” pretty much gave the show away. The one noun which fits this adjective like a glove is the Linear B word, KOTONA = “a plot of land”, the very word Chris Tselentis pairs with this adjective in his Linear B Lexicon, where he has this to say of PU2TERIYA, “planted, cultivated (of ‘ ktoina’ = plots”). And who am I to argue with him? Sometimes, translations of even missing words, in this case, the noun KOTONA, also feminine singular, seem just to leap up and bite you. I have almost no doubt whatsoever that this is indeed the word missing to the left of the alternate spelling PUTARIYA for PU2TERIYA. The truncated word beginning with PERI was a considerably tougher challenge, but as I have so often said on this blog, who am I to refuse a good challenge? So I never do. Basing myself on the various possible spellings of Linear B PERI in alphabetical ancient Greek, meticulous consultation of Liddell & Scott, 1986, yielded no less than nine (9) distinct possibilities for Greek words beginning with the alternatives you see in the illustration above. I have included them all, even though some of them seem more far-fetched than others. What really struck me was that five (5) of these words were all in the same range of meanings, and so I naturally opted for any one of these variants... take your pick, while eliminating the others. Of course, there is no real justification for tossing all of the others out, especially “by the sea”, except that Chris Tselentis himself has an entry in his excellent and comprehensive Linear B Lexicon, which is almost perfectly matched with all five of the alternative meanings I have opted for. Given that this entry, “the further provinces” is the one and only entry beginning with PERA in any available online Linear B glossary or lexicon, there is absolutely no reason to doubt that this may indeed be the very word that originally appeared intact at this position on the tablet. But there is no way to know. The rest of the notes on the illustration of this fragment from Knossos are self-explanatory. The translation of the second line is completely unambiguous. Now, on to the alternative translations... take your choice. These are: A: a cultivated (plot of land) close by, with wheat amounting to a total of 130+ units (bales)... where “amounting to a total of” is a free translation of “so much wheat 130+” B: a cultivated (plot of land) just beyond, with wheat amounting to a total of 130+ units (bales)... C: a cultivated (plot of land) on the other side of (... the island or peninsula or whatever...), with wheat amounting to a total of 130+ units (bales)... D: a cultivated (plot of land) on the opposite side of (... the island or peninsula or whatever...), with wheat amounting to a total of 130+ units (bales)... E: a cultivated (plot of land) in a distant province, with wheat amounting to a total of 130+ units (bales)... and even possibly: F: a cultivated (plot of land) by the sea, with wheat amounting to a total of 130+ units (bales)... Again, I say, take your pick. All of these translations are perfectly sound, and since the context of this fragment is no longer fully intact, any one of them could very well have been the original integral text. I would much rather entertain all the probabilities for this context, partial as it is. If it is possible to cross-correlate the context of this fragment with that of a more complete tablet using almost exactly the same text as this one, then we may be able to confirm the best translation(s) from the seven (7) alternatives above, possibly even rounding them down to two. I am a real stickler for context. Where a very similar or almost identical context does exist on another Linear B tablet, regardless of its provenance, we simply must not fail to take its entire text into strict account, in order to flesh out the missing text on the tablet we have in front of ourselves. Of course, where no cross-correlated context is to be found on any extant Linear B tablets or fragments, we have to make do without it. At this moment in time, I can think of no other Linear B tablet or fragment from among the 3,000+ I have closely examined, the content of which cross-correlates with that of this tablet. Given the fact, however, that even the missing text of this tablet appears not to be so mysterious after all, we can, I think, rest assured that we are on the right track. On a final note, even where context is sufficient to establish meaning with a fair degree of certainty, as in this instance, it is not everything. We must prepare ourselves for all possible contingencies, which is precisely what I have done here, and what I attempt to do to the best of my ability with any Linear B tablet or fragment I must struggle with to decipher it... in the exact same scenario which faces any and all Linear B translators. Richard
Tag: Linguistics
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SITO = “wheat” again, this time on a contextually considerably clearer fragment
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Table 2: Comparison of Spelling Conventions in Linear B and Alphabetical Greek
Table 2: Comparison of Spelling Conventions in Linear B and Alphabetical Greek – Click to ENLARGE:
As you will quickly enough appreciate from studying Table 2, Comparison of Spelling Conventions in Linear B and Alphabetical Greek, the Linear B syllabary sometimes has a tough time representing exactly the Greek vowels and consonants they are supposed to be (exactly but not always!) equivalent to. This is particularly true for:
(a) the vowels E & O, which are both short and long (epsilon in the Table) and long (aytay in the Table in alphabetical Greek & o micron (short) & o mega (long) (See the 2 variants on each of these vowels in Greek in Table 2 above) can only be represented by 1 single vowel syllabogram for the same vowels, i.e. E & O, in Linear B. (See also the same Table).
(b) the situation seems considerably more complicated with the alphabetical Greek consonants, but the appearance of complexity is just that, merely apparent.
By studying the Table above (Table 2), it should dawn on you soon enough that the Linear B syllabograms in the KA, PA, RA, QE & TA series are forced to represent both alphabetical Greek variants on the vowels each of them contains, since once again, Linear B is unable to distinguish between a short vowel and a long vowel following the initial consonant in each one of these series.
(c) In the next post, we will provide ample illustrations of these principles of spelling conventions in Linear cross-correlated with their equivalent spelling conventions in (early) alphabetical Greek.
NOTE: When we eventually come around to analyzing the Syllabary of Arcado-Cypriot (the Greek dialect resembling the Mycenaean Greek dialect to a striking degree), we will discover that in fact the Syllabary for Arcado-Cypriot, known as Linear C, suffers from precisely the same deficiencies as Linear B, which in turn establishes and confirms the principle that no syllabary can substitute fully adequately for the Greek alphabet, although I must stress that both Linear B & Linear C are able to account for a great many (though certainly not all) of the peculiarities of the Greek alphabet. What is truly important to keep in mind is that a syllabary, in which all 5 vowels have already been accounted for, and in which the consonants (so to speak) are all immediately followed by any one of the vowels, is the very last step in evolution from hieroglyphic through to ideographic and logographic systems before the actual appearance of the (earliest form of) the ancient Greek alphabet. In other words, the evolution from hieroglyphic systems such as ancient Egyptian all the way right on through to the Greek alphabet, the culmination of 1,000s of years of evolution, looks something like this:
hieroglyphics -› ideograms -› logograms -› syllabary -› alphabet
in which only the last two systems, the syllabaries, represented by Linear A, Linear B & Linear C, and the Greek alphabet, contain all of the vowels. This is of the greatest significance in the understanding of the geometric economy of both syllabaries and alphabets, explaining why syllabaries consist of far fewer characters (generally no more than about 80-90 syllabograms, not counting logogams and ideograms, which are merely remnants of the previous systems) than any previous stage(s)in the evolution of ancient writing systems, and why alphabets consist of even fewer characters (only 24 in the classical Attic Ancient alphabet, and never more than 30 in the earliest Greek alphabets).
Richard
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Science Daily reports: automated Time Machine to reconstruct ancient languages!
Science Daily reports: automated Time Machine to reconstruct ancient languages! (Click to enlarge)
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130212112025.htm
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