Tag: syllabograms

Introduction to supersyllabograms in Linear B: O = onato = lease field # 2

Introduction to supersyllabograms in Linear B: O = onato = lease field # 2



Now that I have fully explained how supersyllabograms function in Mycenaean Linear B, it is going to be a lot easier for us to understand the second tablet in the series, Knossos tablet KN 1270 E j 213, on which once again the supersyllabogram O = onato = “(usufruct) lease field” appears for the second time and again on the bottom line. So the translation of that line must be “... and 48 rams on a lease field on the island of Eksonos -or- Exonos”, where the supersyllabogram O in front of the ideogram for “rams” of course means onato = “(usufruct) lease field”. That was pretty easy. I shall post one more tablet with the supersyllabogram O = onato, to make it crystal clear how it functions. Then we shall turn to the supersyllabogram KI, which for the moment I am keeping a secret from you. Eksonos or Exonos was one of several major islands in the Minoan-Mycenaean Empire where sheep were raised.

Introduction to supersyllabograms in Linear B – what is a supersyllabogram?

In brief, a supersyllabogram is the first syllabogram, i.e. the first syllable of any Linear B word (or phrase) used in conjunction with any one of scores of Linear B ideograms. In a sense, almost all supersyllabograms are dependent on the ideogram which they modify, hence they are called dependent supersyllabograms. However, it is not as simple as that. In actual fact, it is the supersyllabogram which modifies the meaning of the ideogram, sometimes drastically.

Additionally, in the field of agriculture, all supersyllabograms without exception are said to be associative, which is to say that they are associated by happenstance with the ideograms they modify as indicators of geographic location, land tenure, land disposition, sheep raising and husbandry, as dictated by each supersyllabogram. The tablet shown here clearly illustrates the disposition of an associative supersyllabogram, in this case O = Linear onaton = “a usufruct lease field” or more simply “a lease field”, which as you can see is an entire phrase in English, even though it is only one word in Mycenaean Linear B. Here is how the supersyllabogram O = onaton in particular functions. Where the ideograms alone (accompanied by no supersyllabogram) signifying rams and ewes appear on any Linear B tablet, as on the first line of KN 1371 E j 921, they simply mean what they are, rams and ewes, which is why the first line of this tablet simply translates as 80 rams and 8 ewes. Period. Nothing more, nothing less. Simple.

The supersyllabogram O, the first of 36:

However, as soon as the scribe places a supersyllabogram, in this case O, which as we have just noted above is the first syllabogram, i.e. the first syllable of a certain Linear B word, the meaning changes, often dramatically. The problem is, what does O mean? Upon consulting Chris Tselentis’ excellent Linear B Lexicon, we discover (not much to our surprise) that there is one word and one word only which fits the context and that word is of course onato. Every other entry under the vowel syllabogram O in his Lexicon comes up cold. They are dead ends. This leaves us with only one alternative. The vowel syllabogram O must mean onato = “a lease field”, and absolutely nothing else. So the second line on this tablet can only mean one thing, “12 rams on a (usufruct) lease field”. Nothing else. Period. However, take away the ideogram, in this case for “rams”, and leave the O all by itself on the tablet, it means absolutely nothing. It is just the vowel syllabogram O, and there is no Mycenaean Linear B word with the single vowel “O”. This is precisely why the supersyllabogram O (and all other supersyllabograms in the agricultural sector of the Minoan-Mycenaean economy are tagged as associative (because they just so happen to be associated with the ideograms they modify) and dependent on the ideogram they modify (because once they are associated with a particular ideogram, they distinctly modify its meaning). This phenomenon takes some getting used to, because it does not exist in any other language or script, ancient or modern... which is astounding when you think of it.

Unfortunately, not all supersyllabograms are that easy to crack. In fact, the majority of them are not. But we can leave that prickly problem to later, much later. In case you are wondering , out of 61 syllabograms + 1 homophone (AI) in Mycenaean Linear B, no fewer than 36 (!) or 59 % are supersyllabograms. That is a huge investment on the part of Mycenaean Linear B scribes. But why, I hear you asking, would they even bother doing this? The answer stares us in the face... to save precious space on what are after all tiny tablets. Linear B tablets are rarely more than 15 cm. wide, with only a few being 30 cm. So rather than spell out onato in full, in this case onato = a lease field, they simply placed the supersyllabogram O in front of the ideogram for any of sheep or rams or ewes, and left it at that. And what goes for the supersyllabogram O goes for every last one of the 36 supersyllabograms.

This phenomenon may seem a little weird to you all at first sight. But you will rapidly become accustomed to it as I post more and more supersyllabograms (a.k.a. SSYLs) pursuant to this post.

Note that until I myself deciphered all 36 supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B between 2014 & 2016, no one in the field of linguistic research into Linear B had ever deciphered any more than a scattered few or them, let alone isolated, identified and classified all 36. In fact, no researcher to date has ever even understood what the phenomenon of the supersyllabogram is. Not until I cracked them wide open.

This is the most significant breakthrough in the decipherment of Mycenaean Linear B in the 64 years since its initial decipherment by Michael Ventris in 1952. In 2017, I will be publishing the definitive article on The Theory and Application of Supersyllabograms in Linear B, but in which publication and precisely when remains a closely guarded secret never to be whispered until it meets the light of day.

The lovely Minoan Camp Stool or Footstool Fresco fragment KN 1521 X m 50

The lovely Minoan Camp Stool or Footstool Fresco fragment KN 1521 X m 50:



This is a particularly fascinating fragment. First of all, I never imagined I would ever be able to find a  picture, and better than that, an actual fresco of a Minoan camp stool or footstool. Mais une fois l’affaire cherchée, les voilà trouvés, deux tabourets exquis ! Once searched, once found, two exquisite stools! Just my luck. Secondly, have a look at the scribe’s hand. Beautiful!... especially the way he stylizes NU. Three florid variations on just one syllabogram.  For that matter, the same phenomenon recurs with RA. He must have been in love and wanted to give a least one of the footstools to his darling. Just kidding! Quite impressive and quite an impressive fragment, unique, one of a kind.

3 quasi-identical tablets on rams. But what are the “items related to rams ”? What a quandary!
3 quasi-identical tablets on rams. But what are the “items related to rams ”? What a quandary!

The written text of all three of these tablets is identical. Only the total numbers of rams and so-called “items related to rams ” vary, especially that latter, from a low of 10 to a high of 67. This raises the thorny questions of why the shepherd or owner of these sheep, Dumireweis, would have to use 67 items related to rams on the second tablet, versus 10 on the first and 20 on the third, especially in light of the fact that the number of rams varies but little on all three tablets (4,5,4).

The next problem is that Mycenaean Greek does not in any specify what these items are supposed to be. The only recourse I have is to assume that they are the instruments and implementa the shepherds and sheep owners used to raise their sheep. Turning to modern sheep raising instruments, and using a little imagination to boot, I came up with the ones listed in the illustration above. This still leaves the issue of Dumireweis having to resort to using 67 such items for a mere 5 rams on the second tablet. The only explanation I can come up with is that the is using several of the same items, meaning that he has several of each in stock. But if this is the case, why does he apparently have only 10 items in stock on tablet 1 and 20 on tablet 3, unless these are a subset of his total stock? That can make sense, as in modern inventories, we can and sometimes do find varying numbers of tool, instruments etc. related for instance to car or airplane manufacturing. These instruments can run to a significant number, especially in the aerospace industry. But I find it extremely difficult to believe that there could as many as a total of 67 discrete (separate) instruments used in an ancient agricultural setting such as that of Knossos, Mycenae or Pylos. It would make far more sense to adduce that the number of such tools and implementa is in fact only 10, as illustrated on the first tablet. This would mean that the 20 on the last tablet would make for redundancy in the number of separate, distinct items, for instance 3 forceps for birthing, 2 different shearing tools etc. Shearing in particular could have involved the use of a number of different, even specialized tools. So the number 67 on the second tablet may not be so wacky after all. For instance, Dumireweis could have made use of 2 different type of forceps or calipers for birthing, and as many as 5 different shearing tools, all in quantity, in order that the total runs to 67.

But we are not done yet. Why on earth are there 3 tablets inventorying Dumireweis’ rams, when the scribe could have fit all of the rams and all of the instruments on one tablet? That really beats me. He could have listed 97 instruments for 13 rams, but he didn’t. The only explanation I can come up with is that the scribe is inventorying three different groups of rams Dumireweis owns. No matter how you cut it, though, there appears to be no way our of this messy impasse.
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Cool mock-up I found on the Internet modified just for us! “Linear B! That’s what!”
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Cool mock-up I found on the Internet modified just for us! “Linear B! That’s what!” 

 
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Linear B tablet, Ashmolean Museum An1938_708_o, rams and ewes

Linear B tablet, Ashmolean Museum An1938_708_o, rams and ewes:



Note on the translation:

In the first line, we have the intriguing word, Yatiri, which I take as being a place name (toponym). However, given that it ends in “ri ”, it could also be dative, and in that case, it sure looks like that dative of Linear B iatere = Greek iatros = “physician”. If that is so, it would seem that the scribe who inscribed this tablet may have wanted to indicate to us that he wishes the owners of the sheep, Adaios and Dotias, to bring their flocks to the attention of the physician, who would check them for disease. However, this is the less likely of the two translations. The place name makes more sense.

In case any of you are wondering, as I am sure you are, what are all these tablets tagged Ashmolean Museum? There is a relatively small, but extremely significant collection of Linear B tablets held by the Ashmolean Museum, the British Museum, The Sir Arthur Evans Archive, here:




Although this collection of tablets transferred by Sir Arthur Evans to the British Museum in the early 1900s is small, it should never be ignored, as it contains in its gallery




such commanding tablets as:
Ae 2031, previously translated on our site, here:
https://linearalinearblinearc.ca/2016/05/05/the-famous-bulls-head-sacrificial-libation-rhyton-ashmolean-museum-translated/
and An1910_211_o 
https://linearalinearblinearc.ca/2016/01/01/knossos-tablet-kn-894-n-v-01-ashmolean-as-a-guide-to-mycenaean-chariot-construction-and-design-3/

Linear B tablet KN 791 G c 101, ewes and rams & what it really signifies

Linear B tablet KN 791 G c 101, ewes and rams & what it signifies:

Linear B tablet KN 791 G c 101, as with most Linear B tablets dealing with sheep, takes stock of ewes and rams. There are literally 100s of such tablets, far more than all the tablets put together in every other sector of the Minoan/Mycenaean economy (military, textiles & vessels or pottery). This goes to show the critical importance of sheep raising and sheep husbandry in the Minoan/Mycenaean economy. It is by far and away the most important sector of their economy. I first translated this tablet back in 2014, when I was just familiarizing myself with supersyllabograms. I made a fundamental error in my then translation, by conflating KI with pakoso, giving pakososi, which is meaningless. In actual fact, the separate syllabogram KI is the supersyllabogram for kitimena = a plot of land.

On another point. Those of you who visit our site may find it odd that the nouns on Linear B tablets are almost always in the nominative, even when one modifies another, such as onato kitimena which literally means “a lease field, a plot of land”, but freely and accurately translated means “on a leased plot of land”, where onato becomes attributive. The difficulty here is that these are both associative supersyllabograms, both of which must be nominative regardless of context. Why so? Since the Linear B tablets are inventories, the scribes could not be bothered with inflected cases, unless it was absolutely unavoidable. As far as they were concerned each “item” on the inventory stood on its own, as a nominative, in other words, as a naming marker. Although this seems very peculiar to us, that does not matter one jot, because here we are in the twenty-first century and there they were in the thirteenth or fourteenth century BCE, and never the twain shall meet. After all, they, the scribes, wrote the tablets, so whatever we may think about their “style” (which is also irrelevant because they could have cared less about that too), we have to put up with their formulaic conventions, because that is what these phenomena and others similar to them amount to. Take it or leave it. But if you leave it does not make a hill of beans worth of difference.

INVITATION to Classical Sites (Greek & Roman) including Twitter to join us as * PARTNERS *

FROM: Richard Vallance Janke of Linear B, Knossos and Mycenae

Invitation to join the new Premier Network of Classical Sites on the Internet

NOTE! If you are a regular visitor to Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae, please leave the LINK to your site in Comments, and I will add it to our * PARTNERS *

Otherwise:

To accept, please send me an e-mail at: vallance22@zoho.com
OR vallance22@gmail.com

We have just invited today (Wed. June 15 2016):
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World
Federico Aurora, DAMOS, Database of Mycenaean at Oslo
Michael Cosmopoulos, Iklaina Archaeological Project
MNAMON: Ancient Writing Systems in the Mediterranean
Res Gerendae

See below no. 4

First, a few significant developments with our organization in the past two years:

1. We are now by far the largest Linear B & Linear C site on the Internet.
2. We have translated at least 500 tablets, mostly from Knossos, some from Pylos and Mycenae.
3. I am now being published on a regular basis in key archaeological and historical linguistic sites. My most significant article to date is “An Archaeologist's Translation of Pylos Tablet TA 641-1952 (Ventris) with an Introduction to Supersyllabograms in the in the Vessels & Pottery Sector of Mycenaean Linear B” in,
Archaeology and Science. Vol. 10 (2014) pp. 133-161. Belgrade: Institute of Archaeology, 2016. ISSN 1452-7448
https://www.academia.edu/23643380/Archaeology_and_Science_Vol._10_2014_An_Archaeologists_Translation_of_Pylos_Tablet_641-1952._pp._133-161

NOTE that I am to be published again in next year’s issue of Archaeology and Science. And that article is going to be a ground-breaker in the refinement of the decipherment of Linear B.

Another of my recent publications is, “The Role of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B”, here:
https://linearalinearblinearc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/the-role-of-ssyls-in-mycenean-linear-b.pdf

4. ** We are setting up a new Premier Network of Classical Sites on the Internet, which for the time being is subsumed under the Category ** PARTNERS **, the very first Category at the top of the first page of our site:

https://linearalinearblinearc.ca/

We are in full partnership with (Koryvantes) The Association of Historical Studies (Athens) http://www.koryvantes.org/en/
and with Sententiae Antiquae
https://sententiaeantiquae.com/

and with The Institute of Archaeology (Belgrade).

+ one other site. We have just begun establishing the Network and we hope to expand it to at least 25 sites in the next year.

We will be contacting scores of other invitees in the next few weeks.

PS could you add our site to your list of sites under Linear B, as Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae is one of the major Linear B sites on the Internet?

Thank you

Richard Vallance Janke

Comprehensive Architectural Lexicon, Knossos & Mycenae (Part A)

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

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

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

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



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

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

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



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

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

Linear B tablet KN 847 K j 61 deals with wheat production at Knossos for one month (we do not know which month). Soanobotos is the wheat farmer. Note that the ideogram for “month” looks like the moon, which is scarcely surprising. The output of wheat at 12 hectares for this particular month is in line with the extent of wheat production we might expect from the large expanse of fields surrounding a city as large as Knossos (population ca. 55,000). It is absolutely critical to understand that, in ancient times as in modern in the Mediterranean basin, the production of wheat could not have extended through every month of the year. Far from it. That is par for the course in any civilization, ancient or modern. The second point, which stage of production are we dealing with here? This tablet does not make it at all clear. Is is spring and are we dealing with the sowing of wheat? Or is it autumn, and the harvesting of wheat. My bet is decidedly in favour of the latter scenario. Now it is more than likely that harvesting of wheat was spread over two months at most, since the autumns are warm in the Mediterranean. So we can expect that something in the order of the number of “hectares” = 12 for this month, let’s say it is lunar “September”, would be repeated for the next month, lunar “October”, though probably on a somewhat lesser scale, let’s say 8 hectares. That would yield a crop of 20 “hectares” harvested for the current year. Pretty decent, I would say. Not only that, we must keep firmly in mind that this crop is only that of Soanobotos, who is only 1 of God knows how many farmers at Knossos. There could have been as few as 20 or as many as 50. No one knows for sure. So the wheat crop harvested at Knossos alone could have run to 240 hectares at a conservative estimate. Just about right on target for such a large city. If a conservative estimate for both of the lunar months is taken into account, the harvest runs to 400 hectares! We’ll never know, but it is always worthwhile conjecturing, and in any case, the wheat crop at Knossos would have had to be pretty substantial.
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Pylos tablet Eo 269, wool carding and the production of wheat
Pylos tablet Eo 269, wool carding and the production of wheat:

Pylos tablet Eo 269 deals with both wool carding and the production of wheat (wheat crops). The person responsible for wool carding is Aktaoios, who is the owner of a settled plot of land. Note the emphasis on “settled”. The family lives on the land and off it. Aktaoios would therefore appear to be a well off farmer-land owner. The first occupation mentioned is wool carding, which implies the presence of (a lot of) sheep, even though sheep are not specifically mentioned on this tablet. With reference to the wheat crop, while we do not know exactly how much wheat the “unit of measurement” refers to, for the sake of convenience, let us say it is something like 1 hectares or 1 acre or something along those lines. It clearly was something along those lines, but no actual “proof” of the size of measured land upon which wheat was grown in Mycenaean times survives, as is to be expected. So we make an approximation. In any case, it is a lot of wheat, and he and his family would have had to do a lot of seeding to bring in such a rich crop. The Minoans and Mycenaeans (here at Pylos) appear to have been real experts at growing wheat, as it is often mentioned in large quantities on Linear B tablets from both Knossos and Pylos.
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Linear B tablet K 1248, Knossos, a special case

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

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

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

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

Because Knossos tablet KN 1530 R t 01 on textiles is so severely damaged, it is impossible to make any sense at all out of lines 1 & 2, while only the right side of line 3 makes any sense, in so far as it clearly sets down 11 units of textiles and (apparently) a liability, if that is what the supersyllabogram O means in this context, i.e. O = opero = liability. Line 4 is muddled on the left side. It is difficult to establish whether or not the word on the left side, which is partially missing, is a person’s name, but if it is, and we insert “i” as the missing letter, then we have Waisio in Linear B or Waisios in Archaic Greek. The middle part of this line is garbled. The word kitano means “a terebinth tree” and seems out of place in this context, unless the pistachio from this tree is used to create a pale green dye for the cloth. The right side of line 4 makes sense, in so far as it clearly sets down 11 units of textiles and (apparently) a liability, if that is what the supersyllabogram O means in this context, i.e. O = opero = liability.
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Linear B tablet Knossos KN 683 Sh 01 dealing with textiles and onyx

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

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

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

Linear B tablets on wheat: KN 849 K j 72

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



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

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



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

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