Tag: syllabograms

Generously retweet from fellow researchers and aficionados of ancient Greece and watch what happens!

Generously retweet from fellow researchers and aficionados of ancient Greece and watch what happens! Click to ENLARGE:

Thanks to timely assistance from my colleague and fellow Linear B researcher, Rita Roberts in Herakleion, Crete, right next door to Knossos, who showed me how to insert photos, charts and translations of Linear B tablets, I was suddenly able to increase the number of photos etc. on my Twitter account:

from only 13 to 115 illustrations in just 3 days! This finally gave me the confidence to start retweeting similar tweets from fellow researchers into ancient Greece, ancient Greek and the ancient world in general, and even to post those illustrations of mine which I was quite sure would appeal to each person I retweeted, as well as favoriting their tweets. The result has been nothing short of astonishing! Suddenly, the number of my followers jumped from 620 to 668 in just 3 days, while the number of visits to our Blog have concomitantly risen from an average of about 60-75 per day to almost double that, clocking in at around 120-180 per day. I never expected that, but it sure is very encouraging. To the extent that we support our fellow researchers and aficionados of ancient Greece and Greek, we soon find ourselves rewarded by reciprocal endorsement from our new friends. Karma.

Besides, 668 followers for something as esoteric and far-out as Mycenaean Linear B and Arcado-Cypriot Linear C is rather impressive, if you ask me.

So allow me, my new friends on Twitter, to extend my gratitude and thanks for your reciprocal support.

Richard

My Translation of lines 474-510 of “The Catalogue of Ships” in Book II of the Iliad

My Translation of lines 474-510 of “The Catalogue of Ships” in Book II of the Iliad: Click to ENLARGE

This is Part 1 of 9 Parts of my running translation of the “The Catalogue of Ships”, lines 474-815 in Book II of the Iliad. The cardinal aim of our translation is to underscore the close relationship between the most archaic vocabulary in the Iliad, almost all of which appears in Book II, and primarily in “The Catalogue of Ships”, with both of the earlier Mycenaean Greek & Arcado-Cypriot dialects. With this in mind, I expect to be able to regressively extrapolate derived (D) vocabulary in the Mycenaean Greek & Arcado-Cypriot dialects from archaic vocabulary found in “The Catalogue of Ships” in Book II of the Iliad. Derived vocabulary (DV) in Mycenaean Linear B and Arcado-Cypriot Linear C is not to be found on any extant tablets in either script. Vocabulary on extant tablets is designated as attested (AV).

I am quite convinced that it will be possible for us to derive a considerable number of Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot words, which are presently nowhere attested. This derived vocabulary (DV) should appreciably expand the corpus of Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot vocabulary in Linear B and Linear C respectively. My research colleague, Rita Roberts, and I expect to eventually be able to compile a truly comprehensive topical English-Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Lexicon, which may very well double the existing vocabulary in Mycenaean Greek, and supplement somewhat the already considerable vocabulary of Arcado-Cypriot, which appears in both in Linear C and in alphabetic Greek. Our Lexicon, which should appear in PDF sometime in 2016 will prove to be greatly superior to the Mycenaean (Linear B) – English Glossary, currently available on the Internet. This glossary should be consulted with the greatest caution and wariness, as it was so poorly proof-read that its entries in Linear B, alphabetic Greek and English are riddled with well over 100 errors. In fact, I would strictly advise anyone who is familiar with either or both Linear B & ancient Greek to double-check every single entry for errors. On the other hand, Chris Tselentis’ Linear B Lexicon, which can be downloaded in PDF format from the net, is a reliable source of considerable merit of Mycenaean Linear B vocabulary. It has the additional advantage of including a large number of eponyms and toponyms, which play a formative rôle on extant Linear B tablets, regardless of provenance.

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

Rita Robert’s Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 1115 E c 315

Rita Robert’s Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 1115 E c 315: Click to ENLARGE



Rita’s comments on her translation:

By consulting the huge Tselentis Linear B Lexicon, I found the place name Kytaistos where the 81 rams and 20 ewes were kept. I intuitively inserted “There is a total of”, because this would normally appear on a Linear B Tablet itemizing the number of animals or items. But of course, on this tablet as with so many others, the scribe omitted this because of the necessity to save space on such a small area. 

Rita Roberts

Comment by Richard:

Here is yet another of Rita’s successful translations of moderately difficult Knossos tablets using ideograms (in this case, those for ram & ewe). Since Rita always excels at what she does and now that Rita has fully mastered this level of translation, she is moving onto advanced decipherment, which is going to present a lot more challenges to her.

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

Without further ado (or maybe with it!) let’s all wish Rita Happy Birthday with her WIPO & EREPATO!

Without further ado (or maybe with it!) let’s all wish Rita Happy Birthday with her WIPO & EREPATO! Click to BLOW UP, eh...

I simply have not the faintest idea (though if I did, I probably would faint!) who designed this cluttered Birthday Card, but they must have been high on mushrooms, marijane or some kind of hallucinogen, eh. OMG! And the notes! They fairly shout at us, Hey READ ME, why don’t you, anyway, eh! (eh being Canajun for A, ha ha!, and since I am a Canajun, I know what THAT means, eh!... so do all other Canajuns, a few Brits, a few Aussies & a few Kiwis, but no Yanks, who for some bizarre reason insist on saying, HUH?, which unlike EH! sounds kinda stupid, eh!). I don’t know about YOU, but I am going to fly to Herakleion (& if you don’t know where that is or you are American & don’t know anyway, FORGET IT, EH!)

So have a wonderful, stupendous, hyper-terrific, copacetic, ecstatic, far out, flighty, spacey, what planet are YOU from?, Plan 9 1/2 from Outer Space etc. etc. etc. Birthday, eh, Rita.... because WIPO simply does not have the graphic skills, let alone writing skills, to cobble together another Birthday Card like this for at least another year, eh. Anyway, it IS one astonishing CARD, totally unique on this little planet of ours full of HUGE ELEPHANTS and little WIPOs, don’t you think, eh?

Yours most sincerely trying with all my might to avoid any nearby EREPATOS! Oh and of course Rita will have to Translate this great card for us, because no Canajun in his or her right mind would even dream of translating it, except for a million Euros... hint, hint, Rita, eh.

Ton ami canadien (Canajun eh!) Click to ENLARGE, even if no-one has ever seen an enlarged beaver! They sure would not like that, and might nibble your finger nails off if you tried!

Richard EH!

The moment we’ve all been waiting for. This is it! Ideogram for “horse” IQO + Our First Supersyllabogram = ZE, “a team”: our First Concrete Example = “a team of horses”

The moment we've all been waiting for. This is it! Ideogram for “horse” IQO + Our First Supersyllabogram = ZE, “a team”: our First Concrete Example = “a team of horses”

I honestly believe that this is the first time ever since Michael Ventris' successful decipherment of Linear B in July 1952 that a major step may have been taken in the further decipherment of those elements of Linear B which, at least until now, have been entirely recalcitrant to any meaningful decipherment. I have spent the past half year ploughing through 3,000+ tablets & fragments of the Scripta Minoa Catalogue of some 4,000+ fragments and tablets unearthed by Sir Arthur Evans between 1900 & 1903, with further excavations to follow in later years, prior and subsequent to World War I. This irreplaceable precious treasure trove of the largest collection of Linear B fragments ever discovered is available online in its entirety at Heidelberg University, Germany, here:

I fully expect that I will eventually be able to extract hundreds of examples all told of the potentially widespread use of an Ideogram immediately preceded or followed by a Syllabogram, and always in one of these two specific, invariable orders. In other words, we are speaking of a “formulaic phrase”, though of course, since the Linear B word in question is not spelled out in syllabograms as it “normally” would be, we are not strictly speaking of “phrases” here, but of a formulaic expression of an Ideogram immediately preceded or followed by a Syllabogram in every single instance, without exception, or as we choose to define it, a Supersyllabogram.

Almost from the outset I was astounded to discover the recurrence of the exact same sequence of an Ideogram + Syllabogram no less than seven (7!) times on only two pages of the Scripta Minoa, i.e. pages 144 & 146. This formulaic expression of the Supersyllabogram ZE (plus a single instance of the SSY MO), I must underline, was only the first of scores and scores of Supersyllabograms I have since unearthed in several categories of tablets and fragments from the Scripta Minoa. My discovery of our very first Supersyllabogram in May of this year (2014) was, to say the very least, a real eye opener. For certain Linear B expressions compounded of a single ideogram invariably followed or preceded by the same syllabogram, which have utterly defied decipherment to date, suddenly became accessible for decipherment. The astonishing thing is that the very first two of these expressions involves the Linear B ideogram for IQO = horse + the syllabogram ZE, and always in the exact same order in every single instance, as you can judge for here yourself:

7 Linear B Tablets & Fragments from Knossos Illustrating the Use of the Supersyllabogram ZE = a team (of horses) Click to ENLARGE:

All this was almost too good to be true. But when I fell upon even more of these expressions for the second instance of the ideogram for “horse”, I could scarcely believe my eyes. But there it was, plain as the nose on my face.

Now, as you can see at once for yourselves from the first example of these seven fragments of Linear B, the ideogram(s) – 1 or 2, as the case may be – are always in the precise same order and always, without exception, immediately followed by the syllabogram ZE. But what, you are obviously asking, is that single syllabogram ZE supposed to mean? All by itself, it would mean precisely nothing. But in this specific, particular and often recurring formula, I originally deduced that ZE always meant “a halter” or “a yoke”, but I was dead wrong.

An esteemed colleague of mine, Ms. Gretchen Leonhardt, who is also a highly competent decipherer and translator of Linear B tablets and fragments, soon enough set the record straight for me, convincing me beyond a shadow of a doubt that, in fact, the Supersyllabogram in the specific context of military matters could mean one thing and one thing only, “a pair of” (wheels etc.) or “a team of” (horses), and absolutely nothing else.

Moreover, further research on my part has confirmed Ms. Leonhardt’s hypothesis beyond question. Chris Tselentis, near the end of his excellent Linear B Lexicon, has provided us with numerous examples of very well known Linear B tablets to illustrate the various problems which so often arise in our attempts to decipher or translate Linear B tablets and fragments. Among these tablets there is one which cracks the case wide open. Here it is:

And Tselentis got it right bang on. He correctly translates the ideogram for wheel + the syllabogram ZE + the number 3 as “three pairs of wheels”, and this in spite of the fact that he did not quite get it right with the rest of the text. But no-one is perfect, so we can simply let that go. Anyway, I have corrected his own translation as illustrated above.

All that follows is my original text from May 2014, revised wherever necessary to reflect several new revelations on supersyllabograms since then:

In the previous post illustrating Thomas G. Palaima's expert translation of Heidelberg Tablet FL 1994, we saw that he interpreted – and as it turns out, correctly — the syllabograms KO ZA PA PO & MU as being just the initial syllable of – and again, I must lay particular emphasis on this observation – the names of major Minoan/Mycenaean centres. Is this just a fluke? Far from it. The precise point is this, why would expert Linear B scribes bother with spelling out over and over the names of these cities and sites with all their syllabograms when “Everyone (meaning among all of us scribes) knows perfectly well that the first syllabogram, in other words, the first syllable alone, and nothing else, tells us in no uncertain terms that this is is the name of one of our important Minoan/Mycenaean centres, and if you cannot see that, you must be blind.” (So they say, the scribes).

We do well to keep this firmly in mind: the Linear B scribes never inscribed their tablets for us, they did so for themselves and for the specific, sole function of annual accounting in the context of their own society. Nothing could be more obvious. That is the whole point to this marvellous adventure of deciphering ancient scripts! This was not only the lifetime mission the great Michael Ventris laid out for himself — it was nothing short of the love of his life. And since I love his work so dearly, can you be even remotely surprised that I will do absolutely anything to be able at last to decipher scores of of previously undecipherable Linear B tablets to honour his name?

Recasting this phenomenon as a general “rule”, Linear B scribes appear to have frequently resorted to using the first syllabogram, in other words, the first syllable alone of (sometimes long) place names, instead of wasting their time writing them out in full. Makes perfect sense to me. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Not only are the full Linear B spellings of place names treated in this manner, but also several other key components of the Minoan/Mycenaean socio-economic infrastructure, including agriculture, crafts, household matters, trade, and of course, religious affairs. I shall amply illustrate this frequently recurring phenomenon in the coming months. In a nutshell, my premise is this: single syllabograms on fragments and tablets, which have defied decipherment to date, can in fact be contextually deciphered in a manner which makes perfect sense, no matter how you look at it, just as Thomas G. Palaima has so clearly illustrating in his masterful translation of Linear B Tablet Heidelberg FL 1994.

The fact that so many Linear B fragments and tablets, and I mean everywhere they have been found, and not just in Knossos, are liberally peppered with single syllabograms either immediately before or after the ideograms they modify must signify something of real import to us in the further decipherment of Linear B. Why?... well, because the Linear B palace scribes knew perfectly well what they were doing, which is to say, what they were writing, why they wrote it the way they did, and especially how they wrote it, when they consciously and deliberately so often had recourse to single syllabograms. This practically begs the question – what on earth were they up to? Precisely this: they used the first syllabogram only, in other words the first syllable of vitally important Linear B words, which would otherwise have had to be spelled out, thereby wasting valuable space on what are for the most part, very small tablets measuring no more than 15-20 cm. at most. In other words, they were making liberal use of shorthand (at least as we would call it), and liberally using it thousands of years before we in the modern world finally cottoned onto it again in the late nineteenth century. Clever bunch of lads, weren't they?

But, oh no, the Linear B scribes weren't even satisfied at stopping there. After all, “If we are going to use shorthand with initial syllabograms alone, why not go whole hog and use formulaic expressions of an ideogram (or even more than one ideogram!) + a syllabogram (or even more than one syllabogram!), and always in the same precise order, in other words, as a formula. Sound familiar? That is precisely what Homer did over and over and over in the Iliad? Co-incidence. I am now beginning to sincerely doubt that.

So I have to ask, what is a big chunk of the corpus of Linear B if not, in essence, shorthand, pure and simple. And if this is the case, we have some serious rethinking to do about the very nature of Linear B. It may even mean going back to the drawing board in the re-decipherment of a considerable number of Linear B tablets and fragments. What a mind-boggling prospect! But, hey, sounds like fun to me. To put a fine point on it, this is going to be a truly daunting challenge, if we are to really get at the nitty-gritty of accurate contextual decipherment. This is something we can no longer afford to ignore.

Why Supersyllabograms are What They are:

Allow me to explain why I call such syllabograms “Supersyllabograms”. It is really quite straightforward. Since such syllabograms always and invariably consist of the first syllable alone of an entire Linear B word, they must perforce be shorthand. Take this premise just one little step further, as I have in fact done and fully demonstrated in the table of 7 (almost) identical formulaic expressions of the syllabograms (chariot) + IQO (horse) + ZE in every single instance, and what do you get? - none other than the entire phrase, “a pair of chariot wheels” (since after all, chariots need two wheels, as if...) or, alternatively, whenever horses are involved, “a team of horses”. That is one big mouthful for 1 little ideogram + one little syllabogram in a standardized, invariable formula. The whole point is that these formulae recur so often on the Linear B fragments and tablets in the Scripta Minoa as to make it virtually impossible to ignore them, except at our own peril born of a frustratingly annoying inability to make any sense whatsoever of such expressions. Yet, as I shall illustrate many times over in the next year or so, such expressions not only exist, but recur very frequently on Linear B fragments and tablets, regardless of provenance, whether from Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae or anywhere else... (some original text erased, no longer being relevant).

Add all of these components together, and what do you get? ... the Supersyllabogram, a new term I have had to coin, simply because it fits the bill to a tee. And there you have it. At least for now.

More to come. Much much more. I welcome and strongly encourage feedback and especially criticism of my basic premise here, and of its theoretical soundness or lack thereof, for otherwise, none of us can or will make any further headway in the eventual decipherment of a huge chunk of the Linear B corpus. But somehow, intuitively and through the process of inductive logic, I truly believe I am onto something, possibly even something big where the decipherment of large portions of Linear B “texts” - an inaccurate term if ever there was one, should my theory prove substantially sound.

And to test my hypothesis against reality, which I am ethically and honour bound to do, I shall convey all of this information to Prof. Thomas G. Palaima, Prof. John G. Younger and to every other major Linear B scholar or researcher whose name comes to mind. If any of you who are reading this post, or know of anyone who is just such an expert, please identify the same to me immediately. And, if you yourself are a truly enthusiastic student of Linear B in any way, shape or form, please do not hesitate to contact me, or even better, to comment, in favour, against or neutrally, on this (potentially) ground-breaking post on our blog.

Cheers

Richard

All 9 Supersyllabograms for Amphorae & Vessels in Mycenaean Linear B

All 9 Supersyllabograms for Amphorae & Vessels in Mycenaean Linear B – Click to ENLARGE:



Of the 9 supersyllabograms for amphorae & vessels in Mycenaean Linear B, only one (1) is derived (D) = SORO (ancient Greek = soros) or “urn for the ashes of the dead” or “funerary urn” (Liddell & Scott, 1986, pg. 643). The rest are all attributed (A) on Linear B tablets, regardless of provenance. But this is the only entry in Liddell & Scott which closely matches amphorae, vessels, pots & urns, and it is so convincing that I feel quite sure it is the correct interpretation in this specific context.

Following are two Linear B fragments which nicely illustrate the use of the supersyllabograms RO (crooked) & DI (dedicated to Zeus) Click to ENLARGE:



This concludes our review of supersyllabograms related to amphorae, vessels, pots & urns in Mycenaean Linear B.

It has become apparent to me that at least half or possibly even the majority of basic syllabograms and at least one logogram (for MERI = honey) are supersyllabograms. If this turns out to be the case (as I am quite sure it will), these results will serve to confirm my underlying hypothesis that the Mycenaean Linear B syllabary is shorthand to a considerable extent, given also the Linear B has around 100 ideograms as well, so many of which either contain attributive supersyllabograms inside them or have as many as three (3!) environmental supersyllabograms either preceding (proclitic) or following them (enclitic). 

Richard

Rita Robert’s Excellent Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 1198 E x 205 “Tanaposo the shepherd”

Rita Robert’s Excellent Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 1198 E x 205 “Tanaposo the shepherd” Click to ENLARGE:

I really have very little to say about this very fine translation Rita Roberts has made of Knossos Tablet KN 1198 E x 205. Now at the final stage of the Advanced Level of learning Mycenaean Linear B (Level 5), Rita has come very far indeed since she first started learning Linear B from me some 19 months ago. She has a true knack for intuiting what any Linear B tablet is really saying, in spite of the fact that the Minoan scribes at Knossos were notorious for omitting everything but the most essential information, given that they inscribed their tablets solely for inventorial purposes for the palace administration, and that, in so doing, they all knew perfectly well what each of their colleagues was saying, since they all adhered to the same code, so to speak, for tallying inventories. Inventories, after all, have to be standardized, and composed consistently across the board; otherwise, they are useless.

Moreover, Rita has swiftly mastered the knack for intuiting the difference between Mycenaean vocabulary & Mycenaean names. She knew perfectly well that Tanaposo could not be a common Mycenaean word, but that it had to be a name. It matters little whether or not the word was later to enter standard Greek vocabulary. She even explains how that came about.

She also correctly divined Tanaposo’s rôle as a shepherd, and correctly assumed that, since he was a shepherd, he had to be tending to his flocks... hence her excellent translation. In a word, the difference between a fair or a good and an excellent translation of any Linear B tablet consists in just this ability, to be able to coax out of the tablet what the Linear B scribe must have actually meant it to say. And I think she has it pretty much bang on.

Richard

A Female Slave Brings Honey to be Poured into an Amphora (Knossos Tablet KN 713 M a 01) Click to ENLARGE:

This is an intriguing little Linear B fragment. Although the actual Linear B text is sparse, with the logogram MERI for “honey” and the ideogram for “amphora” clearly taking precedence over the Linear B word DOERA for “slave”, we must not and we dare not underestimate her essential rôle in the “script” for the play, so to speak, of this fragment. What fascinates me to no end is the fact that the logogram MERI is no closer to the ideogram for “amphora” than to the Linear B word for “slave”. This surely must imply something of the intent of the scribe who wrote this tablet (or fragment). And I think it does. It implies the notion of action, which can only be realistically rendered into Greek (if the Linear B text were used instead of the logogram MERI alone) as an active verb, and in this case, that verb would almost certainly have to be “to bring”, followed by the infinitive of the verb “to pour” or “to be poured”, in other words two verbs in succession!

This is precisely one of the paramount features or characteristics of Mycenaean Greek as it actually appears (or not!) on so many Linear B tablets. I have stressed this over and over again on our blog, and I shall never tire of doing so. Since supersyllabograms, ideograms and logograms, taken together as a phenomenon, should be interpreted as being abbreviations or better yet, shorthand, for actual Mycenaean words in Linear B, and since they occur so very frequently on Linear B tablets, regardless of provenance (Knossos, Pylos, Phaistos etc.), it would be unwise to ignore them, and downright obtuse to dismiss them as minor factors in the decipherment and translation of Mycenaean Greek. In fact, the precise opposite scenario obtains.

As Gretchen Leonhardt, another highly adept translator of Linear B, has frequently pointed out to me, what is the point of deciphering Linear B tablets, if we do not use our imaginations in endeavouring to unveil, as it were, the actual intent of the scribes who wrote them in the first place? Failure to do so simply suggests we are wasting our time even bothering to translate the tablets in the first place.

However much I disagree with Ms. Leonhardt’s fundamental assumptions and hypotheses over how to go about using one’s imagination bent to this exacting task (my own views being almost diametrically opposed to hers), I completely agree with her notion that the Linear B tablets, at least those in which shorthand techniques take marked precedence over Linear B text, must be deciphered with a generous dose of imagination. Otherwise, they simply defy decipherment at all.

This is precisely why I have invented the concept of “supersyllabograms”, in an informed and logically driven attempt to account as fully as possible for the huge textual gaps which riddle so many Linear B tablets, again regardless of provenance. Taking this approach to the decipherment of Linear B tablets consisting mainly of logograms, ideograms and supersyllabograms clearly justifies the kind of translation I came up with for this particular tablet alone. And trust me, I myself, Rita Roberts and Gretchen Leonhardt all take the same approach to translating such tablets, even though Rita and I share approximately the same perspective on what a viable translation should look like, as opposed to Ms. Leonhardt, who views decipherment based on this technique through an altogether different prism. So be it. Ainsi soit-il.

Again, as my colleague, Rita Roberts, stresses in her translation of another Linear B tablet (which we shall be posting very shortly),

... clay tablets were so small that it was impossible to write every detail on them. However his fellow scribes would have known and understood what he meant, they certainly would not have thought about future readers, as they were concerned only with the current fiscal year,...

I could not have put it better. The Linear B scribes compiled their annual fiscal inventories for the sole use of the palace administration, period. It ends right there. Any thought of preserving the tablets for future generations would never have even entered their minds. So before we even dream of translating any Linear B tablet whatsoever, whether or not it sports plenty of text, we had better make sure we are putting ourselves in the head space of the scribes themselves, in so far as this is possible. It is scarcely easy to do so, in fact, it is downright mind-boggling, given that we are separated from their own civilization by over 35 centuries (!), so that any attempt to try and get into their frame of mind is bound to be fraught with hazards galore. But this does not mean we should not try.

So here we have it. As far as I am concerned, this tablet does in fact mean:

The female slave is bringing honey to be poured into an amphora.

And why not? Plenty of professional Linear B translators are bound to object to our somewhat more imaginative approach to translating Linear B tablets with little text, but plenty of ambiguous logograms, ideograms and supersyllabograms, or any combination of these, but when they do, I expect them to come up with translations of their own which are likely to hold as much water as ours, when they are held up to the scrutiny, not only of the Linear B research community at large, but of folks who neither know Greek, ancient or modern, nor Linear B, but who are more than intelligent enough to decide for themselves what they decide any particular tablet means, thank you very much.

Richard

The Various Kinds of Vessels (Amphorae, Pots etc.) in Linear B with their Supersyllabograms (SSYs)

As with any category of common ideograms in Linear B, whether it be livestock (primarily and almost always sheep, rams and ewes, (i.e. on over 20 % or 700 + on all 3,000 Linear B tablets from Knossos I have closely examined), other livestock (cows, bulls, goats, billy goats and she goats etc.), horses, textiles & vessels, among others we have not yet posted on this blog, a large number of ideograms are either preceded or followed by a single syllabogram or contain the single syllabogram inside them.

This single syllabogram we call a supersyllabogram since it is always the first syllabogram, hence, the first syllable of a specific Linear B word of which it is, for all intents and purposes, the Linear B abbreviation. Another way of interpreting this phenomenon is to view each and every supersyllabogram as a kind of shorthand for specific Linear B words, shorthand which the Linear B scribes frequently resorted to to save valuable space on the very small clay tablets they were obliged to write on.

One of the primary considerations to keep firmly in mind is that, with the sole exception of the SSY NE, which always means “new”, regardless of category, identical syllabograms standing in as supersyllabograms never mean the same thing from one category to the next. Allow me to illustrate with a few examples. For instance, the SSY PE for sheep, rams & ewes and other livestock always = PERIQORO, the Linear B word for the ancient Greek “peribolos”, which means “an enclosure”, or more accurately in Mycenaean Greek, “a sheep pen” or “cattle pen” etc., and nothing else whatsoever. In this category, vessels, the sypersyllabogram A = “amphora(e)” is as plain as the nose on your face.

Cross-correlation of the ostensibly “same” supersyllabogram yields predictable results. As illustrated by Linear B Tablet Heidelburg HE FL 1994, all of the SSYs are toponyms, each corresponding to the name of a single Minoan or Mycenaean city or settlement. For instance, the SSY PU = Pylos. On the other hand, the SSY PU in textiles has an entirely different meaning = PUKATARIYA, “a kind of cloth”. Likewise, on the Heidelburg tablet, PA = Palaikastro, whereas in textiles it means PARAKUYA “died textiles or cloth”, and nothing else.

Supersyllabograms for Vessels, Amphorae, Libation Vessels etc – Click to ENLARGE:

There are only 3 supersyllabograms for vessels, A, NE and PO, as illustrated above. A & NE are self-explanatory. As I have frequently pointed out, NE is the one and only SSY which never changes meaning across categories. It always means NEWO (masc.) or NEWA (fem.) = “new”. On the other hand, the supersyllabogram PO for vessels initially posed a problem for me. It was an enigma. What on earth could it mean? My first reaction was to run to Liddell & Scott, 1986, where I found the obvious entry (to me at any rate), “poteos-a-on”, meaning, of course, “drinkable”. Yes, I exclaimed, Eureka! It has to be that. No. No way. Why? Unfortunately, the SSY PO does not simply refer to water, wine or even water turned into wine, or wine or anything else we would consider as “drinkable” as opposed to “undrinkable” or polluted. Sorry. Unfortunately, it is also & frequently, at that, applied to to “honey”, and honey is not exactly what we would refer to as “drinkable”. It is a bit too sticky for that!

Now what? I despaired. But, wait, hold on a sec. Before I could even think twice, the solution leaped right into my mind. That’s it! I (somewhat triumphantly) exclaimed. The SSY PO clearly refers to “a libation to POtiniya”, perhaps the most famous of all Minoan goddesses. Now, since the Minoans were a matriarchal society, at least in so far as deities were concerned, this had to be it. But no, not quite. There is another possibility, which we cannot and must not overlook. PO could just as well refer to “a libation to POseidon”, written as POSEDAO in Linear B. OK, that suits the bill just fine. But which one is it? To my mind, at least, given the marked propensity of Minoan religion for female deities, I expect the odds are something like 70/30 for POTINIYA. Take your pick. If you are macho, you will probably go for Poseidon. Otherwise, the rest of us will likely opt for Potiniya.

And there you have it.

One final note. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Linear B scribes appended the logogram MERI for “honey”, sometimes to the left of the ideogram for “amphora”, sometimes to the top left, and sometimes squarely on top of it. It seems really bizarre to me. There two possible explanations for this. Either (a) they did not care where they put the logogram MERI, since it was after all rather complex and clumsy to write anyway or (b) they did care, because they intended the logogram to have a different meaning in relation to the ideogram for “amphora”, depending on where the logogram MERI was located relative to the ideogram. But what these alternate meanings are we cannot really say. I can at least hazard educated guesses. It seems to me that when the logogram MERI is directly to the left of the ideogram for “amphora”, that amphora is used solely for wine, and nothing else. This interpretation fits neatly with my other translations of similar SSYs which precede or follow their ideogram, especially in the field (pardon the pun) of sheep. When MERI appears to the top left of the ideogram for amphora, this may mean that wine is being poured into the amphora, whereas when MERI appears at the top of the ideogram for amphora, it may mean that the amphora has just been filled to the top. But who knows? I am probably getting a little too specific for my own good. If a Linear B scribe were to come back from the dead as a revenant, he would probably laugh me out of the room for these so-called “explanations” or on the other hand, he might not, and instead say something like this, “Hey, man, you got it bang on”. Fat chance of that.

Richard

The Newly Unearthed Minoan Winnie the Pooh Tablet (from Knossos? I wish it weren’t)

The Newly Unearthed Minoan Winnie the Pooh Tablet (from Knossos? I wish it weren’t) Click to BLOW UP TO ELEPHANT SIZE if you dare!:

I really don’t want to say anything more about this astonishing tablet, except to say that I can’t believe Rita and I found it last Hallowe’en while all the other archaeologists in Herakleion were either out trick or treating with their better halves, or sitting morosely in Greek bars sipping, of all the disgusting things, Retsina! Rita pleaded and begged and pleaded again for me to re-bury it, but I would have nothing of it, informing her in no uncertain terms that this was the Linear B find of the century, if not the entire millennium, given that it is so incredibly unlike any other Linear B tablet she and I have ever, ever, ever seen... let alone anyone else. How it came to be is anyone’s guess, though I do believe that the scribe’s signature, WIPO, is a dead giveaway. Plus, although he had no brains, Minoan Winnie the Pooh was a clever little bugger, riding into the city market, no less, on an ELEPHANT, no less, just to make sure everyone (especially the already burnt-out scribes!) got the hell out of their way... or else... or else what I cringe to imagine. And although our “scribe’s” scratches and scrawls are almost illegible, even for Linear B, which is almost illegible most of the time anyway, only this time round far worse, the text is utterly charming in the extreme, once you can figure out how to decipher it.

I wonder how many elephants he has. I wonder whether or not he shares (at least one pot of) honey with his elephants. I suspect he has to, unless he also wants to get squashed underfoot. I wonder why the scribes just don’t give up, toss in the towel (though there probably no towels as such in ancient Knossos), and run off in all directions screaming like maniacs (which is what they would have been by this time!). I wonder why Rita and I ever decided to keep this silly tablet, except that maybe, just maybe, we want to set the entire Linear B research community, and especially Linear B translators, on their heads, aghast at this new, entirely unexpected and entirely earth-shattering tablet... earth-shattering, not because there was another one of those nasty earthquakes at Knossos when it was composed, but because elephants really do shatter the earth when they come stomping by or, worse yet, stomping into the scribes’ HQ.

This is of course the primary reason why so many Linear B tablets were never unearthed by Sir Arthur Evans in the first place, since the poor bloke was entirely oblivious of the Elephantine Factor (see shattering above). It is almost certainly a historical given that Minoan Winnie the Pooh ordered his pet elephants to destroy as many tablets as they could on any subject but honey pots and honey amphorae, except that the stupid elephants got it all the wrong way around, and destroyed thousands upon thousands of honey-pot and honey amphorae tablets, upon which the entire Minoan economy depended for its survival. When I rummaged through 3,000 + tablets from Knossos, I could find only 7 or 8 honey-pot tablets (and fragments, of course, given those elephant feet!), a horrific loss to posterity, especially to all those honey-sweet Pooh Bears who have lived on this lovely earth of ours since then, Winnie Ille Pooh, the Roman Pooh, Winnie Lou Pou, the Provençal Pou, and so on and so forth, all the way up to Winnie the Pooh today.

What a terrible loss indeed! Small wonder that the Minoan economy collapsed in a heap of rubble! Those meany ole’ scribes just didn’t get it! Their entire economy was stuck on honey. No honey, no economy. Poof, no Knossos!

Richard

Minoan Winnie the Pooh with His Pots of Honey! Honestly, I Am-phor-a Him.

Minoan Winnie the Pooh! Click to ENLARGE for a really good laugh!

In case you were wondering whether or not Winnie the Pooh was Minoan or Mycenaean, I can tell you without equivocation that he was Minoan and that he lived in Knossos ca. 1450 BCE. After all, those bloody Mycenaeans were much too warlike for Pooh Bears. So, as the story always goes when it comes to Pooh Bears, while all the scribes were frantically scribbling away their tablets on amphorae of honey, our Minoan Winnie the Pooh would surreptitiously sneak in (at least as surreptitiously as a Pooh bear can, which isn’t very surreptitiously at all), grab as many amphorae and pots of honey as he could, and then dash off like mad, with a gang of thoroughly freaked out scribes chasing after him. And just as they were about to nab him, he scrambled up the nearest tree, hauling up his treasures behind him, and then began to voraciously gobble as much honey as he could (which was all of it!) before they (the scribes, of course) got a ladder and scrambled up to nab him again... by which time he was already running back to the vaults of amphorae and pots filled with delicious honey, bamboozling them all over. You just can’ t win, unless you are a Minoan Pooh Bear! Bully for Winnie the Pooh, Minoan or Roman, Winnie ille Pooh or our modern day descendant, Winnie the Pooh. May all the Winnie the Poohs from time immemorial triumph in the hunt for the most delicious honey they can find! MERI MERI MERI!

In case you are wondering (which I am sure you are!), “What on earth is the whole point of this silly story?”, you need only ask Christopher Robin, or failing that opportunity, me, and I can easily explain why. And here is why. It just so happens that all those thoroughly frustrated Minoan scribes at Knossos, fed up as they were with their Minoan Winnie the Pooh snatching all their honey in amphorae (and pots, of course!) and running off with them, decided to label their tablets with the logogram for “honey” (MERI) and with the supersyllabogram for “amphorae” (Linear B A), in the vain hope that this would somehow prevent our Minoan Pooh from absconding with them. A through waste of time! He did steal off with them (the pots of honey, not the scribes!), but he was such a “sweet” little Pooh Bear that he always returned the pots and amphorae he had snatched (empty of course), in the full realization, in spite of the fact that he had no brain, that they (the scribes) would just have to insist that the honey merchants refilled the same old amphorae and pots all over, with the predictable results we have already witnessed. Live but don’t learn, eh. The human condition, eh.

But, to get serious, if it is at all possible to do so at this point, let us examine how our busy-body scribes labeled tablets which dealt with amphorae. The simplest way was simply to use the plain ideogram for “amphorae”, as illustrated on this tablet – Click to ENLARGE:

I suppose they must have done this in the (again, vain) hope that if they did not label the amphorae as being just what they were, amphorae, and left out the logogram for honey, Minoan Winnie the Pooh would be fooled. But because he had no brain, he could not be fooled, and stole the amphorae with the blank ideogram anyway, in the (sure and certain) hope that they would be filled with honey... as if!

Since this hopeless ploy never worked anyway, the scribes, being realistic and practical as scribes always were (and are) just went ahead and labeled the amphorae as amphorae, with the supersyllabogram A, which happens to be the first vowel of that wonderful word, in case you haven’t yet noticed! And just to make certain that they (the scribes) realized what he, Minoan Winnie the Pooh, already knew, they also, rather stupidly, methinks, labeled the same amphorae with a great big logogram for honey... as if Minoan Winnie didn’t already know that too!

So their honey pot tablets would end up looking exactly like this! Click to ENLARGE:

If ever there was a wide open invitation to Minoan Winnie the Pooh to abscond with all their honey, this had to be it! Poor buggers. Lucky Winnie!

As you can imagine, the honey pot sector of the Minoan economy suffered irreparable damage, while Minoan Winnie the Pooh criminally lived off the proceeds from their losses. Sigh!

Oh and wait until you see the next Tablet in the next post! Rita Roberts and I recently unearthed this sweet find on dark, stormy, rainy night when all the archeologists were at home drinking Retsina. I think it was last...

Hallowe’en!!!


Richard

Two New Book Titles on the Arcado-Cypriot Dialect, Rare Birds Indeed!

Two New Book Titles on the Arcado-Cypriot Dialect, Rare Birds Indeed! Click to ENLARGE:

This first title is most unusual, I dare say, unique, since I have never, ever seen, let alone heard of a book on ancient Greek philosophy written in Linear C, which is to say, if it is written in Linear C rather than in alphabetical Arcado-Cypriot. Either way, it is of inestimable value. Of course, I just have to lay my hands on it. What’s more, this title confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that Arcado-Cypriot, quite unlike Mycenaean Linear B, was a literary script, as well as legal + constitutional, given that the Idalion Tablet (which is in Linear C) runs along those lines. This characteristic in particular may lead to some complications in our attempt to correlate a significant cross-section of Arcado-Cypriot Linear C vocabulary, of which more words are bound to be connotative & abstract rather than merely denotative or concrete with presumably equivalent vocabulary in Mycenaean Linear B, of which of which more words are bound to be denotative rather than connotative, i.e. the reverse scenario. However, this situation is not all that likely to actually cripple the process of cross-correlation between Linear B and Linear C vocabulary, since after all, there are bound to be plenty of denotative, concrete nouns, along with connotative, abstract, in both dialects, given our personal interest in the latter for the purposes of establishing a corpus of derived (D) Mycenaean words, however minimal it may prove to be. Only time will tell. In this endeavour, I expect to be able to work well with another Linear B colleague and translator, Ms. Gretchen Leonhardt, who I suspect is rather more interested than am I in collating a derivative (D) vocabulary of Mycenaean connotative words in Linear B. But that I am sure is fine with both of us, as we are surely going to share our resources.

You may visit Ms. Leonhardt’s blog here. Her approach to the decipherment of Linear B is both highly unusual, and to my mind, radical, running rationally, practically and instinctively against the grain to me at least, but fascinating nevertheless:

The second book to which I wish to draw your attention is — Click to ENLARGE:

Actually, I was astonished to find any books at all on Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, since practically no-one seems even remotely interested in it, not counting myself, of course, or another Linear B colleague of mine, Gretchen Leonhardt, who also wants to learn Linear C. All the more power to us! At least she and I will probably end up being the only two researchers in practically the entire world who can not only read Linear C but translate it as well. And trust me, if we do (more like, when we do, as it is only a matter of time), that is bound to raise a few eyebrows in the Mycenaean Linear B research community, given the extremely close relationship between these two dialects. One can easily call them kissing cousins, as they are even closer to one another than Ionic and Attic Greek are!

Richard

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

Rita Robert’s Translation of Knossos KN 739 Bj 01, the Famous “Interior Decorators” Tablet

Rita Robert’s Translation of Knossos KN 739 Bj 01, the Famous  “Interior Decorators” Tablet

This is a famous Linear B tablet, one of the earliest to be deciphered by Michael Ventris and his colleague and close friend, Dr. John Chadwick, who outlived Ventris by over 40 years.

Click to ENLARGE this tablet:



For me this tablet brings to mind a picture of a girl and boy “maybe apprentices”  helping the women interior decorators. One can imagine the wonderful colours the Minoans were so famous for. We only need to see the glorious frescoes to imagine what these interior decorators were capable of. The inside of Knossos Palace must have been a delight to look upon.

Rita Roberts

Partially Restored Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 536 R j 01, a Real “Patch Job” for Textiles!

Partially Restored Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 536 R j 01, a Real “Patch Job” for Textiles! Click to ENLARGE:

Any attempt at translating this messed up tablet is bound to be only a partial success or something of a partial failure, depending on whether or not you see the glass as half full or half empty. Anyone who knows me is aware of the fact that my philosophy runs to for half full glasses. At any rate, this damn tablet posed plenty of little headaches for me, all of them annoying like mosquitoes, but none of them really challenging, except for the fact that no matter what any Linear B translator does to decipher this tablet, plenty is left in the doldrums.

The copious notes in our illustration of this tablet above are pretty much self-explanatory. About the only thing left for me to explain is the nature of ideograms which contain their supersyllabograms inside of them, as in the case of every last supersyllabogram in the context of textiles or cloth, versus supersyllabograms which either precede or follow the ideogram which they modify, as is the case with all of the SSYS related to sheep, rams, ewes, pigs, sows, bulls and cows, i.e. to all agricultural livestock. They are emphatically not the same.

SSYS which appear either before or after the ideogram which they modify are invariably environmental, which is to say that they describe something about the land, pasturage or what have you surrounding the livestock, such as KI = KITIMENA, a plot of land, O = ONATO, a leased field, PE = PERIQORO, an enclosure or sheep pen, etc. On the other hand, SSYs which appear inside their ideograms, as is the case with all SSYs dealing with textiles or cloth, are invariably attributive, i.e. they describe an attribute or quality of the textiles or cloth to which they refer. So in the context of textiles or cloth, the supersyllabogram inside the ideogram modifies the meaning as follows: PA = “dyed cloth”, PU is a kind of cloth, TE = “well prepared” or possibly “well spun” cloth & WE is another kind of cloth. I have been unable to decipher the remaining 3 SSYs for textiles, KU, SA & ZO. It is clear from all of these examples that the SSYs all take on an adjectival value, modifying the noun PAWEA = textiles or cloth, in other words, they lend an attributive value to the ideogram, which is otherwise simply the noun, PAWEA if the ideogram is blank. This just so happens to be the default for the majority of the ideograms for textiles. They are just blank. However, the Linear B scribes would have to throw a monkey wrench into the ideogram by modifying it with at least one of the aforementioned supersyllabograms, and not so infrequently as you might think.

Richard

A Map of the Mycenaean Empire (ca.. 1600-1200 BCE), with Major Locales, Attested (A) & Derived (D) Named in Linear B for the First Time

A Map of the Mycenaean Empire (ca.. 1600-1200 BCE), with Major Locales, Attested (A) & Derived (D) Named in Linear B for the First Time: Click to ENLARGE:

Whereas we find only attested (A) Minoan & Mycenaean city and settlement names on the map of the Mycenaean Empire in the previous post, the majority of the Mycenaean settlement names for which I managed to find room to translate on this map are derived (D). Attested (A) Linear B words and toponyms are those found on any extant Linear B tablet, regardless of provenance. Derived (D) Linear B words and place names are precisely that, derived, which is to say regressively extrapolated from their ancient Greek counterparts (if any) or where no alphabetical Greek toponym can be found, directly from their English names. This of course implies that a few of them may not be quite accurate, and where there was any real doubt in my mind, I assigned alternative spellings, just in case. At any rate, the orthography of most of the derived (D) toponyms on this map is probably pretty much on target, but only if you go along with Mycenaean orthographic conventions as I interpret them, as follows:

1. When the settlement name ends in “ria” in English, as in the case of Agios Ilias, I translate it into Linear B as Akio Iriya, not Akio Iria, since the latter is not what you would really expect in a Linear B toponym, whereas the termination YA is extremely common in Linear B vocabulary regardless.

2. When the settlement name ends in “sios/sion” or “ios/ion” in English, here again I translate it as YO, since that termination is also extremely common in Linear B vocabulary regardless. Examples are (a) Korifasion which translates as Koriwasiyo in Linear B, the “f” being of course the digamma, otherwise known as “wau”, which was always rendered in Linear B words by the W+ vowel series of syllabograms, i.e. WA WE WI & WO & (b) Aigion, which translates as Aikiyo in Linear B. In fact, the syllabograms YA & YO are at the very highest frequency level of use among all the Linear B syllabograms, another extremely sound reason for preferring them as word terminations over the simple “ria” and “rio” endings, which just do not wash with me.

3. As illustrated by Korifasion = Koriwasiyo in Linear B, so also Linear B Epidawo for Epidauros. In other words, the cluster “auro” in the Greek equivalent of this site is regressively extrapolated to “awo” in Linear B, the intervocalic “r” disappearing altogether. This is standard Mycenaean orthography.

4. Likewise, standard Mycenaean orthography stipulates, in fact, demands that filler vowels be inserted in any Greek word, toponym or not, in which there are two or more consecutive consonants (called consonant clusters). Since Linear B is a syllabary, in which all the syllabogams are either pure vowels (a, e, i, o & u) or a consonant + any of these vowels (a, e, i, o & u), it is patently impossible (with only a couple of bizarre exceptions, such as the homophone PTE) for Linear B words to allow for clusters of two or more consonants. So, when confronted with a place name such as this, Kastri, we must somehow fill in the blank spaces, so to speak, or more properly speaking fill them out, by inserting vowels after both the interior “s” & “t”, thus: Kasatiri or Kasitiri. In the case of this place name, I was uncertain which of these variants was likely to be more accurate, so I have given both versions. Linear B linguists of some note will soon enough straighten me out on this account, I am sure. Other simpler examples are Linear B Atene for Athens & Katarakiti for Greek Katarraktis (notice also that double consonants are also forbidden in Mycenaean, for the very same reason)

5. Since Mycenaean words never end in consonants, even though they are Greek, all consonant terminations in place names must be dropped, as in Linear B Puro for Pylos, Orokomeno for Orchomenos & Aikio Tepano for Agios Stephanos. Note also that the initial “S” in Stephanos must be dropped, again for the same reason, namely, that Mycenaean Greek forbids two consecutive consonants. So where there are two of them, the vocally weaker of them must be eliminated, in this case, the weaker sibilant “s” yielding to the stronger plosive “t”.

I know, I know. Practically all of you who are well versed in ancient Greek are going to (loudly) protest, “But so many ancient Greek words end in a consonant!” True enough. But you will just have to swallow your pride, and accept the fact that, even if Mycenaean Greek words were pronounced with consonant endings (which is highly likely to have been the case), the Linear B syllabary is utterly and hopelessly incapable of accounting for them. So you will have to do the same thing as the (rest of us) Linear B specialists, get over it and get used to it, frustrating as it is. Even after two years of reading 3,000 + Linear B tablets, I myself am often still unable to wrap my poor skull around this phenomenon, let alone around several other apparent vagaries of Linear B spelling.

But there are plenty of reasons why Linear B orthography is the way it is, not the least of which is that the Linear B syllabary is the child or direct spinoff of Linear A, a syllabary which was never meant to be used to spell Greek in the first place. And please do not protest again. The Mycenaeans had to use Linear A or some sort of syllabary, because the blasted (Greek) alphabet hadn’t been invented yet! So give the poor blokes a break. They did a pretty bang-up job of it, if you ask me, considering the insane odds they were up against just trying to make Linear A square syllabograms fit into round holes in Mycenaean Greek. I would like to see you try to do that. Good luck. Fat chance.
So there you have it, a neat little lesson in the apparent vagaries of Mycenaean orthography. I say apparent, because in fact they are not. But I can tell you one thing. They sure cause a lot of headaches to translators who wish to regressively extrapolate ancient alphabetical Greek words to their Mycenaean forbears.

Remember! The derived Mycenaean toponyms on this map are precisely that, and nothing more. While their Linear B equivalents are my own, they are not even close to mere guesses. Given the Mycenaean orthographic conventions I have outlined above (at least as I see them), these spellings are perfectly sound... except of course in those instances where some Linear B experts might take exception to some of the conventions as I have outlined them above, which some of them are bound to do. If anyone does take exception to any of the derivative (D) place names I have assigned, for heaven’s sake, let me know!

Nothing is cast in stone (or even clay, for that matter) where it comes to translating into or from Linear B. Trust me on that one. Never believe any Linear B translator, myself included, of course, or should I say, especially myself, has a monopoly on translating any Greek word from certain ancient Greek dialects (but not all of them, by a long shot) into Mycenaean Greek in Linear B, or vice versa. Anyone who does make such a claim is leaving him- or herself wide open as a target for being roundly, and dare I say, soundly criticized.

And the more I am criticized, the better. I have always been the doubting Thomas, anyway.

Richard

Tag: syllabograms

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