An Easy Guide to Learning the Linear C Syllabary for Arcado-Cypriot & a Plea to our Followers: Click to ENLARGEI have just spent 3 hours compiling this Easy Guide to Learning the Linear C Syllabary for Arcado-Cypriot. There is nothing like it on the entire Internet. I have obviously done this for the benefit of those of you who wish to learn the syllabary, and for those of you who are already familiar with it, but who would like to see for yourselves just how elegant the geometric economy of Linear C is, even in comparison with Linear B for Mycenaean Greek. Linear C contains only syllabograms, whereas Linear B has 61 syllabograms, numerous homophones, logograms something like 100 ideograms, which makes for a much more challenging learning curve. In fact, Linear C represents the final step in the two syllabic scripts (B & C) before the various avatars of the ancient Greek alphabet were adopted ca. 800-700 BCE. And we must remember that the relative simplicity of Linear C allowed it to last from ca. 1100 BCE to at least 400 BCE, since the Arcadians and Cypriots could see no real reason to abandon what was after all a very easy syllabary for the Greek alphabet, although they did start using the Greek alphabet alongside the syllabary by about the seventh century BCE. The Idalion Tablet, for instance, is composed in both Linear C and in the Greek alphabet, the latter acting as a check on the accuracy of the Linear C syllabograms, and in turn, as we shall see later on this year, as a check on the Linear B syllabograms as well, facilitating more accurate translations of tablets in the latter syllabary. Michael Ventris & Prof. John Chadwick were fully aware of the urgent need for cross-correlation of the values of the Linear C syllabary used for writing Arcado-Cypriot Greek as a check on the correctness of the Linear B syllabary for Mycenaean Greek. We must always keep in mind that of all the ancient dialects, no two were more intimately related than the Mycenaean and the Arcado-Cypriot, which were in fact, kissing cousins, much more closely related even than Ionic and Attic Greek. Here is what Prof. Chadwick so aptly points out in The Decipherment of Linear B (Second Edition) Cambridge University Press, © 1970: “The conclusion was already advanced that the new dialect was most closely related to Arcadian and Cypriot, as had been predicted...” (pg. 78) & again, “We know not only that the Mycenaeans were Greeks, but also what sort of Greek they spoke. They were not Dorians,... passim... But at least we can say that linguistically their nearest relatives were the Arcadians and Cypriots, and next to them the Ionians.” Thus, any attempt to correlate the East Greek Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot dialects with the West Greek Dorian dialect is bound to prove a failure. I WOULD LIKE TO NOTE IN PASSING THAT, AFTER ALMOST TWO YEARS OF MARKED SUCCESS WITH OUR BLOG ON THE INTERNET, ALMOST NO-BODY EVER TAGS OUR POSTS WITH “LIKE” OR FAVORITES THEM, OR FOR THAT MATTER EVEN BOTHERS TO RETWEET THEM MORE THAN A COUPLE OF TIMES, ALL THIS IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT THERE IS NO RICHER SOURCE FOR SO MANY ASPECTS OF MYCENAEAN LINEAR B, ARCADO-CYPRIOT LINEAR C & THE TRANSLATION OF THE ENTIRE CATALOGUE OF SHIPS IN BOOK TWO OF THE ILIAD ON THE INTERNET. That this is a huge disappointment and source of discouragement to both myself and my research colleague, Rita Roberts, is an understatement, to say the very least. I sincerely hope that our devoted followers and other folks involved in research into Linear B & C will rectify this sad state of affairs all through this year, 2015. Thank you Richard
Tag: translation
-
Rita Roberts’ Translation of Knossos Tablet K 1092, Rams at Eksonos & Sygrita
Rita Roberts’ Translation of Knossos Tablet K 1092, Rams at Eksonos & Sygrita: Click to ENLARGE
Rita Roberts, my Linear B student who is now at the advanced stage of learning Mycenaean Greek, and I had quite a field day discussing the implications of various interpretations which might be lent to this tablet in translation. What especially intrigued me was the possibility that one could interpret the toponym Eksonos as meaning “outside the belt”, where “belt” refers to a belt of arable agricultural land. Rita, who lives near Heraklion and Knossos in Crete, put me onto this scent, as she explained to me that even to this day sheep are raised on non-arable land in Crete and Greece, which makes perfect sense when you come to think of it... except that, being Canadian and living in the “Great White North”, the idea never crossed my mind. It takes a native to know the lay of the land. As soon as she said that, I instantly recognized the possibility of parsing Eksonos into the Greek preposition “eks” + the genitive adjectival “zonos” (of a belt), which may or may not have been current in Mycenaean Greek. The point is that Prof. John Chadwick and other Mycenaean Greek researchers since have often enough noted that Mycenaean toponyms and eponyms can sometimes be parsed into Greek words which, taken together, make semiological sense. Interpretations such as this are of course susceptible to plenty of criticism, because there is no real evidence that the Mycenaeans and Minoan scribes who worked for them were necessarily conscious of such connotations. But the idea is intriguing nevertheless.
Once you accept the notion that Eksonos has this notion built-in, then you can extrapolate this meaning to other Minoan/Mycenaean sites for sheep husbandry on pasture land, which is why we did this for Sygrita on this tablet. Anyway, whether or not the toponym Eksonos carries this connotation with it, sheep were raised in antiquity and are still raised today in Greece (let alone pretty much anywhere else in the world) on non-arable land, which is to say, outside the fertile agricultural belt for crops.
On the other hand, we should probably not read too much into (or more like it, out of) the tablets, since that sort of practice can and often does lead to mis-interpretations. Still, since Linear B is by and large a shorthand script for Mycenaean Greek, the tiny size of the tablets necessitating such drastic shortcuts, it is by no means inconceivable that the scribes, who knew perfectly well what the tablets meant to themselves, and who could care less what they might mean to future generations, given that the tablets were devised for annual accounts only, and nothing more than that, did not see any need to bother with explaining away the contents of their ephemeral annual accounts, destroyed at the end of every “wetos” or fiscal year. Prof. John Chadwick himself, in his ground-breaking book, The Decipherment of Linear B (Cambridge University Press, © 1958), makes this perfectly clear, when he notes:
By contrast there are several mentions in the tablets of ‘this year’ (toto wetos), ‘next year’ (hateron wetos) and ‘last year’s’ (perusinwos). These phrases would be meaningless, unless the tablets were current only for a year. This seems to imply that at the beginning of every year the clay tablets were scrapped and a new series started. (pg. 128, italics Chadwick’s)
and again, that Linear B “is rather like shorthand; the man who wrote it would have little difficulty reading it back...” to other scribes, “But a total stranger might well be puzzled, unless he knew what the contents were likely to be.” (pg. 131, italics mine).
I can easily carry Prof. Chadwick’s conclusions one step further. I can now assert with confidence that a great deal of Linear B is precisely that, shorthand, and in fact far more of it is shorthand than has been assumed until now. Logograms and ideograms play a significant rôle in the frequent application of shorthand to Linear B. But supersyllabograms, which are an entirely new phenomenon which I myself discovered only last year, come into play and in a much bigger way than logograms and ideograms, as we shall soon enough see this year. There are in fact so many supersyllabograms (31) that it astonishes me that no-one actually isolated them in the past 64 years since the successful decipherment of some 90 % of the Linear B syllabary by our dear friend, the genius, Michael Ventris, in June 1952.
PS I invite anyone who is adept at translating Linear B tablets to contest our rather unusual translation of this one, since after all, we may have strayed too far from the proverbial aurea mediocritas, “the golden mean”, just as the splendid Roman poet, Horace (65-27 BCE) characterized it so long ago:
Auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit, tutus caret obsoleti sordibus tecti, caret invidenda sobrius aula. “Whoever cherishes the golden mean is sober, safe and secure from the filthiness of a mansion fallen into disrepair, and free of palace intrigues.” (Translation mine)
Richard
Share this:
-
Happy New Year in Greek, Linear B, Linear C, English, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian & German
Happy New Year in Greek, Linear B, Linear C, English, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian & German! Click to ENLARGE:
Richard and Rita
Share this:
-
Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae 2014: The Year in Review and then some, our new blog, Transcendence and The Singularity, in 2015
Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae 2014: The Year in Review and then some, our new blog, Transcendence and The Singularity, in 2015 Although our blog is only 20 months old, it has assumed a prominent rôle as one of the Internet’s primary resources on current research into Mycenaean Linear B and much more besides. We are also the fist and foremost source for the ongoing study of Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, for which until now very few adequate resources have existed on the Internet. We have carefully classified our blog into several main Categories, which appear right at the top of the Home Page of our blog, as you see here: Click to ENLARGE
The Categories of PRIMARY concern to ourselves and, we hope, to all of us worldwide who are deeply committed to the furtherance of research into Mycenaean Greek & Linear B, as well as into Arcado-Cypriot and Linear C, are highlighted in UPPER CASE. This does not imply that the other Categories are not important. They are. It is just that we devote less of our time and resources to them than to the PRIMARY Categories.
In our first full year of operation, 2014, we set out to reach certain goals, and we are pleased to announce that we have attained or exceeded them all.
These are prioritized as follows:
1. The theory and practical implementation of the new theory of SUPERSYLLABOGRAMS in Mycenaean Linear B. While Prof. John Chadwick, Michael Ventris, Prof. Thomas G. Palaima and Chris Tselentis were all aware of the existence of supersyllabograms in one form or another, and while the latter three had each isolated certain instances of their appearance in Linear B, none of them actually “defined” them as such, since none of them was aware of all of the practical applications of supersyllabograms in Linear B, of which there are three, as we shall soon enough see in 2015. It is my intention to publish, in concert with my research colleague, Rita Roberts, a full-length research article in PDF format, The Theory and Applications of Sypersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, sometime in 2015, probably no earlier than the summer, as we fully intend to have it peer-reviewed by at least 2 of the world’s leading experts or institutions intimately involved with Linear B prior to publication, among whom we can hopefully count on Prof. Thomas G. Palaima, Chris Tselentis and the Heraklion Museum: Click to ENLARGE
2. The translation of as many extant Linear B tablets as we could reasonably hope to handle, without over-stretching our human resources. There are two translators of Linear B on our Blog, my now advanced student of Linear B, Rita Roberts, and myself. Between us, we have managed to translate into English scores of Linear B tablets from Knossos, four from Pylos, and one each from Mycenae and Thebes. You can review all of our translations for yourself by clicking on the Categories SCRIPTA MINOA for tablets from Knossos and Tablets for Linear A, B & C tablets and fragments from anywhere else.
3. Throughout the spring of 2014, I also began reconstructing the grammar of Mycenaean Greek from the ground up, successfully building complete verb conjugations for the active voice in all of the these tenses of both thematic and athematic verbs: present, future, imperfect, aorist & perfect, leaving other tenses aside for reasons which will be made clear later in 2015: Click to ENLARGE
I intend to continue with the reconstitution of derived forms for the declensions of nouns and adjectives, and for the use of cases with prepositions, including the early instrumental case which fell into disuse by the time alphabetic Greek came to the fore in the eighth century BCE.
4. We also believe that a successful decipherment of Minoan Linear A may be around the corner (i.e. within the next five years or so), for reasons which will become apparent with the creation of our new blog, TRANSCENDENCE, as of early 2015:
The title of our new blog is, of course, based on the movie of the same name, Transcendence & The Singularity, 2014, starring Johnny Depp and Rebecca Hall. Our new Blog is to serve as an international online forum for the sharing of novel ideas, new theories and advances in the following areas of scientific research now dominating the world scene: the implications of the Curiosity Project on Mars and of the search for exoplanets for the potential and probable discovery if life elsewhere in the universe; the active involvement of NASA, other major international Space agencies and organizations in extraterrestrial communication; the emergence of cosmic consciousness beyond our earthly sphere of knowledge for the first time in human history and, of course, the search for the practical application of artificial intelligence and its implications for human affairs in all spheres of life, with reference to the likelihood that the well-touted Singularity will occur sometime in our century, possibly as early as 2025-2030, more likely around 2040-2050. These will be our primary concerns on that blog. It is not so much a question of I myself sharing my own knowledge, pitifully limited as it is, of these critical advancements in the sphere of our scientific knowledge-base as of seeking as much input and as variegated feedback from the scientific and technological community worldwide, as well as from amateurs such as ourselves, on these amazing developments now sweeping over the planet.
5. Concurrent with the creation of our Blog, Transcendence and the Singularity, we shall be pursuing the possibilities for the practical application of Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C on this blog to extraterrestrial communication, a project which is already well underway here under the rubric, NASA at the top of our home page. Click on the NASA banner to read more about this truly fascinating research project:
6. We shall also be taking our first steps towards the compilation of the most comprehensive vocabulary of Mycenaean Linear B ever yet developed, A Topical English-Mycenaean Greek Lexicon. We intend to double the Mycenaean Greek lexicon of some 2,500 attested (A) words currently known to 5,000 attested (A) and derived (D) at the very minimum, with a large number of derived (D) words regressively extrapolated from these sources in descending order of priority:
(a) the extant vocabulary of Arcado-Cypriot, in both Linear C and in the alphabetical Arcado-Cypriot dialect, since this dialect is more closely related to Mycenaean Greek than even Attic Greek is to Ionic;
(b) The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of Homer’s Iliad, in which we find the most archaic Greek after the Arcado-Cypriot dialect, a Greek which still contains a number of grammatical elements left over from Mycenaean Greek. I shall have translated the entire Catalogue of Ships into English before the end of winter 2015 as the framework or template, if you like, for the regressive extrapolation of derived (D) Mycenaean Greek;
(c) from the rest of the Iliad and (d) from the early Aeolic, Ionic and Attic dialects, prior to the fifth century BCE. I must lay particular stress on the fact that Mycenaean Greek vocabulary can only be derived (D) from these dialects alone, since all are East Greek dialects, right on down from Mycenaean to Attic Greek. Mycenaean Greek words emphatically cannot be derived (D) from West Greek dialects such as the Doric, as these are not directly related to it.
Richard
Share this:
-
The Implications of the Geometric Economy of Linear C versus that of Linear B
The Implications of the Geometric Economy of Linear C versus that of Linear B I have compiled here a geometric analysis of the Geometric Economy of the Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Syllabary: Click to ENLARGE
If you are already familiar with Mycenaean Linear B, you will quickly realize that the Linear C syllabary is even more streamlined for its geometric economy than is Linear B. The Linear C syllabary consists of only 5 geometric shapes: the dot, the straight line, the circle, the tear & the oval, even fewer than we find in Linear B.
The implications of this further streamlining are clear enough, even superficially. Since the Linear C syllabary simply abandoned all logograms, homophones and ideograms once and for all, it is in fact a much more elegant syllabary than its forebear, with only 56 syllabograms versus the 61 we find in Linear B (leaving aside the 100+ homophones, logograms & ideograms cluttering up the latter). Mycenaean Linear B in turn has considerably fewer syllabograms, logograms and ideograms than Minoan Linear A. With only 56 characters, the Linear C syllabary is the simplest syllabary, ancient or modern. Compare this count with the number of letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, as in Russian = 32, and we can readily see that Linear C has taken the practical application of a syllabary about as far as it can be.
We shall be returning to a more in-depth cross-correlation of the Linear B & Linear C Syllabaries early in 2015, when we shall be discussing their potential application to extraterrestrial communication, reflecting our own developing perspectives on an article on this very topic recently written for NASA by Prof. Richard Saint-Gelais. To read that post, please click on this BANNER:
Richard
Share this:
-
Translation of the Silver Spoon Inscription in Linear C, “Clotho, the Spinner” at the British Museum
Translation of the Silver Spoon Inscription in Linear C, “Clotho, the Spinner” at the British Museum: Click to ENLARGE
This is a truly difficult inscription to translate. In the first place, we cannot be sure that the subject is a person actually called “Ammus”, a name, apparently Egyptian, which sounds suspiciously like that of the Egyptian deity Amun Ra, King of the gods, god of the wind and patron deity of Thebes, who rose to prominence in the 11th. dynasty in the twenty-first century BCE (ca. 4,200 years ago): Click on the image of Amun-Ra for the Wikipedia article on him:
It is also abundantly clear that the Linear C syllabary, which was frequently used alongside the Arcado-Cypriot dialectical Greek alphabet, had made huge strides over Mycenaean Linear B, especially by the 6th. century BCE, when the inscription you see on this spoon was composed. As for the silver spoon itself, the inscription appears only in Linear C; so it is impossible to cross-correlate with an equivalent in the Arcado-Cypriot Greek alphabet. Had there been a version of this inscription in alphabetic Greek, we would have been certain of an unequivocal, indisputable translation of the text on this silver spoon. As it stands, with the inscription appearing only in Linear C, we are left to our best devices. The translation you see here is my own interpretation, and is at least in part subject to dispute. As you can see, I have interpreted the verb as the Arcado-Cypriot aorist middle corresponding to the same tense of the Attic Greek verb, kathisteimi. I had serious problems interpreting the last word in the sentence, but I finally settled on what I suspect is probably the Arcado-Cypriot dative singular for the Attic name of the Muse, Clotho, the youngest of the three Fates or Moirai, the same who spun the thread of life: click to ENLARGE her image
Structural and Grammatical Considerations:
It is immediately obvious to anyone familiar with ancient Greek dialects contemporaneous with the 6th. century BCE Ionic and Attic, that Linear C had made huge strides over the much older Mycenaean Linear B syllabary. First off, the Linear C syllabary was from the outset in the 11th. century BCE, structurally much simpler than Linear B, having abandoned once and for all time all logograms and ideograms characteristic of both Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B. Linear C is simply a syllabary and nothing more. Grammatical Considerations: While we can be pretty much certain that the earliest Arcado-Cypriot documents in Linear C could not possibly have made use of the definite article, the typical later ancient Greek construction of a verb + ta (these things) in the neuter plural, the advanced dative singular with the definite article or the use of the definite article preceding names of gods and abstract words, all of these characteristics are firmly in place on this tablet, which was after all composed in the sixth century BCE, some 500 years after the first appearance of Linear C on the scene.
These developments are extremely significant. In the first place, even if we did not know the precise dating for this inscription, we would still know that it had to have been written no earlier than the sixth century BCE, since all of the grammatical elements we have flagged in the notes on the tablet above only appeared in ancient Greek (regardless of dialect) from that century onwards. The telltale signs for this dating are:
(a) Whereas in Mycenaean Linear B it is not possible to clearly identify the gender of the nominative singular for nouns which are either masculine or neuter, such is not the case in Linear C. All nouns of any gender end in “se” in the nominative singular.
(b) the use of the definite article twice in the same inscription. The definite article never appeared in early Greek writings, not even in the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer.
(c) Radically unlike texts on in Mycenaean Linear B, inscriptions in latter-day Linear C not only sported the definite article, but made frequent use of the typical Ionic-Attic verbal construction of a verb (in any tense) + the definite article in the neuter plural (ta) to denote abstract constructions, i.e. abstract thought. Abstractions are almost totally absent from Mycenaean Linear B tablets.
(d) Finally, the dative singular, again used with the definite article for the names of gods & goddesses, city names and the like, was a huge leap forward from equivalent constructions in the dative singular on tablets in Mycenaean Linear C, where it is often difficult at best even to identify the dative singular, let alone distinguish it from the nominative singular. The same holds true for the nominative and dative plural, and indeed for all the cases. It is easy to isolate cases in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, not only because the syllabary clearly demarcates them, but also because the definite article frequently appears in all cases. The same can scarcely be said of tablets or inscriptions in Mycenaean Linear B, in which the cases are all too often ambiguous, making it difficult to determine which is subject, which is direct and which is indirect object. Note that in the last instance of the dative singular on the silver spoon, I have translate the Greek for – the = + the feminine dative sing. of the number one as: for the one and only, because – miai – uncharacteristically follows the noun, i.e. the name of the muse, Clotho, adding extra emphasis to it. Although she is only one of the three Fates or Moiroi, she is in her own right the one and only of her kind. An earlier translation of this tablet which I found on the Internet tells us that the dedication is to the Golgian goddess, whoever that is supposed to be. Yet my own translation makes much more sense, given the century in which this inscription was composed, the 6th. cent. BCE, when the Three Fates or Moiroi were familiar fare to Greeks everywhere.
The only case which is clearly demarcated in Linear B is the genitive, which appears as “oyo” in the masculine singular, “oya” in the feminine singular & “isi” in the plural. Otherwise, we are left to our own devices. The same cannot be said of inscriptions in Linear C, unless they are very early. There is only one such inscription that I know of, which I have already translated, dating from the eleventh century BCE. The Profound Implications of Cross-Correlation of Equivalent Vocabulary in Mycenaean Greek Arcado-Cypriot: All other extant inscriptions in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C date from the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE. Of these, the extremely long Idalion Tablet, an official decree, leaves little or no room for doubt with respect to the grammatical clarity or the vocabulary of documents written in the Arcado-Cypriot dialect. The vocabulary of such inscriptions cannot be in doubt in those instances where the inscription exists both in Linear C and in the Arcado-Cypriot alphabet, as is the case with the Idalion tablet. The vocabulary on that tablet cannot be interpreted as meaning anything other than what it says in the alphabetic version, leaving no room for alternative interpretations in the Linear C version.
This fact alone has immense implications for tablets and inscriptions in Mycenaean Linear B, on which there appears any word which has an exact or nearly equivalent Linear C version. In such cases, the meaning of the Mycenaean word equivalent to its Arcado-Cypriot counterpart is relatively fixed, once and for all. Once put into practical application, this development will have a profound impact on the interpretation of many Mycenaean words which have (near) exact equivalents in Arcado-Cypriot, leaving little or no room for interpretations of their meanings, and effectively invalidating such interpretations where they clearly clash with their Arcado-Cypriot equivalents, either in Linear C or in the Arcado-Cypriot Greek alphabet. Recall that these two dialects are far more closely related than any other ancient Greek dialects, even the Ionic and Attic. Once you know and accept this fact, it becomes next to impossible to deny the evidence of Arcado-Cypriot words for which there are (exact) equivalents in Mycenaean Linear B. We intend to carry this hypothesis to its logical terminus, settling once and for all at least some of the disputes that have occurred over the “meanings” of a number of Mycenaean Greek words since the decipherment of the syllabary by the genius, Michael Ventris, in 1952-1953. Any word which says what it clearly says in Linear C or in the Arcado-Cypriot alphabet must almost certainly mean (almost) precisely the same thing in Mycenaean Greek. A rose is a rose is a rose.
Richard
Share this:
-
The Earliest Inscription in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C (11th. century BCE) & our 600th. Post in 20 months
The Earliest Inscription in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C (11th. century BCE): Click to ENLARGE
Now that we have introduced you all to the Arcado-Cypriot Linear C syllabary, it is time for us to reveal to you our very first translation of an inscription in this syllabary, dating from the time of the earliest appearance of the script in the 11th. century BCE, a mere 100 years or so after the fall of Mycenae ca. 1200 BCE. As I have pointed out several times over the past year, Mycenaean & Arcado-Cypriot Greek were the two most closely allied ancient Greek dialects, even more closely related than Ionic & the classical Attic Greek dialect some six centuries later (from ca. 500-400 BCE). The significance of this inscription from Palaepaphos cannot be stressed enough. I only just became aware of its existence today, and it came as an exciting discovery. I had previously assumed that there were no inscriptions in Linear C from the very first century in which it rose to prominence. But as is always the case, it is foolish to make assumptions; and so I plead guilty. This inscription finally closes the gap between the earliest written Greek, in Mycenaean Linear B (ca. 1450-1200 BCE) and the next appearance of writing in Greek to a mere century, give or take, as illustrated by the time line which I previously posted on our blog. Click on the Time Line graph to read that post.
We'll be posting two more brief inscriptions in Linear C this month. Throughout 2015, we shall translate as many inscriptions and tablets in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, including the famous Idalion Decree composed in the fifth century BCE in both Linear C and the Arcado-Cypriot alphabet, leaving the interpretation of this particular tablet pretty much set in stone (although the decree was inscribed on bronze).
Richard
Share this:
-
An Easy Guide to Learning Arcado-Cypriot Linear C & I mean easy!
An Easy Guide to Learning Arcado-Cypriot Linear C & I mean easy!: Click to ENLARGE
If any of you out there have already mastered either Minoan Linear A or Mycenaean Linear B or both, Arcado-Cypriot Linear C is likely to come as a bit of a shock. Although the phonetic values of the syllabograms in Linear C are identical to their Linear B counterparts, with very few exceptions, the appearance of Linear C syllabograms is almost always completely at odds with their Linear B counterparts, again with very few exceptions. If this sounds confusing, allow me to elucidate.
A: Appearance of Linear B & Linear C Syllabograms. Linear C syllabograms look like this. If you already know Linear B, you are probably saying to yourself, What a mess!, possibly even aloud. I can scarcely blame you. But courage, courage, all is not lost. Far from it. Click to ENLARGE:
Only the following syllabograms look (almost) alike in both Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C [see (a) below]:
NA PA TA * SE * LO * PO *
* There is a slight difference between those syllabograms marked with an asterisk *
DA in Linear B is identical to TA in Linear C because Linear C has no D + vowel series, but uses the T + vowel series instead.
SE in Linear B has 3 vertical strokes, whereas in Linear C it has only 2.
RO in Linear B is identical to LO in Linear C. While Linear C has both and R + vowel series, it uses the L + vowel series as the equivalent of the Linear B R series.
PO stands vertically in Linear B, but is slanted about 30 degrees to the right in Linear C.
All other syllabograms in these two syllabaries are completely dissimilar; so you might think you are on your own to learn the rest of them in Linear C. But in fact, you are not. I can help a lot. See below, after the section on the Phonetic Values of Linear B & Linear C Syllabograms.
B: Phonetic Values of Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C Syllabograms:
Here the reverse scenario applies. Once you have mastered all of the Linear C syllabograms by their appearance, you can rest pretty much assured that the phonetic values of almost all syllabograms in both syllabaries are identical, with very few exceptions. Even in those instances where their phonetic values appear not to be identical, they are in fact identical, for all intents and purposes. This is because the ancient Greek dialects were notorious for wide variations in pronunciation, ergo in orthography. Anyone at all familiar with ancient Greek dialects can tell you that the pronunciation and spelling of an identical document, were there ever any such beast, would vary markedly from, say, Arcado-Cypriot to Dorian to Attic alphabetic. I can hear some of you protest, “What do you mean, the Arcado-Cypriot alphabet? I thought the script for Arcado-Cypriot was the syllabary Linear C.” You would be only half right. In fact, the Arcadians and Cypriots wrote their documents either in Linear or in their version of the ancient Greek alphabet, or in both at the same time. This is the case with the famous Idalion decree, composed in the 5th. Century BCE: Click to ENLARGE
The series of syllabograms beginning with the consonant R + any of the vowels A E I O & U is present in Mycenaean Linear B. However, the series of syllabograms beginning with the consonant L + any of the vowels A E I O & U is entirely absent from Mycenaean Linear B, while Arcado-Cypriot Linear C has a series of syllabograms for both of the semi-consonants L & R. It rather looks like the Arcadians & Cypriots had already made the clear distinction between the semi-vowels L & R, firmly established and in place with the advent of the earliest form of the ancient Greek alphabet, which sported separate semi-vowels for L & R.
Likewise, the series of syllabograms beginning with the consonant Q + any of the vowels A E I & O is present in Mycenaean Linear B, but entirely absent from Arcado-Cypriot Linear C. Conversely, the series of syllabograms beginning with the consonant X + the vowels A or E (XA & XE) is entirely absent from in Mycenaean Linear B, but present in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C.
For the extremely significant socio-cultural linguistic explanation for this apparent paradox (I say, apparent, because it is in fact unreal), we shall have to defer to the next post.
WARNING! Always be on your guard never to confuse Linear B & Linear C syllabograms which look (almost exactly) alike – the sole exceptions being NA PA TA SE LO & PO, since you can be sure that their phonetic values are completely at odds.
Various strategies you can resort to in order to master Linear C fast!
(a) The Linear B & Linear C syllabograms NA PA TE SE LO & PO are virtually the same, both in appearance and in pronunciation.(b) Taking advantage of the real or fortuitous resemblance of several syllabograms to one another & (c) Geometric Clustering: Click to ENLARGE
What is really astonishing is that the similarities between the syllabograms on the second line & their geometric clustering on the third are identical! So no matter which approach you adopt (b) or (c) or both for at least these syllabograms, you are a winner.
Failing these approaches, try
(d) Mnemonics: For instance, we could imagine that RO is a ROpe, PE = Don’t PEster me!, SA = SAve $, TO is TOFu etc. or we could even resort to
(e) Imagery! For instance, we could imagine that A E & I are a series of stars, RI NI & KE all look like variations on the letter E, that LE is the symbol for infinity, WE is an iron bar etc. For Mnemonics & Imagery, I am not suggesting that you follow my own arbitrary interpretations, except perhaps for LE, which is transparent. Take your imagination where it leads you.
Finally (f) the really great news is that the Linear C syllabary abandoned homophones, logograms and ideograms, doing away with them lock-stock-and-barrel. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B syllabaries. The first had so many syllabograms, homophones, logograms and ideograms that it can be a real pain in the butt to learn Linear A. Mycenaean Linear B greatly simplified the entire mess, reducing the number and complexity of syllabograms & homophones, but unfortunately retaining well over a hundred logograms and ideograms, which are equally a pain in the you know what. In other words, the process of greater and greater simplication was evolutionary. This phenomenon is extremely common across the spectrum of world languages.
What the Linear C scribes agreed upon, the complete elimination of anything but syllabograms, was the last & greatest evolutionary phase in the development of the Minoan-Greek syllabaries before the Greeks finally reduced even Linear C to its own variable alphabet of some 24-27 letters, depending on the dialect. But even the 3 syllabaries, Linear A, B & C, all had the 5 vowels, A E I O & U, which already gave them an enormous advantage over almost all other ancient scripts, none of which had vowels, with the sole exception of Sanskrit, as far as I know. That alone was quite an achievement. If you have not yet mastered the Linear B syllabary, it goes without saying that all of these techniques can be applied to it. The same goes for the Minoan Linear A syllabary, though perhaps to a lesser extent.
The Real Potential for Extrapolation of these Principles to Learning any Script:
Moreover, at the most general level for learning linguistic scripts, ancient or modern, whether they be based on pictographs, ideograms alone (as with some Oriental languages, such as Chinese, Japanese & Korean, at least when they resorted to the Kanji script), or any combination of ideograms, logograms & syllabograms (all three not necessarily being present) or even alphabetic, they will almost certainly stand the test of the practical validity of any or all of these approaches for learning any such script. I have to wonder whether or not most linguists have ever considered the practical implications of the combined application of all of these principles, at least theoretically.
Allow me to conclude with this telling observation. Children especially, even from the age of 2 & a half to 3 years old, would be especially receptive to all of these techniques, which would ensure a rapid assimilation of any script, even something as simple as an alphabet of anywhere from 24 letters (Italian) to Russian Cyrillic (33 letters), as I shall clearly demonstrate with both the modern Greek & Latin alphabet a little later this month.
PS. If any of you are wondering, as I am sure many of you who are familiar with our blog must be, I have an extremely associative, cross-correlative mind, a rather commonplace phenomenon among polyglot linguists, such as myself. In fact, my thinking can run in several directions, by which I mean I frequently process one set of cross-correlative associations, only to consider another and another, each in quite different directions from the previous. If that sounds like something Michael Ventris did, it is because that is precisely what he did to decipher almost all of Mycenaean Linear B - almost all, but not quite. As for the remaining 10 % or so which has so far defied decipherment, I promise you you are in for a great surprise very soon, perhaps as early as the spring of 2015, when my research colleague, Rita Roberts, and I shall be publishing an in-depth research paper in PDF on the Internet - a study which is to announce a major breakthrough in the further decipherment of Linear B. Those of you who frequent this blog on a regular basis already know what we are up to. As for those of you who are not regular visitors, if you read all the posts under the rubric, Supersyllabograms (at the top of this page), you are going to find out anyway.
Richard
Share this:
-
NEWS RELEASE! Just a few of the KEY Twitter Accounts following us
NEWS RELEASE! Just a few of the KEY Twitter Accounts following us: Click our banner to view our Twitter account:
Note that the number of Twitter accounts following us has grown from about 500 at the beginning of 2014 to just short of 800 now, growing at a rate of 10-20 new followers per month.
As of December 2014, we have the honour and privilege of being followed by some of the more significant, indeed some of the most important Twitter accounts. Of these, perhaps the most impressive is none other than The British Museum, with 428,000 followers: Click on its banner to visit their Twitter (also Click on all of the other Twitter accounts below to do the same): Click here:
You will perhaps have noticed that The British Museum follows fewer than 10 % of the Twitter accounts who follow them; so it is particularly telling that they decided to follow us.
Here are some more Twitter accounts of direct relevance to ours, starting with linguistics:
Once again, Babel follows just over 10 % of those who follow them. They stood up and noticed us.
And here we have just of few of the scores of Twitter accounts relevant to ours following us:
who by the way lives in Mycenae.
And here are just two of the most popular MEDIA and Promotional accounts on Twitter now following us (some of them with 100s of thousands of followers):
Richard
Share this:
-
Rita Roberts’ Translation of the famous “Ivory” Tablet, Knossos Tablet KN 684 U h 11
Rita Roberts’ Translation of the famous “Ivory” Tablet, Knossos Tablet KN 684 U h 11: Click to ENLARGE:
Once Rita and I had finally managed to establish our connection with Skype, due in no small part to her patience in assisting me to get it up and running on my computer, I began to teach her interactively. Her lessons have run to about one hour each, which is what I would have expected. Rita emphatically told me that she found this tablet, the famous “Ivory” one, to be the most difficult one by a long shot that she has had to translate so far. And she was right. I had deliberately assigned her this tablet with the express intention that she had to move on to more complex Linear B tablets; so this one came as a shock to her.
During the classroom session, in which we tackled this difficult tablet, we spent some time comparing her translation to my own, and as a result of our conversation, I have come to the conclusion that I prefer Rita’s to my own, if only for the fact that her approach is less academic than mine, hence more realistic. Whereas I have translated the notion of loss as “8 accounts written off”, where “written off” is meant to be the equivalent of “lost”, Rita takes this as meaning a single transaction or sale which the Minoan palace administration has lost. This translation makes more sense than mine.
I now believe she is more than ready and willing to tackle more and more Linear B tablets at this advanced level, a task which she will find herself confronted with more and more often as she progresses towards her matriculation at the secondary school level either in December 2014 or in January 2015. She is already fully aware that in order to graduate to the university level she will be obliged to translate the very first Linear B tablet which Michael Ventris himself deciphered in 1952, Pylos Tablet PY 641-1952 (Ventris): Click to ENLARGE
Meanwhile, compare Rita’s translation of KN 684 U h 11 to my own and to the faulty one by Gretchen Leonhardt (with the demerits of the latter discussed at some length here:
Richard
Share this:
-
Rita Roberts’ Translation of Knossos Tablet K 1186
Rita Roberts’ Translation of Knossos Tablet K 1186: Click to ENLARGE:
In her translation of Knossos Tablet K 1886, Rita Roberts mentions the toponym “Lato”, which she has transcribed into the correct English name for the Linear B “RATO”. Other than that, this tablet is relatively straightforward to translate.
Richard
Share this:
-
Rita Roberts’ Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 933 G d 01 with the Supersyllabograms O & KI
Rita Roberts’ Translation of Knossos Tablet KN 933 G d 01: Click to ENLARGE:
In her translation of Knossos Tablet KN 933 G d 01, Rita Roberts, now an advanced student of Linear B, refers to the SSYLs O & KI, which are the Linear B Supersyllabograms “a lease field” and “a plot of land” respectively. We have discussed our all-new Theory of Supersyllabograms several times on this blog, but just to refresh your memory, a supersyllabogram is defined as the first syllabogram, in other words, the first syllable of a Linear B word. The meaning of any supersyllabogram in Linear B never changes in the context for which it is intended, but can & often does change its meaning when it appears in a different context. For instance, the supersyllabogram O means one thing & one thing only in the context of livestock, in this case, sheep (rams), namely, “a lease field”, while the SSYL KI can only mean “a plot of land” in the same context. Specific supersyllabograms sometimes appear in only one category of the Minoan/Mycenaean economy, and in no others. On the other hand, they often appear in two or more sectors of the economy and social + religious life of the Minoans & Mycenaeans. Early in 2015, we shall compile a complete table of all 31 supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, to be posted on this blog as the first step towards the publication of our research article positing the Theory of Supersyllabograms sometime in the spring of 2015.
Richard
Share this:
-
Ripley’s Believe it or not! The telling contribution of the Minoans & of the great metropolis of Knossos to the Trojan War according to Homer. Iliad II, “The Catalogue of Ships” – lines 615-652
Ripley’s Believe it or not! The telling contribution of the Minoans & of the great metropolis of Knossos to the Trojan War according to Homer. Iliad II, “The Catalogue of Ships” - lines 615-652: Click to ENLARGE
With reference to the great Minoan civilization, to Knossos, a metropolis of some 55,000 citizens (the size of Classical Athens), Phaestos & some 100 (!) Minoan cities in prominence in these few lines of the Iliad (according to Homer), this is far and away the most significant passage in the entire “The Catalogue of Ships” as far as we as researchers into Mycenaean Greek and its civilization, should truly be concerned with. Click to ENLARGE:
There are several points of note we feel we must raise here:
(a) It is hugely surprising that Homer should take so much trouble to refer to so many Minoan cities and settlements under the Mycenaean aegis, at least as far as the Trojan War is concerned. This is because Knossos at the acme of its power was supposed to have fallen no later than 1400 BCE, but the Trojan War took place at least 200 years later! (ca. 1200 BCE). So what is going on with Homer? Is he off his rocker? I sincerely doubt that, when it comes to perhaps the greatest Epic poet of all time. Either Homer is truly confused with his “historical facts” or Knossos did not fall around 1400 BCE, but hung on as a major Minoan/Mycenaean centre of economic and maritime naval power for at least another 200 years, or... or what? What on earth can we make of this bizarre scenario? – bizarre to us, that is. I find it positively intriguing that Homer should be so insistent on mentioning by name several Minoan cities and outposts, and that he should then go on to inform us that there were at least 100 of them overall. This is simply astonishing!
(b) The memory of the great Minoan civilization on the island of Crete appears not to have faded one jot by Homer’s era, another point of contention in our modern historical understanding of the time lines for the height of the magnificent Minoan maritime empire and for the Mycenaean Empire. Homer’s emphatic references to the major contribution of the Minoan Cretans to the expedition against Troy flies straight in the face of all modern archaeological evidence to the contrary. So who has got their “historical facts” right or wrong, Homer or we ourselves today? Or perhaps no-one has got it “right”, neither Homer nor we ourselves. This is just one exasperating instance of the innumerable glaring discrepancies between Homer’s interpretation of the so-called “historical facts” and our own, where the toponyms, the disposition of the geographical and cartographic features of the expedition and a great many other finicky details of the Trojan War are concerned, and refuse to go away.
(c) The question is – as it always has been – can we reconcile these perplexing paradoxes? The answer is bluntly, NO. I for one suspect that Homer (or whoever “wrote” the Iliad, whether or not this was one author or multiple authors) must have known a good deal more about the recent Trojan War, from his perspective a mere 400 years or so after it, than we credit him for. It would be risky at best, and pure folly at worst to dismiss his observations out of hand. The primary reason for my asserting this is simply that he gives us so much detail, not only about the Minoan participants in the Trojan War, but about the participation of all of the other Argives or Achaeans in it.
Just because he mentions so many place names that no longer exist does not mean they never existed. And even if he has got his geography all wrong, can we blame him for that? I hardly think so. After all, were there any competent cartographers anywhere in the ancient world at the time Homer lived, whenever that was – somewhere between 800 & 700 BCE? When I say, were there any good map makers at the time, I mean precisely that. How do we know? How can we know, in the patent absence of evidence to the contrary? I am quite serious when I say this, since only about 10 % of all ancient Greek literature alone – never mind that of other great ancient civilizations – survives to this day. That is a pitiable resource-base of primary documentation we have to reply on. When I speak of primary documentation, I mean in any form whatsoever, whether or not this be engravings on signets, tablets such as those in Mycenaean Linear B or Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, monuments or burial stones and the like, on buildings or edifices, on shards or pottery, in actual writings by the ancient Greek authors, etc. etc. Frankly, we really do not have much to go on.
(d) Archaeological data, while accurate where it has been decisively confirmed, is never the same as written records, and cannot be relied upon to convey the same core of what we nowadays call “information”, however reliable that information may or may not be. This includes historical information, and, if anything, primary historical information is itself subject to all sorts of contradictions, anomalies and paradoxes which cannot ultimately be resolved, no matter how much of it we have at our disposal. Quantity can never replace reliability or the presumed lack of it of primary sources.
Yet Homer is, let’s face it, a primary, if not the primary, literary source for the Mycenaean War against the Trojans. What then? I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions. Yet I for one dare not draw any, for fear of trapping myself in a quandary of conflicting “evidence” between confirmed reliable archaeological findings and the much more unstable and inconsistent historical written records we are nevertheless fortunate enough to still have on hand. Still, the astonishing detail Homer provides us in this single brief passage alone from “The Catalogue of Ships” in Book II of the Iliad begs the question. How did he come to be consciously aware of all these historical details, however “right” or “wrong” the majority of researchers take them to be. Perhaps it might be better for us all if we just dropped the notion of “right” or “wrong” where the ancient authors in general are concerned, and above all else, in the case of Homer, who really does seem to know what he is talking about. In other words, I believe that we should take what he has to say with much more than a grain of salt. Rather, we should be taking much of what he says quite seriously. But in what regards and in what applications to modern interpretations of the Trojan War and the deep, dark recesses of Mycenaean history I cannot, I dare not say. For all of this, somehow, somehow deep down inside, I instinctively, intuitively suspect he knew a lot more than we possibly can ourselves, if for the sole reason that he lived only a mere 4 centuries from the actual events in the Mycenaean War, while we live at the historical remote in the time line of events exceeding 3,200 years!
(e) Finally, and especially in light of that huge gap between ourselves and the Mycenaean era, we are in no position to understand with anywhere near the insight Homer must have had what the Mycenaean Trojan War was all about anyway. After all, Homer was Greek in the so-called “dark ages” of archaic Greece (another misnomer, if ever there was one); so he, being Greek, and living at that time, must have been immersed, not only in the mythology of the Trojan War – if indeed it ever was mythology to him, which I sincerely doubt – but in the historical facts as probably most of the Greeks of his era then understood them. Sadly, we shall never know how much they still knew about the Mycenaean War against the Trojans, nor how accurate their knowledge of it was. But the fact remains, they did indeed know about it, and if the Iliad is any indicator of their knowledge of it, they were consciously aware of a hell of a lot more about that great event in human history than we can ever hope to understand today. How the ancient Greeks understood and related to the world they lived in is beyond our ken. But we still must endeavour to understand their world on their own terms, in so far as this is humanly possible. This is a basic tenet of modern historical research. Do not judge ancient civilizations – or for that matter, much more recent ones – on our terms, but try to understand them on theirs. A huge bill to fill? You bet. But we must do the best we can; otherwise, we learn nothing of any real value even to ourselves in our modern society, with all its technological and scientific marvels. Science and technology cannot unearth the past, any more than we can in good conscience dig up the graves of the dead without desecrating them.
Am I giving up the search for understanding the far-flung past? Far from it. I am merely saying that we have to watch ourselves at every turn, no matter how sophisticated the scientific and technological tools, marvels as they are, at our command. To summarize, it takes real human empathy to actually try to relate to civilizations long-since dead and gone. I myself always try to imagine what a life I would have been living, were I Minoan or Mycenaean. To my mind, that sounds like a good place to start.... indeed the right place.
Richard
Share this:
-
Why anachronistic translations of Homer’s Iliad scare people off, Versus my modern translation of the Iliad, Book II, “The Catalogue of Ships”, lines 581-604
Why anachronistic translations of Homer's Iliad scare people off, Versus my modern translation of the Iliad, Book II, “The Catalogue of Ships”, lines 581-604 Here is my translation: Click to ENLARGE:
& here is the 1924 translation, which is even worse than the one of the previous post (lines 546-580). I have underlined the grossest anachronisms. Click to ENLARGE:
Richard
Share this:
-
Some Really Fine Twenty-First Century Translations of Homer’s Iliad
Some Really Fine Twenty-First Century Translations of Homer's Iliad Be as it may, it is up to us in the early twenty-first century to rectify this pitiable state of affairs. Here is at least one downloadable modern translation of the Iliad which really flies:
You can download this translation in .PDF, Mobi, Epub, WORD or HTML here:
Fortunately, there have been many truly fine translators of the Here are a few telling reviews of some of the best contemporary translations: click to READ
Take your choice.
Richard
Share this:
-
Homer. Iliad, Book II, “The Catalogue of Ships”, Lines 546-580 in Modern English Cf. Anachronistic Translation from 1924
My translation of Homer. Iliad, Book II, “The Catalogue of Ships”, Lines 546-580 in Modern English: Click to ENLARGE
Compare my translation in twenty-first century English with that of A.T. Murray 90 years ago (1924): Click to ENLARGE:
and you can instantly see the glaring discrepancies in the English of these two completely alien translations. Murray's translation from 1924 sounds uncannily like something Alexander Pope might have dryly penned in the eighteenth century! There really was no excuse for this, even in 1924, when people spoke an English very little removed from that we speak today. We can be pretty sure that the poor school children who were obliged to read the Iliad and Odyssey in that translation would probably not want to have anything more to do with either masterpiece for the rest of their lives. And who could have blamed them? But the Georgian mores of that era, still grudgingly hanging on in spite of the roaring twenties, prevailed, and to this day, far too many readers, young and old alike, end up in the ghastly grips of translations such as that one. God forbid! The most galling thing about it all is that The Perseus Digital Library
should know better. They have such a wealth of choice from modern translations, which they could easily have availed themselves of.
In the next post, we will be recommending some quality twenty-first century translations of the Iliad.
Richard
Share this:
-
What does Homer’s Iliad, Book II, “The Catalogue of Ships” have to do with Linear B? Why bother translating just it, and not the rest of the Iliad?
What does Homer’s Iliad, Book II, “The Catalogue of Ships” have to do with Linear B? Why bother translating just it, and not the rest of the Iliad? Click to ENLARGE my translation of Homer. Iliad, Book II, “The Catalogue of Ships” lines 511-545:
The Catalogue of Ships (lines 459-815) in Book II of the Iliad is the most reliable source for regressive extrapolation and derivation of archaic Greek vocabulary progressively extrapolated into equivalent Attested (A) or Derived (D) Mycenaean Greek vocabulary, next to the archaic Arcado-Cypriot dialect, in which several documents were written in the Linear C syllabary, the close cousin of Linear B. These include the famous “Idalion Tablet”, a decree from Stasicypros, king of Idalion in Cyprus, on behalf of a physician, Onesilos, and his brothers, whom the king and the city promises to pay medical fees for the treatment of the wounded after the siege of Idalion by the Medes (478 and 470 BC). (Bronze plaque engraved on both faces with a Cyprian inscription at the Cabinet des médailles, Paris, France.)
But it isn’t just the Linear B and Linear C scripts which stand hand in hand. The Mycenaean Greek and Arcado-Greek dialects, both very ancient, are even more closely allied than Ionic is to Attic Greek. The implications are clear. Any time we, as linguists specializing in the translation of Linear B tablets and sources, wish to verify the authenticity of our translations, the best source for such verification lies in tablets and documents in Arcado-Cypriot, whether these are written in Linear C or in the Arcado-Cypriot Greek alphabet itself (which is not quite identical to the Classical Greek alphabet).
Following hard on the heels of Arcado-Cypriot is the archaic Greek of Homer’s Iliad, and above all, that of “The Catalogue of Ships” itself in Book II. It is precisely in this passage alone that we find the most archaic Greek in the entire Iliad. So we, as translators, should rely on “The Catalogue of Ships” more than the rest of the Iliad as the second choice after Arcado-Cypriot for the regressive-progressive extrapolation of Mycenaean Greek words, Attested (A) or Derived (D).
Since a great many Attested (A) words in Mycenaean Greek often call for or even require some reliable source(s) for Derived (D) variations, the significance of Derived (D) Mycenaean Greek vocabulary in the Linear B script should not be underestimated. Conjugational forms of verbs and declensional of nouns missing from Linear B tablets cannot be reliably extrapolated unless we can find some dependable source to do just that. This is precisely the reason why I intend to resort to both Arcado-Cypriot sources in Linear C and in alphabetic Greek, and to “The Catalogue of Ships” in particular in Book I of the Iliad for the purpose of reconstructing “missing” Derived (D) vocabulary, for which certain forms are Attested (A). Why would I want to do that? With the assistance of my research colleague, Rita Roberts, who lives near Heraklion, Crete, I intend to publish a Topical English – Mycenaean Greek Linear B Lexicon sometime between 2016 and 2018, which will account not only for all of the currently Attested (A) vocabulary in Mycenaean Greek, but which will also include a great deal of Derived (D) vocabulary based on the principles I have just mentioned. And more besides. I have in mind the goal of at least doubling the currently Attested (A) Mycenaean vocabulary of some 2,500 words to at least 5,000.
And that is why it is imperative for me to translate in its entirety “The Catalogue of Ships” itself in Book II of Homer’s Iliad.
NOTE: to read my previous translations of Homer’s Iliad on our blog, scroll to the top of the page, and click on “ILIAD: Book II”.
Richard
Share this:
-
MEDIA Linear B Tablet, Heraklion Archaeological Museum, List of Men Including the “Basileus” or Viceroy
MEDIA Linear B Tablet, Heraklion Archaeological Museum, List of Men Including the “Basileus” or Viceroy: Click to ENLARGE
This magnificent photograph was taken by my colleague and fellow Linear B researcher, Rita Roberts, who actually lives in Heraklion, Crete, only five kilometres from Knossos. Rita is also a retired archaeologist who worked for years with pottery and other precious Minoan findings at the site of Knossos. I am so very fortunate to have her as my colleague. She and I have been working together for at least 15 months, almost since the founding of this great Linear B blog 20 months ago. In spite of our recent advent on the scene, our blog is now the second largest of its kind on the Internet, with the blog, Linear B Syllabary – the ancient script of Crete – Omniglot, the only one ahead of us. To visit Omniglot, Linear B, click here:
A general search on “Mycenaean Linear B” finds us several times on just the first two pages. I would like to make it absolutely clear that, in the field of linguistic research into Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C in particular we leave no stone unturned. We will go to any lengths to unearth absolutely every scrap of evidence, every instance of new research and insights into these scripts and all related matters. So if you are looking for a clearinghouse on “everything you ever wanted to know about Linear B, but were afraid to ask”, you have just found it.
Our Twitter account, Knossos KO NO SO, is the only Twitter page on the entire Internet focusing specifically on Mycenaean Linear B, undeciphered Minoan Linear A & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, as well as on related areas of historical significance such as The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of Homer’s Iliad, archaic Greek dialects, Classical Ionic & Attic Greek, the Twitter account of Henry George Liddell Scott, and others like these. If you wish to follow us on Twitter, click HERE:
Share this:
-
Rita Roberts’ Translation of Pylos Tablet AE 08, Slaves serving the priestess in charge of sacred gold
Rita Roberts' Translation of Pylos Tablet AE 08, Slaves serving the priestess in charge of sacred gold: Click to ENLARGE
Rita and I had our very first SKYPE teacher-student session just a few days ago. What a delight it was to finally meet my star student face to face! She is as charming as I always imagined she would be. Our classroom session lasted almost 1 1/2 hours! Rita learned a great deal more about the niceties of translating Linear B tablets, I enjoyed the teaching experience as much as she did the learning.
Richard
Share this:
-
SPECIAL MEDIA POST! 2 Linear B Tablets at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum Naming Knossos & its Harbour, Amnisos + Piraeus & Ostia!
SPECIAL MEDIA POST! 2 Linear B Tablets at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum Naming Knossos & its Harbour, Amnisos + More Tablets: Click to ENLARGE:
These tablets speak for themselves, to say the very least. There are in fact scores of tablets mentioning the name of the unwalled metropolis, Knossos, estimated population 55,000 (a very large city for antiquity) and of its bustling town harbour, Amnisos. We have already translated over a dozen tablets naming Knossos & Amnisos. Here is a sampling: Click to ENLARGE
Check Wikipedia to read all about Amnisos:
By comparison, Athens, with its own harbour, Piraeus, had about the same population at the acme of its power in the 5th. century BCE. Click to ENLARGE:
This is the first time ever that I have put my modern Greek lessons to the test, by including the title of this image in modern Greek, as well as English & French. If there are any errors at all in the Greek title, I beg one of our native Greeks to inform me ASAP, so that I can correct the error statim.
To read all about the Piraeus, see Wikipedia:
while Rome, a much larger city (est. pop. at least 750,000 at its height in the Augustinian period, ca. 20 BCE – AD) also had its own town harbour, Ostia (aka Ostia Antica). Click to ENLARGE
Check Wikipedia to read all about Ostia:
SPECIAL NOTE: From here on in, whenever we post anything which largely features MEDIA (photographs, videos & films), we will tag them as such in the post Title, MEDIA POST! We are also creating a new Category at the top of the first page of our blog, MEDIA, so that you can search all archived media posts at your leisure!
Richard
Share this:
You must be logged in to post a comment.