Tag: translation

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

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

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

My reasons are several:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And again:

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

And again:

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

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

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

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

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

Richard

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

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.

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

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

Is this cloth gold? Your guess is as good as mine…

Is this cloth gold? Your guess is as good as mine... Click to ENLARGE:



The supersyllabogram KU, as used in the specific context of textiles or cloth, poses real problems to the researcher attempting to decipher it, because there is nothing in any of the Linear B glossaries or lexicons on the Internet which really fits the bill. So we have to make our best guess, which is of course what I have done, right, wrong or whatever, in accordance with my usual practice. There isn’t really much else to say, except to give a tentative translation to each of these tablets. Here are my best guesses:

KN 514 R r 01:
Line 1: 14 rolls of cloth (of gold?) (& delivery? of.... cloth...?)      
Line 2: 18 rolls of cloth (possibly 19) – translation is secure.

KN 515 R r 11:
29? rolls of cloth (of gold?). NOTE: it is really peculiar, but the scribe has reversed the no. 29, placing the digits (9) before the tens (20). This makes no sense to me, but I am not the scribe.

KN 516 R r 12:
2 rolls of cloth (of gold?)

Richard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The most fundamental division of the Greek dialects is that into the West Greek and the East Greek dialects, the terms referring to their location prior to the great migrations. The East Greek are the “the old Hellenic” dialects, that is, those employed by the peoples who held the stage almost exclusively in the period represented by the Homeric poems, when the West Greek peoples remained in obscurity in the northwest. To the East Greek belong the Attic and Aeolic groups... passim... And to the East Greek (dialects) also belong the Arcado-Cyprian.”

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

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

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

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

Richard

Tag: translation

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: