Linear B script

This article addresses the rather special place of ku-do-ni-ja (a toponym almost certainly associated with the LM III settlement under the modem town of Khania) within the political geography of Late Minoan III Crete, as this can be reconstructed from the study of geographic references on the Knossos tablets. The discussion focuses on the contextual internal consistency and remarkable contextual isolation of the toponyms associated with ku-do-ni-ja (the ‘ku-do-ni-ja group’) and attempts to contrast it with the more diverse occurrences of ku-do-ni-ja itself. Finally, archaeological data are brought into the picture. Ιt is argued that the emergent picture, supported both from the study of the Knossian occurrences themselves and by the archaeological facts revealed by excavations at Khania, is one of a remarkable site, which has a very unique relationship to the Knossian centre. This relationship might not be properly assignable to such absolute schemes as 'autonomy' or ‘dependency’.

Ever since humankind first settled down in permanent settlements as the direct consequence of farming of grains and other crops and the raising of livestock in the Late Neolithic era, the territorial imperative has consistently dictated real or imagined threats from outsiders. Consequently, people always struggled to improve means of self defence, leading to the introduction of missiles such as sling stones, spears and arrows. In the Late Neolithic, humankind built enormous fortresses. This was soon followed by the emergence of the first chariots in Sumeria ca. 2,500 BCE. Cumbersome as they were, they represented a significant step forward in the early technology of warfare. The next millennium was to bring about the perfection of the chariot as a vehicle enabling much more efficient warfare. Chariots had become far lighter, more mobile and more battle-worthy than their much more ponderous Sumerian predecessors. All late Bronze Age chariots, including Egyptian and Mycenaean, had reached the zenith of perfection attainable for that era. The Linear B Lexicon for the Construction of Mycenaean Chariots, the only one of its kind, has been produced in partnership with Koryvantes, the Association of Historical Studies (Athens).

The questions concerning the decipherment of the inscriptions of Linear A and related scripts in the Proto-Kartvelian-Colchian language are studied here in the following order:1. Ancient inhabitants and languages of southern Europe and Asia Minor;2. Some information about habitations of Macrians and Dolionians;3. Discovery and study of Linear A and Cretan hieroglyphic inscriptions;4. Graphic parallels of the Linear A and Cretan hieroglyphic signs with the signs of the Phaistos Disk and other related scripts;5. Graphic features of Linear A signs *326, *120, and *120b – their meanings and typology with a commentary;6. Reconstruction of the Common Kartvelian general word denoting grass, hay, food, wheat, barley, bread, nourishment, feeding, grazing, cereals, eating;7. Reconstructed words and lexical units denoting grass, hay, food, seed, cereals, grain, wheat, barley, millet, bread, flour;8. The territory and era of cultivation of barley and wheat;9. Linear A syllabary and ideograms;10. Linear A ideograms, their combinations, and ligatures of a general word for grass, hay, food, grain, cereals, wheat, barley, bread, grazing, feeding, nourishing;11. Whole numbers and fractions of Linear A script;12. Examples of deciphering Linear A inscriptions;13. Deciphering of the inscriptions on a jug in Dablagomi (West Georgia).● Conclusions

The word e-qe-ta is one of the most well-known Linear B words. It is transcribed as /hekwetas/ (in alphabetic Greek ἑπέτας ‘follower’). It has been regarded as a title of important and powerful persons of ‘the royal court’ charged with military, religious, and other functions. However, there are still unanswered questions about the morphology and the semantics of the word, permitting new interpretations. Here, the hypothesis is put forward that e-qe-ta can be transcribed as /hēgwétas/ (in alphabetic Greek *ἡβέτας ‘ephebe’) and the one and only identity that must be attributed to him is that of a young soldier in the Mycenaean army, comparable in roles to the ephebe of Classical Greece.

In this study a revised analysis of the Mycenaean tablet PY
Tn 316 is presented, a piece of utmost importance for the
knowledge of the Mycenaean language, rituals and religion.
New proposals are drawn for the solution of old cruces (e.g.
Myc. ma-na-sa), based on the application of a hermeneutic
principle of internal coherence to each sections of the text.

The sign-sequences (words) denoting arithmetic operations in Linear A inscriptions:  KU-RO – ‘to gather, to collect’; and KI-RO – ‘decrease, reduce’ were presented earlier by me (Kvashilava 2011).
Below these sequences are studied in detail.

During some lectures, then published into a book entitled "Presupposti del sacrificio umano", Angelo Brelich analyzed, according to a very innovative methodology for his time, the phenomena that he considered the foundamental conditions of human sacrifice in different cultures of the world. A half century from these lessons, the "fundamentals" of its methodology are still relevant and, with the necessary updates, functional. First aim of this paper is to investigate if the cultural and contextual assumptions recognized by Brelich as the fundamental elements of the phenomenon of human sacrifice can be individuated also in Mycenaean Greece.

The “Bodosakis Foundation” (www.blod.gr), launched a series of online video-lectures with free access. In this frame, invited K.S. Giannakos to present the subject: “The Trojan War based on Archaeological Findings”. In practice, the presentation constitutes an ‘extended summary’ (with more pictures and figures) of five (5) of his published articles – after peer review – in (a) Archaeological Journals [Giannakos 2019b; 2016] and (b) proceedings of Archaeological Conferences [Giannakos 2019a; 2015; 2013]; these articles are cited (with the links to download them) below (cf. References). The presentation clarifies in details the author’s “working hypothesis” on a ca. 1400 BC Troy’s conquest, after “a conflation of raids from ‘one-or-more centuries’ before the alleged dates of Greek literature”, that is beginning at 1534(+) or 1336(+) BC until post-1200 BC [according to professor Trevor Bryce].
The enriched English version has been uploaded in the link: https://www.blod.gr/lectures/the-trojan-war-based-on-archaeological-findings.
In www.blod.gr, the narrating presenter and the corresponding power-point slides are presented simultaneously on the screen. The spectator disposes the possibilities (a) in the “full-screen mode”, to re-arrange the magnitude/width of the power-point slide vs the presenter, on the screen and (b) to freeze the image in order to watch (and examine) the slide thoroughly; furthermore, a full list (120 works) of the used Bibliography and an Abstract are also included, separately.

The possibility that the Linear B term to-ko-do-mo = *τοιχοδόμοι(ς): “wall-builders” could be a dative plural on line 11 of the new text PY An 7 + Fn 1427, edited by Melena after a join of two fragments (see Minos 31-32, 1996-1997, 171-176), is here discussed through an analysis of the internal arrangement of this tablet and the graphic features of its scribe, Hand 3 of Pylos. Without going into the general discussion about the dative plural of the o-stems in Mycenaean Greek, if the hypothesis that there is at least one form in –o for a thematic dative plural in Linear B were certain, this would involve that the two endings attested for this case in alphabetic Greek, i.e, -οισι and –οις, were be already in use in Mycenaean times for the same case, at least to the end of the period of the Linear B inscriptions (ca. 1200 BC).

Two types of ko-to-na are distinguished at Pylos by the accompanying participles ki-ti-me-na on the Eo and En tablets and keke- me-na on Eb and Ep. Both types occur on the short Ea tablets. For the purposes of this article I shall follow the universally accepted interpretation of ko-to-na as referring in some way to plots of land.

This paper examines the allocations of cereals and wine to carpenters recorded on the Linear B tablets from Thebes.
Within this scope, the attestations of the term te-ka-ta-si /tektasi/, dative plural from te-ko-to /tekton/ “carpenter”, are reviewed. Carpenters appear as recipients of HORD (barley or, more probably, wheat) on tablet Fq 247, and wine on tablets Gp 112, 114, 147, and 175. It is argued that they were carpenters employed in the building rather than in ship construction because: 1) the term seems to be attested also in two tablets from Pylos along with masons, 2) in Linear B we have another term for “ship builder”, na-u-do-mo. Then, the main reasons why it is likely that the supplies of HORD and wine recorded on such tablets from Thebes were provided during religious ceremonies are presented. Finally,  records of supplies of HORD and wine to carpenters are analyzed with the aim of suggesting how many carpenters are recorded, how much each of them receives, and what can be inferred about their social status.
The number of carpenters is never specified, but, because in Fq 247 they receive 4 sub-measures Z of HORD, we can suggest that the carpenters were either two or four. If they were four, each of them would receive HORD Z 1, i.e. 0.4 l of barley/wheat. Such an amount of barley/wheat is likely equivalent to one meal on subsistence rations. Despite the incomplete documents and the great variability in the amount of wine distributed to each individual or group in the Gp series, it is possible to infer a hierarchy of recipients based on the frequency of attestation and the amount received. Moreover, such a great variability prevents the interpretation of these distributions of wine as standard, regular payments. Since carpenters occupy the fourth position in frequency and received good amounts of wine (with a maximum of VIN 4+ in Gp147.2), a luxury item, probably during religious ceremonies, we can conclude that they enjoyed a relatively high social position in Mycenaean society and/or that people who worked for the Palace and participated at the feasts were exceptionally skilled workers.

Il convegno sulle economie palaziali (presentato in questo fascicolo monografico di «Pasiphae»), tenutosi a Sèvres dal 16 al 19 settembre 2010, ha avuto lo scopo di riunire studiosi di aree diverse che condividono lo stesso oggetto di ricerca. Lo svolgimento del XIII Simposio Internazionale su testi micenei ed egei a Sèvres, Nanterre e Parigi, la settimana successiva, ha dato la possibilità di beneficiare della presenza della maggior parte degli studiosi di epigrafia egea a Parigi. Il volume comprende la quasi totalità dei contributi presentati. Gli scambi scientifici e, più in particolare, il confronto tra i palazzi del mondo egeo e quelli del Vicino Oriente erano emersi presto come una necessità, dopo la decifrazione della Lineare B, e anche prima. Oggi, sia per gli specialisti di epigrafia egea, sia per gli studiosi di orientalistica, sia per gli antropologi dell'economia e gli storici, il lavoro da fare sull'economia dei palazzi nel mondo egeo e in quello del Vicino Oriente è enorme, in primo luogo a causa del continuo aumento delle fonti disponibili, tra studi filologici, archeologici e storici. Inoltre, l'attività in comune e i metodi comparativi restano da definire e sono anch'essi oggetto di discussione, per quella che è una delle principali direzioni di sviluppo degli studi micenei.

The aim of this paper is to provide a synthetic outline of the attempts so far produced by scholars in trying to decipher Linear A, an undeciphered Aegean writing system (dating back to the European Bronze Age), highlighting some still unanswered epistemological questions. Linear A documents (mainly clay tablets) come (predominantly) from the Mediterranean island of Crete and transcribe Minoan, an unknown language. Being the linguistic enigma behind this writing system not yet solved, new hermeneutic approaches could be able to shed some light on old Linear A's interpretative problems. The paper is structured as an agile literature review on Linear A, followed by a series of old and new methodological questions on this Aegean writing system, involving the possible connection with Ancient Greek (through Linear B, the script transcribing Mycenaean Greek and plausibly derived – partly – from Linear A), Semitic hypotheses, theoretical parallels with the Cuneiform writing system, the idea of a grammatological macro-comparison, and the possible improvement of computational approaches to the Linear A corpus.

This paper represents a study of the D-class tablets from Knossos. This class includes several sets of documents dealing with the administration of the sheep flocks of the palace. A large group (Da-Dg, Dk(2), Dm, Dn & Dv), written by scribe 117, was found in the J1 deposit, while a smaller – and less homogeneous – group (Dk(1), Dl, Do, Dq and D), written by several scribes, was found in the NEP.
The main aim of this article is to offer an analysis of these documents from a comparative point of view. The study of the scribal hands, findspots, prosopography and topography represents the first step for a clear definition of the similarities and differences existing between the two groups. On the other hand, a deeper study on the bureaucratic and administrative mechanisms which produced them offers the possibility to understand the nature of their reciprocal relationship. Finally, the formulaic, administrative and bureaucratic differences and similarities revealed are analyzed in the wider perspective of the chronological question of the archives of Knossos.

Negli ultimi anni, la ricostruzione delle pratiche rituali associate allo svolgimento di banchetti nel periodo miceneo è stata oggetto di un confronto spesso molto acceso tra gli studiosi di protostoria egea, in particolar modo in relazione a quanto tali cerimonie possano aver rappresentato la manifestazione di una precisa strategia con forti implicazioni di carattere sia sociale e politico sia religioso elaborata dall’élite palatina. Dall’analisi delle evidenze testuali micenee, infatti, le cerimonie di banchetto si configurano come rituali collettivi intesi a rinsaldare l’identità tra gruppi sociali diversi (attraverso la partecipazione a un momento rituale comune) legittimando e rinforzando, allo stesso tempo, le differenze di status tra i membri della comunità (elencati, sulle tavolette in Lineare B, secondo una rigida gerarchia). Tali cerimonie, inoltre, prevedevano l’offerta alle divinità (oltre che di cibi e bevande di diversa natura) di sacrifici animali. In questo modo, la partecipazione metaforica degli dei stessi al pasto comune assicurava la protezione divina sul palazzo e sulla sua comunità e legittimava, allo stesso tempo, la consumazione di grandi quantità di carne. Nel contesto di tali rituali, un aspetto particolarmente controverso è rappresentato dalla possibile partecipazione a cerimonie di banchetto di individui – anch’essi destinatari di offerte alimentari – denominati attraverso uno zoonimo. Costoro, secondo un’ipotesi che si giudica particolarmente interessante e che si cercherà di sostanziare ulteriormente attraverso l’analisi di fonti testuali e iconografiche, potrebbero essere identificati con alcuni rappresentanti di alto rango della classe sacerdotale, caratterizzati (e, da ciò, denominati) dal recare maschere ferine, indossare pelli di animali, partecipare a processioni e svolgere danze mimetiche in occasione di festività religiose.

This volume is intended to be the first in a series that will focus on the origin of script and the boundaries of non-scribal communication media in proto-literate and literate societies of the ancient Aegean. Over the last 30 years, the domain of scribes and bureaucrats has become much better known. Our goal now is to reach below the élite and scribal levels to interface with non-scribal operations conducted by people of the 'middling' sort. Who made these marks and to what purpose? Did they serve private or (semi-) official roles in Bronze Age Aegean society? The comparative study of such practices in the contemporary East (Cyprus, Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt) can shed light on sub-elite activities in the Aegean and also provide evidence for cultural and economic exchange networks.

DOI: 10.21276/sb.2017.3.10.9 Abstract: The present study describes the ten attested signs of the Cretan Protolinear script which render disyllabic phonetic values, unlike the monosyllabic ones of the Consonant-Vowel type, which is the common phonetic pattern for the rest of the signs. The Cretan Protolinear script has been proposed as the script that all the Aegean scripts of Bronze Age evolved from. The linguistic affinity of these disyllabic signs to the Sumerian language is demonstrated, in terms of lexicographic reference, phonetic correspondence and pictographic resemblance. In addition, the description of these signs’ phonetic features is accompanied by valuable cultural information, wherever available.

Ethnicity and Language: a view from Knossos Personal Names (yet again).
Abstract
Discussing the proportion of Greek versus non-Greek names observed in the documents from the Room of the Chariot Tablets, Jean Driessen remarked that if the concentration of Greek names is related to the social context of the personnel mentioned - a highly controversial question -, this may have some consequences in our understanding of the social composition of the cnossian population in the latter stages of Greek Bronze Age. Moreover, being the RCT the oldest Linear B deposit at Knossos, Driessen wonders if comparing the results deriving from the analysis of these personal names with the whole cnossian corpus from the other deposits could be historically (with the Greek and non-Greek names thematically restricted to different socio-economic contexts or mutually mixed) and linguistically (being in relation with the language-shift in Crete) significant. Unfortunately, “no reference work exist to perform such an analysis”, except the studies made by Baumbach (Ap, As, C- series), Ilievski (D- series) and Varias Garcia (B- series) and the statistical analyses carried out by R. Firth, that shows a trend in which non-Greek names are generally restricted to inferior socio-economic contexts. Moreover, it is difficult to assess whether carrying a Greek name actually  implies ethnic group affiliation. If in conditions of language shift a congruence between mother-tongue and social status can be traced, because some socially distinct groups often lead the rest of the population, it is equally possible (as suggested by sociolinguistic parallels) that individuals belonging to a socially inferior class may have chosen Greek names (possibly to acquire status) or can get nick-names by Mycenaean administrators, who can also try to hellenizing names they can’t understand.
Keeping in mind these basic problems, the aim of this paper is to suggest, also on the basis of the prosopographical study made by Landenius Enegren, some remarks about this topic by examining personal names from Linear B sets from Knossos not jet analyzed in a socio-linguistic perspective, focusing on difficulty in recognizing the identity of people bearing the names and the way in which Mycenaean scribes registered the personnel (often by professional designations, ethnics or simply VIR/MUL ideograms) and wondering, as Varias Garcia did studying B- tablets, if the data represent the whole island population.

Après le premier volume, consacré aux textes mycéniens et à leur monde, paru en 2008, Y. Duhoux et A. Morpurgo Davies nous offrent ici un second tome tout aussi utile et passionnant que le premier pour tous ceux que le monde mycéniens intéresse, qu'ils soient philologues, historiens, archéologues ou linguistes. Il s'ouvre sur une contribution d'Yves Duhoux lui-même (chapitre 11, pp. 1-32), qui souligne quelques précautions à prendre quand on se lance dans l'interprétation des textes en Linéaire B. Après avoir rappelé que le problème essentiel, lié à la nature même des textes, à la graphie mycénienne et à l'ancienneté de la langue, consiste à interpréter les mots eux-mêmes, il présente la méthode à utiliser pour interpréter les documents en Linéaire B et une sélection des règles les plus importantes à suivre, tenant au respect des règles épigraphiques et orthographiques ; à l'examen soigneux du contexte, qu'il soit inter en ou externe ; à la consultation appropriée du dictionnaire grec et au respect des règles linguistiques. Il s'élève également contre un écueil où des mycénologues se sont trop souvent échoués, soulignant avec force et raison ce que M. Ventris affirmait déjà : l'explication religieuse ne doit être acceptée que si aucune autre n'est valable. Il rappelle enfin que, pour être considérée comme acceptable, une interprétation doit utiliser le moins possible d'hypothèses et/ou d'hypothèses qui ne peuvent être facilement démontrées. Il termine enfin en rappelant qu'en face à des textes aussi complexes que ceux des archives en Linéaire B, nous devons faire preuve d'humilité et parfois reconnaître notre ignorance en essayant de trouver l'hypothèse la plus probable sans nécessairement aboutir à une conclusion, se référant ainsi à M. Lejeune : « Il vaut mieux confesser une incertitude que professer une erreur ». La seconde contribution du présent volume est signée Tom Palaima (ch. 12, pp,33-136), qui nous offre un long chapitre sur « scribes, mains et paléographie ». Il se concentre sur les scribes, c'est-à-dire sur ceux qui ont écrits les textes mycéniens que nous possédons. La première partie de son travail fait état des différents moyens que les chercheurs modernes ont utilisés pour identifier et donc étudier le travail des scribes et de la façon dont une étude paléographique rigoureuse des textes en Linéaire B, commencée avant même leur déchiffrement, nous a conduit à une compréhension plus assurée de la signification des textes et de leur but dans le système administratif organisé autour de et par les centres palatiaux mycéniens. Dans une seconde partie, son étude est consacrée au monde des scribes et aux importantes théories et conclusions auxquelles a conduit l'étude paléographique des inscriptions en Linéaire B , ainsi qu'aux questions que cette étude a soulevées : qui étaient les scribes, comment le devenaient-il, comment travaillaient-ils ? T. Palaima rappelle alors la façon dont les différentes « mains » ont pu être identifiées, chaque scribe mycénien ayant ses particularités graphiques ; il nous informe sur la façon dont les tablettes, scellés et étiquettes étaient faits, mis en forme, écrits, organisés. Utilisant de nombreux parallèles avec le monde suméro-akkadien et hittite, il tente de déterminer le degré de spécialisation des scribes, ce qui s'avère particulièrement difficile dans un monde mycénien pour lequel les textes que nous possédons ne couvrent que les quelques semaines ou mois précédant la destruction des palais. Il s'interroge enfin sur la statu social des scribes, tâche particulièrement ardue encore une fois puisque aucune référence à ces mêmes scribes n'apparaît dans les textes, et penche pour l'hypothèse selon laquelle les « mains » identifiées auraient été des spécialistes de l'enregistrement qui accompagnaient les officiels palatiaux ou régionaux tels que le wanax, le lawagetas, les ko-re-te-re, po-ro-ko-re-te-re, e-qe-ta et différents types d'inspecteurs. Les scribes auraient donc essentiellement pris des notes sous la dictée d'autres personnes et auraient organisé et gardé la trace de données complexes en les transcrivant sur les tablettes. Les textes pyliens suggéreraient de plus l'existence d'une hiérarchie entre les scribes selon leu capacité à enregistrer correctement des informations plus ou moins complexes.

Η υγειονομική και κοινωνική κρίση λόγω της πανδημίας COVID-19, ανέδειξε την
ανομοιογενή κι υφέρπουσα ευαλωτότητα στον πλανήτη. Ταυτόχρονα, την ανάγκη να «συμβαδίσει»
η ανθρωπότητα για την αντιμετώπιση της. Η πανδημία αυτή δεν υπήρξε η πρώτη στην ιστορία.
Ενάντια στις νόσους, ο άνθρωπος αναζήτησε πρακτικές ίασης, εξαγνισμού, καθαρμού. Η πανάρχαια
ελληνική κληρονομιά αποδεικνύει τη συστηματοποίηση της ιατρικής από την Εποχή του Χαλκού. Η
ύπαρξη της λέξης γιατρός στην Γραμμική Α και Β και της λέξης Παιάν, όνομα του θεϊκού γιατρού -
γνωστό προσωνύμιο του Απόλλωνος και η παιάνια ωδή του, αποδεικνύουν τις παμπάλαιες εναγώνιες
προσπάθειες του ανθρώπου να απαλλαχθεί από τα δεινά. Επιπλέον, και την ανάγκη του για καλή
αρχή εγχειρημάτων, εξύμνησης του θριάμβου και της ευγνωμοσύνης προς τον/τους θεραπευτή/ές
θεό/ούς. Έφτασε ως τις μέρες μας ως εμβατήριο. Ο παιάνας για χιλιάδες χρόνια συνοδεύει ποιητικά
και ρυθμικά τον «βηματισμό» της εξέλιξης, ρίχνοντας «ηχηρό» και ενίοτε «εκκωφαντικό» φως κατά
των συμφορών της ανθρωπότητας.