The Decipherment of Mycenaean Greek in the Linear B Script and Its Consequences in the Field of Homeric Scholarship

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Loyola University Chicago

Loyola eCommons

Master's Teses Teses and Dissertations

1957

Te Decipherment of Mycenaean Greek in theLinear B Script and Its Consequences in the Field

of Homeric ScholarshipFrancis Tomas Gignac Loyola University Chicago

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Copyright © 1957 Francis Tomas Gignac

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THE DEC IPIillfU>1F;N'l' OF MYCENAEAll GR8EK IN THE LumAR B

SCRIPT AND ITS CONSE,UEHC:';S n ~ T H f ~FIELl) OF H O M ! < ~ R I C SCU()LAHSfLIP

by

Francia Thomas Gignac, S.J .

A The.is Submitted to the Fac·ultl ot t.ha Gradu.ato Scbool

ot Loyola University in Part ia l Fulfilment of

the Requirements for the Degree ot

Master of Art.

June

19$7



LIFE

Francis Thomas Gignac was Dorn in Detroi t , Michigan, on

February 24, 1933.

Graduating from the University of Detroit High School in

June, 1950, he entered the Society of Jesus a t l"111ford Novitiate,

Milford, Ohio, on August 8, 1950, and began his undergraduate

work as a student of Xavier University, Cincinnati .

The degree of Bachelor of Arts was conferred upon him by

Loyola University, Chicago, in the summer of 1955. Since that

time, he has been pursuing his graduate studies in classical

languages under the direct ion of the Reverend Raymond V.'Schoder,

•. J . , Ph.D., a t West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana,

and a t Loyola UniverSity, Chicago.

i1



TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter

I . INTRODUCTION

A. Introductor1 remarks •••••••••••••••B. Writing in general ••••••••••••••••

1. Pictograph1 ••• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •2. Ideography and rebus-writing • • • • • • • • • •3. Phonetic writing ••••••••••••••••

a. Syllabary • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •b. Alphabet •••••• • • • • • • • • • • •

C. Cretan writ ing ••••••••••••••••••1 . Cretan pictography • • • • •• ••••••••2. Linear A • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •3. Linear B • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •4. C1pro-Minoan script ••••••••••••••S. C1priote syllabary • • • • • • • • .• • • • • • •

•••••••••••••

I I . HISTORICAL B A C K G R O U ~ ~ • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

A. Ancient rumors• • • • • • • • • • • •

• • • • • • •B. Sir Arthur Evans ••• • ••••• • • • • • • •C. My1onas's amphora reading ••••••• • • • • • • •D. Excavations of Blegen and Kourouniotis • • • • '« • • •E. Ventris 's early work ••••••••• • • • • • • •F. John Franklin Daniel ••••• • ••• • • • • • • •G. New in terest in Linear B ••• • • • • • • • • • • •H. Alice Elizabeth Kober • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •I . Emmett L. Bennett, J r . • ••••••• • • • • • • •J . The stage i s se t • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

I I I . THE DECIPHEm'IENT OF LINEAR B • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

A. Internal evidence • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •B. The grid ••••••••••••••• • • • • • • •C. Features of tae syllabary ••••••• • • • • • • •D. How Ventrls deduced the grid ••••• • • • • • • •E. Assumed rules of Mycenaean orthoJraphy • • • • • • •F. Observations on the decipherment ••• • • • • • • •

l i i

Page

1334SS67A899

11

1112

141516181920

232S

26

26293232

~ ~



IV. C O N S E ~ ~ U E N C E S OF DECIPHEHMENT ON HONZRIC SCHOLARSHIP

A.

B.

c.

Mycenaean civi l izat ion •••••••••

1. The Greeks in Crete . ••••• •••2. Lives and customs of Homer's heroes •

a . Administration • • • • • • • • • •b. Literacy •••••••••••••

c. Mycenaean rel igion • • • • • • •

d. Myoenaean mythology • • • • • • • •e. Social structure • • • • • • • • •

i.. Royalty • .. • • • • •• •••i i . Private property •• ; ••••

f . Geographical looation •••••••

g. Daily l i fe • • • • • • • • • • • •u.. Conclus ion •• • • • • • • • • • •

M70enaean Dialect • • • • • • • • • • • •

1. Relation to other dialects ••••••

2. Vooabulary • • • • • • • • • • • • • •3. Syntax • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

4. Morphology • • • • • • • • • • • • • •5. Phonology •••••••• • • • • • •6, Conolusions • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Note on tablet references • • • • • • • •

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

AN ATTEHP'l1 A'r DEC IPHERI •

• •• • • •

A. Purpose • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •B. Pylos table t Va482 • • • • • • • • • • •C. Pylos tablet Un267 • • • • • • • • • • •

• • • •

• • • •

• • • •

• • • •• • • •• • • •• • • •• • • •

• • • •

• • • •

• • • •• • • •

• • • •• • • •

• • • •

• • • •• • • •• • • •• • • •

• • • •

• • • •

• • • •

••

••

• • • •

• • • •

• • • ••

iv

• • 40

•

•

•

••

••

••

••

•••

•

••

•

•

•

•

•

•

•••

•

•

•

••

••••

•••••

••

•

•

•

•

404043

4345525961626670727375

757679829295

• 100

• 101

• 107• 107• 108• 113



LIST OF TABLES

able

I. THE LINEAR B GRID IN ITS PRESErlT STATE • • • • • • • • •I I . TH.E FIHST DECLENSION ••• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

I I I . THE SECOND DECLENSION ••• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

IV. THE THIRD DECLE!lSION • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

V. -EYZ NOUNS OF T H ~ THIRD DECLENSION • • • • • • • • • • •

v

Page

31

83

86

87

88



CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Our a ~ has seen one of the most remarkable archaeological

triumphs of a l l t ime, the deciphering of the writing of the

chaean Greeks, the heroes of Homer's poems, by an English archi

tec t , Michael G. F. Ventris. The aohievement of the sucoessful

archi teot , a cryptographer during World War I I , whose interest

in Greek antiquity stems from his school.day education in the

class ios , ranks with Heinrioh Schliemann's discovery of Troy and

Jean Franyois Champollionts decoding of the Rosetta Stone as one

of the greatest accomplishments of archaeology. While Schlie

excavations gave historical substance to the legends of

•Ventris 's decipherment revealed the language of Homer's

while Champollion had a quasi-translat ion in Greek to work

rom in the prooess of decoding the Egyptian hieroglyphics and

scr ipt , Ventri . worked on tablets whose sense as well as

was unknown.

A ~ ~ Times ar t ic le announcing Mr. Ventrists 1952 dis-

read:

An ancient Greek scr ip t chat for l;he las t half centuryand longer has baffled archaeologists and l inguists has beendecoded finally--by an amateur.

1



2

Solving of the r iddle by Michael Ventris, an Englisharchi tect and leisure-t ime scholar of pre-class ical sc r ip t s ,• • • is looked upon as an unparalleled achievement.

Implications of Mr. Ventris 's findings have rockedthe archaeological world, and resul tant tremors, scholars

assume, wil l be fe l t in other areas of learning as well . l

The story of the Myoenaean scr ip t began more than f i f ty years

ago when S ir Arthur Evans unearthed comparatively great masses of

engraved tab le ts from the palace a t Knossos, Orete. No one could

read the t ab le t s , except for some numbers. When you find on a

t ab le t this se t of symbols:

-

"

1/ t I

I I I

i t i8 l ikely that t : l is i s merely an add! t ion, the ver t ica l st rokes

r e p r e s e n t i n ~ single units and the horizontal ones tens: thus, 1+

7+2-40. 2

But the words on the table ts were another s tory . Tney were

compose. of different Signs, which no scholar could recognize.

True, a handful of them resembled signs in other scr ip ts , but

they consti tuted such a small percentage that they offered l i t t l e

of leading to a solut ion. Indeed, the writ ing seemed im

possible to decipher. The scr ip t was unknown, the meaning of the

tablets was unknown, and, seemingly, so was the language. Unless

lSanka Knox, "Deciphered Tablets Antedate Homer," !h!Times (April 9, 1954), p. 2.

2Jotham Johnson, "The Language of Homer's Heroes," !!!!American, OXO (May, 1954), 71.



3

someone discovered a Rosetta Stone in tn1s sc r ip t , the .outlook was

glum. As late a8 1948 we find eminent arehaeologlsts writ ing:

The r lna l hope for a complete solution of the problem

seems to res t in the future discovery of one or more bil ingual inscriptions. • • • When and i f such bil ingual in scriptions are discovered in trw Mainland of Greece nnd inOrete they wil l provide the key to the prehistoric scr iptsot: Greece. Even inscriptIons In the Greek language writ tenin the Linear Scripts of prehistoric times wil l be of greatvalue to the work of decipherment; but these are s t i l l 8

boon devoutly to be wished.)

How ironical i t 18 tha.t the Cons",n8U8 of arohaeologiats ruled

out the pos8ibil i ty o f these tab le tsoeing actually written in the

language, though in a Minoan scriptS But before we e&amine

in more deta i l the evidence for a Greek dialect in the tablets ,

and hov Michael Ventris solved the r-idd:"" without bilingual in -

cript ion. , a few observations i l lus t ra t ing various types or

in general and the various Minoan s tyles in part icular

re nec•• sary to r a proper understanding o t Linear B.

•Writing, or the oommunication of conceptual language by

a ~ b i t r a r y signs, 1s the a r t which b1ves permanence to man's know-

ledge. Presclnding from auch e ~ b r y o - w r l t l n g as symbolic icono

graphy and "rock-pictures, t writing m ~ , y "be d1vlded into picto

graph)", ideography, and phonography.4

P1ctography, the most pri.m1tlve stage of true writing, is

the semantic representation of ideas, i . e . , representation through

3Qeorge E. MJ'lonas, "Prehistoric Greek Scripts ," Archaeo1oQ,I (Winter, 1948), 220.

4Davld Dirlngcr, The Alphabet. 2nd ed. (London. 1949). P. 31 __



4

piotures. We find this language used extensively in two greatly

differing sphere.: in aboriginal t r ibal wri t ing, and in contem

porary adverti . ing.

While in pictography the picture8 i l lus t ra te material thinss.

in icleograph,., a further stage ot development, the,. a180 represent

abstract ideas. Iel.oaraph,. aeems to .be a highl,. developed picto

graphy in which. the plcturas represent not so much the things theT

portray as tho underlying Ideas of tho.e thing8. Pol" example., ,a

circle m.1ght repre8ent, not just the8un, but l ight , heat, or the

word dar_ lUre Ideogl'aphJ i8 rarely u8ed, seemingl,. only by Ka,.a

and As teo Indi an t r l bes, and by some 0 t the Illore prim! t i vo Atr.1. can

PolJl1.s1an, Australian, and Asian indigene ••

filat pure ideograph,. is inaut.tlcient can be easil,. seen. ' t ry

to repre8ent names, especially foreign names, or pronouns, ad

Verbs, preposit ions, and inflections by m.eans of picture's alone.

aence, the picture symbola came to atand not only tor o ~ j e c t . or

re la ted abstract ideas, but al .o to r !!!.! Ehonetic value !!.! word,!

wi thout anz r e , a " !2. theip pictuI-!.!_ fhls i8 more technicall , .

known . a r .bus-vrl t i ! l . det1ned •• the "enigmatical repre.entation

ot words and phJtas•• b)" pioture. ot object . the names ot Which

p ••••bl. the worda or the1r 8711abl••• H' SUch rebu.-writing, or

tranait ional writing (bordering on both ideograph,. and phonograph,.

6W.bsterts ..ew Colleliate D1ctionarz, 6th .d. (Springfi.ld,.. s ., 1949), p . ~ S . 1£.1108 no£ In tne original.



or ideography improperly so-cal led, is the Babylonian cuneiform

system (in which the ideographs are formed out of wedge-shaped

l ines) , the Egyptian hieroglyph, and the Ohinese character

system.7

In the picture-writings and the pure ideographic scr ip t ,

there is no oonnection between the depioted symbol and the spoken

name for i t , the symbols can be "read" in any language. Phono

graphy, or phonetic writing, is a great step forward. The written

signs now represent not ideas, but sounds. The writ ten forms,

now having a direct relat ionship to the spoken language, become

i t s secondary forms.

There are two classes of phonetiC writing; the syllabary

and the alphabet. The syllabary, in Which each sign represents

a syl lable , i . e . , a consonant plus a vowel, i s cumbersome because

of the greater number of signs it must have. The Japanese Hira

gana and Katakana syllabaries each have forty.eight sign8. 8

7It is a matter of his tor ica l controversy whether or notwriting actually developed in a s t r i c t sense from a more primitiveto a more advanoed stage, or whether different forms of writing

were actually invented in a higher degree of perfeotion. Dr.D1ringer holds a Darwinian view of the development of writing. Hes ta tes : "The struggle for l i fe i s the main condition of existencefor a scr ipt as for other things. The best f i t ted res is ts andsurvives, although sometimes the surrounding dircumstances maybear a greater influence on the survival of a scr ipt than i t smerits as a system of writ ing." This principle of evolution,false as regards specific evolution, seems the best workinghypothesis for the development of writing. (Quotation on p. 21.)

8The complete syllabaries may be found in Mario A. Pei, The

World's Ohief ~ n g u a g e s , 3rd ad. (New York, 1946), p. 530. - - -



6

(That the adoptlon and use of these .,.11aO&1'1e8 along with the

Chinese charaoter. was a simplif icat ion in Japanese readlng wl11

be understood when one ref lec ts that the "impossible" Ohine8e

signa amount to more than 80,0001)9 Other syllabarie8, however,

have as many as 400 sIgn. , dependlng upon tne number of sounds

in the language.

The alphabet 1s by ta r the simplest and most highl,. developed

torm ot vri tinge Xet there are degree.s ot pertec t ion wl thin i t .

A pertect alphabet i8 one which haa out one l e t te r to r a 8lngle

sound and to r that 80und alone. The Roman alphabet i s tar tram

pertect for the Englisb 1anr,:uage. There are twent,.-aix l e t t e r .

in the English alphabet and probabl,. tour or flve tim• • as many

aounds 1n our dally .peech. The English a alone can b. pro--ounced a t leas t eir;ht di t ferent va7s .10 The Cyri l l ic alphabet,

art. i t iciall; ,- composed to r a Slavio tongue, 18 near-perrect ,

•dmitting only a few variations introduoed through pbonetic decay.

San.krl t alphabet, although orten oonsidered a syllabary b1

at the ahort .! following everrr oonsonant unl . s . another

or a virama 18 writ ten, seem. to be, with i ta forty-nine

the most pertect ot a l l .

Atter t h i . diacussion of wrIting in general, i t wil l be

consider tha t t ~ r o u p ot vri t inga known a . Cretan sor ip ta .

9DIrlnger. p. 31.

lOwebster-a 6th 8d., p. v l i .



1Minoan, or perhaps more properly, Aegean civi l izat ion flourished

in Crete and in Melos and other Aegean islands centuries before

Greek civi l izat ion proper arose. By the year 2,000 B.C., the

Aegean civi l izat ion had dbveloped so ful ly that "Crete entered

upon a period of power and bril l iancy which r ivals in interest the

more famous civi l isat ions of Egypt and Babylon."ll From the Bronze

Age Early Minoan I period12 (3,000 B.C.) onwards, seal-engraving

was practiced, along with mason's marks, label-indications, and

the l ike .13 The fir 'st phase of lhe Middle Minoan period (say, be

tween 2,150 and 2,000 B.C.) wawan elaboration of the early decor

ative devices and the transformation of the representat ional draw-

ings into true plctograms. Short pictographic inscript ions were

cut on hard three- or four-sided seals .14 This mode of writing

called Pictographic Class A or Pictographic Class B, according

to the re la t ive cursiveness of tne scr ip t . These classes are

•generally referred to as Minoan pictographic or ideographic w r i t i n ~

I l J . B. Bury, A H i s t o ~ of Greece, 3rd ed., revised by R u s s . l ~eiggs (London, 1 9 ~ ) , p. •

12These classif icat ions of Minoan civi l izat ion are the standard ones originally formulated by S ir Arthur Evans in the closingof the nineteenth century and s t i l l commonly used by scholars

of this civi l izat ion. See Gustav9 Glotz, The Ae,ean Civil ization,rans. M. R. Doble and E. M. Riley (London;-!925 , p. 27; andJ . D. S. Pendlebury, The A r c h a e o l o ~ of Crete: An Introduction(London, 1939), pp. xXIrl-xxlv, 30 - 3 ~ . - -

13Sterllng Dow, "Minoan Writing,"LVIII (1954), 113.

14Diringer, p. 15.

The American Journal of-



8

We are not oonoerned with th is type of writing in this thesis .

In the l as t phase of the Middle Minoan period (at)out 1800 B.C

the piotographic writings give plaoe to l inear scr ipts . A l inear

soript , technioally, is a scr ipt composed of combinations of

strokes which are straiff t t or only sl ight ly ourved. These l inear

soripts are divided into two olasses: Linear Class A and Linear

Class B. I t is Linear B whioh is the subJeot of this thesis .

Linear A sor ipt flourished a t Knossos and in the res t of'

Crete from 1750 to 1450 B.C.I1S Linear B a t Knossos only between

1450 and 1400 B.C., but also on the Mainland at Myoenae and Pylos

between 1300 and 1200.16 Aooording to Evans, the two l inear

scripts were paral le l evolutions; Johannes Sundwall, Finnish

archaeologist, and o t h ~ r s hold that Linear B was a development of

Linear A.17 Linear B now defini tely seems to be a deliberate and

thorough revision of Linear A, with some Linear A signs omitted

and some new signs added. 18 The numeration is also partly ohanged

the single units are represented by vert ical l ines, the tens by

horizontals, the hundreds by circ les , the thousands by circles wit

four spurs in the oenters, and the ten thousands by s imilar signs

l5Emmett L. Bennett, J r . , "Fraotional ~ a n t i t i e s in MinoanBookkeeping," ~ , LIV (1950), 204.

l6M1ohael Ventris and John Chadwick, "Evidenoe for GreekDialeot in the Myoenaean ArChives," ~ r l S , LXXIII (1953), 84.-

17Diringer, p. 76.

1. 18s i r John L. Myres, "The Minoan Signary,U.!!!:!2" LXVI

(1946),



9

with a dash in the middle. l 9

Besides these Minoan pictographic scr ipts and 1 1 n e ~ r scr ip ts ,

there are two other scr ipts which were used in Cyprus especial ly,

called the Cypro-Minoan acr ipt and the Cypriote Syllabary. The

eypro-Minoan scr ip t i8 found on a very few insoript ions: five

terracotta balls from Enkomi, some inscribed seals , and a few

short inscript ions on pottery.20 This system of writ ing, however,

whose re l ics indicate i t was used between 1400 and 1200 lj.C.,

seems to be a connecting l ink between the Minoan l inear scripts anc

the l a te r Cypriote Syllabary.

The Cypriote Syllabary, a pure syllabic writing used in

class ica l times (a t least from 700 to 300 B.C.), was mainly de-

ciphered in the las t twenty-five years of the nineteenth century,

thanks to the facts that the l a n ~ ~ u a g e written was Greek, and that

in many insoriptions an equivalent Greek alphabet accompanies the

•Cypriote sor ip t . This scr ipt , whose par t ia l value in helping to

solve Linear B will be seen, consists of approximately f i f ty-f ive

symbols, each representing an open sylls.ble (such as R!., !,£, !!!,

! ! ) or I i vowel. 21 The scr ip t , created for a non-Greek s p e ~ c h ,

l ~ D i r i n g e r , p. 16. See also Bennett, "Fractional Q,uantitiesin Hlnoan Bookkeeping," for a scholarly presentation of the differences between the two l inear scripts in the i r methods of computingfractions.

20Alioe E. Kober, "The Minoan Scripts: Fact and Theory," ~ ,LIl (1948), 99.

21Dlrlnger, p. 165.



10

represents the Greek sounds rather imperfectly.

I t is rather doubtful whether this scr ip t was derived from

tha Minoan l inear scr ipts . Very few of Lhe symbols of cypriote

are similar to those of Linear B, and even they do not represent

corresponding sounds. This scr ip t does, however, p laya role in

the ultima.te deciphering of Linear B.

With this br ie f discussion of writing in general and of

Minoan writing in particula.r, a foundation has been laid for the

study of Linear B. An examination of the historical background

leading to the deCipherment will follow, accompanied by an account

of the actual decipherment i t se l f .



CHAPTER I I

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In Book Six of the I l iad , Glaucon t e l l s the story of poor

Bellerophon. Relating how Proteus, believing the false story of

his wife, sent Bellerophon to Iobates with a l e t te r requesting him

to put Bellerophon to death, be te l l s Diomedes:

~ £ ~ n e O ~ ~ ' V A U X { ~ V O £ , ~ & p £ v 0 ' ~ ye o ~ ~ a ~ a 4uypd,

y p d . a ~ ~ v ~ ( v a x l ~ ~ u x ~ ~ a u ~ o ~ e o p a ~ O A A d ,O £ r ~ a l 0 ' ~ W y e , v , xevSep', o ~ p ' & x o A o l ~ o . l

This sole reference to writ ing in Homer gave r ise to controversy

concerning the l i teracy of the Achaean Greeks. Many t)elieved

they must have been l i te ra te , at least to a certain d e g ~ e e ; yet

•r , ~ o s t scholars saw in i t "precisely the a.ttitude of' an i l l i tera te

people which has heard dis tant echoes of the ar t of writing pra.c

t iced elswhere [s1c] further east or perhaps in Greece in ear l ie r-ages."2

Vague rumors of the existence of an ancient script were based

on Plutarch, who described how in a grave near Haliar tos, reputed

l I l iad VI.168-110.

2M710nas, "Prehistoric Greek Scripts ," p. 200.

11



12

to be that of Alcmene, was found a bronze tablet covered with

characters w"lich neither the Greek nor the Egyptian learned men

could read.)

Even less credence met the accidental discovery at Knossos

of some inscribed tablets in the thir teenth year of Nero's reign

(66 A.D.), brought to l ight by an earthquake--tablets which a t

the command of Nero were interpreted as the diary of the Knossian

Dictys, a follower of Idomeneus in the Trojan War (a "translation"

of which diary provided the principal materials for medieval

writers on the story of Troy, notably for Chaucer's Troilus and

Cressida4).

When Heinrich Schliemann failed to unearth any written docu-

ments in hia excavations at Troy, Mycenae, and Tiryns, the i l -

l i teracy of the Achaeans seemed confirmed. But here and there

evidence began to accrue from sporadic flnds 1n the years follow-

ing Schliemann's great excavations. •An engraved pest le was found

at Mycenae, a handle a t Nauplia, a aeal a t Sparta .

One of the many people who saw the Spartan seal- -a four-sided

seal of red cornelian--while i t was on display a t the Ashmolean

useum was A. J . (from 1911 S ir Arthur) Evans. He was impressed

with the possibi l i t ies of this seal , whose facets were covered

with a series of figures seemingly belonging to a conventionalized

3Ibid. , 210 •..........

4S ir Paul Harvey, The Oxford Companion 1£ Classical Studies(Oxford, 1937), p. 145.---



13

system of writing or picto6raphy. Evans .a t off for Greece in the

spring of 1893, tramped a l l ove r ttle Mainland, and found many

additional specimens. Most import.ant of a l l , he traced the seals

back to Crete, where they were s t i l l used as superst i t ious charms,

part icularly propitious for child-bearing.>

In 1894 Evans arrived in Crete, and determined to excavate

the s i te of Knossos in hopes of discovering some more Bronze Age

writ ings. 6 In the meantime, he had published the resul ts of his

previous findings. 1

At the turn of the century, r ~ a n 8 began his excavations at

Knossos, and between 1900 and 1904 found important remains of

Cretan a r t , architecture, and writing, including, eventually,

2,191 Linear B tab le ts .8

Within the next th i r ty years, Linear A tablets were unearthed

at Hagia Triada, a disc a t Phaistos (which was to cause more

troubles in the decipherment of Linear B than it was wor'bh), and

other tablets elsewhere.9 Within these years, too, S ir Arthur

Evans published his famous works on Minoan excavations, determined

the classical archaeolOGical periods of Cretan civi l izat ion, and

>MYlonas, p . 212.

6Dow , "Minoan Writing," p . 80.

1"Cretan P ictographs and Prae-Phoenician Script ," JHS, XIV(1894), 210-312.

8Dow, p. 80.

9Ibid.



14

transcribed and class if ied a l l the writings in his Scripta Minoa.

He made some important preliminary steps in the decipherment of

1inears A and B, clearing the ground for subsequent scholars.

What Schliemann's discoveries were to our knowledge of the

Homeric Age, S ir Arthur 's were to our knowledge of Aegean civ i l -

izat ion. Since his important finds at Knossos, the history of

early Greece has been completely revised. And the recent decipher

i n i . ~ of the Linear B scr ipt as a Greek dialect makes him the father

not only of Cretan archaeology, but also of Greek pre-alphabetio

palaeography.

In 1933, Rbys Carpenter pu"blished an ar t ic le ent i t led , "The

Antiquity or the Greek Alphabet,tt10 in which he expressed the

opinion that the absence of any Greek written in Phoenician

l e t t e rs before 725 B.C. proved that the Phoenician alphabet was

introduced about that time, and not (as had been universally

supposed) much ear l ier . This implied a period of nonwriting of

some 475 years between the l a tes t Cretan scripts (1200 B.C.) and

the ear l ies t Greek writ ings.

In 1936, George E. Mylonas published an inscript ion on an

amphora found at Eleusis , which beoame the best-known Minoan in

script ion from the Mainland. ll In his ar t ic le , he ident if ied the

signs on tae amphora with signs or Linears A and S, and, applying

10AJA, XXXVII (1933), 8-29.

11 tfEleusinlaka," ~ , XL (1936), 429.



1$

the syllabic values of similar Cypriote signs, obtained the very

plausible reading: "Oh, maiden, this potion here I offer to thee."

His t ransl i terat ion ran: "Ea-i do. ku-ka-vo-ne-da," which he t rans

l i terated into Greek as ~ a r 0& xuxewveOa. Taking ~ a r as the

vocative of ~ a r ' and 0& as an encl i t ic adverbial form meaning

' th is here , ' as ,in the demonstrative pronouns <30&, TiBe, e tc . , and

accepting xuxewveOa as an unique accusative of the heterocl i t ic

form of xuxiwv, he understood the proper verb and thus derived

his meaning. 12

Mylonas's reading now seems merely coincidental; out his

ar t ic le did serve to identify the Mainland scr ip t with the Linear

B of Crete, and suggest tne use of the Cypriote script and of the

Greek language in the deoipherment of that unknown wrIting.

In 1939, jus t before the beginning of World War II , Carl W.

Blegen, University of Cinoinnati archaeologist, and the Greek

•archaeologist , Dr. Kourouniotis, discovered 621 tablets a t Pylos,

Nestor's home with i t s "broad, sandY' beach, where OdY'sseusls son

Telemachus was so hospitably entertained in the Odzssey. These

Blegen classi f ied as Linear B. What i s now more important, he

discovered t h a ~ the ear l ies t possible date for the tablets was

1200 B.C. And f inal ly , while admittin6 that i t was not safe to

say whether the tablets were writ ten in tne Minoan language or in

a quite different tongue, he asserted that the former alternative

12Ibid . , 429.-



16

seemed almost oertain. 13

That the tablets were Minoan or some oognate language was

the opinion of most soholars. In faot, a young man just turned

twenty wrote a lengthy ar t ic le in 1940 upholding th is view. The

author was no other than Miohael G. F. Ventris. His opinion was

that the Minoan langua:;e was olosely related to the Etrusoan, and

in muoh detai l he adduoes the best information available to sup

port his olaim.

Ventris 's purpose in writ ing th is ar t ic le shows the sp i r i t of

youth oombined with the pat ient , systematio method of a man fa r

more advanoed in years, two essential q u a l i ~ i e s of a great scholar

The Minoan insoript ions from Knossos and elsHwh8re,though they ha.ve been known for forty years, remain the onlyextensive writing of the ancient world whioh cannot y e ~ beei ther read or understood.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

The unwillingness of tne leading authorit ies to oommitthemselves to any partioular interpretation is very- natural .But I feel that if ' the exist ing data were more oarefully coordinated, a more positive viewpoint might be made possible.I do not propose to offer here any broad ' t ranslat ions ' ofthe insoriptions. All I want to do, within ttlis short space,is briefly to review the evidenoe and see what l ines ofa p p ~ o a o h i t suggests.IS

But the idea that tne language was Greek seemed to Ventris u a more

fanoiful interpretation Which does not require a detailed cr i t io is

l3Blegen, and K. Kourouniotis, "Exoavations a t Pylos, 1939,"AJA, XLIII (1939), 566-569.-

14"Introducing the Minoan Language," ! l ! , XLIV (1940), 494-520.



17

i t has never received "any real support." He wrote: "The

with most followers appears to beL.hat which makes Minoan

ut as Greek. • • • They agree in their primary ident i f icat ion,

ut that is a l l : the i r readings are, substantial ly, quite unrelated

o each other. The theory tha t Minoan could be Greek i s based of

on a deliberate disregard for his tor ica l p lausibi l ity , and

he wonder of i t is tha t the Greek readings have been got into

form at al1."16

Ventri8 makes his presence in the f ield f e l t as he urges his

scholars to ooncentrate the ir efforts along those l ines to

a l l evidence points. The _outhful Ventris i s a l l optimistic

s he concludes: "Onoe a single theoretical foundation hasoeen

on, based solidly on factual evidence, the i n i t i a l obstacles

and i t is only a matter of time before a fu l l deoipher-

has been achieved. In the case of Minoan this is no idle

I t oan be done."17

And i t was done, by !lIr. Ventris himself .Bu(; the resul t was

ot to come immediately. A war intervened, and scholars turned

peacetime pursuits to wartime use, Ventris becoming a British

And S ir Arthur Evans, the great pioneer, whose

had f i r s t interested the oollegian Ventris in Cretan

died in 1941.

16Ibid.-17Ibid. , 520.



18

Only one art ic le of note concerning Cretan scr ip t appeared

~ u r i n g the war. Published in 1941 by John Franklin Daniel,

~ P r o l e g o m e n a to the Cypro-Minoan Script"18 t reats the Cypro-Minoaa

~ c r i p t specif ically as a t ransi t ion between Minoan Linear and the

plassical Cypriote Syllaba1'7. Finding fourteen different signa

~ n Cypro-Minoan scr ip t which differ from any Minoan signs, Daniel

poncludes that eI ther the two systems of writing fused (which he

plaims is highly unlikely), or else the Minoan sor ipt was adapted

~ o a non-Minoan language. 19 He is heading in the right direction.

DanIel also corrects some of Ventris 's erroneous views. Ven-

t r i s had noticed the fai lure of the Cypriote to dist inguish between

voiced, voioeless, and a.spirated stops. Drawing from t ' l is evidenoe

the conclusion that the prototype of the syllabary possessed only

ne of the three stops,20 he had compared i t to Etrusoan, which

has only the voiceless stop_ Daniel points out that the 'error

rises from presuaing the Cypriote derives direct ly from the

Minoan Linear scr ip ts , and not through the medium of the Cypro

sc r ip t , whose transformations of the parent scr ipt to su i t

t s own words 8nd sounds ( i f i t were a non-Greek language) would

for ttle absence of certa in sounds .21 Daniel also points

l8AJA, XLV, (1941), 249-282.-

19Ibid. , 257.

20VentrIs, "Minoan Language," p. 504.

2lDanl e l , p. 264.



19

out that several Minoan words which survived into Greek should

have warned Ventris of his error. ACLf'hSp& v a o ~ contains both voiced

and aspirated stops, ~ e p t ~ ' v e o , a l l three.22

The use of known words of Minoan derivation helped to solve

Linear B, and will prooably help to solve Linear A, i f that script

should turn out to contain a Minoan tongue. Most words ending in

- inth are of Minoan derivation: absinthe, acanthus, currant (from

Corinth), Cynthia," ~ a c i n t h , labyrinth, mint, plinth , terebinth,

turpentine ( terebInthine). Likewise words in =!!: abyss, byssus,

colossus, cypress, narCissus, Parnassos. Other words which may

come from the Minoan are: asparagus, asphodel, daffodil , cane,

canna, cannon, canyon, dithyramb, govern, hymn, paean, porphyry,

purple, scandal, sesame, sponge, wine. 23

After the war, scholars resumed their work along ~ h e s e l ines.

An I ta l ian , G. Puglie.e Carra te l l i , published in 1945 a eor-pus of

a l l the Linear A and Linear B tablets with the exception'of those

a t Pylos under the t i t l e , ItLe Iscrizioni preelleniche di Haghia

Triada in Creta e t della Grecia peninsulare."24 In 1947, Helene

J . Kantor published nThe Aegean and the Orient in the Second

Millennium B.C."25 embodying the f i r s t fu l l presentation of the

23 Johnson, "Language of Homer's Heroes," p. 75.

2 ~ o n u m e n t i Antichi, XL (1945), 422-610.

25AJA, LI (1947), 1-103.



20

case for extensive Mainland trade and power, at the expense of

Crete, before 1400 B.C. This monograph helped to increase the

his toric plausibi l i ty of Linear B being writ ten in the Greek

language. John Franklin Daniel died in 1948 at the age of th i r ty-

eight . His only published oontribution, an important one, the

above-mentioned "Prolegomena," was hIs dootoral dIsserta t ion.

In the meantime, VentrIs, now out of service and established

in his arohiteotural business, circulflted privately his index of

the syllabary signs in 1949. In the following year he edited

The Languages ! ! Minoan and ~ v o e n a e a n Civilizations: ~ -century n e p o r ~ , puplished privately in mimeographed torm and

distr ibuted grat is . The text oonsisted of' answers, in English. or

Englished, to an elaborate questionnaire whioh he had sent out to

eminent soholars in the f ie ld , by Bennett, H. T. Bossett , Carrat e l l l , V. Georgiev (Russian archaeologist) , E. Grumach,C. D.

Ktistopoulos, S ir John Myres, E. G. Peruzzi, F. Sohachermeyr, and

Johannes Sundwall.26

In the meantime, also, came a l l the writings of Miss A. E.

Kober, of Brooklyn College, New York. Alice Elizabeth Kober could

well serve as an inspirat ion to any scholar. Her doctoral dis

serta t ion from Columbia University was enti t led Color Terms ~ ~Greek Poets. But she became interested in Minoan writ lnJ , and

af ter an ar t ic le and a couple of reViews, l e f t the f ield of color



21

for good. To prepare herself for her new f ie ld , she went back to

school again, taking summer courses in Greek and Latin comparative

grammar and Hit t i te under Sturtevant . She took nine other ancient

languages, omitting only Egyptian, probably beoause i t was not

available. Then she went into the exact soiences, studying ohem

i s t ry , physics, and astronomy for the i r method, mathematics for

i t s use in s ta t i s t ics . For archaeologioal praotioe, she even triec

exoavation in New Mexioo. 27

In 1944, twelve years af ter her disser tat ion, a:)peared her

f i r s t ar t ic le on Minoan scr ipt , "The 'Adz.- tablets from Knossos,"

in which she noted some variat ions in the formation of Linear B

signs, at t r ibut ing them to phonetic differences.28 More important

she drew the oorrect conclusion chat the Linear B signa"'f meant

to ta l , occurring as they did a t the end of l i s t s of numbers and

always followed by a number greater than or as great as the num-

•bers in ser ies . This discovery was to play a role in the f ina l

decipherment.

Following this ar t ic le with another on the "Chariot" tablets

from Knossos,29 Miss Kober reasoned very sc ient i f ica l ly to the

probability of inf lect ion from changes in the f inal signs of

27Sterling Dow, "Necrology--Alice Elizabeth Kober," ~ ,LVIII (1954), 153.

28AJA , XLVIII (1944), 64-75.

29"ti':vidence of Inflection in the I Chariot t Tablets from

Knossos," ~ , XLIX {1945}, 143-151.



22

sign-gz·oups in Linear B inscr ipt ions . The following years

he worked out acoording tiO seven assumptions based on cirCUIllstan-

t i a l evidence a deductive system of declension in Linear B. Re

that; the language a t the time was completely unknown"

nd tha t , i .n fact" Miss Kober was prescinding ent i re ly .from any

i t might have" it i s l i l"tle stlort of remarkable tha t she

b able to deduce her deolenslons from in ternal evidence alone. 30

r IDtlT;nem&.tics was proving i t s worth.

Her knowledge of method next came into play. Annoyed a t a l l

the wasted energy" as iJentris had been eight years before, she

up in her , "Minoan Scripts : Fact and Theory"31 a l l that was

about Cretan writing up to that t ime. In i t , she also ad

the classi f icat ion which S ir John M1ras had established in

She summarized the arguments for and 8.6a ins t Linears A and

being ident ica l languages, concluding that the only safe course

•t t aa t time was to regard them as two dis t inct languages, as i s

the acoepted opinion.

Reoognizing valuable contr ibut ions when she saw them, the

year M I ~ s Kober t ranslated the German ar t ic le of Johannes

ent i t l ing it "An Attempt at Assigning Phonetio Values to

Sl::,ns of Minoan, Linear Class B."32 Then S ir John Myres,

30"Inflect ion in Linear Class B: l--Dec1enslon," i l l , L (1946)

3 1 ~ , LII (1948), 82-103.

32AJA" LII (1948), 311-320.-



23

in the process of edi t ing ScriEta Minoa 11, to whose care the

work had been entrusted by S ir Arthur Evans, asked Miss Kober to

class i fy the whole mass of 1,122 Linear B documents to be included

in the comprehensive work. Miss Kober obliged, S ir John accepted

her work, and i t remains one of her greatest achievements, the

claasLt ' ication beinG the pioneer step in the i r ultimate in te r -

preta t ion.33

This was her l a s t work on Minoan writ ing. Several book re -

views, including an adverse cri t ic ism of Dirlnger t s ~ Alphabet,3!

appeared in the short interval betore her death in May, 1950. She

was only forty-three years of age.

The contr ibut ions ot Alice Elizabeth Kober to the decipher-

ment ot Linear B were indeed invaluable. "There are those who

think that Miss Kober, it she had l ived, would have been the f i rs t

to tear apart the veil ."3S

•But the deciphering of Linear B was reserved for the 1950 t s .

And the spot l ight focuses temporarily on Emmett L. Bennett , J r .

In 1950 he published "Fractional Quantit ies in Minoan Bookkeeping,

in which he vir tua l ly proved that the two l inear scrIpts widely

di f fe r by showing how different were their respect ive methods of

33DoW, "Necrology," p. 153.

34Kober, "Review of David Diringer, The Alphabet, A K21 toHistory.2f Mankind {London, 1949)," AJA, LIIl (19491, 2=:Z13.

35Jobnson, p. 73.



24

computing aliquot fractions.36

That summer, Bennett made a grand tour of Greece and Crete,

Athens and Oxford, checking readings and inventories, forwarding

his observations to S ir John Myres for publication in the forth-

coming Scripta Minoa If- Early in 1951 he published, under ~ h edirect ion of Carl W. Blegen, !2! Pylos Tablets: ! Preliminary

Transcription, containing a l l the tablets found by Blegen during

his 1939 excavations at the home of Nestor.37 Later on tha t year

he made systematic and elaborate computations of frequencies, with

tables, of a l l important aspects of Linear B sc r lp t .38

The Scripta Minoa II of Sir Arthur Evans and Sir John Myres

was published by the Oxford University Press in January, 1952.

That summer Blegen discovered 484 more Linear B tablets at Pylos,

his f i r s t excavation sinoe before the war, while A. J . B. Wace

found thirty-nine others at "'iycenae. I t is important for the

•present to note that these findlngs were not published unt i l the

scr ipt had been deciphered. Ventris t s decipherment, when a;:plied

to one of them which he had never seen, yielded several Greek

ords.39

Bennett, in the meantime, was making new indices of Linear B

36AJA, LIV (1950), 204-222.

37(Princeton, 1951).

38Dow, p. 82.

39Ibld. , p. 83.



signs, and produced and dis t r ibuted privately a card bearing on

i t s two faces tables of a l l the Linear B sions, with variant forms

and transcriptions of each.40

Teamwork among scholars is the keynote of a l l the preliminary

groundwork done by the internat ional team of scholars who worked

doggedly on the unyielding Linear scr ip ts , hoping that someday

their effor ts would be rewarded by someonets discovering the key

to the decipherment. When Ventris , in the sprini::; of 1952, turned

from Etruscan to explore the possib i l i t i es of Greek as the lan6Uagc

f Linear B, the sta';.;e was se t for i t s deCipherment.



CHAPTRR III

THE DECIPHERMENT OF LIN&\R B

With the ful ler publication of the material found by Blegen

at Pylos in 1939, and of a ll the known writing in Scripta Minoa !I.

i t was a t las t possible to undertake a systematic study of a l l the

Linear B texts .Kober and Bennett had expressed their opinions that Linear B

contained a new and dis t inc t language from that found on Linear A

table ts . But for some years, according to Ventris, the prospect

of the tablets being written in an "Aegeantt dialect related to

Lemnian and Etruscan seemed to be supported by parallels in place

names and cer tain words. But the l inguist ic features which appearE

in the new material forced him to the conclusion which Wace and

Blegen favored on l l is tor ical grounds: that the maUl lan&'1lage of

the Knossos, Pylos, and MTcenae tablets was not only Indo-European

but specif ically Greek. l

Ventris believed that i t was necessary in deciphering an un-

known language in an unknown scr ipt to extract as much data as

possible from a purely internal study of the material before makine

any assumptions about pronunciation or any assumptions about

IVentrlsand

ChadWick, ~ ,LXXIII

(1953), 84.

26



27

language a t f in i t ies . 2 The wisdom of this procedure is fa ir ly ob

vious. Without i t , one is apt to end up with unpronounceable words

and ludicrous meanings ta r out of context. When both quanti t ies

are unknown, nearly ')nything can resul t .

Proceeding with utmost care (he passed the remark that i f the

in i t i a l moves are wrong, i t should be quite impossible to force an

part of the texts into showing the sl ightest conformity with the

vocabulary or grammar of a known languageJ), he derived the f o l l o w ~ing conclusions from internal evidence. Since they are of such

importance in the deCipherment, and since they present very pre

cisely the nature and content of the Linear B table ts , i t seems

worthwhile to quote them in fu l l :

Ca) The table ts are inventories, accounts, or receipts,which were in a l l probabili ty written within the l as t few

months be.fore the destruction of the various buildings inwhich they hb.ve been found.(b) They reoord the l is ted commodities by means of

i d e o ~ r a m s (a kind of commercial shorthand); these aI'e introduce by names, words, and sentences writ ten Ehonetical!l(the writing system proper).

(0) The identi ty of some of the commodities can immediately be recognised from ~ h e i r ideograms (e .g. MEN, W O ~ l l i N ,CHARIOTS, WHEELS), or from the way they are grouped anddifferentiated (e . g. HORSES, CA'fTLE, SHEEP, GONrS, PIGS). Inother cases we have an approximate indication in the way they

are counted: metals and precious materials uy weii;ht; cerealsby volume; l iquids by fluid measure; and manufactured orpackaged ar t ic les oy units .

(d) About eighty-eLr,ht different phonetic signs havebeen ident if ied in the Linear B material; these are shown • • in the order which has been used by Bennett. Almost COM-

2Ibid. , 85.-J ~ . , 88.





29

form dis t inc t series.4

By working through internal evidence alone before attempting

al lot any phonetic values whatever to che signs, Ventris de-

five vowels and twelve consonants. Ventris 's ar t ic le is

succinct; we might well wish he had gone into more detai l

different steps involved 1n the deCipherment. But i t

he deduced these vowels and consonants in this manner:

by making paral le l l i s t s of signs found on tablets from

Mycenae, and Thebes, and tabulating them according

the ir locale, he discovered that Linear B was s t r ic t ly homo-

a sign trom Knossos resembled most exactly the correspond

sign from Pylos, etc . Since, then, no account had to be taken

where a Sign, a word, or a tablet comes from, the next step was

collect evidence of changes in the forms of words due ei ther to

orthography or to inf lect ion. Then, follOWing Kober before

•, he deduced certain stems and endings in incomplete declensions

tabulated the results in relation to the signs.5

The crucia l step was to assign the signs involved in the

to positions on a grid which provides for the five vowels

d for each of the consonants in combination with the vowels. His

as printed in his 1953 ar t ic le , found certain

only f i f ty-eight Signs, arranged somewhat irregularly

4Ibid . , 85-86.

5Ibid . , 88 •...........



30

five vert ical and thir teen horizontal columns. Since then,

e and other scholars, especially Enrnlett L. bennett, J r . , have so

the grid that in i t s present sta te i t arranges seventy

signs along eight ver t ica l and thirteen horizontal columns in

regular fashion. The ArchaeoloAical Newsletter published

grid in February, 1955, from an india-ink copy made by the

fram Dr. Bennett 's manuscript. This grid, the Linear B

in i t s present s ta te , is reproduced on the follOWing page

I ) .

Some explanatory comments on the grid may be found helpful .

the top are l is ted the five pure v'owels; on the l e f t are the

Note that Linear B does not distinguish between !:.d ~ } between ~ , ~ , and ~ ; between £: ' ~ , and ph-; or be

the unfamiliar sounds kW_, Sw- and ~ , labiovelars, a l l but

of which disappeared by the time of classical Greek. In

words, the Linear B script does not differentiate ~ e t w e e nvoiced, and aspirate consonants, or more technically,

surds, sonanta, anu aspirates . Ventris had made this

in 1940, and Daniel had denied that i t was necessarily

i t certainly seems true now. The case is the same with the

Cretan scripts : the same phenomenon was noticed in the class

Cypriote syllabary, as Ventrls pointed out years earl ier ,7

6S ee page. 18 and 19 of this thesis .

7Ventris, "Minoan Language," pp. 503-504.



! A E , 0 U --j1"' tr

'*J) P "fN- 'K ~ , J

'"T- TH- t: 1! ft\ r tJ5,

TA<l.!

0 1- X -r, it ' t

f t G { ~ ID ~ ~ ~ ? !3K- - •

P- B-ffi * e ~ ~ .til 1;A. It ~ J t;l(

K ~ ~ Q · @ ~ .L.i.

T.- _

s- If fA' )t( '1 e H- Sf ~ t t ~ • I4t"" -

M- Jtt 9' ~ ~ C.,)-I

t

N- 0/ Y f

I-'YI PI XN ~ ·

' -l: R- k. 'Y ~ t tr JJ ~ tt"':1.

J- § X ~ I I.

w- fTi 'Z IA If

Thus, ~ has the phonetic value of ' a ' j ~ the value or

at 0 ' the t • ~ the value of ' d i ' · the value or



32

in the cypro-Ydnoan,B and, since Linear B i s derived from

A, as is the current consensus among scholars, i t probably

true for Linear A also. I t is most s'rtplge, however, that

is a separate series of signs for ~ , the sonant of !.::. and

This i s unparalleled in the Cypriote syllabary, and seems to

e inheri ted from the Linear A.9

Another surprising feature of Linear B differ ing from the

syllabary is the single ser ies for 1 and r . But as

cannot be rid ot without throwing the whole ' g r id ' out ot

suff icient evidence warrants the i r posit lon.10

In ver t ica l columns s ix , seven, eight , and nine are placed

whose phonetic value and positi.on is established, but

relat ion on the grid is not altogether clear .

In addition, there are approximately sixteen syabols forreasonably certain phonetic values have not been obtained.ll

The manner in which Ventris proceeded in part icular instances

nd more In detai l in deriving his grid pattern seems to be the

Seeing the many abortive attempts to t ransl i te ra te Linear B

a r igid correspondence with the forms of the class ica l

Soan1el, "Prolegomena," p. 264.

9ventris and Chadwick, p. 89.

10Ibid. , 89.

IlJotham Johnson. Archaeological Newsletter, XXII (Pebruary,0. 1955). 173.



33

Cypriote syllabary where these forms coincided, Ventris realized

that this was not the way. I t did seem to hirn, h o w e ~ e r , that the

conventions of Cypriote spell ing could be followed profi tably.

Now the Cypriote syllabary did not dist inguish between long and

short vowels. I t omitted m and n when they preceded other oon-- -sonants. I t represented consonants relf,ted to one another (e .g . ,

ba, Eha) by the same symbol, as mentioned a·oove. 12

Following these leads, Ventris beban to perceive tha t a cer-

ta in vowel, very characteris t ic of ments names and of masculine

names of trades (a l l of wnich he had deduced from internal evidenoE

alone), was always preceded by none other than the twelve signs

hich, on the e*idenoe of the grid (also deduced from internal

evidence), belonged to different consonants but shared the same

vowel. When he noticed that the same vowel appeared in the

plural a lso, he was reminded of the Greek - € ~ ~ , plural

•The omission of the f inal -', both in the singular and

in the plural , was due probably to rather rudimentary spell ing

conditions, since i t was not true in regard to the Cypriote

sy1laoary.13

Following the premise that each syllable of the pronunciation

is normally represented by only one syllabic sign, provided that

l l stops and diphthongal -u ' s are recorded, he was able to deduce

12Johnson, "Language of Homerts Heroes,"

13Ventris and Chadwick, p. 89.

d:luJ\S T o ~ e -vY. I i > ~LOYOLA

\ UNIVERSr r y

~ S R A R ~



34

ten postulates which he enti t led, "Assumed Rules of Myoenaean

orthography,1I which are "the fundamental rules for a l l Linear B

readings, and therefore should be stated in ful l :

(1) The .yl laoary d i f f e r e n ~ i a t e s five vowels -a -e - i -0

-u , indifferent as to length.(2 ) The seoond component of diphthongs in -u i s re gularl.

indioated (na-u-do-mo: v a u O o ~ o , f re-u-ko: A£UXO{, z?e-u-ke-ua i: ~ e u r £ G a l , a-ro-u-ra: apoupaJ.

() The second component of diphthongs in -l i s regularl,omitted ~ p o - m e : ~ o , ~ ~ v ) , exoept before another vowel ( i - je re- ja : lepela) and in the i n i t i a l sign a i - . Where - i i soooasionally added to endings in -a and -0, these are prooably to be interpreted as -(u , -Ol'.

(4) Vowels t o l l o w i n ~ i generally indicate the semi-vowelglide by j ( i - ja - te : ( a ~ ~ p T , those following ~ by ! (e-u-wako-rol EGaypo'). These glides will be omitted from the Greekspelling.

(5) Apart trom j- and w- (F), the syllabary different i ates at leas t ten ser ies of consonants: d k m n p q (xW, etc .r (A p) 8 t and z'l (gj ' l) . Dou"bled consonants are not in dicated.

(6) There is no sign for the aspirate , nor are aspiratedoonsonants distinguished. ~ , f , andxwo are spel t ka-sa-,ke-s6-, pa-sa- , pe-se- , eto . , except when f inal , where theyappear to shed the - 8 and take the vowel of the precedingsyllable (wa-na-ka: F d v Q . ~ , a i - t i - jo-qo = Ale (0 , ) ."

(7) The consonants A ~ v p a are omitted from the spel l ing where they are f inal or where they precede another consonant (ka-ke-u: xaAx£u', i - jo - te : ( & v ~ e ' , pa-ka-na: ~ d o y a v a )

(8) In i t i a l a- and F- are apparently omitted before aconsonant (pe-ma: a x i p ~ a , r i - jo : Fp{ov).

(9) The consonant ~ o u p -vF- is writ ten nu-w- (ke-senu-wi-ja: ~ e v F , a ) . p before F 1s more often omitted (ko-wo:xopFo', we-we-e-a: PepFeea).

(10) All stop consonants which precede another consonantare written with the vowel of the succeeding ~ J l l a b l e (k i - t i ta : x ~ { ~ 4 ' , ku-ru-so: X p u o o ~ ) . But analogy may sometimescause a spell ing to be levelled for a number of related forms(wa-na-KA-te-ro: F a v d x ~ £ p o ' ' royal ' on the model of wa-na-ka'k ing ' ; ru-KI-to: A U x ~ o ' on the model of the ethnic rU-ki- t i jo) .14

l4Ibid . , p. 91.



35

The detailed rules on the preceding page lead, for example,

to xop-Fo, being writ ten ko-wo, but to the expanded spell ing of

x v a - ~ £ d , as ka-na-pe-u. This omission of f inal -', noticed also

in the genitive singular of certa in nouns (since i t would not

dif fer from the dative, e .g . , in the f i r s t declension) would seem

to have had an undesirable effect on in te l l ig ib i l i ty , but in

comparison with many modern alphabets and old Hebrew. in which

the vowels were not even writ ten, i t does not seem too extreme.

Nouns ending in -u tormed the i r genitive singular by adding

-~ ; those ending in - 0 formed theirs by adding - jo (1 and ~ are

both semi-vowels). In Greek, this gives us the endings - ~ [ F ] o 'and -OlO acceptable Homeric endings. They would indicate that

Homer t s l a n E > ' U a , ; ~ e is really based on the old Mycenaean dialect ,

rather than on the. Cypro-Arcadian, as well as on the Doric, Ionic,etc.

After these observations, Ventris was able to f ix the ident i-

f icat ion of the vowels and semi-vowels. I t remained to discover

a consistent dis tr ibut ion of the consonant ser ies , and to tes t

whether the resulting t ransl i terat ion, when applied to the texts ,

would yield complete and comprehensible Greek w o r d ~ ., ,

The IdentIfioation of ea-te and ma-te as x a ~ ~ p and ~ a ~ ~ popened the series .2:. and !!:. and gave 1!::., characteris t ic of aEent

nouns ( - ~ ~ p ) and of present partioiples ( - o v ~ e ' ) . The n- series-resulted from the interpretat ion of the frequent words in ~ e - n o

and me-na- as middle or passive part iciples . The series d- and 8 -

-



36

were given by the formula to-so-(de) or to-sa-Cds), which Kober

ad construed as meaning ' t o ta l . tIS I t did, coming out as ' toaao{

(5e), 'to(Jou{(6e). Finally, the ~ ser ies was found to represent

both the Greek p by te - re , nominative plural of t.he snme abent

nouns, and the Greek A by words such as p o - r o = ~ ~ A o , tcol ts . 11b

Ventris discovered, to his surprise, that i t would be neces

sary to allow a. separate consonant series for Lhe labiovelars xv,

"(W, and XV. The sign !l!. defini tely represented an encl i t ic . I t

could not be read ~ (Greek ' t£), because i t s alternate !i2. seemed

to anticipate Greek forms with no (e .g . , Ai-t i- jo-qo • A { e { O ~ o ~ ) . 1When th is d is tr ibution of vowels and consonants was applied

to the matter as a whole, a most Interest1.ng l i s t of place-names

resulted (e .g . , Ko-no-so ( K y w a 6 ~ ) , Fa-i- to ( ~ a l ~ 6 ~ » .With

no bil ingualor other

externalaids to decipherment

' ,vailable, the validity of a proposod t ransl i terht ion can only be

tosted by applying i t to Ghe material as a whole. And Ventris

found that his proposed t ransl i terat ion stood the t e s t . A

f the words "read" turn out in recognizable Greek dress.

thaL the results so far yielded by th is t rans l i tera t ion are

too numerous to be at t r ibuted to pure coincidence. In his ar t ic le

l i s t s no fewer than 223 Greek words easily recognized

1Ssee page 21 of th is thes is .

lbYenaris and C h ~ d w i c k , p. 89.

17Ibid. , p. 90. See pages 93-95 of th is thesis for a c r i t i of-rnrs viewpoint.



37

trom the Linear B scr ipt . He l i s t s the grammatical variations

between masculine and feminine which his readings furnished.

Greek declensions were derived trom the proper names; occupational

names yielded declensions corresponding entirely with the three

Greek declensions and their variations for certain stems. Whole

sentences appeared on some of the tablets , each word readily

in te l l ig ible . Indicative and par t ic ip ia l forms of the verb, gen

ders and cases of the adjective followed. I t would be almost im

for any system of values, however uncertain in i t s out

l ines , to yield a comparable mirage of Greek forms i f the language

in fact of a to ta l ly different aff ini ty . Someone has computed

the mathematical odds as two hundred bil l ion to one.

Some of the more interes t ing Greek words yielded by Linear B

ollow:

i-je-ro-wo-ko ;&poFopyO<; pr ies t

to-ko-so-wo-ko ' t o ~ o F o p y o { bow-makers

to-ko-do-mo 't'O&xo00IJ.O, masons

da2-ru-to-mo Opu't'0IJ.0 l woodcutters

do-e-ro / - jo OO&AO<;, - 0 1 0 bondman

a-ke-ro tiyyeAo<; Messenger

wa-na-ka-te-ro Fa.vdx't&po<; king's

ra-wa-ke-si-jo AdFCiyeolo<; commander's

e-re- ta ~ p e ' t a . l oarsmen

ai-ki-pa-ta a.lYl1td't'a.<; goatherd

ka-ke-u Xa.AX&U<; smith



wo-ne-we

i - ja - te

tu-ka-te-re

po-me

te-ko-to-ne

to-so-de ka-ko

e-ke

e-ko-te

a-pe-o-te

o-pe-ro-te

de-do-me-ns

0 - di-do-sida2-ru-to-mo

0 - de-ka-aa-to

A-ko-so-ta

0 - a-ke-re-se

Fo I v,;Fe,

t a ~ 1 l Pe u y a ~ ~ p e '1tOllJ.';V

' t ' ~ x ' t ' o v e ''t'ooooooe XaAXO'

;xel

~ x o v ' t ' e '&'1teov't'e'

6 , i A A o v ~ e 'O & O o l J . ~ v aa o'-oovo,

opu'tOIJ.01

a e x d . o a ~ o A.

~ tJ.ypT)oe(ciyptjoel)

38

wine dealer?

physician

daughters

shepherd

carpenters

to ta l in bronze

he has

having

are absent

owing

given

what the woodcutters give

which A. has

received

what he has take(or wil l take)

I f the preceding t ransl i terat ions seem a l i t t l e tenuous from

the eccentrici t ies of the Greek, Ventris would add the following

observations :18

(1) I t is the Greek language at a stage 1,000 years older

than Plato 's (a difference in time comparable to that between

Beowulf and Shakespeare), and separated from classical times by a

ark Age of barbaric invasion. Perhaps, too, i t is mixed with

some words or forms currectly in use in the non-Greek languages

• 90.



39

which the people were in contact.

(2) The archives are exceedingly abbreviated accounts, not

The names they contain could be pre-Hellenic.

(3) Many of the baffl ing features of the orthography may be

e to Linear B be1ng a scr ipt imperfectly adapted to Greek from

e conventions of quite a different language.

(4) The tablets examined contain a l l the passages most

as l inguist ic evidence.

Linear B may be considered "cracked. 1t Eventual complete de

seems probable. I t is opportune to examine now the

follow upon this decipherment, one of 'the

archaeological feats ever accomplished.



CHAPTER IV

THE CONSEQ,UENCES OF l'HE DECIPHERMENT

ON HOMERIC SCHOLARSHIP

The decipherment of Linear B i s a discovery whose effects on

Homeric scholarship promise to be far-reaching. A carefUl study

of these effects as so fa r experienced brings a treatment of the

deciphering to a f i ~ t i n g conclusion.

A. MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION

Perhaps the most immediate problem raised by the discovery

that the Linear B tablets are wri Ltten in the Greek l a n ~ ~ u a g e is the

problem of how Greek came to the island of Crete and, as. a l l evi

dence indicates, became the off ic ia l and commercial language of

Crete for a period of approximately f i f ty years. While Linear A

tablets are found throughout the other ci t ies of Crete and date

from about 1800 or 1750 B.C., l Linear B tablets are found only a t

Knossos aLd only from between about 1450 to 1410 or 140,5 B.C. All

the off ic ia l records of the Minoan palace for t.hat period are in

the Linear B scr ipt .

IDow, "Minoan Wri t ing, fl p. 113.

40



41

Before the decipherment of Lineur B, Nilsson advanced the

opinion that ~ h e language of the tablets originated in Crete and

that the tablets found on the Mainland were imported from Crete.2

This view can now be safely ruled out, sinoe the language of the

tablets has proved to be Greek, not a Cretan tongue; and the dis-

covery of many more tablets at different places on the Mainland

precludes the possibi l i ty of importation as well as does the con

tent of the tablets . At the time of Nilsson's writing (1950), the

only tablet discoveries of importance on the Mainland were those

of Blegen a t Pylos. I t is expressly because no tablets had been

found at other s i tes that Nilsson proffered his opinion.) But

with the subsequent findings of Linear B tablets a t Mycenae and

a t Thebes, the premisses fe l ' his conclusion are no longer valid.

Evans was of the opinion that Crete once dom1nated the Main

land and introduced the l inear scr ipt there, adapting i t to the

different exigencies of the Greek tongue.4 TClis view has been

discredited on archaeologIcal grounds. A large body of opinion,

including Blegen and Wace, holds that the civi l izat ion on the

Mainland was a spontaneous adoption of the Cretan culture by the

Greeks who had lived there for some time •

•

2Martin P. Nilsson, The Minoan-MYcenaean Religion and i t s

Survival ~ Greek R e l i ~ i o n ; - 2 n d revised ed. (Lund, 1950r;-p:-r9.

)Ibid.




42

I f we accept the la t te r view, the introduction of Linear. B

from Crete, or wha.t is much more l ikely, the adaptation of the

Cretan Linear A signary, could have come through the regular

commercial dealings between the two locales . Perhaps i t is bet ter

to hold that a good number of Cretans moved to Lhe Mainland

(whether as independent colonists, as slaves, or as merchants) and

there made the adaptation themselves. But the Greeks seem to have

received the Phoenician alphabet without many people l iving among

them who used i t .

Another theory, wnich would nicely account ror the presence

or Linear B in Crete claims that the Achaeans, adventurous as

the i r legends have indicated, sought their glory in a ser ies of

conquests w'dch included the Aegean i s les , Crete, and f inal ly ,

Troy. Reoently disoovered Hit t i te reoords of wars in Asia Minor

refer to a people known, seemingly, as the Aohaeans, fighting

there during the fourteenth and thir teenth centuries.$ Now i f

che Aohaeans were a people of oonquest, and gained the ascendanoy

over Crete, say, in the middle of the f i f teenth oentury, and ruled

there a t Knossos unt i l the city was destroyed f i f ty or so years

l a te r , i t is rather l ikely that the Greeks l iving 1n numbers In

Knossos would have reoognized the value of l i te raoy, adapted the

l"'linoan system to their own language, and brought i. t home wi th them

>w. B. Stanford, The O d Y S S e ~ of Homer (London, 19$0), p. xlvl jVentris, "Minoan Language," p. 4 7 ;pp . 506-$07.

6Dow , pp. 117-118.



43

This l a t te r opinion s ( ~ e m s to agree substantial ly with the

his tor ical acoount of the ·ooginnin;;s of Greece and the Heroio Age

in Bury's History .2£ Greece.1 Abundant evidence of Greek oontaots

at this period with Crete and Ylith the wealthy East, from h i s t o r i c aa.nd arohaeological souroes, forms the basis for the author 's con

clusion that "t.i'lis s tr iking penetration of the East suggests enter-

prise and power and there is some reascn to believe th;1t i t was

ot the work of independent adventurers. u8 Also writing oefore

the decipherment of Linear B {wtllch he thinks rr.ight be a language

a.kinco Cretan}, the Qut.;.lor hazards Lhe guess the. t tne lan;;ua,6es

of tohe Mainland table tos and t.Cle Knossian tablets are ident ical .9

The Aohaeans conceived as an adventurous and powerful group

ot conquistadores brings up the next question 1;;0 wilich the deciph

ering of Linear B has offered an answer, the question of the l ivesnd habits of Homer's Achaeans.

The discovery of so many inscribed tablets in the c i t i es of

Pylos, and Thebes seems to disprove very effect ively any

about the s ta te of culture in the late MYcenaean world

picture the Achaeans as a group of i l l i t e ra te and adventurous

who imposed the i r domination through a series of ruthless ,

iking ra ids . Their orderly methods of administration, to which

1Bury, ! H i s t o ~ £f Greece, 3rd ed. , pp. 41-49.

8 ~ " p . 43.

9Ibid . , p. 41.



44

the table ts tes,t ify, do not f i t well in such a view. The table ts

ontain records of grain t ransact ions, l ivestock t ransact ions,

of charlots , wheels, und other accessories. They were kept,

in wooden chests-- the Mycenaean equivalent of a f i le

IO I l l i te ra te adventurers do not act in t . l is marmer.

When loquacious Nestor se t off from 17108 to join the host

t Aulla, he must have l e f t a t ~ l s t y steward in charge back home

o handle a l l the business and keep the accounts up to date.

ylos wns the f i r s t excavatIon on the Mslnland to yield written

able ts , although Mycenae and Tiryns had been excavated long be

But l a te r finds B.t Mycenae prove that Agamemnon was pro

a good administrator , too. Someone, a t any ra te , was keepin

he palace records in the leading ci ty of the age.

But were recordings on tablets the only writing of the

heroes? The only remains, with the exception of ' a very

w inscribed vases, are more or less of f ic ia l records. The

of other extant material , however, can well be explained

y the fact trlat these Linear B tablets themselves would not have

the ages had they not been baked in the intense heau of

palace f i re , and thus preserved. Other writings in wax or

material w'ich survived the palace f i res would have dis-

long ago. The absence of a l l Linear B writing besides

accounts, therefore, does not prove that th i s was the

kind of writing used; s t i l l , i t does serve to open the

10



45

of whether or not the l i teracy of the Greek mainland in

he Mycenaean age was what is called Special Literaoy, i . e . ,

invented and used for specif ic purposes.

'rhere are many factors which seem to indicate that Special

was the rule . Among these, of cours0, would oe the

of the eighty-eight signs of r.he syl labary, and the

of faci le vlrit ing mater ia l . Clay seems to have been used

Even when clay is sof t , i t is not the eas ies t sub

on which to Write. Papyrus, the paper of the Egyptians,

was never imported before c lass ica l t imes.

But there are other , more cogent arguments in favor of a

res t r ic ted l i t eracy . DOW, of Harvard Universi ty, in h is

"assay on Literacy ," l l l i s t s three arguments:

he homogeneity, conservatism, and complexity of the signs. 12

Homogenei ty i s a cogent argument in th i s case. For·· there

•s almost complete uniformity between Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae, and

in (..he format.ion of the signs and the spell ing of the words.

has been proved by comparative i l lus t ra t ions . l ) Since Linear

was used a t Knossos before 1400 and on the Mainland s t i l l a f t e r

the most exact correspondence in such complex sizns is

short of astonishing. Even an introductory book on Greek

11Dow, "Minoan Writing'," pp. 122-129.

l 2 ~ . , p. 122.

13Ventris and Chadwick, p. 85 (f igure 1).



46

palaeography wil l indicate and give examples of' r..he variations in

Greek scr ipt down through 'the yoars. A cursory study will suft ice

to show thfit Greek writing ( i . e . , in the Phoenician alphabet, a

much simpler m·:.:thod of writing) did not remain as constant for

f i f ty years as the very complex Linear B did for' more than two

centuries. In addit ion, the very composition of ena tablets is

str iking in i t s homogeneity. Ventris writes, "The more one looks

a t Linear B, the more one is struck by the stereotyped nature of

the table ts , .:oing fa r beyond mere identi ty of signary or language

'I':leir similar i t ies imply continuous operation of a scr iba l routine

having a common origin and ident ical milieu, and imply, too, that

telis routine had already been in operation for some time before

the Knossos tablets were written."14 I f l i teracy had been wide-

spread, such homogeneity could never have been maintained.

I \.; is indeed strange trIa t the inventors of Linea.r .B adopted

so many Linear A signs with such exactitude of t ranscript ion. The

l a te r Greeks did not copy the Phoenician le t ters so s lavishly .

This would oe fair ly well explained, however, it a s e m 1 - p r o f e s s i o n ~group of merchants or scribes had consciously adapted t;he Linear A

to their own needs, viz . , for off ic ia l records. It off ic ia l work

was a l l they had to do, a great degree of stereotyped conservatism

could be expected.

Another argument against popular l i teracy arises from the

14From a l e t t e r of Ventris to Dow, quoted by Dow, p. 122.



47

complexity of the signs. I f this signary had ever become wide

spread among the unprofessional populace, these complicated s igns ,

so di f f icu l t to write (anyone who has t r ied to reproduce tnem can

tes t i fy to tha t ) , would almost certainly have been simplif ied. As

Dow remarks, "they fair ly cry out for s implif icat ion."l" But, as

the tablets prove, the Mycenaean Greeks retained the elaborate,

del icate , fussy signs to the very end. And, as they gave no in

dication of an incipient development or Simplification, we might

well conjeoture that i f the a r t of writ ing had not been wiped out

in one fe l l swoop, to which Blegen claims archaeological evidence

pOints,16 Linear B writing wauld hAve remained just as exact for

any more years.

Some indications of writing among the nonprofessional class ,

however, do appee,r in some of the exca,vatlons. Simllar tablets

were found in the ~ o m e of a wine merchant in Mycenae--still a

commeroial man, certa inly, but probably not an off ic la l scr ibe;

also, br ie f inscript ions are painted on vases found a t Thebes,

Tiryns, Orohomenos, and ~ w c e n a e . l 7 In addit ion, there are a coupl

graf f i t i (scratchings) on some sherds. Yet, when these inscribed

objects are compared in number wi.th the inscrlbable objects which

bear no indication of writing, l i teracy among the oommon people

15now, p. 122.

16Bleeen and Kourouniotis, p. 570.

17Dow, p. 120.



48

and lower classes appears to be more the exception than the rule .

Perhaps the t ruth wil l , as usual , appear on middle ground.

Handwriting, experience proves, changes with famil iar i ty . When

we f i r s t learn to write, our le t te rs are scrawly, lopsided, very

i l l-formed. Then, af ter years of writ ing, when the ar t becomes

second-nature to us, there is a much greater uniformity and pre

cision 1n our writ ing. Then, as we grow older and have ~ o do a l l

kinds of writing--memoranda, lecture notes, etc . - -our familiari ty

with writing tends to breed contempt, and our hand gradually be

comes more or less i l l eg ib le , or a t least imperfect. The same

pattern can be observed in the wI'iting of a.ny people over a period

of centuries. When they f i r s t learn the a r t of w r i ~ i n ~ , the i r

characters are formed with hesitancy and general lack of sk i l l .

s they oecome more acquainted witn writing, see i t frequently and

more themselves, their s tyle becomes more uniform and pre

cise . Through the course of YGars, however, u le i r proud and care

ful uncial writing willoecome cursive and f re i .

Applying this analogy to Linear 13, we may safely sa.y that we

are observing it in i t s middle stage. Ventris has already t es t i -

fied that i t must have been employed longoefore OUI' f i r s t ta.;,lets

appear. l8 And as their writing wa.s s t i l l most precise and exact

to the end, and since it was los t not throu,,?;h decay or any

natural means, bUt.. by destruction and sack, i t ha.d not become

18See page 46 of this thes is .



49

overfamil iar . Since th i s overfamil iar i ty , then, which generally

comes af te r a couple centuries only, is wantine in Linear B, the

most plausible explanation is tha t L1near B never became popular

enough to engender such famil iar i ty . We have no cursive Linear B.

So one may with reason hold that the l i teracy of the Homeric

Age was a Special Literacy, reserved for the purpose of accounts

and records, for Which quite a few scribes seemed to have been

employed. Careful palaeographical stUdy of photographs of the

tablets reveals many d1fferent hands. This is concluded from

sl ight variat ions 1n form of the signs, methods of rulinp; the

t ab le t , spac:lng of l ines, height and w1dth of signs, arrangement

of the tex t on the t ab le t , depth of inoision, and, as the t e l l -

ta le clay clear ly reveals , the varying sequence of strokes in the

forme.tion of different s1::::;os. From photographs o.f' the t ab le t s a t

Knossos, I have been able to dlsttnp;uish several di "'ferent hands.

Bennett l i s t s six different hands on the Mycenae t ab le t s , and

th ir ty on the Pylos t ab le t s . All palaeographical and archlleologic

eVidence, then, i s 8.Bainst the hypotheSiS that Linear B was used

generally for any purposes other than busines8 accounts and

documentary reoords.

The res t r ic t ion or Linear B to Special Literacy does not im-

ply, however, t.;hat none of the common people, or nobles, for that

ware l i t e ra te . The mere discovery of a vase with 1nscrip-

t iona among the reaa.lns o.f a private house might indicate tha t

some were l i t e ra t e . I do not think that i t would necessari ly



demand, however, that the person who kept it in his house was

l i te ra te , on the grounds that he would have no use for an in -

50

scribed object unless he could read i t ; although this is the opinl

of no less an authority than A. J. B. Wace,19 I do not see the

cogency of the argument. A man seemingly might think the writing

the equivalent of an in terest ing design, or l ike to have an in -

scribed ar t ic le around his house as a souroe of curiosity and

pride. But i t is equally l ikely that some, a t leas t , of the

nonprofessional class were l i t e ra te .

So one may conclude that the Homeric heroes certainly knew

of writing, and, a t leaat those from the greater centers of the

Mycenaean civi l izat ion, had the opportunity of·learning how to

read and write. Many of them probably did learn. Known patrons

of the f iner arts of poetry and dancing, such as Menelaus, very

l lkely would have made themselves acquainted wlth the a r t of

writing, unless, of course, that art was looked upon with disdain.

But judging trom the Homeric view of women, children, alaves, and

common workmen and soldiers , a most humanistic view, the a r t of

riting was more probably honored than contemned.

I t is l ikely, too, tha.t the a f ) ~ a . ' t a . AUYPcl which Proteus gave

to bear to his would-be host were actually the syl

labic signs ot ~ h e Linear B sor ip t . This passagi:.:l in the I l i ad ,

19Wace. "The Discovery- of the Inscribed Clay 'rablets a tMycenae," Antiquitz, XXVII (1953), 80.



51

as mentioned above,20 has seen variant in terpretat ions. One old

scholiast understood the signs as real writing: 21 " o ~ ~ a ~ a ~ e v ~ &y p d ~ ~ a ~ a , ~ { v a x a Oe ~ O A e y & ~ e v o v ~ l v a x { O l o ~ ; another took them to

be writing only in the wide 8ense:22 n y p d t J . l J 4 ~ a } ( . Q . ~ d . AOYOV CPlAO-

oocpov, 'net e(o, o ~ t J . e r a ~ v ~ v ~ v O ~ t J . a ~ w v ~ n p a y ~ a ~ w v . or ot } ( . A ~ p O Ve O T ) ~ ~ v a ~ o · HOC; ~ l V e ~ l y p d . , a . C ; t t [IA.laC; 7 .175) . cho1(oV ydp ~ o J c ; 7t40a.v

~ t X V T ) V e u p o v ~ e C ; oox etotva& y p a t J . t J . Q ~ a . ~ ' v t C ; Ot, we; nap' A { Y U 1 ( ~ ' O l C ;,epa. ' ~ O , a , 0, ' ~ v 6 T ) A . o 6 v ~ o n p d y ~ a ~ a . " His l£p& , ~ o , a refers

undoubtedly to the Egyptian hierat ic scr ip t .

As might be expected, Wolf in his Prolegomena took this

passage as one of the anachronisms in Homer which proved that

Homer could not have written the entire I l iad , .although from the

s ta r t Doederlein opposed him by maintaining the ROAAQ. could never

refer to many tal ly symbols, but only to many, say, slanders, as

i ~ reported by Paley.23 Paley's own opinion in the matter is that

t ~ e signs represented true writ ing, a position also upheld by Sey-I:

DlO:'Ur, who claims that the reterence to writing i s "dist inct, :

eqough, 1t24 and Leaf, who goes so far as to postulate a syllabaryI -

20See page 11 of this thesis .

2lScholia in Homeri Iliadem, ex recensione Immanuells Bekkeri( ~ e r l i n , 1825},-P. 184 (ad 1.168 VI).

I. 22ill5!.

23Paley, F. A., ~ I l iad of Homer (London, 1866), I , 217.

24i'homas Day Seymour, ~ .!.!! ~ Homeric Age (New York, 1907 p . 35.



s the medium125

From the analysis of the possioi l i t ies of l i teraoy among the

Greeks, i t seems safe to say tha t Homer actually, i f

referred to real writing in th is passage of the I l iad .

Homer's poetry i8 not mere fioeion, but rests on firm his

foundation, is a faot proved again and again.

Conoerning the religion and mythology of the Mycenaeans, on

he other hand, can anything be learned from the decipherment of

B1 Protessor Nilsson proposed a theory as early as 1933

the majority of Greek mrths were already current in the

to the th ir teenth centuries . 26 I t was his opinion that

he Myoenaean Greeks incorporated a t least some elements of the

Minoan mythology and cul t into the i r own, so that the

religion was a fusion of the two.27 Some

relevant

are revealed by the decipberin6 of Linear B.

A great number of names of Greek deit ies with whom we are

occur a t Knossos and Pylos on tablets from 14$0 to 1200

This oertainly confirms Nilsson's view about the antiquity

f Greek mythology. A tablet from KnoBsos, KN.V$2,28 l i s t s the

2>Walter Leaf, ~ Il iad (London, 1886), I , 208.

26Nilsson, The Mlnoan-Mloenaean Religion, p. 28.Chadwick, p . ~ . Cf. Ventria

d

271i18son, pp. 3-5.

28See the page immediately preoeding the bibliography of this

for the manner of identifying tablet references.



names:

A-ta-na-po-tl-n1-jaE-nu-wa-rl-joPa-ja-wo

Po-se-da-(o)

'Aec!va. n&'t'v,a' E v \ ) & . A . . o ~na& dFu>v

nooElod.wv

53

las t name recurs on KN.x5560 and on FY.Tn3l6, and PY.Fn187.l8.

also contains the following:

Di-weE-raPo-t l-n1-jaDl-u-jaE-ma-a2I-pe-me-de-ja

names are found elsewhere:

y .Gg70.$.1:y .Gg705.2:

D1-wo-nu-so-joE-re-u- t i - jaPa-si- te-o- iA-ne-mo-i-je-re-ja

AlFovl500lo'EXtuela.'RaO' e e o r ~L ' , ,u.ve\lwv lepe&a

sta tes (December, 1955) that the f o l ~ o w i n g names have

"been deciphered: Artem.is, Are1a, Erinys, Tr1sheros,

Teiresias , Them1s, Diu1eus. 29

Some detai ls about the worship these gods received in Mycen

times are furnished by the Linear B tablets . Some tablets

re records of seemingly sacred transactions, as , for instance,

of contributions for temple worship (perhaps PY.Jn829).

these various tablets , we can glean the following knowledge

the worship of the MYcenaeans; i t will bear comparison with

Homeric concepts of the same worship.

29T. B. L. Webster, HHomar and the Mycenaean Tablets," Anti-

XXIX (1955), 11. ---



54

Eleuthia i s mentioned in connection with pots of honey (1 ) at

This is consistent , as far as location is concerned,

the statement about her in the Odyssey, in wtlich Odysseus

te l l s his unsuspecting wife that he had seen Odysseus on Crete:3l

! v e " o o u o ~ ~ y w v l o 6 ~ ~ v X«l ~ E ( v l a o ~ x a ••• • , .J . . . ." .1 1xat yap ~ o v K p ~ ~ ~ v O e x a ~ l r r a y £ v " a v e ~ o l o ,

, e ~ e v o v T p o ( ~ v 6 e ~ a p a n A d y ~ a o a M a A e , ~ v .o ~ ' o e 6 ' iv ' A ~ V ' O ~ 8s, ~ e oneo' E : A e , e O ( ~ ' ,tv A , ~ e o , v x a A e ~ O r O l , ~ 6 y , ' 0 ' u n d A o ~ e v d.eAAa'.

The Winds, too, appear to have received some sort of dulia in

times. In the quoted Knossos table t KN.Pp13, the phrase

a v e ~ v lipe,a occurs, meaning ei ther a pries tess of the winds or

'priesthood of the winds. ' At Pylos (FY.Tn3l6), offerings were

to a deity whom some32 equate with Tripator, a wind god. The

ablet i s read Ti-r i-ae-ro-! , or T p , ~ p o e , ; but Reinberg,has in

this new evidence to bolster his thesis that ~ r i s e r o sd Tripator are ident if ied in Greek mythology. The prayers and

to wind-gods among the Mycenaeans reminds one of Homer's

of Achilles praying and sacrif icing to Boreas

d Zephyr for wind to fan the pyre of Patroc1us:33

30Ibid.

310dyssez XIX.186-189.

32E.g., Bengt Heaaberg, " T P I l 1 A T ~ P und T P I E H P ~ l ' . 1 t aranos, LII(1954), 179.

33Illad XXIII.192-l98.



,5

The lengthy tablet PY.Tn)16 records the following interest ing

l- je-to-qe po-sl-da-i- jo a-ke-qe wa-tu-de

ito9wv ~ e n O o l O a { ~ aye ~ e F d o ~ u O tdo-ra-qe pe-re- po-re-na-qe a-ke

O ~ p a ~ e ~ e p t ~ b P £ v d (7) ~ £ aye

GOLD/CUP 1 ",rOMEN 2 qo-wl-ja [do- .... ]ra ko-ma-we-te-jaA1F{a OotAa x o ~ a F € v ~ e { a

l - je- to-qe pe-re-ku2-jo l-pe-me-de-ja-qe dl-u-ja-jo-qet , · ( ) " ,lto9wv ~ ~ X£A£XU10l? I ~ e ~ ~ O e l ~ ~ e A l F a l ~ ~ tdo-ra-qe pe-re- po-re-na-qe a-ke pe-re-ku2 GOLD/BOWL 1 WOMAN 1

O ~ p a 't£ ~ e p e <pboeva 't€ ayt ' J t ~ A £ X U V 'I-pe-me-de-ja GOLD/BOWL 1 dl-u-ja GOLD/BOWL 1 W O I ~ N "1#' rI < p e ~ ~ O £ ' ~ A 1 F l ~e-ma-a2 a-re- ja GOLD/CUP 1 MAN 1

' E p ~ d q . # Apt ~l - je- to-qe- dl-u-jo do-ra-qe pe-re- po-re-na-qe a-ke

leOeWV ~ t A ' F { ~ O ~ p a ' t t ~ l p e <pbpevd 'te aye

dl-we GOLD/BOWL 1 MAN 1 . - ra GOLD/BOWL 1 MAN 1

AlFer "'Hpq.

di-rl-mi-jo dl-we-l-je-we GOLD/BOWL 1 MAN 1

A p l ~ l ~ ( ? ) AlFer

(l ines 11 to 16 vacant)

po-ro-wl-to-jo,'1tPOPt ' to, 0



I- je-to-qe pa-kl- ja-al do-ra-qe pe-re- po-re-na-qe" , " 1&&oGwv ~ £ %q>ay,ao, OQpa ~ £ ~ £ p £ 1topeva ~ £a-ke po-t i -n l - ja GOLD/CUP 1 WOMAN 1a.ye no'tv{q.

GOLD/BO\'IL 1 HOMAN 1 po-sl .da .... - ja GOLD/BOWL 1 "!OMAN 1

noo djQ. t (q.

GOLD/BOWL 1 do-po-ta GOLD/BOWL 1A O c r n o ~ q .

(five more l Ines vacant)34

56

the tab le t deals with gif ts to cer tain dei t ies , but the

in terpretat ion i s not clear . Since ~ ~ p e and aye probably

' b r ing ' or .bear,- it seems l ikely that the l i s ted ar t ic les

ei ther gifts to the dei t ies or persons and commodities in

use. The l a t t e r seems preferable in order to explain the

N and WOMml ideograms. unless the meaning is tha t gif ts were

or to be received from e .g . one man, or one woman, or

women. A temple of Poseidon in the city was to recei've a

•goblet, perhaps l ike a chalice; double axes seem to be the

the worship of Iphimedia, i f tha t is how i-pe-me

Is to be read, as well as a bowl of gold. I t seems that

..34Furumark ("Agaische i 'exte in griechischer Sprache,n Eranos,

gives a reading of this tab le t . I have changedis reading sl ight ly: his qe 's I have changed to ~ e '., for reasons

on pages 9.3 to 95 of this theai , . Likewise, I have in the readings 1t£A£XIJ' 01 (?) and 'JttAtXIJV in the proper places,

by others, although Furumark was not confident enoughth9 r e a d l n ~ to accept i r- I have also divided the word ~ e p e -

tnto qlepe and qlop&va, although the meaning of tile aeconds not clear , bot.h because the paral le l ccnstruction demanded such

verb as q>epe r ight here, and because the new edit ion of The

Tablets (19.55) shows the words divided in transcriptIon,thougn not in the reproduction of the table t .



51

(Zeus?) or di-we received a gold bowl, as well as Hera,

in the same l ine, as is f i t t ing f'rom t tle i r re la t i onship

n mythology. A gold chalice was also the lo t of Hermes. Whether

a s ,parate deity, perhaps Ares, or merely an epi tnet of

is not clear . The identif icat ion of di-r i -mi- jo is also

I t seems to be a speoial t i t le of di-we-i . Furumark

a p o ~ , o ~ , but the change of vowel violates Ventris 's Assumed

10,35 although i t gives an acoeptable reading, viz . , "Zeus of

he Oak (or Oak Grove)." In the next l ine , Furumark reads ea-ki

as % ~ a Y l a a l , a god or goddess (connected with Sphacteria?),

ut I wonder i f i t may notue taken as a. form of a. word re la ted

,o OC4'<lYIOY, perhaps a ~ a y , a , a " 'with sacr i f ices . ' Po-t i -ni- ja

taken by Furumark to refer to Demeter; perhaps i t could as

refer to Athena, Who is called'Aedva n b ~ v , a in KN.v52. Per-

the do-po-ta refers to Demeter. In confirmation of'Puru

view, hmvever, is tab le t PY.En609 which reads:

pa-ki- ja-ni- ja to-sa da-ma-te

Z ~ Q . y 1a v {a 'tbo'qa A 4 ~ t t ' t T ) pto-so-de te- re- ta e-n .-e-s i

'toaoolOe 't&Ato'ta{ ~ y ~ e V O l

DA 40

MEN 14

is probably the pr ies t of Demeter a t Sphacteria .

Another tablet reoording, one suspects, gif ts to cer tain

is FYCn3, reading:

jo - i - j l - s i me-tal-na e - r e - u - t e ~ r e di-wl-je-we qo-o

l5see page 34 of th is thesis .



58

w ~ ,f}ol ( -va l?) Me8o.vo. ( M £ e ~ v T ) ? ) 'EA€u8,jpel t . l F l t ~ F e l (AlFe, =Z e ~ ~ ? ) poG'.

Another tab le t , PY.Fnl81 l i s t s the following temple servants:

ka-ru-keo ..pi-tu-ra" ' joi - j e - re -u

f

Xo.pUX& ,6,u eupo. ,f <t>

t £ p e o ~heralddoorkeeper (Janitor?)pr ies t

These tablets , therefore, seem to indicate, at leas t , what

of gif ts were actually presented to the Mycenaean gods and

I t is not surprising that we find a hei fer or a bul l

Zeus, an,1 th.at axes are associated with the worship of

e or another of the dei t ies . When some idols and axes were

a t the Mycenaean sanctuary at Asine, Nilsson gave his opiniol

" . • • it is very' tempting to think tbat Chis head and th is

xe are the ear l ies t representations of Zeus, the Greek God of

I t 1s rather l ikely that they were. Axes, especial ly

long been associated with mythology, as many Minoan frescoes

Chalices and cups of gold, and golden bowls, also seem to

the objects of offer ings. Neither is th is strange, in

of the frequent presentation of such ar t ic les as gif ts

one man bo another, or from a host to a guest, in the I l iad

d the Odyssez. And the dei t ies who were the object of these

offerings, were, i t seems, predominantly the ,;ods and

of Homer.

Other tablets dealing with dei t ies seriously tempt one ~ o

36Nilsson, Homer and Mycenae {London, 1933}, p. 80.



59

other comparisons between Mycenaean mytholo.;1 as. revealed

. the tablets and Mycenaean mythology as revealed by Homer. But

the readinGs of these tablets have not proved sat isfactory,

exact interpretat ion must s t i l l remain uncertain. Bu:.; the

of many familiar names of Greek dei t ies on these tablets

suff ic ient to establish the hypothesis that many of trle late

myths date -back at leas t to 1450 b.C., and perhaps even

But the question of t..he Greeks fusing thei r own cults

e x i s t l n ~ 1-11noan ones s t i l l remains to be solved. No

is afforded by the decipherment of Linear B except

the fusion must now be dated several centuries ear l i e r than

supposed.

Closely al l ied to worship of dei t ies in Greek religion and

isthe honor and commemoration given the great heroes

f the past . The decipherment of Linear l::) gives s imi lar ' tes t i -

to the great antiquity of Lhe t radi t ional heroes. Striking

occur on many of the table ts : 31

y • Vnl30·.4:

•In)20 .6:

A-ki-re-weAi-ki-e-weAi-va

A-ka-ma-joA-pi-a2-roA-ta-noA-ti-pa-moWa-tu-o-koE-ke-me-deE-ni- ja-u-si - joE-u-da-mo

'AXiA.A.tFei'AlYleFEl

At'F'a.(;

I A A ) q . ~ a {wv'AIJ.<p{a.A.o(;, . -kv"avwp'hV"{<fUlJ.o (;l"a..o.,;"ox° ;:EXelJ.¥Tl'Ev i a."O'l 0'EuOa.\J.o(;


AchillesAegeus .Ajax?

AlcmaeonAmphlalosAntenorAntiphamusAstyochusEchemedesEniausiusEudemus



.An519.7:.5:

.An39.6:•Jn3l0 .13 :

E-u-ko-roE-u-:ru-da-moE-u-:ru-qo-taE-u-to-ro-poKa-ra-u-ko

E-ko-toI-do-me-ne-jaI-pe-me-de-jaKe-re-te-uPo-te-uTe-se-uKa-sa-toKo-so.,u-to

E u x o ) . o ~E O p U O a . I J . O ~Eopu(3a1:T)'

E ~ ' t ' p o ' J { o ~r ) . a . u x o ~

"b'x1:Wp'I6o\-LEVe,a, I q>l I J . ' ~ O E , a.

K p l l e e u ~llov1:E:u'

6 T ) a t u ~a ; a v e o ~

8 o u e o ~

Eukolo8EurydamusE u r y o ~ . t e sEutroposG1aucus

HectorIdomeneiaIphimediaKretheusPonteusTheseusXanthosXouth08

60

Before the decipherment of Linear H, i t was commonly held

Homer received the majority of his c n a ~ a c t e r s from t radi t ion

legendary f igures, portraying them, perhaps in a different

as only he could do; While some few characters he invented

Such a character was Hector. J . A. Scott has a chapter in

Unity of Homerent i t led

"Hector," in which he states that bothe name and tne character of Hector a ~ e an invention of Homer.38

•out tha t the Greeks in their bardic lays gave Greek names

the Trojans oecause the names of the l a t t e r did not always come

to them through t radlt ion,39 he s tates that tfHector, in name,

character , and a l l , is a Greek loaned to the enemy,"40 and

"Homer was the f i r s t poet to draw the p o ~ t r a i t of Hector and

38John A. Scot.t, The. 205-239.

UnitT of Homer (Berkeley, Calif . , 1921),

3 9 ~ . , p. 225.

40Ibld. , p. 226.

-



61

give him a name, a Greek common noun, and make it a proper name

e name of a hero."4l The common noun, of course, means a 'prop '

r f s t ay . '

The Linear B table ts do not offer any solution to tne ques·

of whether or not Homer invented ttle character of Hector but

point out one of t,wo thine:;s: ei ther Homer recei ved Hector

d most of his other characters from t radi t ion , or he gsve ilis

c:n.aracters common or his tor ical names. The exis t ing tab-

however, do not c;ive enough tnformation a-00ut the p,;rsons

with the famil iar names to judge of the i r social posi t lon

most cases, nor i a t he r s hope of f:tnqing anyt;h:t.ng o t h e l ~ than

inventories among the taeJlets. There is no l i t era ture in

B. The answer -e,o the problem, then, c ( ) n c e r n i n ; ; ~ the or1::;in

Homer's heroes remains essent ia l ly hidden. The only l ight

on the subject by the Linear B ta.blets i s the f 'act ' thot

•ne_mes as those l i s ted above were common names in Knossos in

e f i f teenth century and a t Pylos in the th i r teenth .

We learn as much about the social structu.re of 14ycenaean

from the decipherment of Linear B as we do about the re l ig i -

s and mythological habi ts of the people. The soc ia l order of

period, both ut Knossos and a t Pylos and Mycena.e, is one of

as can be deduced from the very frequent occurrence of



62

he word paz-si-re-u ( ~ ~ O l A & O , ) . 4 Z Twelve kings are mentioned a t

remInding readers of Homer of the twelve kings of the

with Alcinous as the th i r teenth:

, , , , • «Owoexa ya.p oa.'tu o ~ 1 1 0 V apl1tpeUeeC; ~ a . O t A ' ~ J e C ;dPXOl Xpa.lVOU01. "CP&Ox.\llO&Xa"CoC; 0 ' iywao"Co,.43

In & recent BBG t a lk , Professor L. R. Palmer of Oxford

made the statement that extreme central izat ion was the

of the Mycenaean society mirrored in the Pylos tablets .44

the recurrence of many place nahes on the Pylos ta.olets, we

an conclude that Pylos was the center of transaction B.nd the

center of a large st retcn of the Western Peloponnes l

ut th is does not mean that the rul ing king was an absolute mon ..

Rather, there is a s tr iking analogy "between ~ ! y c e n a e a nand the feudal society of medieval Europe, an analogy

a half-century ago by Andrew Lang,45 and

substantiated by the Linear B t ab le t s .

Palmer holds that the 4vaf;, and the Aa.FepyeOla.' have two dis -

off ices , the former being the true monarch, the l a t t e r merelJ

he war-leader. This i s of course the dist inct ion between the

42 E•g ., PY:Fn$O.l, A1398, Jn43l, Jo438.20, Jn601; KN.As15l6.

430dYSS8Y VIII.390-391.

44Leonard R. Palmer, "The Revelations of Pylos," The Listener1, 1955), 935.

45Andrew Lang, Homer and His Af'e (London, 1906). The chapter"Loose Feudalism l1 speaks i r 'Achi l les "renouncing nis

and Agamemnon demanding gi f t s of atc'nement for "surquedry"~ l - 7 2 ) .



63

klng and hi rd , the Germanic king and his vassal , the

th is opinion i s the very e t y m o l o i ~ of the word

, from tho L a t i n ~ , ' l eader , ' corresponding to the AaFep-

, of Mycenaean t imes.

Webster observes t h ~ t Py10s tablets also record the existence

f a counci l of seniors and a palace . 46 Very l i ke ly . tillS was the

palace of Nestor in waich Blegen discovered the t ab le t s . But

the council of seniors be more s imilar to Priam's t rusty ad

at Troy:47

(I' t" t , It ,01 6 a ~ " I ~ , a ~ o v xu, nUVOlOV T ~ e e U ~ O I ~ ~ VAal11l:oy 1:e 10.,,1: {ov e , Ixt ' taovd. ~ ' I otov "ApT}o'

, ' \,1 " . , • UO U ) ( . a . f ~ t ; y W V 1:€ XCH i i . V ~ T ) U W P , 'Rt'ItyulJ.evw IllJ.qJW.

~ ~ o O T } ~ o y e p o v ~ e ' Err. ~ x a ' n a l nOAnol,

y 1 ) p a · ~ · 07} 1tOAelJ.o1o 1 ( e 1 ( a u ~ & y o " a . A A ' d . y o p T I ~ a l1 e'" ' , l' .. , •EO ~ O l . ~ e ' t ~ l y e a o l v _ ~ O I X O ' t ~ ' , 01 't& xaO UAT}V

O e v o p e ~ t g e ~ O ~ e Y O I ona AelplOeaaUY tera,''tOlOt apa T p ~ y r y y ~ o p e ~ ~ Y ' t ' en; n o p y ~ .

r would they be the typical assembly of the people such as Tele-

cal l s together in the Odyssey?48

r t, t ,a ,a oe xT}puxeoal A t y u ~ e O y y O ' O I xe'A.euoexT}poooetv dyoPDvoe xap'l1 x o ~ & w v ' t a ' ' A x a L o U ~ .On cer ta in Py10s tab le ts , the name of' a king, according to

e exper ts , appears between al locat ions of Dronze. T ~ i s might

t h a ~ a king was actual ly on the spot 8 u p e r v i s 1 n ~ the col lect1 n

46Webster, p. 11.

47I l iad III.146-l53.

4 8 0 d l s s e ~ II.6-7.



64

s Webster suggests ,49 or that the t ransactions took place in his

or even merely in h is palace, or with his approval . In the

a king stood by while the men brought in tha i r crops:

~ a o ' A e v ~ 5 ~ ~ v ~ O r O l o ' w ~ f to X T J ~ ~ P O V £xwv e a ~ ~ x e l in' ~ y ~ o u y ~ e o o u v o ~ x ~ p ,

ut there does not seem tc be any need to suppose thaI.. th i s was

e regular custom, nor tha t the name ot a king between tho t rans-

on the t .qblets indicates such a supervision. The name of

e king might si;glify that the palace was the beneficiary of the

althour.,h the ind i rec t object is specif ied ~ u i te

the person to whom the amount of bronze was given W3.& a

of the king.

I t seems tha t the king, as 1s bef I t t i ng , was a person ot

among the people. I t i s in teres t ing to note that a t Pylos,

e word lj\eu6epoC;; appears on a large r . t ~ . L l n b e r of taDlets recording

I t does not refer , as one might at f I r s t s ~ p p o s e ,any freedom that might have been enjoyed by the populace, but

reoords that the king or some other person of importance

some work done to r him, e .g . , by a bronze-smith, and

id not have to pay to r i t . Perhaps the bronze-smiths did not

to charge the i r king for services rendored. 'I 'his 1s shown

y a typical example in a t ab le t from Pylos, PY.Na334, readings

49Webster, p. 11.

50Iliad XVIII.556-557.



e-re-u-te-ra wa-na-ke- e-ke

~ A & U e & p a F d y a ~ tXt,

65

Some remarkable revelat ions concerning royal households appea

the t ab le t s . One reca l l s that in the Odyssey. both Odysseus ane

have f i f ty slave-women es.ch. But a t Pylos, acoording to

e t ab le t s , Nestor seems to have had as many as 1500 women, boys,

d gi r l s in his employ. This fact i s gathered from the number of

l i s ted 1n classes Aa and Ab (MEN and WOMEN t ab le t s according

Bennett class i f ica t ion) . That they are slaves in royal

i s deduced by Webste r51 from the ethnics w:J.ich follow

names: women of Kn1dos, Crete, Cythera. One might compare

e s imilar ethnics occurring in the I l iad and Odyssey. Besides

ethnics , the women are desoribed and class if ied a o c o r d l ~ gt he i r handiwork, as spindle-women, carding-women, flour-women,

attendants . I f th is deduotion is correc t , namely, that these

mostly slave women, are on the s ta f f of tne royal Ralace,

the rea11ty of ehe Mycenaean age is even more heroic in i t s

than it i s portrayed In the epics of Homer. I t i s

to see how the palace of Knossos, over in Crete, w1th i t s

passagewa78, would require great numb8rs of slaves

r i t s maintenanoe, but th is 1s not the case with Pylos. The

of Nestor, i f th' l t i s the ouilding in which 'Che majority

f the Pylos tablets were found, i s ra ther moderate in s ize , so

so, in faot , tha t it would hardly contain a hundred people,

5l Webster, p. 12.



66

less f i f teen hundred. So a t Pylos, ei ther our oaloulation

these men and women being slave laoor ac the palaoe i s

wrong, or they are merely f ie ld laborers in the king's

r someone elae 's employ_ Additional data must be forthooming

more definite oan be pronounoed concerning this

Interesting questions are also posed by the deoipherment of

B oonoerning the subject of private ownership among the

Greeks. I t has been suggested that the Greeks at th is

l ived in a sor t of communistio sooiety. A taolet from Pylos

to support this opinion (PY.Eb846):

al-to-jo-qo e-ke-qe o-na-ta ke-ke-me-na k o ~ t o - n a pa-ro da-moko-to-no-o-ko to-so-de pe-mo

' { e { o ~ iX€l ~ t 3 v a ~ o v x e x e , ~ e v a ~ x ~ o { v a ~ napb o d ~ ~x ~ o ' v o o x o ~ ' ~ o o o o v o & o n & p ~ o v

x ~ o { V ( L ~ . ooourring frequently on the tab le ts , se$ms to be

H •' p lot of land, ' while o v a ~ o v , i f that i s the correct reading,

mean a ' l ease . ' Ventris t ranslates the nearly ident ical

.EP146.9: 52

I-do-me-ne-ja te-o-jo do-e-ra o-na-to e-ke ke-ke-me-na

ko-to-na pa-ro da-mo to-so pe-maIdomeneia, servant of the god, has ~ h e lease of a fixed port ion of ground on the oommunity's land. So muoh sowing: •••

similar i s the tablet PY.Eb297 which reads:

I - je-re- ja e-ke-qe e-u-ke-to-qe e-to-ni- jo e-ke-e te-oko-to-no-o-ko de to-to-na-o ae-ke-me-na-o o-na-ta e-ke-e

52Ventria and Chadwiok, p. 98.



67

Yentris t ranslates:53

This the priestess holds, and declares that the god has thetrue ownership, but that the plot-holders have the leases ofthe plots in which i t is laid out.

x ~ o { ~ are also held by oommon people: a ~ O l ~ ~ V in PY.E0278,

ouf3c:na.{; in PY .Eq59.

What are we to conolude from these tablets? Was the sooiety

communistic, or did the tablets merely record the bel ief of

h e people, that a god or honored king was the true lord of the

while they, his humble servants, owned i t "by his graoe and

I t seems that the society was 1n a true sense c o m m u ~ i s t i cfar as private ownership of land was concerned, i f the tablets

e the only means of judging. The fact that the tablets are in

sense l i te rary, that they reoord merely the barest facts , that

do so 1n the most abbreviated manner possible, seems to pre

any referenoe to the bel ief or pious rancy or the people.

The question of oommunism among the Myoenaean Greeks has

been hotly debated, but because of the laok of evidence on

s1de, no compelling conclus10n has been reached. Leaf &1-

advocated a communal land-tenure among the Homeric heroes;54

held that there was muoh land in common, with grain land

d f ru i t land in several ty, with absolutely no sel l ing of land;55

53Yentris, "King Nestor's Four-Handled Cups," Archaeologz, VII20.

54Leaf, I , 176, 366.

55leymour, pp. 235-246.



68

argued persuasively for the existence of an "open-field"

r ttcommon-tield" system of agriculture among the MYcenaeans;56

in modern times George Thomson, an avowed Communist, hopes

show by etymological and l inguist ic legerdemain, among other

that communistic land tenure is the most fundamental sooia1

• 57 But Keller , realizing the lack of cogent evidenoe,

that trying to arrive a t any conclusions in th is matter

"intel lectual exercise."58

Nilsson points out, however, that we know from Homer that

was divided two ways, into X A ~ p O l and into ~ e ~ e y ~ . 5 9 The

were parcels of land al lot ted to individuals as the i r own

property. The ~ € ~ , y ~ were reservations se t aside for

e exclusive use of the kins or a god. In the case of the king,

e~ ~ ~ e y o '

was dist inct from his own personal property.I t

wase remainder of what had been apportioned to indiVidual owners;

•t was, in taot , undivided common land. Often in Homer60 one

that a grant of land was given to some part icular hero in

to r outstanding services. Nilsson observes that this grant

56william Ridgeway, "The Homeric Land System," JHS, VI (1 '85),. -

57George Thomson, Studies in Ancient G.eek Societl : ~ !!!-Aegean (London, 1949),-pp. 297-331.

S8A• G. Keller, Homeric Societ l (New York, 1902), pp. 189-199.

59Nilsson, Homer ~ Mycenae, pp. 2)6, 241-243.

60E•g. , I l iad Ix.514i XX.184i VI.194.



69

always made, not by the king, but by the people61 (cf . nBpd

the tablets oited above). In the oase of a god possessing

e landed ~ ~ ~ £ v o ~ individuals could use parts of the land as

own by paying t i thes . And th'it is preoisely the meaning of

This the priestess holds, and 4eolares chat the god has thetrue ownership, but that the plot-holders have the leases ofthe plots in whioh i t is laid out.

The evidenoe fUrnished by tae Linear B tablets on the subject

private ownership among the Myoenaean Greeks is restr icted thus

r to land held in oommon. The table ts speak of ~ e ~ £ y a , of

o lycu and 3 v a . ~ a . , but there is no mention of the X A ~ . p O " the par

of' land allot ted to individuals as private property. Henoe,

the argument from absenoe has l i t t l e foroe in Linear B evi

due to the general scarci ty of a l l such eVidence, the only

substantiated beyond a doubt by the tablets is ' that

•land was held as community property , or that some ' t e ~ e y o ~ was

e reservation of a god or king and le t to individuals in leased

Alchough no evidence has yet appeared that there was true

ownership in Mycenaean tImes, th is possibi l i ty ' is certainlY'

t ruled out. But i t is now defini te from inoontrovertible evi-

that some land, a t leas t , was common holdings.

I t seems that Palmer makes too much of the use of the word

to express the holdings of leasers of oommunity property

61Nilsson, Homer and MYoenae, p. 243.



70

he emphasises the similari ty of th is word, meaning 'burden, '

word baron, likewise meaning fa man of the bur

t62 I t may well be t rue, as Palmer claims, however, that

of these leaaers of land were warriors holding f iefs under

to render mili tary service, except that a woman seems

have merited one.63 The x'to{va." then, were probably the

of the corrlIllon people, l ike the 1(0 ' IJ.l}v and the 0 \ ) { 3 & t a . ~

I t might be of in teres t to note the geographical location of

e property of the Greeks. Many of ~ h e c i t ies named on the tab

are ci t ies and towns occurring in the Homeric epics; others

t ~ p i c a l names can well be imagined as HomeriC settlements.

the discovery at Knossos, besides the name of that ci ty i t -

the following place-names appear:64 Amnisos, the port of

reminding one of: o ~ ~ o e 0 ' !v ' A I J . V ' ~ ~ e , ~ e a n e o ~ EtAEl-

Phalstos, where the famous disc was found and w h ~ r e a

comparable to that of Knossos was found, recall ing:

62palMer, p. 935.

63py.Ep146.9. See page 67 of tu is thes is .

64See Ventris and Chadwick, p. 89.

650dyssey XIX.188. See page 54 01' this thesis .



71

. a , a ~ e v ~ & ' P ~ ~ l e v ~ £ , neAt" &3 v a , e ~ o w a a , 6 6where part of the f leet of Menelaus was wrecked:

tvea N O ~ o ' ~ e y a x 6 ~ a n ~ l axal&v ploy ~ e e re ~ ~ , a ~ o v , ~ ' x p & ' oe Aloo' ~ e y a x 6 ~ ' anoepyel. 67

above mentioned; Tylisos, I tanus, Kudonia,

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Over on the Mainland in Pylas. the following ci t ies were

Sphagia, Charadros, Rhion (prooably Asine), Euripos, Hyper

Leuctron, Lousoi; Metapa, and Erchomenus (Orchomenus?);

only the las t one mentioned by Homer. 69

R e a d i n , ~ the Linear B tablets is l ike reading Bomer' s sources.

only are many of the ci t ies and towns famil iar from Homer, but

are the commodities mentIoned in the accounts. Bronze 1s per-the commonest commodity mentioned. I t is u.sed, among other

•armor and chariots" Concern1ng armor, the word cpda-

occurs frequently, eyxea is used a t leas t onoe (KN.R0481),

a Knossian tablet (KN.J693) seems to indicate a corselet or

shir t .70

66Illad II.645-648.

610dlssel III.275-276.

680dlsSey XIX.172, 176.

69 I l iad II .605.

70See H. L. Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments (London, 1950),Five. DD. 132-335. to r MY"Ciniiin armor and arohaeology.





73

There a I 'S a few detai ls in the table ts concerning· Mycenaean

oanquets. Readers of Homer will remem:ber Nestor'd four-handled

cup.14 Carl W. Blegen, excavating at Pylos in 1952, uncovered a

tablet (PY.Ta64l) bearing several ideograms suggesting cups or

goolets. 75 After Ventrls published his method of decipherment of

Linear .3 in 1953, Blegen applied the former's norms an j rules to

tao t a b l e ~ and derived a very sat is factory reading from i t :

Two tr ipods; Algeus the Cretan brings them: one t r ipod; i ti s not sound as regards one foot: one t r ipod, the Cretanbrings i t ; charred around the 10gs ••• wine-jars; onelarger cup wi th four handles: two larger cups with t:lreehandles; one sm:l.ller cup wi ch fuur handles: one sma l l e r cupwith three handles: one smaller cup with no handle.

Other Homeric vessels mentioned are amphorae (KN.Am8l9) and

(KN.K740, K875).

A f inal conclusion to be drawn from this study of Mycenaean

civi l izat ion is that Homer used the ~ ~ c e n a e a n language, Qbjects,

goda, names, land terms, and socia l structure in his portrayal of

epic heroes. Even his methods of expression are rather similar .

he tablets quoted above in regard to chariots are s tr ikingly 11k

to Homeric descriptions of Bausicaa's wagon, for instance,76 or

Calypso's axe.17 This would seem to indicate that there was a

74!..liad XI.632.

15Por a complete account, see Blegen, "An Inscribed Tabletfrom Pylos, ff APXAIOAorIKII, 1953.

160dyssel VI.69.

710dzssey V.234.



74

strong epio t radi t ion handing down a l l these terms. and names

nd events from Myoenaean times unt i l the time of Homer. This

may seem hazardous to many Vlho are accustomed to erect

soreen, an absolutely dark age, between the Myoenaean Age and

of t.he Historica l Ages. But as Nilsson so well puts

t :

This screen is in real i ty only our ignorance of what happenedin the intervening centuries . There must 8e a cont:nuity between the Mycenaean and the Historical Ages; the populationremained essent ia l ly the same, although i t was dislocated '0ythe supervening of the Dorians. The s e p a r ~ l t i o n of the twoages i s absolutely unhis tor ica l j instead of ereccing a screenbetween them we ought to try to fiog the connecting l inks andto recognize such as are prooable.-f

I t is hoped tha t the following section wil l lend support to

conclusion t h 1 ~ o u g h an analysis of the i ~ c e n a e a n dialect .79

18Nils80n, Homer ~ Mycenae, p. 178.

79with the s t r iking s imi la r i t ies found in the above comparisof the descript ions of Mycenaean Age civi l izat ion with the poemsf Homer, it seems di f f icu l t to agree with any claim to ~ h e effec t

the " f i r s t tentat ive readings (of Linear B tablets by Michael

and John Chadwick), published in tne Journal of Hellenictor 1953, reveal ( i f they are r ight) a world aIt.ogether

the Homeric, one -.;hat vms rna te r ia l l , . fa r 1I10re ad vanoed, a8

already knew from the archaeology; and ins t i tu t ional ly moreand reminiscent of the ancient Near B;ast,1t as was made by

I . Finley in The World of O d ~ s B e ~ s ( r ~ e w York, 1954), p. 43.e majority of Ventrls a n ~ C h a w i c ~ ' s data derived from the

B tab le ts and included in this chapter ref lects a Homericor a world very much akin to that descrioed in toe epics .

t was l ikewise the opinion of Michael Ventr is , tne author of thequoted in confirmation, that nis findings revealed a

repl ica of the Homeric Age.



15

B . THE MYCJi:NA&:AN D I A L t 1 ~ C T

The decipherment o f Linear .8 has yie lded a re la t . ive ly la rge

dia. lect vocabulary . Such a voca'oular'Y, wi...

h. i l , . . ~ phono-

m o r p h o l o ~ i c a l , and othor ~ i f f e r e n c e s f r ( ~ n c l a s s i ca l Greea

i m p o r t a n ~ contr iDut ion to h i s t o r i c a l Greek g r a r , ~ n a r , to

and to our k n o w l e d ( ~ e o f tne Homeric t ex t a.nd grammar.

Many scho la r s , among them Stanford , Nllsson, Ridgeway, and

hold tha t the language o f Horner incorpora tes many Aeol i c ,

and Ionian forms. In a sense , "Cl,is i s amply sub

the deciphermenl,.. o f Lineal" t i , "t;.>8cause tihis Mycenaean

a lso makes use o f many o f c h e s:':me forms wi:liL;h t ~ J e uUl#tlOrs

Aeol ic , Arcado-Cyprian, anti Ion ian . On t i le o the r [J.and, tn,(;

d ia l ec t i s a t l e a s t t.he hypo the t i ca l ancestor ' ( i f a l l

other dia lec t s as wtll.l as o f " l.e liO(ileric dia:i.ec i . . 'l'he r e -

o f Dr. Chadwick are en l ibh ten ing ont ;h i s point : .

In ! l i s to r ica . l 1iiw.es Arcadia in t,ae mountainous centl:irof ttl,e Peloponnese formed a l ing. .J is t ic enclave wi th an Eas t

Greek d ia l ec t , complet.ely s U l ~ r o u n d e d oy v,esLi li.l?eek (01 ' Doric)d i a l e c t s . As the Dorians were tne l a s t a r r iva l s in SouthernGreece , it seemed reasonable , ,0 suppose t na t Arcadian Had a tone t ime covered most o f the Peloponnase, and confi rmat ion

tha t. i (, reacned '('11e coast

was provided I:)YlJhe

axis tence ofa

very s i l l i l a r d i a l e c t in Cyprus. Since Cyprus was colonizedin Hycenaean t. imes, it seemed l ike ly chat Arcadian and Cypriwere the descendents 01' tue Mycenaean Greek d i a l e c t , and t h i s

~ a n now be re ia rded as ce r t a in . 'l'he Mycenaean dialec-:C;-seems' t "()have v a r l e ~ very ITt ; t re over a per iod of two hundred yearsawl as oetween Knossos, Pylas , and 11ycenae. Trle vase in

sc r ip t ions a re no t by any means c lea r ; bu t it i s ce r t a in tha t

they SilOW Greek words of' a s i ; i l a r type to tnat;; o f t I l e t ao I s t

80 John ChadWick, "Greek Records 1:1 the .:.inoan 5 c r i p t /' p . 191



16

Hence, i t is plausible to suppose that Ghe Aeolic substratum

w.clich undurl1t:;s the text of Homer is not the Aeolic of Lesbos,

which i s , as Ventris remarks,81 a much L,tar dialect , but the

much older Mycenaean form, in Which bardic lays were probably re

cited for many centuries. The forms of the Aeolic and of many of

the other dialects wil l appear in the following discussion of the

Mycenaean dialect . In procedure, the vocabulary, syntax, morpho-

logy, and pl1onology of the Mycenaean dialect wIll be examined in

turn.

As regards vocabulary, q ~ i t e a rew new words have been added

to our knowledge of Greek by tne decipherment of Linear B. Often

the!:r meaning is not clear , except in the case.of compound words,

one or 'ooth of whose parts a:re known words. The l i s t of these

new words (which probably wil l make succeeding editions of the

lexicons even longer!) is here presented:

.; cip.'JtUKOFoPt'o{•

PY .Ab210: a-pu-ko-wo-ko headband makers?PYAn39.5: e-to-wo-ko ~ v ' t o F o p . y o { armorersPY.En609.5: e-te-do-mo l v ' t e a O ( S \ l o ~ armo:rerKN.BI01: ko-wi-ro-wo-ko KOP, A.oF'opyo { coopers?l'Y.Na568.2: na-u-do-mo v a . u O o ~ o , shipbuildersl'Y.Ep611.6: si-to-po-qo O''t01{OKO' cookPy .Ab553: re-wo-to-ro-ko-wo ?A.oFf:'tpoxoFol bath attendants

PY.Fn50.6: si-to-ko-wo <H'toxoFo, grain keepersFY.Ep611.11: ko-to-no-o-ko X'tOlVO&XOC; pr.opert,,"'ownerPY.An594.1: pu-ka-wo 1{upKaFol stokers

Y.An292.1: di-pte-ra-po-ro Oacp6epa.<popol tannersPy .Ea52: e-pi-we-t1-r i - jo ~ 1 t & F m p , o ~ close-woven

wa-to ? F a . o ' t o ~ ~ 1 t . 1 7 . ~ r , : 1FY.gp617: po-ti-n1-ja-we-jo ? 1 t o ' t Y l a . F £ r o ~ of' Magna Mater?PY.Ae264: a1-ki-pa-ta cd y l1ta.'ta. goatru.rd

81Ventr18 and Chadwick, p. 103.



PY.Fn$O.l:PY.An26l.7:PY.Ab5.5.5:PY.Ebl.56.l:PY.Cn40.2:

PY.En609.l1:PY.En298.2:PY.An207.3:Py .AnS94:PY.An209.l:Py .Eb477:PY.Anl92.3:PY.Fn50.7:Py .An39:PY.An39.2:

paz-s l-re-wi- jake-ro-ai- jara -p i - t i - razka-ma-e-uwo-ne-we

I: i-ri-se-weo-na- te-repl - r i - je - te - reml-ka-tat a - te ..rekl-r l - te-wl- jadaz-mapo-ro-da2-ma-tepo-ru.-da-ma-teme-rl-da-ma-te

?f3ao, A11F{ ( ll

?yepoyo(a 'Fpcin:'t e t po.,

? X ( t ~ a . e u ,FOl y ~ F e I

Xplol'lFe'o y ( t ~ i ' l p e '?,pa £ ~ i ' l p e { ;

~ l X ~ a . 'o ' t ' ( t ~ i ' l p e ,XPI 611F1{ (L ,

0 4 ~ a . R' 1 l p o o d l - ! o a . p ' t " l ; ; ~1 ( o ) , " O a ~ o . o ' t & '

~ e ) ' A , o d ~ a . p ' t ' e '

71

palace workers?pageseamstresses.farmer?wine dealer?

anolnters?tenantsTrp{CiI='saw'????' !

?11111

1111

The above l i s ted names comprise those words not already in

our lexicons whose readings are well substant ia ted. Undoubtedly,

the Mycenaean dialect inoludes many other new words, but because

of readings whioh are not above doubt, they seem too tenuous for

inolusion. Those included ~ . r e taken, in the main, on the author

i ty of Ventr is . 8Z

Besides new ~ o r d s introduced Into our Greek vocabulary for

•the f i r s t time, Linear B shows us more famil iar words In a some-

what di f feren t l igh t , or confirms accepted in terpretat ions of

cer tain words. Thus the word for ' baker , ' d p ~ o x o ~ o ' , appears in

the form d p ~ o n o x w o ' , proving that Curtius was r ight in doubting

i t s etymology from !p ' to ' and x o n ~ w .. 000').0' , ' s lave , ' appears

an unknown form which serves to explain tIle oircumflexed

diphthong 1n the classioal w o r d ~ ' t e ~ ! y o ' , a word u a ~ d for a piece

of land cut off and al lot ted fo r a specia.l purpose, is always used

82Ventris and ChadWick, pp. 96-97.



n the tablets with FUvdx'ttpov or ' h a F a . y ~ o l O V , meaning, therefore,

he king's land, or the commander's land. Compare Nausicaa's

to her fa ther 's ' t e ~ . I . E V O ~ "Daddy'S garden" 1n Book VI:

O ~ e , ~ ay'ha.ov a ' h o o ~ ' A 9 ~ V ~ ~ &YXl x&'hsu90ua.{ye&pwv· ~ v be x p ~ v r ) vdel, alJ.q>t bE 'heq.l.wv.€v9a. be ~ a . ' t p O ~ ilJ.oU ' t ~ ~ e v o ~ 't&9a.'hurd. ' t ' d ' h w ~ ,'toaoov d ~ & ~ ' t O A l O ~ ~ o o o v 't& yiYWVE ~ o ~ o a , . 8 3Xpuao' i s usually assumed to be a wo:.;-,d borrowed from West

84 and introduced by the Phoenicians between 1100 and 900

But the word appears on a Knossos tablet describing a goblet

to the Vaphio cups and also in the compound form xpuao

conjunction ~ ~ Is writ ten 12, i . e . , ' w ~ (Sanskrit

confirmlng Bolsacq t s etymology.8S A clas.slc word for 'cus

x'he&Oo6xo', 1s wrltten ka-ra-wl-po-ro, 1.e . , x ' h a . F ' ~ O p o ' .Doric word for cloth• • FtQ'tpa. (Latin vesta) appears a8 we-te

, i . e . , Feo'tpelSC;. The class ic 'td'hCLV'tOV Is writ ten t a - ra-s i - ja

'tC1Aa.O&a, and seems to be taken in i t s root sense ~ f a

comparison with the corresponding Latin pensum.

g1ves wo-z?-e, F & p ~ & " perhaps the Mycenaean form of

he common verb P & ~ w . The typical F d v a ~ has the adjectival form

while the word l J . e & ' ~ w v , al-t.hough appearint?; once as

830dysaey VI.291-294.

84.ventris and Chadwiok, p. 93.

85Emile Boisacq, Dictionnaire E t l ! O l O ~ l q U e de 19. LanSH84th ed. (Heidelberg, 1950), p. 10 4.



79

me-&10, appears elsewhere as me-u-jo ( ~ e F l w v ) and me-wi-Jo ( ~ e F { -ov£' ) •

Many of these older words 1n different dress and other words

not part of our Greek vocabulary show faJlliliax' Homeri 0 ctln-

struotion. The frequent use of agent nouns ending in _ ~ ~ p shows

why Homer uses more of them than la ter Greek wri ters . I t was the

words 1 [ a . ~ t i p and ~ d . 1 : T ) P on Aoo07 which gave Ventris his f i r s t read

ing8.86 Likewise, many agent noUDS end in - ta , whioh oould be-t ransl i terated ei ther -1:4' (the origlnal form, as in Attio l a t e r

on; in Homer usually -1:T)' ), or -'to., corresponding to the di s t inct l ,

Homerio - 1 : a . - - ~ e ~ ' ~ 1 : a . , ;1[1[&1:0., 1 ' J [ ~ T ) A d ~ a . ~ U 1 : a . , a . l x ~ ~ d , xua.vo

£ ~ X ~ a . , v e ~ £ A T ) y e p ' 1 : a . .Hardly less s ignif icant are the omissions of words which one

might reasonably expect to be present . One of the most st r ikingis the complete absence of our old l'rie.nd XCli. When a conjuncti ve

part ic le i s needed, i t is 1:£ .87 Another notable absence i s that

of any defini te ar t ic le , thus confirming the theory that the de

f ini te ar t ic le was Just beginning to be so used in Homer.

Regarding syntax in the Mycenaean dialect as revealed on the

tablets , one must remember that in such inventories of bare facts

and commod1ties expressed in most unliterary lanciuage, l i t t l e can

be learned concerning syntax except what Is almos t; obvious, as ,

86Ventri8 and O h ~ d w i c k , p. 89.

87See pages 93 ~ o 95 of this thes is .



80

or instance, that adjectives agree with theIr nouns.Neverthe

less , a few notable syntact ioal oonstruotions have been found on

the Linear B tab le ts .

I t is not surprising to find the instrumental case, ending In

- ~ " used frequently. This would indicate, as has been held by

he majority of soholars, "hat. 1 ts preservation in Homer reflects

n ancient usage.

The familiar Gr;':ek oonstruction of opposition indicated oy

the part ic le 0& is found on tne tab le ts , e . :::;., on An607. where we

two halves of the formula contrasted by that par t ic le . I ts

requent ooourrenoe In cases of obvious opposition served to con-

Ince many that the Linear B syllabary was aotually Greek.

The verbal negative 1s ou (there would hardly be any ocoasion

n these writings for the use of ~ ~ , whether or not that negat1ve

Th1s appears in ou O{OOVO& i ~ PY.Ma225.2 and as ou

•in PI.Bg319. I t is lIkewise used in the negative con-

junction o u ~ e , as in PI.Sn64 o U ~ t a y p ~ o e .The demonstrative 8 ~ , ~ , ~ is amply attested to by the f re -

use of the neuter acousative singular as a direct objeot ( th

~ quod): ~ a y p ~ o e (PI.Sn64), o-o-pe-ro- . i , i . e . , ~ 6 ~ ~ A A (PY.Nn228.l), 0 o & x d o a ~ o (PY.Pn)O.l), o.F{Oe (PI.Eg2l).1), 0

(PI .VnlO.l) , 0 OG>x£ A. (PI .Un261. l) , 0 FopttH (PY.Eb»8).

Enlightening observations on the use of tne part ic iple oan be

Every student of Greek l i tera ture is familiar with tne

part ic iple expressing purpose. This seems to be a oon-



81

of old atanding in che Greek language, for it. is found

on Linear B tablets . Two of them, rosters of men appointed

jobs, show the future part ic iple used to express the

obs a S 3 i ~ a d . Thus we find'tolX000l101 Oel1tov'te' 'masons for

work,' and epe'ta, DA£upwvaOe t o v ' t e ~ 'oarsmen to go to

(Perhaps this i s the Homeric Fleuron, a ci ty in Aetolia

f ~ o , i t is interes t ing to remember the t radi t ion that the Dorian

crossed the Gulf ot' Corinth by way of Ns.upactus, a bare

miles along the coast from Pleuron. There may be an al lus

on to this invasion in tnis tablet writ ten , as archaeologists

decided,88 immediately before the destruction of Pylos.)

Another use of the p a r t i c i ~ l e in Mycenaean Greek, a middle

used of 11 shepherd guarding nis flocks, reminded Ven

89 of two lInes

ofBook XIV of

the Odlssey, which hequotes

n oomparison. The tablet entry reads:

Ke-ro-wo, po-me A-si - ja - t i - ja o-pi Ta-ra-ma-ta-oqe-to-ro-po-pi o-ro-me-no:

K., ~ O l ~ ~ V ' A a , a ' t { a ~ 6nt 8aAal1d'tao' t e ' t p o ~ o [ O ] ~ ' 6 p o l 1 e v o ~ ·K., a shepherd of the place A. , looking af ter the animals of

T. ,90

88Carl W. Blegen and K. Kourouniotls, "Excavations at Pylos,"XLIII (1939), 510.


900dlssel XIV.I03-104.



fvedOt 0 ' a(nOAla ~ A a ~ & ' a t y ~ v lVOexa ~ ~ v ~ al o x a ~ l ~ p O O X o V ~ ' , fn; 0 ' ~ V ~ P € ' laexo: o p o v ~ a , .

82

In the l ine of morphology, the declensions of MYcenaean Greek

seem to present a basis for certa in Homeric uses. The declensions

can 'be determined onl1'Oy different words appearing here and there

in undoubted construction as such or such a case. EVen when this

is done, the resul ts are not always w h ~ l t one might desire . Thus,

a word ending in - ta could be ei ther nominative singular ( - ~ a or

- ~ l 1 ' ) , dative sIngular (-'I)' accusative singular (-(tv), vocative

singular ( .4) , nominative, accusative, and vooative dual (-4),

nomin_tive and vocative plural (-a,), or acousative plura l ( - 4 ~ ) .Nevertheless, through the observation of certain words appearing

in a oertain form in an unmistakable syntact ical c o n s t r u c ~ i o n , it

as been possible to deduce surprisingly complete declensions.

Thus, in the f i r s t declension, te- re- ta appears as nominative

singular and nominative plural one time each, and another time in

the genitive plura l , writ ten t e - r e : t ~ .otes on the f i r s t declension:91

I t is to be noted that there is an absence of an inf lect ional

change to an - ~ in feminines of this declension, although this

ould not prove conclusively that such a vowel change was entire ly

acking. The majority of the words from whicL" the declension was

deduced were agent nouns, and inf lect ion in -4 throughout is the

ule in these. But m a ~ non-agent nouns such as x ~ 0 { v 4 ' 'property

9l See Table l I o n the followin, a ' e .



TABLE I I

THE FIRST DECLENSION

Bom. ag. Gen. sg. Dat. sg. Nom. p l. Gen. pl. Oat. pl.

-c1 -4{; -a -0.1 -dLUV _die

do-er-a do-er-a60eAc1 ooe).(UPY.Eb464 PY.Ae303

1,-,Je-re- ja, spelQ.

PY.Ep$39.7

do-qe-ja do-qe-ja?OcSp1tE'" ?6cSp1tEHUPY.An601 FY.An601

kl-r l- ta-wki-rl-ta-wl-ja ja-1?Xpl am'llQ.lPT.Eb3 1

? ~ e 1 P f { ( u {;

• 11.1

-It{; -0.& -awv -eu '-te-re-ta te-re- ta te-re-ta-o??-'til{; 11- ' ta, ??-dwvPY.En609.$ .. PY.En609.2 PT.Er3l2.$

e-qe-ta e-qe-ta-1~ 1 t e ' t a , ext'ta., ,PY.Eb317 PY.An607.3

8l



TABLE I I (continued)

THE FIRST DECLENSION

pe-re-qo-ta pe-re-qo-ta1 t p e a " J ~ 4 ~PY.An192.12 'ify

e1c

J4t04 .4

ke-ro-ai-ja ke-ro-sl-Jay e p o v a { Q . ~ ,

yepova,Q.&Py .An261.1 PT.An261.5

me-re- t l - r l - me-re-tl-ra2-ja 0

~ e A & ~ p & Q . ' ~ e A . e ~ p l l 1 w vPY.Aa62 PY.Ad308

a-ke-t l- ra2 a-ke-t l -ra2-0 a-ke- t l - ra2-

ciyTrtep ,,1& c:iy'r)'tepiawv ja - i&'yrytep i Q.1

PY.Ab564 FY.Ad290 Py .Ad290

mi-ka-ta ml-ka-ta

~ { x ~ a ~,

~ ' X ' t o . lPY.An594 Py .An39.3

ra-pl- t l-ra2F p d . ' J t ~ EfH a.,PY ..Ab555

. pe-kl- t l -ra21!ex'tu pcuPY.Ab518

--- .

84- - - - .. ~ - ~ - - _ . _ . _ - -



inflected wi th -a throughout. I t seems that the -4 is 'the

older form.

The instrumental case is shown by xepa.ld(pl and 61[' I dcp , each

p p e a r l ~ g jn th is case only and each on KN.Bd0405.l and KN.Sd0404,

nd bY't€'t'po'lto[6J<p1 appearing on PY.Ae134.

onche second declension:92

Again, the lack of compler.e material to give evidence of

l l the cases and genders is lacking; it is not to be inferred

that such were not used. Evidence to the contrary

s afforded oy the appearance of ovo.'t'ov and ova't'a. (of uncertain

in the accusative of both numbers, as well as O ' J t ~ P W ) V and

in the same cases.

Concerning the morphology of adjectives of the f i r s t and

declensions, A a F ! y ~ a l o ~ has the genitive masculine AdFd

in PY.Ea42l, as 1 [ o ' t ' v , a . F £ r o ~ has ~ o ' t ' y , a . F e ( o , o in PY.Eq2l3.5

•shows the neuter plural nominative in -a. with Fa,vax-

in KN.Lc525.

The third declension needs l i t t l e amplificatlon.93

A few more observations on the inflection of nouns and adjec

in general may be made. A genitive singular in -do appears

or masculine nouns in -4 , as well as in most proper names, e .g . ,

p,;o'td', ' Ap';o'tZio. I t seems to be a rule the. t the -0' 0 ending of

he genitive singular is used in - 0 stems, and the -40 ending in

92see Table I l I on the following page.

93S



TABLE I I I

THE SECOND DECLENSION

Nom .. sg. Gen. age Dat. ag. Nom. p l . Gen. p l. Dat. p l.

-0 ' -O lO -ttl -01 - O l ~ka-ra-w i-po- k a-ra-w i-p o- ka-ra-wi-po-

ro ro-Jo ro)( 'A4Fl <pOpoC; xAciFl<pOP010 xAaFlaOPolP'i.Eb)17 Py .AellO Py . In 29

do-e-ro do-e-ro-jo do-e-ro do-e-ro-160e).0C; O O ~ ) . O l O OO£Ao, OO£AolC;PY.Ebl$6 KN.C912.2 PY.Ae26 PY.Fn,50.1

a-ke-ro a-ke-ro(iYYeAOC;P'l.Eal36

:tyeAol.Vn493.1

ko-to-no-o- ko-to-no-o-ko ko

X'tOlYOO'XOC;,

X'tOlYOOXq?PY.Ep6l7.11 PY.Ep6l7.11

--..

86

, . :w:



TABLE IV

THE T:-lIRD DECLENSION

Nom. ag. Gen. sg. Dat. sg • . Nom. pl. Gen. p l . Oat. pl.

--- -u -e'

po-me po-me-ne,11:0 llJ.\I e {tO qJ.T)Y

PY.Ae134 FY.Ea.439

d a ~ - m a daf!-ma-te6 a . ~ a . p 6 a ~ f y t £ 'FY.AnI92.3 PY.Jn829.2

-"tT)P -"tflpe' -'t"fjPOl

ra-pte ra-pte-re1'1pa1("ttg> }i'paJt'tfjp & ,

Py .Ea2

FY.An424.1pl - t l - j e - te - pl -r l - je - te -

re 81

<ppl£'t1')pe{; <PP l £-rflpOlFY .An201.3 PY.An1.10

po-ro-ko-re- po-ro-ko-re-te

.te - re

11 11

FY.Jn829.4 PY.Jn832.1

81



TABLE V

-EYZ NOUNS OF THE THIRD DECLENSION

Nom. sg. t Gen. sg. Dat. ISg. Nom. p l. Gen. pl. Dat. pl.

- e ~ ' - ~ 1 ' ' o ' -e& -f)Fe' - T ~ F w v -eOaa

ka-ke-u ka-ke-we ka-ke-u-sixa.Axeu, x a . A x ~ F e ' xa.AxeOaiPY'.An601 PY.J'n3l0.l FY.An129.1

ka-na-pe-u ka-na-pe-woxva.q>eu,Py .En14·.2

xVQ.q>f)Fo'PY.Eo269.2

ke-ra-me-we ke-ra-me-wox e p ( l ~ f " ) F & ' xepa.IJ.f)FtuvPy .An201 FY.Ro31l.l

wo-ne ..weFo, vTjFe l

py .C1140.2

ka-ma-e-u ka-ma-we? X a . ~ a . £ J ,PY.EblS6.1

1 x a . ~ a . f j F e 'FY.Eb236.l

pe-re-ke-weI 1tAexfjFt'PY.AeS14

88



89

a 8tems. Hence, the basis for the use of these genitive singulars

n Homer.

Likewise, many consonant stems have a dative in -t l , s e e m i n g ~he original dative ending (as appearing in the Homeric ~ ~ O € r and

of the third declension, whioh came to be replaced in la tel

by -" of locat l va origin. Thus, we find LH [F] e ( , xA£Fer ,

A a ~ o x A e F e r , n&xnpFea.

Certain nouns appear to be deolined according to two declen-

or to admit of heterocli te endings. Such would be the two

singulars, xopla.Ovov and xopla.Ova., ' coriander. ' Also,

has an aocusative singular in a r ~ a . , while XOXAO' has two

nominatives, viz . , XUXAOl and XOXAa..

In inventories of this sor t , the dearth of verbs which exists

s to be expeoted. Hence, no elaborate conjugations can be de

A sporadic use here or there, however, gives a basis for

In the common i r regular verb e ( ~ l , the third person plural is

writ ten in Linear S, which Ventris has t ransl i tera ted I£yo&

the Y on comparative grammar grounds (there is no way

f determin1ng by ehe rules of o r t ~ l O g r a p h y whether a Y is present

r not) . Homer seems to replace th is form by!ao& , perhaps borrow

ng the ending, as Ventris suggests, from the perfect . B u ~ more

i t is ttle orie;inal wlcontracted form of the famil iar e(ol •

t is noteworthy even in this ear l ies t Greek we have that the a

s found, giving credence to the hypothesis ~ h a t a l l the original



90

forms of th is verb contained a a, viz . , ! a ~ t , ~ a ( a ) { , and

he r63ular e ~ { , e o ~ l Y I t a ~ ~ (Sanskrit ~ , ~ , as t i ) .

Another very interesting verb f o ~ n i s the present infini t ive

f them!!ltic verbs as exemplified by that 01' exUl, written a8 £xeey.

serves t.o substantia.te t:J.:.' £ ~ n e r a l opinion that the c l a s ~ i c a lending in -£ , \1 is a cC!J.traction of -eey.

Only in the part iciples is a representative select ion of

obtainable. The present active part iciples are represent

y thE:: following:

PY.Eb236:Py .Na51):Py .An724 .11 :PY.Vn493.1:FY.Eb338.2:0.8823:KN.B823 :PY.An18.6:

PY.Ep6l7.l1:PY.An218.l:

e-ko-tepe-re-wo-tee-qo-tea-ke-raz-teo-pe-ro-sa-deta-pa-e-o-tea-pe-o-tea-pe-o8 -0

o-pe-ro-te

EXOy"teC;1 t A I F o Y ~ t ( ;lnoY1:e(;d.ry t {AU\11: £ C;

.6cptAA.O (Y? ) aa 0e'l:ap1ttoY'ttC;d'Jtt 0 Y't'e ,&'1ttWYtOY6cpeAA.OY't'£(;

I t i s again to be noted tha t i t is impossl'ble to t e l l from

he orthography whether or not a Y i s to be wrItten here or not.

possib1,., each of these couldoe writ ten -01 : ' £ ' .

Present passive particIples are represented by doubtful words

as q 1 - j o - m e - n ~ : ~ & O ~ £ Y O - (FY.Un2.1), re-qo-me-no: A . £ l 1 t O ~ e V O (KN.As1517.l), to-ro-qe-jo-me-no: ' l : p o 1 t t o ~ e v o - (FY.Eq213.l), z 1 e - s o ~

11 (PY.Un267.4), wo-z?o-me-no: 17 (KN.So0429), and .-we-pe

11 (Mf.106). Future part iciples , as well as one

middle partIciple , have already been m 8 n ~ i o n e d in regard

o syntax.



The following reduplicated perfect part iciples have been

KN.Soo44o:

PY'.Va48z:py.sa287:KN.Sd0405.l:Klf.Ral54l:KN.Ld871.2:

de-do-rne-na

qe-qi1-no-me-node-da-me-noa-ra-ru-Jak-ra-rtu-wo-ate-tu-ko-wo-a

OeOO\-Leva

' I foeorn.J.evovapa.pura.a.pa.pFoa.'t'e't'uXFoa.

91

~ h e l a t t e r two forms seem to be archaic neuter plurtals of the

par t ic ip le , while the former has the usual apapura as the

form. Notice the "Attic" rteduplication, morte common in

than in Attic i t s e l f . Without a doubt, therefore, this fOItm

not an invention of Homert, but a t radi t ional f o ~ he inherited

past oenturies.

I t would be in terest ing to inveatigate the use of ~ h e augment

ut due to the scarcity of material for such an invest igat ion,

o conclusion can be reached concerning i t . Certainly it is not

demanded by rule in Homer as i t is in l a t e r Attic .

possibly, i t s use, l ike that of G:1.e ar t ic le , began in the

r i cAge.

Likewise, i t is impossible to invest igate other matters of

in terest concerning morphology in the present s ta te of tne

of the Linear B tab le ts . I t seems probable, for in -

that several of the words ending in -me-na, understood to

e neutert passive part iciples , may well be infini t ives in the

Aeolic ending of -lJ.eva.1 , so familiar to Homer t s readers

Many Homeric forms, so long attr ibuted to the Aeolic or the

and Arcadian dialects derive from Lhe Greek dialect of



92

he Mycenaean heroes. The \-I01"d Fdva.t;;, t radi t iona l ly held to come

the CyprIan dia lec t , has already been seen in context in the

Final ly , some C01:1'lments in the f ield 01 phonology f·ollow.

Fi rs t , vIe ftnd tha t uncon"";racted for:ns in Mycenaean p h o n o l o ~ru le . This confirms th.e theory tha t the l a te r the G r E ~ e k ,

the more contracted the forms. Homer uses many more uncontracted

than Aeschylus; Agamemnon's stewa.rd used more tha.n Homer.

n fac t , contract ion seems unknown.

Another' phenomenon of Mycenaean phonolop;y is the re tent ion of

he digamma in seemingly every case except in i t i a l ly ~ e f o r e P.

t s absence in a few words where our etymologies demand i t s

(e.g. , lvexa, i!pela., b P o ~ e v o ~ , -gpo.) may be due to un-

but pe.r>hapswe

wil l have to revise ourin these cases. On the other hand, i t s use in Repu

' v F & ~ may account for the Homeric lengthening of this suff ix

e .g . , o n w p r v ~ , I l iad v.5).

The rem.ark was made that the digamma was omitted when i n i t i a l

also haopens to an or iginal 0 (e .g . , pe-mo = o n ~ p ~ o ( v ) , jus t

s r1- jo • Fp{ov). But a f ina l ~ i8 also omitted. Whether th i s

8 due to Mycenaean orthography or whether the 0 was actual ly

! t ted in speech c<Jnnot as yet be determined.

One i s very surprIsed co find the followlng peculiar i ty in

he Linear B syl labary. For the p ~ l a t a l s x, Y, X and a given

there is but one symbol. For the lab ia ls R, P, q> and a



93

vowel, there is but one symbol. Yet there is a separate

ror 0 while "t and e are represented by another. One would

to draw any conclusion rrom this phenomenon, unless Ven-

i s r ight in saying that i t makes i t possible to show that the

dh has already become voiceless.

But the most str ik ing feature of Mycenaean phonology iSLhe

se or separate sibns to disting1lish the labiovelars. Ventris

that these labiovelar sounds were present in the pro

or K o , y ~ Greek. But no more exact in terpretat ion or

use, according to him, can be deduced.94

His dirr icul ty with the laoiovelars does not seem in te l l ig io l

or instance, he i s surprised at the lack of any usual conjunctive

only S! used. This he t rans l i tera tes xWe, and presumes i t

s identical with the Homeric and Aeolic xe, wflich must, therefore

had a much wider usage than in classical or even Homeric

•I t seems obvious, however, that the word comes into his-

Greek not as xe, but as the usual conjunctive "te; while

he original rorm in S! i s the regular Indo-European conjunctive,

as -que in Latin.

Ridgeway95 long ago noticed that the Indo-European languages

into two dist inct groups, according as they modify or retain


95William Ridgeway, ~ Earl l Age ~ Greece (Camoridge, 1901), 672.



94

the 51- Thus, the labiovelar is represented in Sanakrit by !. and

in Balto-Slavic by!" in Latin by .9J:! and £, but in Greek by

, ~ . and 6. Likewise, the voiced labiovelar comes into Sanskri t

s 8 or 1, into Halto-Slavic as ~ or ~ , into Latin as ~ or X,

ut into Gres£( as 13, 6, and y . The aspirated labiovelar appears

n Sanskrit a8 ae or h, in Balto-Slavic as !h, in Latin as ! , ~ ,r a, but in Greek as ~ , a, and X.

I t may be added that Greek dialects can also be distinguished

other means, by the ir modification of the Indo-Iuropean

In elegaic and ia.mbic Ionic, the labiovelar appears

n adverbs and pronominal adjectives as a x ( X O ~ t , x o ~ e p o ~ , x ~ ~ ,in Aeolic, it appears as n ( n ~ a a u p e ' , n ~ ~ n & , n ~ A u l ) or ~

( ~ ~ p ) ; in Boeotian likewise as n ( ~ e ~ ~ a p e ' ) , while in Attic as n

a , 0, or a consonant ( R & ~ & , n ~ ~ , ~ n w ' ) , ~ before an & or ,

( ~ , ~ ) i f unvoiced; as 13 before a , 0, or a consonant (l3a{yw), 0

an & or , ( 6 & A ~ U ' ) i f voiced; and as ~ before a, 0, or a

onsonant ( ~ o v o ~ ) , e before an e or , ( ~ £ p ~ O ~ . a ~ p ) i f aspira te .

In the Mycenaean dialect , however, the dialect of the Linear

taolets , the primitive Indo-European labiovelar is s t i l l un

This is useful in p r o v i n ~ ~ that this Mycenaean

is the substratum, not only of the Homeric epic dialect ,

ut of a l l other Greek dialects as well . The followin3 words

with labiovelar consonants appear on the table ts ; appended

s the more familiar form of the same word in l i terary Greek:

to-ro-qe-jo-me-noql-Jo-me-no

,~ p o ' l t e o ~ & v o -:= ~ , o ~ e v o - ?



KN.Aa15l7.l:PY.Va482:PY.An724.ll:PY.Ep.$J9.7:Pr .EblS6.2:

FY.An18.9:Py .An!t27.3:PY.Ae134.1:D.SI055:KN.Ak824:Py .An607:FY.Jn478.10:KN.v147.2:FY.Jn43l.6:py .AnI92.7:Py .Jn693.7:

D.X480:FY.cn40.4:

J;>e-qo-me-noqe-ql-no-me-noe-qo-teo-u-qeAl.-·tl- jo-qo (gen.)

qQ· .u-ko-roa-to-po-qoqe-to-ro-po-ple-qe- taa-pi -qo- i - tado-qe-jaE-u-to-ro-qoE-u-to-qo-taA-pl-qo-( i ) - taA' .e-ri" 'qo-taPe-rl-qo-ta

Qo-u-qo-taPo-ru-qo-ta

95

)..el'JtojJ.£VO&= ~ e ~ l V O \ - L e V o - ?

l n o v ~ € 'o\51:eA(elo1to'

13oU)('o)..o,& . P ~ 0 ) ( , 0 1 l 0 1~ e ~ p d 1 t O o < P l

f 1 t e ~ a . ,' A ~ ~ l ~ O ( ' T : T ) 'Oopel a.EopUl3d1:T)'E ( 5 ~ P 0 1 t O ~, ,

, I J . ~ " ~ E r j 'lip. pd1.\l"'"

ITep' , 0 { ~ T ) 'B o u ! 3 6 ~ T ) 'n o ) . . u < p o v ~ l I '

I t the Mycenaean dialect , however, is not yet different ia ted

other dialects as ta r as consonants are concerned, the same

be said of vowel changes,. The Jlyoenaean dialect shows very

patterns of vowel changes differ ing from the Homeric language.

these vowel changes appear in other his toric Greek

undoubtedly i t oan how be said that they were tne ones

preserved the original forms in these instances. Thus,

i s evidence of the f inalo of the Homeric and Attic dialects

a U ( 41td for cixo, ci1tdOo(H' for 6.1tOOOO& '>; l ikewise, of

al tera t ions in a f ina l or medial a (1tapo for 1tapa,

for ~ e ~ p d 1 t o [ o J ~ ' ) as in Theasalian; and the change of

n i n i t i a l £ in some instances (6x() , although '1t( i s written more

once. 'ox{ i s not found as a Simple preposit ion in l a te r

but i t survives in such words as 61twpa and 01tleev.

These considerations in phonology point to the following

Nilsson has shown that varying fonns in Homer (which



96

he called C 1 p ~ i a n , A ~ c a d i a n , Aeolic) f o ~ c e d one to place the be

ginning of epic t ~ a d i t i o n with i t s formulae of o ~ a l composition

in the "Aeolic" period.96 But then he was faced with the dilemma

of assuming ei ther that the A ~ c a d o - C y p r i a n dialect had influenced

the Aeolic p O l ~ t s , or that the words in question were once co:mnon

to the Aeolic dialeot . He was unwilling to admit the very hypo

the t ica l f i r s t horn of the dilemma, while the second oame very

near to saying that the Arcado-Cyprian dialect and ;·he historic-

al ly known Aeolic dialects a ~ e derived from a common origin from

they were la ter developed separately, but geographical and

lingt<istic considerations seemed against such a view. But, he

adds, " i f this conclusion is r ight , the resul t s are important."97

I t seems now, in the l ight of Linear 8, ths.t the conclusion i s

r i sh t , because the MJcenaean dialect has those precise forms which

at t r ibuted to the Arcado-Cyprian and the Aeoli c·· dialects •

•Greek gives a l l indications of ueing the common origin

for and postulated as an explanation of the Homeric dia lec t .

was the chief conclusion of Michael Ventris and John Chadwick

in the i r epoch-making ar t ic le , "Evidence for Greek Dialect in

the Mycenaean Archives." They wrote a t the end of the i r ar t ic le :

I f our Greek t rans l i tera t ion is jus t i f ied , i t points inescapably to an archaio dialeot of the 'Achaean' type; which ispreCisely what, on historical grounds, we should expect the

96NilsBon, Homer ~ Mycenae, p. 176.

91Ibid.-



97

inhabitants of Pylos and of Mycenae to have spoken. Thename 'Achaean' has been used to denote a hypothetical ancestor of the Arcado-Cyprian and of the Aeolic dialects , andi t therefore seems t..ne most appropriate term to use for th isnew dialect • • •

I ~ this was the language of Nestor and of Agamemnon, theit was presumably also that of Demedokos and the poets of the.time. Should we not conolude that the tAeolic ' stratum,which so opviously underlies the text of Homer, is not theAeolic of Lesbos, but a much older Achaean form, w:lich hadalready se t the conventions of epic verse within the 2ndmillenium B.G.?

Attention has been drawn ~ o Similar i t ies , especially invocabulary, between Cyprian and Homer; but to suppose twot ransposit ions, f i rs t from Achaean to Aeolic, and then fromAeolic to Ionic, i s stretc.d.ing; creduli ty rather far . I f theoriginal stratum was of th is archaic MYcenaean type, manyof the dif f icul t ies disappeaz-. Certainly the sid. laz-i t lesoutlines aboye seem a powerful argument in favour of such a

h y p o t h e s i s . 9 ~What are the important resul ts of which Nilsson speaks? They

re that the beginnings of epic poetry must be eaz-ller than the

invasion, i . e . , they must belong to the end of the Nycenaea

that they must belong to the .Mainland where the.geograpb .

contiguity of the Achaean or Mycenaean dialects has 'been

99

The Homeric epios, then, or the epic t radi t ion predating the

6p10c, must have transmitted i ~ s e l f in this manner. Star t

ng in the Ivcenaean Age and on the M a i n ~ a n d for z-easons given

the tz-adition of oral epic poetry dates from. t.he thir teenth

r twelfth century a.t the la. test (Ventris: second millenium. B . G.lO


99Nilsson, Hom.er ~ MYcenae, p. l 7 ~ .l O O V e h ~ r i s and Chadwick



98

the Mycenaeans were dispersed by the Dorians and took refuge

across the Aegean, they brought with them the i r epics and t rans

them to ~ h e Ionians. 10l The possibi l i ty of advancing and

consolidating th is theory t h r o u ~ h the decipherment of Linear B

serves as an i l lus t ra t ion of how i t s decipherment c o n ~ r i b u t e s to

our understanding of tile l i te ra ture as well as of the history and

eligion of early Greece.

The decipherment of Linear B has proved an outstanding con

t r ibut ion to Homeric scholarship. For Homeric scholarship con-

s i s t s in as deep an understanding as possible of two things: the

thought of Homer and the language of Homer. The t h o u . ~ h t of Homer

s easily appreciated; but the key to a more intinEI te knowledge

of and a further understanding of the people of whom Homer wrote--

of their location and civi l izat ion, the i r wars, their re l igion andthe i r social s tructure , the i r l i t eracy , their daily

•l i fe and customs--which is afforded by the Linear B tablets is of

the Greatest value. I t not only helps us to visual ize mo!'e

ccurately and appreciate more deeply the moving Homeric descrip-

t ions of town and country, but to penetrate more deeply and to

fathom with greater insight the immortal characters of Homer,

through our increased knowledge of the i r culture and our propor-

ionate1y increased abil i ty to esteem the i r sp i r i t . And the

of the decipherment of Linear B upon our knowledge of the

101Xillaon, Homer and Mycenae, p. 177.



99

language of the Mycenaeans can give us a more profound.knowledge

nd appreciation of the language of ~ h e epics . When a person

senses s o m e t h i n ~ of the flavor behind such words pregnant with

connotation as p d v a ~ and Aa&', of XaAXO' and xpua&'J something of

the antiquity of o a ~ o ' and ayyeAo', of n o ~ v t a and A{Fo', he can

experience a sensation akin to that he feels when coming upon

actual remains of the c i t ies of the heroes of Homer--Argos, My-

cenae, Troy. The decipherment of Mycenaean Greek in the Linear B

scr ip t has provided the reader of Homer with another overtone in

is appreciation of the world's greatest l i t e ra ture .



100

NOTE ON TABLET REFERENCES

The various L i n e ~ B tablets are referred to in the following

Firs t appea.rs the place where the tab le t was found. This

s capitalized and abbreviated, e. g ., ..KN for Knossos, PY for Pylos

for Mycenae, 'l'H for Thebes. After the capitals and a period,

he apeoiric clH8sifioation of the tablet .follows, according to

he classif icat ion of Bennett 1n ~ Pylos Tablets (1951) as

revised in his ! Minoan Linear ~ Index and !h! Pylos Tab-

(1955). FolloWing this class i f ica t ion, expressed by a capi-

a l l e t te r plus a small l e t te r in the majorityo.f instances, ap-

inv2':ttory number o.f the tablet , the number under which

given tablet can be found 1n the museum. This method of num-

an improvement over the former method of numeratl'on wi thin

given c l a s s i . f i c a ~ i o n , was worked out in the 1955 edit ion of

Pylos Tablets.

Only readings which are generally accepted are used without

Less oertain readings are queried: (1) .



BIBLIOG RAPHY

I . PRIMARY SOURCES

A. BOOKS

Emmett L., J r . The Pllos Tablets, A Preliminarz Tran-soript ion. With a foreword by Carl W. Blegen. PrIncetOn,N.J., 1951.

The . f Y . ~ ~ ~ . Tablets: Texts of the Insoriptions Found 1939-~ ~ a foreword by Car! ~ B 1 e g e n . prInoeton, w:J:,

S ir Arthur J . Soripta Minoa I . The Written Doouments ofMinoan Crete with SpecIal Reference to the. Archives of KnoBsosWith Plates, Tables, and Figures in the Text. Oxford, 1909.

Scripta Hinoa I I . The Archives of KnOSBOS, Clay TabletsInscrIbed in LInear Script B. Edited from Notes, and Supple-mented by Sir John L. Myres. Oxford, 1952.

B. ARTICLES

Emmett L., J r . , "The Mycenae Tablets," prooeedines of theAmerican Philosophical Society, XCVII (1953), 422-47 • - - - - -

G. Pugliese, ttLe Isorlz ioni preelleniohe di Haghia

Triada in Creta e della Grecla peninsulare," Monument! AntiohiXL (1945), 422-610.

I I . SECONDARY SOURCES

A. BOOKS

B. F. C. The Greek Languat£e. Seoond Edition, Revised.

London, 1933.101



102

annett , Emmett L., J r . A Minoan Linear d Index.------. - - ~ - - ~ New Haven, 195).,

oisac,q, E9ile. Dictionnaire Etyuolobique ~ l:! Langue Grecque,etudies dans ses raP20rts aveo Ies autres langues Indoeuropeennes7 ~ e m e ed. , augmentee dfun index par HiIMut Rix.

HeIdelberg, 1 ~ 5 0 .rugmann, Karl. Grundriss der v e r ~ l e i o h e n d e n Grammatik der indo

Germanisohen S p r a o h e n . ~ Ban . Strassburg, 1886. - - - - - --

uok, Carl Darling. Comparative Grammar of 9reek ~ Latin.Chicago, 1933.

Introduction to the Studl of t.he Greek Dialeots. WithGrammar, Seleoted Inscription&; and Glossary. Revised ed.Boston, 1928.

ury, J. B. A Historl of Greeoe to the Death of Alexander theGreat. Jrd ed. Revised by RUsiiIl Melggi: London, l ~ .

ur t ius , Georg. The Greek Verb: I ts Structure and Development.Translated by Augustus"""S7Wfncrns :_4nd Edwiil1f. ~ n g l a n d . 2vola. London, 187;.

_ _ _e. Prinoiples of Greek Etzsolofi- Translated with the sanotioof the author by Augustus • W kins and E d ~ i n B. England. 2vols. London, 1875.

i r inger , David. The Al1habet: A K;l to the Historl of Mankind.Foreword by Srr-El1 s MInns: nd-ed:-revised. London, 1949.

inley, M. I . ~ World of Odysseus. New York, 1954.

aya Nufto, Benito. Eatudios Sobre Esoritura Z Lengua Cretenses.Lexioon Cretioum. Madrid, 1953.

elb, I . J . ! ~ 5 2 d Z of Wri t ing. ~ i"oundat i ons of Gramma tolo{{J.

Chioago, 1 • ,Vladimir. Etat actual de l' n t e r p I ' ~ t l ' ! tion des inscr'ip

t ions cr&to-mlcenIinnes. SofIa, 1954.

Frank Gordon. Through Basque to Minoanl Transli terations~ Translations £! ~ Minoan Tablets. Oxford, 1931.

el ler , Albert Galloway. Homeric s o c i e t ~ : A Sociological Studl of~ I l iad ~ Odyssey_ New York, 1 02.

ang, Andrew. 'l'he World of Homer. With I l lustra. t ions. New York,1910.



103

Walter.duet1on.

The I l iad . Edited with English Notes and Intro~ o l s . London, 18B6.

du Monde. Par un Groupe de Linguistes sous 1a direc- - £Ion de-X. MeIllet et Marcel Cohen. Nouvelle 'd . Paris , 195,

Henry George and Scott , Robert. A Greek-English Lexicon.A New Edition. Revised and Augmented-throughout by s i rHenry Stuart Jones with the assistance of Roderick McKenzieand with the co-operation of nlany sdholars. 2 vols. Oxford,1925.

H. L. Homer and the Monuments.- - Loncion, 1950.

Piero. Glossario Miceneo. Torino, 1955.

! Testi Micenei in t ranscrizione. Pavia, 1955.

D. B. A Grammar of the Homeric Dialect . 2nd ed, revisedand enlarged. oxrora,-rB9I.

Martin P. Homer and Mycenae. With 52 I l lustrat ions and4 Maps. London, 1933:--

MlnOan-M!Cenaean Religion, and i t s Survival in Greek Re-l igIon. 2n revised ed. , Luncr,-T9'5Q. - -

F. A. The I l iad of Homer. With English Notes. 2 vols .London, 1'81)1;• -

John Devitt Stringfellow. The Archaeology of" Crete:~ I n t r o d u c t i ~ . London, 1939.

William. The Earll A&e £! Greece. 2 vola. Cambridge,Eng., 1901.

Henry. Hycene:! Narrative £! Researches and Discoveries ae r!cene and ! I r Ins . The Preface by the Right HonourablE

;:-E:-G adstone;-M. P. Plans, Maps, and other I l lus t ra t ions .

London, 1878.

in Homeri Iliadem, ex recensione I ~ m a n u e l i s Bekkeri. BerlIn ;-1825.

John A. !h! Unitl £! Homer. Berkeley, Calif . , 1921.

!!!.!!. in the Homeric Age. New York, 1907.

Florence Melian. A ~ !2 the Cretan Scripts . London,1931.





105

"Necrology: Alice Elizabeth Kober," The American Journal ofArchaeolo&,-, LVIII (19.54), 1.53-1.54. -

Arne, "Agaische Texte in griechischer Sprache," Eranos,LI (19.53), 103-120; LrI (19.54), 18-60.

"The Settlement a t 1alys08 and Aegean History c. 1.550-1400B.C.," Opus A r c h a e o l o ~ i c ~ , VI (19.50), 1.50-271.

Archaeological Newsletter, XIX (November 9, 1953)145-146.

Archaeological NeWsletter, ) ~ I I (February 10, 19.5.5), 172-173.

a, "The Language of Homer's Heroes," The Scientif ic American,

axe (May, 1954), 70-75. - - -

Helene J., "The Aegean an: the Orient in the Second Milennium B.C.," The American Journal of ArchaeoloSl, LI (1947),1-10). - -

Alice ElIzabeth, "The 'Adze' Tablets from Knossos," TheAmerican Journal of A ~ c h a e o l o 6 Y ' XLVIII (1944), 64-75.---

"EvIdence of I n f l e c ~ i o n in the 'Chariot ' Tablets fromKnossos," The American Journal of Archaeolosy, XLIX (1945),14)-151. - - •. .--

"InfhH':L.L.:,n in Linear Class B: I·-Declension," T h e ~ AmericanJournal of Archaeologz, L(1946), 268-276. - - -

"The Minoan Scripts: Fi::i.ct and Theory," The American Journal££ Archaeology, LII (1948), 82-103. - - -

George E., "Eleusiniaka, t The American Journal of Archae-ology, XL (1936), 415-431. - - - - -

"Prehistoric Greek Scripts,tI Archaeology, I (Spring, 1948)210-222.

Sir John L., "The Minoan Signary," The Journal or HellenicStudies, LXVI (1946), 1-4. - -

Leonard R., "The Revelations of PylOS." The Listener (Nov-·ember and Deoember, 1955).

William, "The Homeric Land System," The Journal of

Hellenic Studies , VI (188.5), )19-339.



106

"An Attempt at Assigning Phonetic Values toCertain Signs of Minoan, Linear Class B,ft translated by A.E.Kober, ~ ~ e r i c a n Journal of A r c h a e o l o t ~ , LII (1948),311-320.

Michael G. F., and Chadwick, John, "Evidence for GreekDialect in the Mycenaean Archives,lt The Journal of Hellenl.cStudies, LXXIII (195.3), 84-103. - -

Hichae1 G. F . , "Introduc ing the Hinoan Language," TheAmerican Journal £.f. Archae olotg, XLIV (1940), 494 -520 . -

"King Nestor 's Pour-Handled Cups: Greek Inventories in theMinoan Scri pt, 1\ Archaeo1og;y:, VII (Spring, 1954), 15-21.

"A Note on Decipherment Methods," AnLiqulty:, XXVII (1953),

200-206.

J . B., "The Discovery of ~ h e InsoribedClay Tablets a tMycenae," Antiquity, XXVII (1953), 80-84.

"The History of Crete in the 'l'hi!'d and Second MillenniumsB.C.," Historia, I I (1953), 74-94.

"New Light on Homer--Excavations a t Mycenae, 1952," Archaeolo5l, VI (1953), 75-81.

" . "bater , T. B. L., Homer and the Mycenaean Tablets, Antlqu1tl ,XXIX (1955), 10-14.



APPENDIX

AN ATTEMPT AT DECIPHERING

These t ina l pages, const i tut ing an attempt a t further deciph

erment or the L i n ~ · " ' ' : ' ' 'fl . : r tpt , have been undertaken for two

reasons: f i r s t , to gain a humanistic, vicarious understanding of

the diff icul t ies undergone by tllose WilO have fai led and by those

who have succeeded in this great archaeological venture of our day,

secondly, to try to make some addit ional contribution to the cause.

As to the f i r s t purpose, the diff icul t ies encountered In the

decipherment of a scr ipt as ~ m p l i c a t e d as Linear B are suff icient

to "be discouraging. E.ven when one is now able [ ;0 work from WE'll-

established principles and interpretat ions of individual symbols,

allowing always for a margin of error , nothing can be aocomplished

wi.thout diff icul t ies . When a satisfactory t ranscript ion (which i s

rarely verif iable) from t le Linear B syllabic symbols into Greek

or Latin scr ip t has been made, the nature oft-he Linear B syllabary

s t i l l acts as a hindrance. For since there i s often but; one sym

bol for as many as three consonants with any given vowel, i t is

rather often that a single word in preliminary t ransl i terat ion

could jus t as easily be as many as ten otner' Gr8ek words. Context

i s the only refuge. But when the context Is made up entirely or

~ o r the most part of other such words, i t s value 1s negligible •.......--I



108

a resul t , no matter what ut i l i tar ian value crmes of an effor t

t decipherment, ther<'..; has at least resulted a deep and las t ing

of the dif f icul t ies involved in the process.

As to the second purpose, ttl8.t of eolltr1buting some l i t t l e

to the cHuse, it possible, the undertaking 1s ra ther

No discovery of the kind can -':)e made wi IIhout mistakes.

ut i t is a questlnn of values. A l t h o u t ~ ~ n e attempt is apt to

error , i t should also be remembered that even a wrong con-

has often led to a r ight on8, wnereas nothing i s gained

Sit t ing s t i l l . I t Is with caution mingled with hope, ti1erefore

t the following suggested readings are odvanced.

A short , interes t ing table t is tae Pylos tablet py.va482,

WI1ich Ventris quotes to r evidences of inf lec t ion, l but no

or which can he make out . The tablet 1s classif ied Va, i . e .

s ignif ies that i t is a tablet without ideograms, .! Signif ies that

•t concerns men or women. The table t reads, according to the

grid on page 31 of this thesis:

qe-qi-no-me-noe-re-pa a-no-po a-ko ..so-ta z?e e-wi-su-z?-ko 2 ro-i-ko 3

The f i r s t word, se t off to tne upper r ight hand corner ofe table t as i f introducing i t , looks very much l ike a perfect

or passive part ic iple , with the reduplication in qe-qi, and

e part icipia. l ending me-no ( - ~ £ Y O ' ) . . One wO.Jld be severely temptE d

lVentris and Chadwick, p. 88.



109

think i t a form of ~ t v w , fto pay a debt , ' ' to make compen-

were i t not for the fact that the perfect middle of ~ { v wto be ~ e ~ r O ~ a l without any known exceptions. Besides, it

that such a common term for payment, if' such was i t s

use, would be of frequent appearance in tablets record

g commodities and business t ransact ions; but i t is found on no

tab le t , either on the Mainland or a t Knossos. Yet, accord

g to a l l rules of' comparative phonemics, the labiovelar sounds,

~ and 1, ought to come into l a ter Greek as 1 ' s , i . e . ,

meaning 'pa id , ' a very acceptable reading at the top

a table t of this kind.

The following word, e-re-ea, appears in this form only on

tablet as fa:\.' ti S the Mainland goes, although similar words

e-re-mo and e-re-e-wu appear on other table ts (FY.Er)12,7 and

respectively). At Knossos, however, e-re-pa-to appears 0

while e-re-pa-te appears on four others, e - r e - p ~ - t e - oKN.Sel007.2 and e-re-pa-te-wo on KN.Sd040).1 and KN.Scl006.1.

word escapes interpretat ion, but from the related forms ob

e l s e w ~ e r e , i t would seem to oe a noun oapable of declension

the addition o t a!! epuing. One thinks of the w o r d o d ~ a pdeclined exactly that way ( d a 2 - m a ~ d ~ a p t da2-ma-te-

d . t . 2 - m a - t e - o ~ a ~ a p - t l C t J \ l ; thus perhaps e - r e - p a ~ p e < p a . p , e-re

, e - r e - p a - t . - o ~ p e ~ a . ~ e w \ l ? ) ~a-no-po, the following word, appears also on PY.Cnl)1.6, whic



110

ma-ro-pi to-ro-wi CATTLE 13 pa-ro a-no-po CA'llTLE 13

although the meaning is not clear, the word is found to

pa-ro ( n a p o = n a p ~ whose meanind, ' f rom, ' i s establ ished.

The following word, a-ko-so-ta, is a proper name, appearing

s ix other Pylos Lableta. In Greek t ransl i te ra t ion, i t would be

~ p ~ o ~ ~ ~ , as Ventrls suggests elseWhere, or perhaps ~ ~ O ~ a ~ .that the ko-so equals .!!£ ( ')(.00, {;o).

! ! ! i s of doubtful t ransl i tera t ion, occurring only on three

of the tablets . On no other tablet does i t stand alone,

on one Knossos tablet on which i t is presumably an ideo-

E-wi-su-z?-ko i s l ikewise ot doubttul t ranscription, since

reads tL1.6 tnlrd symbol !!,!!, while both Ventris find Furumark

The following symbol is too infrequent to be of estab

phonology; but Ventris and Furumark again preter some z

•I believe that ~ syllable should be writ ten ~ o ~ , be-

this word, while not appearing a t Pylos again, occurs two

on Knossos table ts (KN.Sel007.1 and 1008.1), each time being

e-wi-su-Zol-ko, i . e . , with the already established sign

On the l a t t e r of 'cnese two t ~ b l e t s , thought to be l i s t s

names, it is th e only word s t i l l legible on the table t ; on the

table t , however, i t i s followed by the s ignif icant word:

Is there a connection between e-wl-su-zo-ko and

The following and las t word, rO-i-ko, 1s surrounded by



111

viz . , preoeded by the number 2, and followed by the

3. More l ikely, the preceding 2 goes with the preceding

The word ro-i-ko appears on no other Linear B tablets , and

he appearanoe of e,n 1 in the middle of the word is surprising.

t does not seem to oocur elsewhere, and when i t oocurs a t the

nd ot a word, e .g . , do-e-ro-i ( O O ~ A 0 1 ) on PY.Ae26, i t is the

01 d i p h t h o n g ~ l ending. This, however, i s in conformity with

Rule 3, which states that the second component of diph

in 0' is generally omitted exoept before another vowel and

n noun endings. No other reading of ro-i-ko seems possible, how-

and i t will be notioed that frequent exceptions and varia

in spell ing are found, due, quite l ikely, to the rather

of the time.

The reading of the tab le t , however, remains uninte l l igible .

single syllable !1! is part icularly puzzling. As a one syl-

word i t makes no sense in i t s present t rans l i tera t ion . One

think of a suffix - ~ e , used occasionally (more properly for

but since this suffix 1n Linear B is never found separated

the preoeding'word of whioh i t is enoli t ic , i t should not be

that a questionable - ~ t oan be.

Is the solution to question the t rans l i tera t ion of z?e? One

the following: a t Pylos, this symbol appears as a part of

sign groups. In FY.F.nlB7, it is found in the word

which, when'one remembers tha t ! . ! i s read.s!. or

as well, t ransl i terates into Greek as teu"(e:Ool, dative plural



112

t e u y t u ~ , 'harness maker. ' In PY.Xa70, i t appears 1n the word

which is t ransl i terated t t l axpdvd (xplIva=Doric

r x p ~ v ~ ) , 'head of wheat' (note tha t ~ is never found in the

declension in Mycenaean). Again, the word appears z?e-po-ro

pa - ro ! . • • • followed by the ideogram for grain, wluch

Intote{1(opov iXtl 1ta.pO 'I. ( ~ e { 1 ( o p o v being 'grain '

is the class ica l ~ e { - or te&-1CCpoV, due to the change from 0

u). Whatever the exact determination of these examples, the

of !1! seems to be well founded.

Can any plausible reading of PY.Va482 be given, then? One

not to venture too far afie ld when tne only word certa in

a proper noun; s t i l l , a conjecture can invi te constructive

A-no-po can well be a proper noun, too, since i t is

by pa-ro in PY.Cn131.6. I f e-re-pa is read ~ p e ~ 4 , sub

of ~ p ~ ~ , i t would mean ' roof . ' The l a s t word seems to

pOlXO?, ' s lanted, ' ' curved. ' E-wi-su-zo-ko, which appears with

in KN.Sel007.l, reminds one of the Homeric I L a o ~ , probably

originally with a digamma: ~ F , a u t o x o ? , although the l a t t e r

of the word is unknown. I f the z?e word-syllable could

read 5e, one would derive a reading:

epecpa. 'AV01ttf1·' t e ' t ' V o l J . ~ V O V :

'Al: ' '1 . , 1':)" , 'Z~ o ' t ~ 5£ ~ F , a u t o ~ o , ~ , P01XO' v .

t i f , as evidence indicates, t h e !1 ! must be read te or t e l , the

remains obscure. Hence, i t might be bet ter to read:

' t £ ' t l V O I J . ~ V O V :epecpa. ' A V o x ~ · ' A ~ & ' t ~ 1? ~ F , a u t o x o , 2, pOlXO{ 3.



113PaidsAnops's roof. For Axotas, 71, two even a l l around, threecurved.

Another table t which offers material for decipherment is PY.

which reads:

o-do-ke a-ko-so-tatu-we-ta-a-re-pa-zo-otu-we-a a-re-pa-teze-so-me-noko-rl-a2-da-na UNKNOWN IDEOGRAM #1 6ku-pa-ro2 UNKI'lOWN IDEOGRAM #1 6 UNKNOWN IDEOGHAM #2 6

two more l ines of unknown ideograms with numerals followingthree l ines erased

The meanIng of the f i r s t 1 1 n ~ 1s obvious: o-do-ke a-ko-so-ta

nothing else than ~ a ~ x e ' A ~ & ~ « ' . I t is encouraging to find our

Axotas mentioned in an in tel l ig ible context for a change.

The following l ine of the table t is not so easy to in terpre t .

meaning of tu-we-a is not immediately clear. Perhaps i t s

can be arrived a t , when ingenuity is lacking, by a scient i

c process of' elimination. One finds by examining the le.x1con

the only known class1cal Greek words which i t could be are

-ropo', Gue(a., Sueo'tCI', S'''1e,<;;, 6'00', SUpa., eupeo, .

one ls the proper word in this context? Furumark suggested

hypothetical formSUI-'eGo,

•spices , ' for both this and the followg l ine . But there does not seem to be any declension wnioh

for a variation between ta and ~ in the ending. One

l ike to construe one of the words as an adjective, the other

a noun, but since the word modified by the adjeotive wil l be

to be neuter Singular, the l ikelihood of i t s be1ng an ad

i s diminished, because the neuter s i nu l a r form would not



114

nd in ta . H o w e v e ~ , i f the f i rs t word were a noun, there would be-o need for agreement between i t Hnd the following word. Now the

word in the second l ine , tu-we-ta, t ransl i terates regularly

e o t o ~ a ' , when one r e m e m b e ~ s that the a is omitted before a

consonant. e o e a ~ a ~ , 'a pes t le , ' might be found to f i t

e context.

The following word, a-re-pa-zo-o, begins in a l l probabili ty

the word ! A € l ~ a p , 'unguent, ' to i l , ' and in a sl ight ly applied

' p i t ch . ' T h e ~ e does not seem to be another known G ~ e e kwnch f i t s this spel l ing. The second component of the word

s not olear , tlowever. The obvious conjecture is that i t is 4W',W,

ut i t s exaot interpretat ion i s doubtful. Perhaps a A e t ~ a p ~ vindioate ' f lUid ' pitch or oi l .

The f i r s t word in the third l ine , tu-we-a, followed by a-re

an oblique form of the a A £ l ~ p of the preceding l ine , can

•e t ransl i tera ted into two words: 1) the accusative singular of

'an offer ing ' ; 2) euela., 'a mortar , ' tcup. ' The connection

pestle and mortar i s apparent. Yet neither of these

is grammatically satIsfactory. For Ou&' to have an

singular Soed, i t would be a heterocl i te , very rare

r neuter nouns; while the classical word for mortar or cup is

in gender. The inconsistency in i t s being feminine i s

in the next two words. A-re-pa-te can be nothing else than

the dative singular of a A e , ~ a p of the preceding l ine;

ze-ao-me-no is an obvious future par t ic ip ia l form of ~ ~ w ,



115

to bol l , t ' to see the , ' alt'lcug..PJ. i t s s i t ;n i f ica t ion in oontext i s

ot c lear . But the ending !.e-no, b e i n ~ ~ e i the r - l J . e v o ~ or - ~ e v o v .El1 the r a m t ~ s c u l i n e or neuter , while it proves to be the

of tu.-we-a. The eas ies t solut ton, but one waich Should

the l a s t resor ted to , 1s ~ n e hypothesis tha t 6uc(a, l ike o r ~ o vnd x d x ~ o ' , had al ternate genders 1n Mycenaean Greek.

Tne ko-r i-a2-da-na of the followinH

, l - : ' r ~ e i s in terpre ted by

to be an al ternate form fo r the classicalxop{t\YVOV,2 and

the same reading, x o p ( a ~ v a , as another example o f a

declensIon.)

The ~ u - p a - x : o a . of the next l ine seems to (,e X U 1 t Q , & P O ~ , the

(and Mycenaean, due to t he i r Use o fa in the f i r s t declen

form ot lu.ht&& po ' . The ideol:;ram whIch fol lows !u-p",;-rog,

i t se l f by the numeral 6, i s the sarne 8.S tha t following

I t hae been suggested tha t it should be ln ter-'I

a8 • gra in . ' Sinoe it 1"0110ws two words, thcugh, which

ind.Icate a type of. nerb or grass, it seems lTl(>re l ikely a

of t t ~ commodity mentioned. Perhaps bale (Which the ideo

resembles) 18 too large a quanti ty f'or h.erbs; the generic

1UY' suf t i ce . ' lin. other ideogram must remain uncertain

a suff io ien t oontext throwe more li :',ht on th e sUbjeot .

In vle", of the above, therefore, one mt:,,ht. venture to pro-

2Furumarlc, p . 53.

3Ventrls and ChadWick, p. 92.



the following reading:

~ OG5X€ ' A ~ o ' t a ~ .eueo'ta,· a A e l ~ a p ~ ~ o v ·

e U & { a ~ ? ~ A £ l ~ d ' t & l~ & a & p . & v o ~ ·xop(a.OvQ. *' 6x6na.lpo' '* 5

two l ines of unknown ideogramsthree l ines erased

Given by Axotas:A pest le . Liquid o i l .

A cup to boi l o il in .

Six bundles of coriander.

Six bundles of galingal ... . . . .

116

All7 t r a n s l i t e r ~ t i o n s a.nd conjectures must remain neoessarily

The deciphement of Linear B i s s t i l l in i t s early

Many of the proposed values may have \:;.0 be reconsidered,

nd the rules of orthography may not yet be fu l l l Wlderstood: many

f the most ba1'fling features may be due to Linear B being a scrip1

adapted to Greek from the conventions of a quIte dif-

language. But i t i s the belief of Michael Ventris and of

others well versed 1n the f ield that prolonged study wil l

enable the whole Mycenaean material to be interpreted



117

Since the writing of this appendix, Professor L.R . Palmer,

a broadcast over BBC, as reported in the Listener for Novemper,

, 1955 (p* 892), gave a tentat ive t ranslat ion of the very table t

mentioned, FY.Un267. Taking the tu-we-ta of the second l ine

a proper name, Palmer derived tne plausiole reading: "How Axo-

s gave to Thyestes the unguent boiler aromatic herbs for boil in6

the unguent."

His t ranslat ion compared with the suggestions of the appendix

that he confirmed many ot the suggestions and showed greater

ght in t ranslat ing other words. Examining his t ranslat ion i.n

deta i l , we can at t r ibute his "How AXotas gave • • • n to his

to popularize i t for a radio audience. The ~ O ~ x e ' A ~ O ~ « ~olear enough.

I t1s interes t ing to find that Palmer arrived

atthe same

as we did in regard to the best spell ing of the proper

e A-ko-so-ta.

Making u i O " t 4 ~ a proper noun is a stroke of ingenuity, of

ingenuity which was admittedly lacking and in whose steAd a

process of elimination was substi tuted. Palmer un

takes thE'l name in the dat i va case: e u ~ o ' t " ..I t is not at a l l clear to what Greek worJ Palmer reduces tne

a-re-ea-zo-o to obtain the epi thet 'unguent boi le r . '

component of the word is undoubtedly f r a m a A e , ~ a p ; the secon

must be a derived form of ~ ~ w , ' to bo i l . ' Perhaps he would

the Greek word as ~ A e l ~ ~ ~ o o ' , as the proper t rans l i te ra t ion



118

seems to dema.nd, but there are no comparisons tn other words of

this composition.

Palmer understands tu-we-a of the following l ine as 'aromatic

erbs , ' taking i t as the accusative plural of e o o ~ , viz . , GuFed.

certainly seems the correct reading, but i t is fraught with

a grammatical diff icu l ty . The ze-so-me-no of the following l ine ,

Palmer agrees with me in taking as a future part ic iple of

purpose, must be masculine or neuter singular . The ~ i s defini te

ly of that phonetic quali ty; 1 t cannot be read n!. My suggested

reading as fa cup to boi l 011 1n' 1s hardly more sa t i s fac tory ,

for , besides the non-Greek construction, I also have a

grammat1cal d1fficul ty in that the class ical form of the word for

up i s generally feminine.

All in a l l , Palmer's t ranslat ion, while plausible, can hardly

e class if ied as more than tentat ive. Yet, it wil l be readily

"

tha t he derived a much more sat isfactory reading of the

than that presented in th is appendix.



APPROVAL SREET

The th• • t . submttted b1 Fnnoi . r. Gigaao, S,J.

haa been H ad and apppoved by three member. of the

DepartllWnt ot Cla.n!ee.

The t inal oopl.. have been examined by the 411"-

ecto . o t t.bG theai. and the s1gnature which appear.

below ve . i t l . . the taot that &n1 nec.ssary change.

hav. been incol'ponted, and that the theai. i8 now

given t lnal approval with reterence to content,

.tOI'll, and meohaftloal aacuN c1 ,

Documents

The Decipherment of Mycenaean Greek in the Linear B Script and Its Consequences in the Field of Homeric Scholarship