The Linear B Tablets and Mycenaean Social, Political, and Economic Organization

Lesson 25, The Prehistoric Archaeology of the Aegean ^ | Revised: Friday, March 18, 2000 | Trustees of Dartmouth College

[SunkenCiv]

KO-RE-TE, PO-RO-KO-RE-TE [koreter, prokoreter] -- Such officials are known at both Knossos and Pylos. The titles bear a suspiciously close resemblance to the Latin terms curator and procurator ("guardian" and "manager, imperial officer/governor" respectively). The Linear B evidence suggests that the koreter was a local official in charge of one of the sixteen major administrative units within the Pylian kingdom, and the prokoreter was evidently his deputy.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG, back toward ancient languages.

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[jimtorr]

My take the reverse of Lasken. I put some credence into Latin legends about their origion in Troy. The Latin terms could be taken from the much earlier Greek world.

[SunkenCiv]

My view is that the legend (which is mostly due to the Aeneid) is based on the Etruscan migration to Italy etc, and borrowed by the Latins, who were already in Italy (the Romans inherited architectural systems, roadbuilding, and hydraulics from the Etruscans). The problem with Latin words in Linear B is that there are no signs of Latin roots in the Aegean, and Linear B is supposed to have been abandoned hundreds of years before the Romans were in a position to bring loanwords to the Aegean. :')

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[SunkenCiv]

revised version of the comment (pulled by mod at my request):

A Proper Dating of the Linear B Tablets
by Jesse E. Lasken
ESOP 1993 v 22

While there is general agreement that the language of the Linear B tablets was Greek, many words lack clear cut Greek etymologies and have not been satisfactorily translated. This has led to suggestions that the tablets may contain a sort of jargon combining several languages. I will demonstrate the equivalence of the Mycenaean terms ko-re-te, po-ko-re-te, e-qu-ta, and ra-wa-ke-ta [with] the Latin terms curator, procurator, equite, and legatus and discuss other evidence suggesting that Latin was included in the Linear B tablets. I am not disputing that Mycenaean is a Greek tongue; however, the scribes who prepared these tablets were also using, to a limited extent, certain Latin terms and constructions.

Lasken seems to be onto something here. He claims that some Linear B tablets contain Latin terms, and must date after circa 207 BC. This is not to say that they all must, nor does it take into account the fact that Latin is older than this and the loan vocabulary could have resulted from the extensive commerce, but not so much older that the existence of the Greek Dark Age isn't shown to be imaginary. :') Notice that the Dartmouth paper just mentions a couple of these as suspicious, but offers no critique of it.

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks go from me to the moderator for cleaning up (at my request) my rather careless errors in two of my postings (#1 and #5). :')

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[SunkenCiv]

GGG bump. :')

[SunkenCiv]

Believe it or not, each of the topics below discuss Linear B!

The Case of Victor Davis Hanson: Farmer, Scholar, Warmonger
The Occidental Quarterly ^ | Winter 2004 | F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D
Posted on 05/19/2004 12:31:33 PM PDT by robowombat
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1138659/posts

New Discoveries In Syria Confirm Theory On Spread Of Early Civilization
Newswise.com ^ | 6-2-2002 | Carrie Golus
Posted on 06/03/2002 1:42:03 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/694010/posts?page=30#30

Troy the Movie
Vanity | JFC
Posted on 05/25/2004 7:00:32 AM PDT by JFC
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1141816/posts?page=39#39

Who Really Discovered America?
Hope Of Israel
Posted on 07/14/2002 2:08:47 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/716088/posts

Who really discovered America? (Evidence that the Jews did!)
Far Shores - Ancient Mysteries
FR Post - April 13 2004 | William F. Dankenbring
Posted on 04/13/2004 6:26:18 AM PDT by vannrox
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1116677/posts

Yemen's Great Past and Future.
Accessing Yemen's Historical Importance and Future Role.
The Yemen Barometer | 6/6/04 | Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
Posted on 06/07/2004 1:26:25 AM PDT by Muhammad Shams Megalommatis
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1148990/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Uncracked Ancient Codes
(Lost Languages reviewed)
by William C. West

Linear A, undeciphered, tantalizes, because about 80 percent of its signs resemble those of Linear B. Its system of numerals seems to be fairly clear: On several tablets, a term for "total" appears at the bottom of a tablet that includes a series of numbers. The numbers add up to the total given, instilling confidence that we understand at least these units. Attempts to show that Linear A represents a known language of the Aegean world, however, have not been successful. All but a few scholars agree that the language of Linear A cannot be Greek, and the idea that it represents a Semitic language has been rejected by nearly everyone. An Anatolian language (perhaps Lycian) remains a possibility... Robinson's descriptions of such analysis, and his accounts of both successful and unsuccessful decoding attempts, are clear, provocative and stimulating.

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Lost Languages: The Enigma Of The World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson

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[SunkenCiv]

a few related GGG / FR topics:

Amazon Warrior Women
PBS ^ | Current | PBS
Posted on 08/04/2004 8:51:53 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1185293/posts

The Argonaut Epos and Bronze Age Economic History
Economics Department, City College of New York
Revised May 14, 1999 | Morris Silver
Posted on 08/25/2004 10:30:51 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1199756/posts

Inscription in Carian and Greek
Anistoriton ^ | 27 Dec. 1997 | (editors)
Posted on 07/17/2004 6:20:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1173453/posts?page=10#10

Non-Attic Characters
University of California, Irvine, Thesaurus Linguae Graecae
September 7 2003 (rev 9-28-2003) | Nick Nicholas
Posted on 07/18/2004 6:43:19 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1173901/posts

So Who Is Buried in Midas's Tomb?
NYT ^ | 12/25/2001 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Posted on 12/24/2001 10:12:01 PM PST by a_Turk
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/596541/posts

The Truth About An Epic Tale Of Love, War And Greed (Troy)
The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 3-24-2004
Posted on 03/25/2004 12:03:11 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1105131/posts

Was There a Trojan War?
Archaeology ^ | May/June 2004 | Manfred Korfmann
Posted on 07/29/2004 11:43:38 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1181498/posts?page=3#3

[SunkenCiv]

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Lost Languages: the Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson

[t]he Minoans dazzled Evans, too, and convinced him that Greece was "a Mainland branch of the Minoan culture", a mere "Minoan plantation"... If any classical specialist -- such as the archaeologists digging in mainland Greece -- disagreed with Evans, they seldom voiced their opinion... When the director of the British School at Athens ventured to differ in 1923, he had to retire from his position and was excluded from digging in Greece for a considerable period... According to the Cypriot phonetic values, the two signs should read polo...Evans duly noted that it resembled the classical Greek word 'polos', young horse or foal... But Evans rejected this plausible beginning, almost out of hand... Evans simply could not accept that the Minoans spoke and wrote an archaic form of Greek... In 1939, the American archaeologist Carl Blegen... had struck lucky with his first trial trench at a place he believed to be the site of ancient Pylos... almost 600 new pieces of Linear B... [Evans'] followers rapidly came up with explanations, such as that the tablets were "loot from Crete" or that a Greek ruler had raided Minoan Crete and carried off its scribes to work in his own palace at Pylos. [pp 76-84]

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[SunkenCiv]

New Ice-Core Evidence Challenges the 1620s age
for the Santorini (Minoan) Eruption
Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 25, Issue 3, March 1998, Pages 279-289 ^ | 13 July 1997 | Gregory A. Zielinski, Mark S. Germani
Posted on 07/29/2004 12:25:45 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1180724/posts

here's an old topic, the Minoans are mentioned:

The Scholars and the Goddess
Culture/Society Miscellaneous
Source: The Atlantic Monthly
Published: January 2001 Author: Charlotte Allen
Posted on 01/11/2001 16:26:14 PST by Benoit Baldwin
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a5ddea64a54.htm

[SunkenCiv]

from the Winter 2004-2005 KMT (v 15, n4, pp 55-56):

Upper Egypt's Best Kept Secret: The Temples of Tod
by editors? "Forbes"?

In 1936 French archaeologist F. Bisson de la Roque found beneath the floor of the Middle Kingdom sanctuary, buried in four copper chests, a hoard of raw lapis lazuli, gold and silver ingots and finely wrought silver vessels, many of a votive nature and of Mesopotamian and Minoan origin -- known today both as the "Tod Treasure" and the "Treasure of Amenemhat II" (whose name was on the chests), it was divided between the Cairo and Louvre museums.

other stuff in this issue, also in the new Minerva.

[SunkenCiv]

The Minoan Deposit Project
by Jacqueline S. Phillips
(Project 13, abstract)

The "egyptianising" material on Crete offers further possibilities for chronological limitation, when compared to the original type(s) and their florit in Egypt itself. This aspect previously has been little considered, except for Warren's Minoan Stone Vases type 30, but is being extended to a variety of other artefact types and individual features found on Crete, for which different patterns of "egyptianisation" are emerging. Several such features, in context, indicate a limited dating range on Crete, whilst others continue and parallel developments in Egypt itself and thus are likely to be closely contemporary with them. Review of these trends to date is promising, and involves a detailed investigation of the type(s) and their contexts both on Crete and in Egypt. To this end, this review also considers the question of a wholly indigenous (i.e., non-"egyptianising") Minoan origin for such trends and individual features.

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[SunkenCiv]

Amenemhet III's Pyramid at Hawara
by Alan Winston
TourEgypt.net

Petrie not only investigated the pyramid fairly thoroughly, he apparently also closely examined the huge mortuary complex associated with the pyramid. The reason that modern and not so modern travelers call this the Labyrinth is because of the complex, but splendid mortuary temple located on the pyramid's south side. Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Pliny all make reference to this structure. According to Diodorus, Daedalus was so impressed by the temple that he built his own labyrinth for Minos in Crete based on Amenemhet III's temple.

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Donate Here By Secure Server·Eating our own -- Time to make a new start in Free Republic
PDF to HTML translation·Translation page·Wayback Machine·My Links·FreeMail Me
Gods, Graves, Glyphs topic·and group·Books, Magazines, Movies, Music

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[SunkenCiv]

The March/April 2004 issue of Archaeology Odyssey had as its main focus the Minoans:

Deciphering Cretan Scripts
by Barry B. Powell

As children we learn that A is for Apple, B is for Boy and C is for Cat, and that CAB is the machine we use to travel downtown. We also sing the alphabet song, whose words are the alphabetic signs sung in a sing-song rhythm that helps us to remember them all. We cannot imagine easily that pre-Greek systems of writing do not work that way at all. They do not tell us what words sound like. We do not know, for example, how Hebrew sounded in the days of Jesus, because the ancient Semitic system of writing simply does not tell us how to pronounce the words. You have to know already, just as we are taught to pronounce “A rough cough ploughed through a hiccough.”

To understand writing on Crete, and its place in history, we need to know something about the theory and history of writing, because we constantly run aground in thinking that writing in the ancient world worked in the same way that writing works for us. We also stumble over confusing terms applied unhistorically. For example, we often use the word “alphabet” to describe Phoenician writing, but this obscures the fact that an earth-shattering change took place around 800 B.C. when someone, either Greek or Semite, modified the Phoenician system to create the world’s first writing system that tells the reader what words sound like.*

Writing consists of markings of some kind on a material substance. These markings sometimes represent speech or parts of speech, but they may also communicate information through a raw symbol, like an arrow, or through a picture, like a handicapped-parking sign. What we most often think of as “real” writing, however, is phonetic writing, which refers to systems of writing in which at least some marks represent sounds of human speech.

[SunkenCiv]

Ah, not a topic of its own, just a post in this one. See the in reply to link.

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