middle east aegean region 1800-1300 iib

7/28/2019 Middle East Aegean Region 1800-1300 IIb

1/45

CHAPTER XIIIT H E L I N E A R S C R I P T S A N D T H ET A B L E T S AS H I S T O R I C A L D O C U M E N T S :

(a) L I T E R A C Y IN MINOAN ANDMYCENAEAN LANDS

I . I S O L A T I O N O F M I N O A N - M Y C E N A E A NL I T E R A C Y

I F some fairly high degree of literacy, and at least a modestproduction of literature, are to be expected in an original and inother respects notable culture, such as the Minoan in its greatdays, then the Minoan culture must be considered odd. As withall peoples before a certain measure of literacy is attained, doubt-less there was 'oral literature', but about Minoan oral composi-tions nothing much can be inferred. When at length writing hadbeen learned, at least writing for some purposes, the writing downof creative literature seems not to have been one of the purposes.Of written literature, indeed, not one scrap survives, nor is thereany evidence pointing to the existence of any written literature.Oral compositions m ay well have been comm on rig ht down to theend. Certainly there was no high degree of literacy.For the un derstanding of this, many necessary facts are knownonly partially, and m any m ore are lost. Theory too is weak. Abou tliteracy itself, generally, as a phenomenon, knowledge is rudi-mentary. There is no published study that has both scope andvalue. W e know little of what to expect, how to understand . Th isis particularly true of the earlier stages. Until enough is knownso that sharp delimitations are possible, it seems best to include awide range of graphic expression and communication.One comprehensive fact about Minoan literacy is clear, and isstriking. This is its isolation. From an early period, and at variousstages, the M inoans were in touch with literate peoples in Eg yp t,in the Levant, and in Asia Minor. The Minoans' opportunities,over the centuries, to observe writers and to learn writing maywell have been equal to the opportunities which induced Greekslater to adopt the Phoenician alphabet. Along with the Phoenician

Cambridge Histories Online Cambridge University Press, 2008


2/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 583alphabet, and from the East, the Greeks of the eigh th and seventhcenturies B.C. also adopted 'orienta lizing ' motifs in art. In M inoanart there is no oriental adoption that is quite parallel. TheMinoans borrowed comparatively little from outside. They mayhave imitated others in making use of personal and business seals.They seem to have used as their standard heavy weight theBabylonian light talent; and, though perhaps by chance, theirsystem of fractional measurements is Mesopotamian in methodthough not in significant details. A few of the 'Hieroglyphic'signs have been thought to have an Egyptian look. With respectto literacy, tha t is all. The re is no reason to believe tha t it was theexamples of other literate peoples which induced the Minoans tobecome literate. If it is true that much earlier in Babyloniawriting on clay tablets developed through stages similar to thestages of M inoan writing later, still it seems unthinkable that theBabylonian development was in any real sense a model for theM inoa n: the M inoans would never have looked back to find how,long since, the Babylonians had begu n; then having m astered thebeginning, to learn the next Babylonian steps, also long in thepast, and so on. Rather, the two developments were similarbecause similar forces were at work. Nor was there any transmis-sion of actual signs from Mesopotamia to Crete.Moreover when the Minoans had developed a system ofwriting, they did not follow the Egyptian or any other example ofusing literacy prominently by setting up a wealth of public in-scriptions. The extreme contrary is true. A few masons' marksand some single double-axe signs are the nearest the Minoanscame to big public inscriptions. Like Minoan literacy itself,Minoan habits associated with literacy were home-grown; theMinoans were largely immune to the examples set by others.In time literacy ceased to belong solely to C rete. The last formof Bronze Age literacy, called Linear Script B, is found on theGreek mainland as well as in Crete. When this script was beingdeveloped and propagated, there was a new opportunity forborrowing. As they came to see the ad van tage s of" literacy andbecame literate, the Mainlanders might perhaps have been ex-pected to see advantages, if there were any, in borrowings. Thesystem of fractional measures was in fact altered to resemble,consciously or not, the Egyptian. But that was all. Egyptianwriting as a system was cumbersome and uninviting; and therewas perhaps no obvious advantage in adopting any individualsigns from it or from cuneiform. Lik e its predecessors, Linear Bremained immune.



3/45

584 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T SAs we shall see at the end, Minoan literacy was isolated alsoin respect to its termination. Literacy later, in the Phoenician

alphabet, once it started, spread far and wide, was modifiedfor various lan guages, and has lived on continuously. MinoanMycenaean literacy, in contrast, came to an utter end. Exceptin remote Cyprus, with its other strange survivals, not a sign ofMinoan writing, modified or unmodified, survived to be knownin Archaic Greece.I I . S I G N S A N D M A R K S N O T S P O K E N

It will be convenient to begin with various signs and marks whichevidently did not represent common nouns or other 'vocabulary'words; they were not a part of everyday speech. Many of themseem to have indicated persons.POTTERS' MARKS

In Classical times, fine vases were often lettered with signatures,names, etc., but apart from a few prices and the like, specialpotters' symbols, i.e. marks for the trade, are comparatively rare.In the Bronze Age also, on the whole potters' marks are rare,though less so. Perhaps not significantly, more are recordedfrom some sites than from others.For 'Greek' lands no collection has yet been made, but datawill presently be available from the excavation of Lern a. Le rnayielded marked pots which not only are clear with respect toperiod but are also, after the Early Helladic period, fairlyabundant. Although the earliest that can be claimed are few andsomewhat dubious, their period is actually Late Neolithic: if anyof a half-dozen candidates can qualify as intentional, they will bethe oldest known writing in lands that later became Greek. Theindications of intent seem to be present: not all are scratchesmade after firing, but one may have been painted, and oneincised, before firing. As in Classical times, intent, i.e. theopposite of the casual incising of graffiti, is conclusively provedby painting or incising before firing. Applying this same test, wefind indubitable instances, though not numerous, in EarlyHelladic. In Middle Helladic the number of marked pots fromLerna is well over 100, nearly all of them incised or paintedbefore firing. The element of intent is now further emphasizedby the variety of position of the marks; the handle, i.e. theprominent place, is favoured for the majority of marks. In LernaVI (the Shaft Grave period), however, not so: in a total of 100,



4/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 585all but four are on the base, as commonly in the early period theyhad used to be; but they too were put there before firing.

Going further we may urge that most potters' marks are notmeaningless whimsical scratches, but are lines drawn with fullintent; they mean something. Whatever the purpose(s)a formof signature (the potters' own mark ?), certifying, or numbering,grading, pricing? the impulse was common. Po tters' marksare spread over a wide area, which includes Cyprus, Egypt andPalestine, and the West (Lipari Islands). In a sense, the marksare part of the potters' craft; they belong with it, more or lessexclusively; they were not readily subject to use and developmentfor other purposes. Po tters ' marks stand apar t: it does not seemthat they developed at all, nor can we trace any influence of themon any system of developed writing. This was perhaps natural,because whatever they meant, the message was meagre. Theironly future was to be potters' ma rks. Nevertheless they have someremote bearing on literacy. A certain number of persons wereaccustomed to inscribing signs, and the signs were seen, thoughperhaps only occasionally, by everyone. Po tters' marks were inthe soil from which literacy grew.

MASONS' MARKSAnother class of artisans had occasion to use marks which maybe personal. At some eighteen Cretan sites, Cnossus among them ,as far back as Middle Minoan I, and continuing to the end ofMiddle Minoan III (M.M. Il l) , building blocks are markedwith signs. On the M ainland , masons' marks have been found attwo, but only two, sites. Often more pictorial and distinctive thanthe simple linear marks on pots, typical masons' marks includedouble-axes, broad arrows, stylized trees and branches, crosses,stars, and tridents, as well as abstract and compound forms.1Sometimes two, or a few, are used together. Most important, asindicating a fairly advanced development, are small tokens ofidentification obviously added to qualify signs otherwise identical.There is no inclusive collection or treatment of masons' marks,or even an accepted general doctrine. The meaning of one sign,however, is apparent. In at least one suite at Cnossus, the double-axe is used, not like other masons' marks, but evidently as a signthat the Pillar C rypts are sanctuaries. On the two (square) piersthere are no fewer than twenty-nine double-axes.2 These marksare of only moderate size. M any other masons' marks in M . M . I

1 G , 5,1 . 135,fig.99 .2 G , 5,1 . 425 ff. and Suppl. PI. x.



5/45

586 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T Sand M . M . II are fairly big and bold, but their position, often inthe lower right-hand corners of blocks, is not conspicuous, andonce the masonry was complete, they would be plastered over.At Cnossus, furthermore, the large masons' marks are usually onthe up per or lower surfaces of the slabs. In this one respect, viz.in not being meant to be visible, they resemble m asons' marks inthe Classical period, which however were used largely for re-assembling buildings taken down and moved.From the Cnossus palace of M .M . I, Evans collected thirty-three different designs.1 They remind one of modern brandm ark s used on cattle, and it may well be that they are qua rrym en'slabels, or other builders' personal certifications, or the like. Theonly doubt about this interpretation arises from certain ones ofthe m which are huge m arks, up to 0-72 m . in width, large enoughto extend across most of the area of the block, and deeply cut.These are the largest inscribed signs of any kind in the wholeMinoanM ycenaean period, and at first glance they suggest muchmore than mere personal labelling or certifying: so huge a sign,so much trouble for what was not to be visible, suggests somesort of magic, or consecration, or whatnot. It is probably wise toallow, however, for strong personal pride. Only a few blocks,after all, were thus marked. The labour may have been slavelabour, and extra cost-less time may have been available. A childishdesire for marks bigger than anyone's may have operated. Thedouble-axe surely had cult significance, but the other thirty-twoare too numerous to be magical.In any case it is notable that the signs recur in identical form atmany sites, both on palaces and (at Tylissus) private houses.M os t impressive is the fact that of Evans's thirty-three M .M . Isigns, some nineteen are identical with, or close to, signs on theearlier palace at Phaestus. This includes compound signs.Altogether it seems likely that the double-axes should be con-sidered apart, and that the other m arks are not magical at all, butdesignate quarries, contractors, guilds, or the like, several ofwhich furnished blocks for many palaces.La ter, in M . M . Il l, masons' marks, at least in Cnossus,exhibit the opposite extreme in depth and size. They are solightly incised as to be difficult to detect; all are smaller, and atleast one is m inute. Then, at or before the end of M .M . I l l , allthe masons' marks come to an end.Some masons' marks look like signs used in the variousMinoan scripts, but the shapes are nearly all simple rectilinear

1 G, 5,1. 135, fig. 99.



6/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 587shapes, and several are positively not related to the scripts. Con-sidered as writing, masons' marks appear to be a class apart.Comparable, however, to masons' marks, at least in proving animpulse to put personal marks of certification (?) on expensiveproducts, are signs on bronze ingots. Objects of bone, ivory, andfaience also sometimes bear similar marks.

SEALS AND SIGNETSThere is yet a third group of personal signs, most of thempictures rather than writing. This group consists of seals andsignets, together with sealings made from them. 1 The seals arefine stones, that is engraved gems. A great many are pierced, tobe strung and worn on neck or wrist; others have small finger-grips to facilitate their use as stamps. The signets, so-called, aresmall gold or silver plaques mounted on rings . Large num bers ofseals, signets, and sealings have been well pub lished, bu t they areso abundant that adequate assimilation will take time. They offera profusion of designsabstract, natural, monstrousmany un-pretentious, but many also of high quality. In contrast to th ehumble potters' and masons' marks, the seals and signets makeup a corpus of symbolic communications almost unlimited invariability and expression. In a sense, this great series goesbeyond anything which ordinary literacy might offer.Cylinder seals, though comparatively rare, were also used inCrete, and in all three main periods. Their form, content, and insome instances provenience, bespeak foreign connexions, notablywith Syria and Mesopotamia.2 Rolled upon the clay, they mayrepeat a figure several times, producing a better impression than asingle flat seal impressed several times. But the cylinder seal mayalso give an extended scene with several different figures, com-parable to the largest (flat) signets. This was the direction theirdevelopment tooktoward picturesrather than toward script.From promising but limited beginnings in Early Minoan I allthe way to the end of L.M. Ill , the series of seals and signetsreaches throughout the Minoan periods. The story of literacy isinvolved with this history: in M . M . I a kind of 'P ictographic ' ;and then finally the P ictographic symbols turn into a Pictograph icScript (the term 'Hieroglyphic', much used for this latter, hasthe wrong overtones). Th e Pictographic Script is used, or at leastit survives, mainly on the seals. Early in M .M . I l l , however, the1 G, 6.2 G , 5,1. 197 f., 11. 265 f., iv. 497 ff.



7/45

588 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T SPic tog rap hic Script is supp lanted by, if it does not actually evolveinto, Linear Script A. Linear A was evidently not felt to besuitable for the surfaces of seal-stones, which demand pictures orsome other form of design. But more of this below: first it is inorder to say a word about the seals which have no Pictographicwriting but only designs, so to speak, of their own.The distinction is of course not sharp. Any personal seal (orsignet), whether the design is 'double sickles', or a dog baying ata mountain goat, does mean not just the designthe sickles orthe go at bu t t he owner also. It is his mark, it symbolizes him, itspeaks for him (or for her: women also used them). Unless theseal is a mere ornament or talisman, amulet, or the like, it usuallyhas a fairly precise . meaning, depending on the circumstances.Thus it might mean, 'N owns this'; or, 'The security of thecontents is the object of this sealing, which is done under theaegis of N ' ; or, ' T he quality of the contents is guaranteed by N ' .In later, Linear B, times, a sign might be added by incision toqualify the meaning or to add a detail. Styles of design variedfrom period to period, so much so as to suggest that over longperiods specific designs had no intrinsic meaning which madethem significantly appropriate to their owners. Especially in theearlier periods, for century after century, a great many seals areindeed small and very hum blejust two or three dotted circles, orthe like not much removed from an illiterate person 'mak ing hism ark '. It seems clear that many people of limited means used seals.On ce made , a seal, like a rubber-stam p, is easy to use and savestime. Eventually seals were developed with two, three, four, oreven eight faces. Each face could, and probably did, have its ownspecial meaning; and all of the faces, impressed in a row together,althou gh they m ean t no more than a series of discrete co-ordinateentities, might rather make, in effect, a rudimentary sentence.Th is would be a considerable step toward literacy. Th e next stagewould be to put more than one symbol on a given face of a seal(see Fig . 13). T he seal then begins to speak, as it were, for itself, assentences can, and with less, or with no, present thought of theowner. When two or more symbols are together, the range ofmeanings is of course enlarged. The individual pictures take onnew significance through association with each other: forinstance, the meaning of a given symbol is 'modified', adjective-wise, by juxtaposition . W hen this, or som ething like it, has begunto happen, literacy has begun to be attained.The foregoing analysis is too brief and simple, and probably isotherwise faulty, but at least it can be said that in a world where



8/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 589potters' marks and masons' marks were often seen, and seals toowere com mon, it is with seals that, in the record as it comes to us,the earliest literacy is associated. Seals not only had enormouslygreater variety of design and, no doubt, frequency of use; theyalso led easily to the conjunction of multiple symbols.

Fig. 13 . Four-sided bead seal with Pictographic Script from Sitia. (A .J .E v a n sScripta Minoa i, 155, no. P 28. By permission of Oxford University Press.)

I I I . SCRIPTSPICTOGRAPHIC SCRIPT

The crucial stage was reached when pictograms ceased to berepresentations (usually conventional) of objects intended tosignify those objects, and became symbols representing the soundsof speech, that is, began to have phonetic value. It is useful to callthe body of such symbols a 'sc rip t'; 1 when used, the symbols are'w ritte n' (not 'd ra w n '); and the ability to write and to read themis developed, full, 'literacy'.A Pictographic Script, scil. phonetic writing, has beenrecognized first in M .M . I. In Minoan and Mycenaean lands,writing eventually became one principal and distinctive feature ofthe palaces. Perhapsbut stronger proof is lackingthe factthat writing and the palaces originated in the same period is noaccident. The development went on through the great days ofM . M . I and II, and did not end until seal-like four-sided objectswere made, still small but with room for enough writing to provethat writing had been attained. It was only a short final step toincising Pictographic Script on clay tablets, i.e. on temporarymaterials (see Fig . 14). W hen this had happened, thoug h there areonly a few tablets to prove it, Bronze Age literacy had reached its

1 G, 3, 163 ff.



9/45

59 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T Sgoal, its characteristic forms, both of signs and of material onwhich they were written. All that was left to do was refinements.Seals themselves endure, and in our day a chance finder willusually sell his find, so that the generous number known toscholarship is no mystery. But it is a rare chance that we haveany object on which they were impressed: there survives just onesealing which matches a known seal. The loss of nearly all theperishable matter which might have testified to the various stages inthe development of literacy also makes it difficult to judge about theextent of that literacy. Again, with so few Pictographic texts as abasis, and with insufficient detailed study of the signs, developmentcannot be traced. As later in Linear Abut in sharp contrast withLinear B in Cretethere seem to have been local varieties.

Fig. 14. Clay label with Pictographic Script from Cnossus. The other side is plain.(A . J. Evans, Scripta Minoa 1, 169, no. P 96 a. By permission of Oxford UniversityPress.)Only some general facts are plain. Pictographic literacy hadover 300 years in which to develop, as long as or longer than the

periods during which either Linear A or Linear B was in use. Thenumber of Pictographic texts that survive is very limited, and asexcavations go on year after year the number is not greatly in-creasing. Also very limited are the texts themselves: all of themare short. The contrast moreover with the extent and rapidity ofthe Greek adoption of the Phoenician alphabet later, and thefairly rapid development of it by the Greeks, is impressive.Accounts, or at least lists with numbers, are the subject-matterof a few texts slightly longer than the rest. It is notable thatalthough the total of signs is small enough to make it likely thatthey have phonetic value, an exception is certain signssurvivingpictograms doubtlesswhich function as complete words, like or $. As usually with us also, such ideograms are used onlybefore numerals, a rule that holds also for Linear A and B.



10/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 591Certain sign-groups in Pictographic Script appear to offerindications of inflexion, and since Crete had not been invaded, thelanguage presumably is the same (' M inoa n') as that of Linear A ;but there is no hope of deciphering Pictographic writings untilLinear A is read. A few ideograms, however, are clear, and so arethe integral numerals.

NUMERALSAbout numerals in nearly all stages the re is some positive informa-tion helpful for understanding literacy. A recurrent primitiveneed, for instance, is the counting of flocks. Such counting canbe done by laying out pebbles in rows of fixed lengths, or it canbe done by finger-counting. Tallying howevere.g. one mark foreach sheep, put down on a suitable surfacemay be consideredwriting, or at least a primitive beginning of literacy. As distinctfrom finger-counting and also from rows of pebbles, tallyingtakes more trouble bu t produces some degree of fixity. It is writingwhich can be read later, although, if every sheep, whether ram,ewe, or lamb, counts alike as one, only one symbol need be used,and the meaning may be unknown to the later reader, who canonly understand that n units are recorded. W hose they are, as wellas what they are, he does not know from the writing alone.This is one kind of primitive writing. We have no propercollection of such writings, but tallying went on for an in-definitely long time, and in due course there developed theMinoan Pictographic numerals:

) = 1 = 10 \ = 100 0 = 1,000and fractions i = ? 1/2 (j = ? 1/4 t = ? 1/8These were all. Like the Indo-Europeans and other peoples, theMinoans used the decimal system of numerals, as opposed e.g.to the duodecimal system, in which the second distinct numeralwould represent not 10 but 12, the third not 100 but 144, andso on; some elements of this were used in Mesopotamia, someare used by us for hours, etc. A separate numeral for five wouldhave been a labour-saving device, to avoid repeating the symbolfor 'o n e ' as many as from five times up to nine. But whereas e.g.the Greeks later, and the Romans, had a separate symbol for fivewhich saved writing the unit more than four times, the Minoansnever did, either in the present period (that of Pictographs), orin the later Linear A and B; or for 50, 500, or 5,000. So herewe have a simple illustration, partly of Minoan inertia when itcame to writing, but also of the simplicity of their system itself.



11/45

592 THE LINEAR SCRIPTSLINEAR SCRIPT A

Linear A was developed out of Pictographic. Possibly a third ofthe signs are the same in form, and there are numerous less precisesimilarities. The Linear A numerals are at once closely relatedand an improvement:l = i - = 10 o = i o o $ = 1,000

and fractions, capable of being combined in groups:n n T + * 2 in + gWhereas the Pictographic fractions are inadequate, the Linear Afractions, although not all are positively deciphered, surely areadequate. For integral 10 the dot is still sometimes used buteventually is lengthened ; for 100 the small circle replaces a slant.

Fig . 15. Linear A tablet from Hagia Triada. (M . Ventris and J. Chadwick,Documents in Mycenaean Greek,fig.8.)The Pictographic writings have no uniformity of direction,and it is even hard sometimes to know which way they go.Linear A (and B) are uniformly orthograde. Another improve-

ment in Linear A is the extensive use of ligatures, by whichideograms are given multiple differentiation.These particulars suggest why Pictographic was replaced.Pictographic was probably crude; naturally so, if it had developedvery slowly, never being much used. The development continued



12/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 593to be slow: at Mallia, Linear A and Pictographic were in usesimultaneously, perhaps for decades. Evidently Linear A was notcreated suddenly, as if by decree. Nor is it uniform: there aredefinite local differences, reflecting local developments which aremostly lost to us.Many of the Pictographic signs suggest incision in hardsurfaces: a dot for a numeral is more likely to be definite if incisedthan if marked with ink, and the straight-edged diamond-shapedsign for 1,000 is natural for (straight) chisels, whereas the smallcircle is one of the most difficult characters to carve with anychisel, bu t is easy in ink. In general, the Pictog raphic Script doeshave a glyptic character, the Linear A signs a graphic. If then theimpulse beh ind Linear A was not only to create a better vehicle forthe language but also to create a set of forms more congenial forpens, we can only say that the impulse was not carried very far. Alarge number of the Linear A signs require a dozen strokes each,and are ju st about equally fussy for chisel, pen, or graver in softclay. The pictogram originals should have been left farther beh ind.

Apparently in accord with the non-incised essence of Linear Ais the fact that presently, in the course of M . M . I l l , the seals nolonger have Pictographic writing; Linear A has supplanted it.The seals never have Linear A.Even allowing for a slow adoption, the precise time of originfor Linear A is uncertain. Some inscriptions may be much earlier,but M . M . I l l b is the period of most of the inscriptions, apartfrom the only large group of texts, which is on 168 clay tabletsfrom Hagia Triada (see Fig. 16); they are of L.M. la. Theterminal date is also unknown, but at the least Linear A had a lifeof 200 years. Its distribution was wide but seemingly thin:Linear A has been found at no fewer than a score of sites in Crete,whereas outside Crete only one tablet is known at present (Kea)plus some individual signs on other objects, and of these signsmany are po tters' marks and the like, which may not be, properly,Linear A at all. From m ost of the Cretan sites, however, thereare only one each, or possibly two, or a few, texts. Although thereare no fewer than six (scattered) libation tables inscribed withLinear A, there are also single or few instances each of spoon-shaped mortars, a door jamb (but no other building inscription),a gold ring, a miniature gold axe, a bronze tablet; but a fairnumber of ingots of copper are inscribed with Linear A. All theseinscriptions are short, but certainly the way was open to a wideuse of literacy. Continuing from the use of the PictographicScript for accounts, the palaces made use of Linear A. The only



13/45

H

*

+9

A

y

4

AL 1 t=iAB18 HL 2 +AB4 TAB44 WL 9; cf. 28 xAB. 12 tliL 10 AAB9 YL 15 >A 75 XL 16 P.AB54 ^L 21 *L 22 IAB2 TL23 QAB57 tL24 ftL 25/7 U UAB 19 n FlL 26 ~ T ?AB58 1 1 1L27 f-L 28; cf 56 AAB12 mL 29 /TJAB23 ?L 30 U-AB1 1L 31 vAB27 IL32 AB20 Q

L33 prAB8 1L A 3 B 4 2 9 ^ i tL 36 AAB 69 "L 37; c62OAB35 IL39 TAB7 '*AB367 13 0

BN\ +LA5B826 1 11 %L 59 p (7AB 13 L llL60 **AB46 YL 61 T T XAB33 ^trL 6 2 > (aA 72 6L64 >AB55 (VL65 A AA 81


14/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 595surviving group large enough to be called 'archiv es' is that fromHagia Triada, but we should probably imagine, generously, thatthe smaller lots from Mallia and Kato Zakro, and even the fewfrom Cnossus, are the meagre survivors of much use of Linear Aover a long time. No doubt the losses of Linear A, and also ofPictographic, have been relatively enormous, so that it is only aminute fraction of the written matter which survives.But even so, in view of the length of time available, and thelarge number of objects that might have been inscribed, we mustagain hesitate to believe that literacy was much more than a fringeactivity: comparison with Classical times will enforce the pointthat it was not part and parcel of everyday life. The way was openbut the Minoan world was little interested in writing. The HagiaTriada tablets were found with fragments of frescoes, the finestfrescoes produced by the Minoan world; but the tablets them-selves are uninspired and negligent. Again, although und oub tedlythere was a certain amount of writing with ink on perishablematerials, still the fact that ink and perishable materials wereknown and used may be a further illustration of the failure to writemuch with ink, because if there had been an abundance of writing,far more would surely have been put on imperishable objects.The language of Linear A is definitely a different language fromtha t of Linear B, and therefore is not Greek. Beset tho ug h theyare with discouraging uncertainties, attempts to read Linear Ahave turned up interesting translations of single words, par-ticularly Greek, but also others. History has perhaps one con-tribution to the problem . Linear A flourished in the period of theMinoan Thalassocracy, that is of the semi-piratical, tribute-collecting, crudely organized domination by Cnossus over variouscoastal areas, not inland; and in Crete itself not including anybut a few distant ports. There was ample opportunity for loan-words to have been acquired, in Greece, in Asia Minor, in theLevant. Whatever words have been correctly translated arepresumably jus t such loan-words. On the other hand , Linear Aprobably ought not to be conceived as an administrative toolspecifically of the Thalassocracy, because the Thalassocracy isnot to be thought of as that much organized.

THE PHAESTUS DISK 1An instance not merely of writing but an approximation toprinting, immense in potentiality but null in effecta freakcame to light in 1908, when L. Pernier stated that he discovered1 See Plate 123.



15/45

596 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T Sin the Palace at Phaestus a round clay disk covered on both sideswith stamped signs. It was found in the north-west wing of thepalace, which contained sunken stone treasure-chests ('Kaselles')like those at Cnossus; part at least of the wing was used for keep ingvaluables. The Disk was actually found, along with a Linear Atable t, in one of these Kaselles, but the excavator jud ged that theDisk and the tablet had come down from an upper floor. To this(limited) extent, the circumstances of finding suggest that theDisk was not a casual acquisition but a valued object. Moreover,as part of the process of manufacturing, it had been bak ed; it wasintended to last, and it has lasted: nearly all the readings anddetails are clear. T he context is of M . M . I l l b , perhaps about1600 B.C.Though not perfectly round (it is c. 0-17 m. in diameter) orquite evenly thick, the Disk is well designed. The clay, which isexcellent, has an off-yellow colour; the expert verdict is thatneither the clay itself nor the kind of firing are like anythingknown in Crete. An import, and possibly written in a foreignlanguage, so that few persons could read it, still the existence ofthe D isk mean t tha t a specimen of prin ting was physically presentin the palace at Phaestus, so that conceivably its technique couldhave been inferred and followed.The stamps themselves made such sharp impressions that theymust have been metal, cast. All the indications show that the twosides of the D isk were both the work of one man, at one time . Foreach different sign he had one stam p; he used each stamp over andover, as often as the text demanded. On each side he ran the textin a spiral. Evidently he began, as is natural (the evidence isvirtually compelling although disagreement persists), at thecircumference, and wound in to the centre. To guide the reader'seye, a continuous line was incised, tracing the course of the sp iral.On each side the beginning is marked; the other end, at thecentre, is also unmistakable.The signs are blocked off in groups, each group being de-limited by a vertical line joined at either end to the spiral line.Thus each group is in its own box.The clay had to be kept soft, presumably with a damp cloth,until all the signs had been imprinted. There is but little correc-tion, and only one sign is crowded in as if late; yet the twosurfaces are neatly filled. Not mere planning, but a fairly exactmodel, would have been needed. Indeed, the laying out of themodel itself would have had to be so conditioned by the spaceavailable as to prompt the conjecture that the words themselves



16/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 597were chosen to fit; or that the text was composed in such a waythat it would be adequately long, but could be cut off, or somehowadjusted, when the space was exhausted.The groups, each in its own box, consist of from two to sevensigns each, all bu t a few being three, four, or five sig ns : thus theyare of the righ t length for words if each sign represents a syllable.Some, perhaps most, of the signs look like ideograms, but thereare no num erals. M oreover the total num ber of different signs isforty-five, and linguistic studies show that this number, with theaddition of some ten syllables not happening to occur here, is anadequate number for a syllabary.

On one side there are thirty-one words, on the other thirty.The text begins at the circumference (see above), and the wordsread clockwise, that is (since the signs regularly have their basestoward the circumference) from right to left. Obviously the signsthemselves face the other way, i.e. toward the reader's right, sothat the individual signs also must be read retrograde. Thisfeature can be paralleled, however, in so many o ther early systemsof writing that it is not an argument. Stamping, moreover, doesnot involve the same progressive one-direction movement aswriting.Strongly pictographic and vivid, so that the objects representedby all but a few signs can be identified, their general characterought to be ascertainable. Again the re is dispute. Inscribed on abronze axe of the same period from Arkalokhori is some incisedwriting in the form of a brief three-columned inscription, whichmakes use of ten different signs in all (different that is from eachother). It is claimed that some of the ten resemble some of thesigns on the Disk sufficiently to establish the Arkalokhori Axe asa link between other Pictographic writings and the Disk. Inconsequence, the Disk would be no import, but a development ofMinoan writing on Cretan soil. Inspection will show, however,that although four of the Axe signs are not unlike four signs onthe Disk, none of them, nor any others of the ten axe signs,definitely is the same as any of the Disk signs. Nothin g stronglysuggests, much less clinches, the hypothesis of a developmentfrom Axe signs to Disk signs. An inscribed block from Mallia hasthirteen signs used for a total of only sixteen times. For thisMallia block similar claims have been made, but inspection of aphotograph will show that it is even less related.In not being Minoan, the character of the Disk signs wouldagree with the absence in Crete of any predecessor or successoreither of the signs themselves as a group, or of the technique of



17/45

598 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T Spr in ting. The fount, as printers would call it, of the stamps them -selves would have been made, not just for one document, but formany. H ighly advanced, bespeaking a long tradition, the tech-nique would seem to have been developed elsewhere than inCrete. Long ago certain particulars of the signs suggested Lyciaas the region of origin, and just recently an Early Bronze Agegraffito has been excavated which anticipates remarkably thethree principal characteristics of the Disk's house-sign (Evans'sno. 24). The preference for regarding the Disk as Lycian istherefore strong. Lycia has been much less excavated than Crete,but neither there or anywhere has an object like the Disk beenfound.For the content of the text, indications are scant. Acutelyfinding some repetitions, like refrains, Evans conjectured that thetext is two 'chaunts', and this is a guess perhaps as good as any.The possibility of translation into a modern language is of courseminimal. Beset with doubts, qualifications, and difficulties, theDisk is almost unreal, and only the fact that it was found by anexcavator in an excavation compels its acceptance.Scholars have always regarded the Disk as a distant andam azing anticipation of printing, isolated in the millennia. Carefulthought will modify this opinion somewhat. Let it be recalled thatseal-stones had long been familiar in the older parts of the Aegeanworld: in a sense the disk is only a series of 242 sealings. Everyseal is like type . Pr int ing involves, of course, a whole group ofseals or stamps held in a frame and pressed together upon thepage. This devicethe frame, the many stamps all the same foreach character, and the operation of prin ting the whole frame-loadsimultaneouslywas probably far from the imagination and thecapabilities of the makers of the Disk. Printin g with ink on paper(papyrus) would have been still another, and a very long, step.The Ancient world undoubtedly produced wonderful carpentersand metal-workers, but for machinery there was little inclination.Even so, the potentialities of the Disk for literacy, though notrealized, were considerable. All at once consistency and fixity ofform in writing had been attained, along with perfect clarity inthe individual signs and in the ordering of them. Future recordscould have been similar. It is true that many stamps would havehad to be cut, and in hard material. The scribes themselves,doubtless, never gave a thought to such a project, and theirmasters also saw no point in it. No sufficient need was felt for theperfection which would result. Instead, rapid incising with apoint, even if the result were sometimes wretched, would serve.



18/45

M I N O A N A ND M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 599LINEAR SCRIPT B

Sir Arthur Evans, excavating in 1900 at Cnossus, and C. W.Blegen, excavating in 1939 at Pylus on the Greek Mainland,came upon inscribed clay tablets in large numbers. At Cnossuseventually they mounted up to a total of nearly 4,000, at Pylus toover 1,200. No other city in Crete has yielded any tablets, but onthe M ainland there are Linear B writings from M ycenae, Tiryns,Thebesnumbered, however, only in dozensand a few fromother places. Evans, who named the other styles, called this oneLinear Script B, because like Linear A it is graphic, and itappeared to be subsequent to Linear A. The non-committal termswere good; Linear B has since been termed ' M ycenaean', againstthe principle that terms should never be prejudicial.In 1952 M . Ventris proved that the language of the Linear Btabletsof all of them so far as is known, apart from loan-wordsis Greek. Ventris lived to see the proofs of his own and J. Chad-wick's Documents (1956), which will long be the incomparablework on the subject.Classical Greek later, written in an alphabet (the one we stilluse), ran all the words together, but the Linear B texts had word-dividers. The words are short, much shorter than they wouldmostly be if written in an alphabet. Moreover the number ofsigns is much greater than any alphabet would need. Hence fromthe beginning of these studies it was clear that Linear B and alsoLinear A and Pictographic before it were each a syllabary.A syllabary is a system in the typical form of which each signstands for a combination of a consonant plus a vowel. There areas many signs as there are combinations which the makers of thesyllabary think are needed; there are also signs for vowels, atleast five, when any of them is used by itself as a completesyllable. Thus the syllabary of Linear B has about ninety signs,of which fifty-nine are in regular and frequent use.The decipherment itself was achieved by Ventris in two stages.T he first stage, spread over many years, was the patient recordingof signs (E. L. Bennett, Jr. did this for the Pyliis tablets, and hisdeterminations were vital), study of positions, and determinationof frequencies. V entris's work was carried on with rigid exclusionof influence by any known language (actually Ventris, followingEvans and nearly all others, did not believe, despite historicalconsiderations which might have made themselves felt, that thelanguage was Greek). The second stage, swift and exciting, waswhen Ventris, with such clues as the frequencies and similar data



19/45

6oo THE LINEAR SCRIPTS

I ka

II I

au ^

da

de

d i

d o

du

dwe

dwo

fJ

k i

ko

7\ "3$ to 7II re I tu V

Y pa ^ ri jj twe J>g pe R ro j " tw

ma

mi

mo

mu

na

PO

p t e

Pu

Pu 2

qa

qe

f

y

sa

se

si

so

su

Ap

n o r . t .

fflwe

wi

wo

za

/f

-

1 8

19r

34

3 5

47

49

7>

63

64

T(J79

82

83

8 9Fig. 17. The Linear B syllabary. The signs with numerical values are still undeciphered.



20/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 601had given him, boldly tried translating a certain group of wordsas place-names known in Greek, 'Knossos' among them (threesigns: Ko-no-so). The boldness, and the long years of prepara-tion, were rewarded, and the discovery was announced. Presentlya Pylus tablet from the excavations of the previous summer, notexamined before, was seen by Blegen to have actual pictures oftripods, and with it four signs which according to Ventris's tableof equivalents should be the word ti-ri-po-de. This word, withothers equally convincing, gave irrefutable proof. All that wasleft to do was to work out details: a legion of them, but details.Wholly, apart from literacy, there was ample archaeologicalevidence for Greek rule in Cnossus. On the basis of this evidence,scholars had agreed, long before, that Late Minoan II was anexclusively Cnossian period. What made it exclusively Cnossian,though nearly all scholars failed to suspect it, was that Cnossuswas in the hands of Greeks. Th e period began c. 14 50 ; allow timefor the development of Mainland features, and the Greek captureof Cnossus may be as early as c. 1480. It was a massive invasion:Cnossus itself had to endure at least fifty, probably a hundred,years of foreign control. Du ring this period, or at least by the endof it, the palace accounts, to the extent of thousands of tablets eachyear, were being kept in Linear B. Hence the decipherment byVentris confirmedor, as many scholars would say, establishedpositivelya major historical fact, viz. Greek rule in Cnossus.The use of Greek for the accounts is unimaginable otherwise.

In the early years after the decipherment, everything appearedto be simple. Where did Linear B come from? Answer: fromLinear A, because some two-thirds of the signs of Linear B aresimilar to those of Linear A; and if the signs rarely used areomitted from consideration, the proportion is much larger. W herewas Linear B developed? Answer: at Cnossus, in order that theGreeks, who had found the palace being administered in M inoan,could administer it in Greek. Why was Linear B developed?Answer: because Linear A, used for Minoan, was inadequate forGreek.No positive alternative has been established, but closer studyof the writings has convinced some linguists that an alteration ofall these views must be considered. In their opinion, Linear Bevidently cannot be derived from Linear A, but instead bothmust come from a common source, an earlier script totally lost.The time of creation may have been more than a century earlierthan 1450 or 1480, say 1600; and if so, it was long before otherevidence of Greeks in Crete. Since Linear B is for Greek, it would



21/45

602 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T Shave had to be developed on the Mainland, and it would beimagined to be part of the M inoan izing process which reached itshe igh t in Late Helladic I. For such a view of the origin of L inearB, there are two difficulties. It has to assume that Linear Bwriting was used on the Mainland for perhaps three centuries(16001300) w ithou t leaving one trace. T he re is also the difficultyof imagining why illiterate Mainland rulers would go to the vasttrouble of importing administrators and scribes to create a newsystem of writing, so as to use it for administrative proceduresthat they can hardly have known much about.The linguistic evidence in question thus clashes with thehistorical evidence, and hesitation is indicated about acceptanceof the difficult consequences to which the linguistic evidenceleads.In contrast, the Greek occupation of Cnossus is vividly real.The Linear B tablets from there have whole groups devoted tothe very arms of the invaders, with many new ideograms forcuirasses, spears, swords, arrows, chariots. Once created atCnossus and well learned, L inear B was carried back to Greece.It spread all over, not rapidly perhaps, but widely enough so thatin many places many men who had to deal with administration,chiefly of the palaces but also perhaps in private business, learnedand used it. The total number of different signs known to havebeen used in Linear B, when to the signs of the syllabary areadded all the ideograms, is close to 199. To master them was noteasy: models of the syllabary must have been constantly in frontof the writers, and change could hard ly be thought of. Learningto write was difficult enough.Thus in the period after c. 1380, when Cnossus was burnedand the Greek rulers probably scattered, most of them retiring totheir former homes on the Mainland, Greece became literate, orat least literacy became a feature of the palaces. All of our tabletscome from buildings which have been burned. For since thetablets were made of clay left to harden by drying but not bybaking, they could only be preserved by a fire intense enough, asin the burning of a building, to bake them.T h e palace at Py lus was destroyed by fire in a year not far from1200 B.C: the date of the tablets cannot be moved more than afew years, for they all or nearly all are definitely the ones of thelast year. Another fact impossible to deny is that the Pylus tabletsare very similar to the Cnossian. In the contents, of course,differences are not few, and merely by the look of them scholarsfamiliar with the tablets from years of work can tell Cnossian and



22/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 603Pylian tablets apart. The writing itself, however, scil. the shapesof the signs, is closely similar. The difficulty which this raises isacute. In the 200 years, or two or three decades less, sinceCnossus was burned (that is, since the fire which baked thetablets there), changes in the shapes of the signs migh t perhaps beexpected, despite the difficulty of change mentioned above. Noone who has knowledge of the thousand years of inscriptions inlater Greece could specify any stretch of two hundred or indeedof one hundred years which did not produce definite changes inthe shapes of the letters.It has been and is desirable, therefore, that scholars should re-examine thoroughly the bases for the date given by Evans to theCnossus tablets. Linear B tablets were found in some fiftydifferent places in the palace, and m any years will be needed for afull understanding of all that is involved. The classes of evidenceare : (1) the actual strata at Cnossus; (2) the evolution of po ttery ;(3) various data external to Cnossus. In all three classes, Evans'sdate is now upheld strongly enough to justify the summaryaccount which has been given above.The seemingly necessary hypothesis that Linear B, thoughexported to Greece and written for nearly two centuries, changedvery little, can be confirmed to some extent by the evidence of thevase-inscriptions from Thebes. The signs there may be datedc. 1320 B.C., or at any rate hard ly later than 13 00 ; i.e. they areapproximately in the m iddle of the two cen turies. Th ey too showno appreciable change.Evidently the high degree of fixity in the signs over so manydecades must be accepted. The fixity can be due to the aforesaiddifficulty, and resulting conservatismprovincial at thatinhandling 199 signs. The classical Greek alphabet is so simple inalmost every one of its only twenty-four letters that variationswould not easily cause misunderstandings. Such writing cannotbe used as an analogue. At the other extreme from the flexibleclassical letters we have the signs in cuneiform, which sometimesare not datable by shapes in a span of five hundred years. Withrespect to fixity, Linear B may be somewhere in-between. M ostrelevant, perhaps, is the fact that even when they were free to dosowhen they were creating a whole new way of writing (viz.Linear B)the scribes altered very little those of the Linear Asigns which they retained for Linear B . Similarly when Linear Awas created out of Pictographic, and (it would seem to us)desirable simplification could have been attained, many of thenew graphic signs, as we have seen, instead of being simplified,



23/45

604 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T Swere elaborated. At that stage Minoan literacy was not practisedenough to make the writers want efficiency; instead their primedesire was to make signs that would be recognizedthey weretimid, they did not dare to venture far from the old pictograms,they strove to copy exactly. And so a dom inant trait was establishedfor Minoan literacy which it never lost: whether executed byMinoans or Greeks, it remained far too largely pictographicthrough ou t its history , and hence not sim ple ; it tried to be faithfulcopying rather than to be efficient writing.This does not mean necessarily that only a few people wrote,and little. At Mycenae six different hands have been identified,at Py lus th irty ; at Cnossus up to seventy-five, although it was onlya few scribes who wrote most of the surviving tablets. Recordswere kept in various parts of the palaces, but at Pylus there wasalso an archives room, with shelves, hinged wooden chests, andalso wicker baskets for storing tablets. The tablets were filed andkep t th rou gh the year. This seems cumbersome enough to implythat papyrus, with ink, was little used, though there may havebeen ledgers for monthly and annual entries. The tablets are notnumbered, and presumably the whole was little organized. Someof the tablets however do bear check-marks; erasures and re-writings are not unknown.Nearly all the surviving Linear B writing comes from thepalaces. Short texts, one sign each or a few, are found on a fewvases; sealings are often inscribed, and clay tags . But if writingis sought say among the belongings of upper-class families, asreflected in the extensive, carefully excavated, and carefullystudied tombs of Prosymna, where perhaps, if it were a highlyliterate culture, or if there were only as much writing as inLinear A times, some writing would be expected, there is nonewhatever. Invented for continuing the Linear A administrationof the palace at C nossus, Linear B literacy may have had some useoutside palaces, but not far outside and not much. The survivingwriting suggests tha t Linear B literacy should not be thoug ht ofas being widespread and cheap, like ours, bu t rather as being oneof the special skills fostered by the palaces. Its vitality was inti-mately bound to some of the very things it recorded, such as finewood-working, metal-working, ivory-working.With all this accords the fact that Linear B itself was a mostimperfect syllabary for Greek. Distinctions of consonants vitalfor G reek are ambiguous in Linear B ; other sounds are suppressed.Some short words in Linear B can have multiple differentmeanings in Greek. Verse such as the Homeric, but even much



24/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 605simpler verse, would be impossible in Linear Beven supposingthat in this late, wintry, bureaucratic phase of the culture, epicswere being composed.But it m ight be an error to suppose that the inherent limitationsof Linear B were really what limited its uses and ultimately itslife. If there had been a strong will to write verse, or to write lawsor history or hymns, the limitations would have been overcome.Presumably Linear B was created by fiat; by fiatalso, no doubt,adequate improvements conceivably could have been effected.

I V . E V I D E N C E A B O U T S U R V I V A LTHE END OF LITERACYThe story of the first period of European literacy is not complete,nor even the evidence for the story, without a note about its end.Apart from Cyprus (below) which has its own peculiar circum-stances, literacy did come to an end. The period of illiteracy inquestion begins at the destruction of Pylus and lasts all the waydown to the Greek adoption of the Phoenician alphabet in theeighth century B.C. The interval is lengthy, at most ante-1200c. 725 B.C; at least 1100post-800 B.C. From this interval, nowriting whatever surv ives; careful excavation yearly has made thenegative more compelling. The new Phoenician-derived literacywhich followed has not a single character derived from the old.The extinction of literacy, unimaginable for us without themass extinction of literate persons, is now explicable. It was notdue to massacres: World War II showed us that Greeks arevirtually indestructible; they take off into the moun tains. Literacyended when older writers saw no reason to teach the youn g, and theyoung saw no reason to learn from the old. This time came whenthe palaces and all that went with them, particularly account-keeping, but also the whole series of activities involved with thepalaces, were ended. Literacy had only a few and shallow otherroots. It probably disappeared almost overnight.

CYPRUSPotters' marks are found in Cyprus, together with numbers ofone-sign or few-sign inscriptions on seals, clay balls, and copperingots. As elsewhere, these are mere background. There are alsoat least five tablets with (seemingly) continuous prosecertainlynot accounts consisting, as in L inear A and B, of items, amounts,and totals. Moreover they were baked: they were meant to be



25/45

606 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T Sperm anent. T he earliest may be as early as c. 1500 B.C., thus ante -da ting the Linear B tablets in Crete . On the four later tablets,c. 1225 B.C. or earlier, the signs are small, some very small, merejabs with a point in the clay, clearly reflecting familiarity withwriting and reading. One tablet preserves twenty-two lines butoriginally may have had 20 0. Th e script of these tablets, 'C ypriotLinear', is all in one tradition, but with marked changes over thecen turies. If the script was derived from M inoan Linear A , it mayhave been not mere copying, but rather an adaptation withchanges; but the material is much too scant to be sure.What is sure is that some form of Cypriot Linear lasted onthrough invasions to emerge in the eighth/seventh centuries asthe vehicle for inscriptions, chiefly sacred, to the number eventu-ally (they extend down into the Hellenistic period) of well over500. Of some of these, the language is an untranslated ' Eteo-cyprian', itself surviving or recently introduced (we do notknow); but most are Greek, and can be read. The script, calledthe Classical Cypriot syllabary, has two principal variants, andalthough its relation to the few surviving specimens of the(Bronze Age) Cypriot Linear is far from established, still therecannot be any doubt that the Classical syllabary does descendfrom the Bronze Age, and that during the vast interval it waswritten either on solid materials now lost, or more likely onperishable materials.On the face of it, therefore, Cyprus seems to prove that writing(presumably Linear B ?) could have survived in Greece throughthe Dark Age without leaving a trace in the interval. This isimpressive. Fuller consideration does, however, impose somehesitation. (1) The known uses of literacy, as shown by the fewsurviving Cypriot Linear tablets, were quite different from theuses know n for any Cretan or M ainland writing. (2) Am ong thethousands of Greek inscriptions, some one, like the 500 onCyprus, ou gh t to reflect the transmission. (3) Despite invasions,other Bronze Age institutions survived, oddly, in Cyprus.Whether literacy there was as strongly linked to palaces as wasLinear B is doubtful; but in Cyprus, monarchy of the old typesurvived: in Classical times the kings drove out homerically inchariots to battle. These considerations do at least suggest thatas respects literacy, Cyprus may have been crucially different.



26/45

M I N O A N A N D M Y C E N A E A N L I T E R A C Y 607WR ITING IN HOMER

The mere existence of oral epic poetry like Homer's, writtendown afterward bu t developed in the Dark Age, is itself evidence(if more were needed) that the Dark Age was illiterate. Thetechnique of Homeric poetry, that is the tradition reaching farback beyond Homer, is oral through and through; in modernJugoslavia, and doubtless anywhere, the acquisition of literacynaturally ruins the rhapsodic powers of a bard. Homeric poetrycould never have been developed in a literate age.But some trace of the possible duration of Bronze Age literacyinto the Dark Age might come from chance survivals or frommemories somehow preserved. The only possible survival is theever-mysterious E at Delphi; but whatever the symbol really was,its origin was forgotten, its meaning was unknown, it gives nohelp with literacy.In the Iliad, however, a memory of writing, and also a slightdegree of literacy, can be alleged. Th e heroes can each inscribe ona token a symbol, which was clearly not a regular syllabic signnor a letter, but rather was a sort of private personal signature,their individual mark, familiar only to themselves. The fact thatit was not recognizable shows it was not thought of as a symbolfrom a syllabary or an alphabet: Ajax's token was not marked withan alpha. If Ajax's name had been written in characters intelligibleto others, the token would not have had to be passed around.Thu s th e inscribing of the lots in the Iliad, like po tters' or masons'marks (above), is merely a primitive, restricted kind of literacy,and proves nothing, though it may suggest that Homer thoughtof his heroes as unable to write their own names.

In the Iliad and the Odyssey there is only one occasion w hen theheroes are called upon to write or when there is need to mentionwriting, and that is the story of Bellerophon. Other epics, evenincluding several which were written by their first authors andowe no thing to the (illiterate) oral techn ique , rarely have occasionto mention writing.The Bellerophon story stands apart. The main events aredrawn from the common store of folk-tales: the unjust exile of ahandsome and able young prince; then, in the new land, trial,designed to kill the new arrival, but surmounted on his part byfabulous achievements. These are regular features. The essenceof the story is that Bellerophon, going into exile, unsuspectinglycarries on his own person the message bidding his new lord tokill him. The message is so essential to the plot that it can hardly



27/45

608 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T Sbe later and separable: it cannot have been added when literacywas reacquired. So here we have a definite graphic communica-tion of some sort, certainly coming out of a period earlier thanH om er . Th e message itself is described as ' baneful si g ns. .. many,life-destroying'; but there is an element of epic carelessness here,since the same message is presently referred to, in the singular,as 'an evil sign'.Two interpretations are possible. The first is that the audiencewas to understand, dimly, perhaps, that the writer, Proetus, wasliterate and was employing mysterious written characters, whichwe should call Linear B. If this is correct the passage preserves amemorythe only such memory known to usof the earlierliterate time. The vague terms would suit with the vagueness andmystery, in the minds of illiterate persons, during the Dark Age,and in Homer's audience, of writing itself.The other interpretation is that what the audience wouldnaturally think of is one, or a few, or many, simple pictures.A m odern equivalent would be the warning skull and cross-boneson bottles of which the contents, if swallowed, are lethal; or theJolly R oger of pirates. The advantage of this interpretation is thatthe description of the signs does not have to be understood asespecially vague and mysterious. On the contrary, in this inter-pretation literacy, unknown in the present (i.e. unknown toHomer's audience), is not even vaguely remembered from thepast. Essentially the signs carried by Bellerophon would be likewhat Aias put on his token, or a potter might put on a pot:symbols without phonetic value, not intended to be uttered.This is probably correct. If we adopt the second interpretationof the Bellerophon story, then the conclusion to which theevidence points is that outside Cyprus the Dark Age was illiteratecompletely, for centuriesand that no memory whatever ofthe earlier period of literacy survived into the later.



28/45

609

THE LINEAR SCRIPTS AND THET A B L ET S AS H I S T O R I C A L D O C U M E N T S :(b) TH E LIN EA R B TABLET S AS

H I S T O R I C A L D O C U M E N T SI. T H E N A T U R E O F T H E E V I D E N C E

W H E R E A S the Assyrian and Egyptian documents have long beenreadable and a general consensus of opinion is readily accessible,the Linear B tablets remain only partially understood, and thereis much dispute about their interpretation. While the purelynegative criticism which denies the decipherment is clearly un-justified, it remains true that excessive claims have sometimesbeen made by its supporters. The aim of this section is to presenta brief account of the problems which beset the interpreter andthe conclusions which, if not completely secure, look at presentlikely to withstand criticism.Linear B tablets are so far known from four sites. Cnossus, thefirst site to yield them , has produced more than 3,000 tablets, bu tit must be emphasized that this figure includes many smallfragments, and the number of complete and usable documents ismuch smaller. Tablets were found in all parts of the Palace, butthe main archives were concentrated in certain areas: the area ofthe North En trance P assage contained the remains of what musthave been the principal office or archive room; the West Maga-zines and adjacent rooms contained large numbers of tablets,some at least of which must have fallen from offices on an upperstorey, but in many cases relating to goods in the stores; theDomestic Quarter contained a very large archive dealing withsheep, and one or two smaller groups; the Arsenal containedtablets referring to weapons and military equipment. Strangest ofall, the so-called ' Room of the Chariot Tablets' held a large andapparently self-contained archive with special features whichhave not yet been satisfactorily explained.1

The Palace of Pylus, by contrast, had almost all its 1,200 ormore tablets concentrated in the area adjacent to the mainentrance; clearly the main office was situated where messengersand officials arriving could report the facts to be recorded. Small1 G ,4 .



29/45

610 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T Sgroups have been found elsewhere in the Palace, notably in thestore-room s. At Mycenae the main archives were probably on thesummit of the hill and have been destroyed by denudation, if notlost in the earliest excavations. A few badly preserved tablets havebeen found inside the citadel walls, but most have come fromhouses outside the walls. T heir first excavator, A . J. B. W ace,regarde d these as the houses of merchants ;x but the evidence thatLinear B is a tool of the royal administration suggests that theyshould rather be regarded as the residences of court officials, someof whom were in charge of productive departments and probablyresponsible for the manufacture of goods such as perfume.2 Thetwo small groups so far recovered from Th ebes, though promisingfor the future exploration of the site, offer little evidence of value.All that can be said for certain is that all four sites show the samescript, language and accounting procedures, a clear indication ofthe reality of the common culture inferred originally frompottery styles.It is certain that the use of Linear B can be demonstrated for ashprt period only, but its limits are disputed. Traditionally thefall of Cnossus, which was accompanied by the violent firenecessary to bake the clay tablets, is dated to c. 1400-1375 B.C.,and despite a ttem pts to lower this date, it seems very unlikely thatit can be far wrong.3 All the Mainland tablets are confined to theL .H . I l l b period : those from Pylus belong to the very end of theperiod, those from the Houses outside the walls at Mycenae areperhaps half a century earlier, and those from Thebes may beearlier still. But the maximum chronological range seems to be14001200 B.C, and all the inferences in what follows must beunderstood as relating to that period alone, and in Crete only tothe beginning of it. It does not of course follow that Linear B wasonly devised around 1400 B.C; it must have had an unrecordedpre-history.The size of tablets varies from small flat bars with roundedends to large roughly rectangular slabs similar in shape and sizeto the page of a modern book.4 The great majority of tablets havea single heading to which are attached one or m ore book-keepingentries, each end ing w ith a num eral. Thus a tablet may record thename of a man, a place name and a number of sheep; and thesemay be interpreted as the shepherd, the town or district to whichhe belongs, and the size of his flock. Another type may give aplace name, a series of commodities either counted or weighed,

1 G, 2, 3- 14 . 2 G, 9.3 G , 13. * G, 14, 11 0-1 2.



30/45

T H E T A B L E T S AS H I S T O R I C A L D O C U M E N T S 611and notes of contribution or deficit. This must be understood asan assessment for tax and a record of how far this has beenfulfilled. This is unpromising material for historical conclusions,bu t fortunately it is now becom ing clear in what way many of therecords are to be interpreted, and some documents can yieldimportant information.The typical tablet is a registration of a single fact or event, butthere are also large, composite docum ents with numerous entries.In a few cases the same or parallel information is contained intwo series of documents, and these allow us to estimate how wellpreserved the series is. Similar conclusions can be drawn fromdocuments which give the total of figures listed in the relevantseries of table ts. Generally speaking series appear to vary fromabout 60 per cent to 100 per cent complete.All docum ents appear to refer only to the curren t year; there isno system of dating by years, though months are named. Re-ferences to 'this year', 'last year', etc. also confirm that the tabletsof previous years were not preserved.1 Thus it is probably safe toassume that for each site we have a part of the year's records,immediately before the destruction which baked the tablets andrendered them durable. T he presence at Cnossus of records of thewool-clip, but apparently not the grain harvest, suggests a date inspring or early summer; the five names of months recordedwould confirm that date, if the year began at the winter solstice,but this is very uncertain . Similarly at Py lus, the evidencesuggests a date early in the year; if the word-po-ro-wi-to s thename of a month derived from 7rXetu 'sail', 2 since if correct it islikely to be the date of the destruction, then March-April wouldappear probable.

The majority of tablets contain no finite verbs, but where foundthey show a full range of tenses: both aorist and perfect are found,referring to past events, the present is used in a 'timeless' sense(in some cases implying annual repetition), and the future denotesexpectations. It does not seem that the futures are to be con-strued as orders, and no imperatives have been certainly identified;thus the function of the tablets seems to be confined to recordingand the script was not used to convey instructions , a risky businesswith so much ambiguity inherent in the writing system.All tablets can theoretically be classified as relating to in-comings, outgoings or stock; but owing to the nature of therecord and its imperfect preservation, it is not always possible to1 G, 14, 113-14.8 G, 12, 254.



31/45

612 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T Sassign a tablet to the correct class. Incomings, large con tributionsimposed by the Palace on individuals or areas, are sometimessignalled by the word a-pu-do-si (apudosis = aTroSocri?) or appro -priate forms of the verb SiSo/n.1 Outgoings can often be recog-nized by the name of the recipient expressed in the dative or placenames in the accusative with suffixed -de. A common type of thisclass is the ration document, assigning quantities of food topersons . Stock records are of various types, and include flocks ofsheep, lists of furniture and textiles, and notes of men and womenavailable as labour.

I I . O B ST A CL ES T O I N T E R P R E T A T I O NThe difficulties in the way of interpreting these documents aresuch th at archaeo logists, inexpert in the epigraphic and linguistictechniques they demand, have been frightened of making muchuse of the information they can contribute, while other scholarshave sometimes pursued an eclectic policy, picking at randomamong the numerous interpretations which they cannot evaluate.A brief review of the obstacles may also reveal how solid is thebasis for some at least of the conclusions to be offered below.The tablets are poorly preserved, often damaged and hard toread; in all too many cases they have been reduced to smallfragments. The material from Cnossus has suffered most, mainlydue to the inadequate care taken by the first excavators, who didnot even seriously attempt to re-unite the fragments to makewhole tablets, a task which has now been attempted with muchlabour by a new generation of Mycenaean epigraphists. But theother sites too, whose excavators deserve nothing but praise, haveyielded their quota of tantalizing scraps and unintelligible frag-ments. W e m ust continue to deplore the accident which has givenus the name of Dionysus twice on fragments from Pylus so in-complete that we cannot even be certain it is the name of a god. 2All too often vital information has to be qualified by a reservationarising from the incompleteness of the context.When complete and well preserved, it is possible to transcribethe te xt : that is to say, we can replace the L inear B symbols by aphonetic transcription, which is then to be understood and filledout in accordance w ith certain well-defined rules which have beenrecovered em pirically from the texts. On ly a few very raresyllabic signs lack certain or probable identifications. Num erals

1 G,6.2 PY Xa 102, Xa 1419.



32/45

T H E T A B L E T S AS H I S T O R I C A L D O C U M E N T S 613offer no problems, and the system of weights is well understood -,1the system of dry and liquid measures is more difficult, since,although the relationship of the units to one another is known,there is as yet no agreement on the absolute values of the units.However, we can at least assign limits within which the valuesmust fall. It seems likely that the size of the larger vessels in usein Mycenaean times will approximate to units of the measuring

WEIGHTS

jTfl.so % , 1 - 4 #1 # - ? s 1 & -6? fD R Y M E A S U R E L I Q U I D M E A S U R E1 3p = 10 f i | = 3

= 6


33/45

614 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T SThe words spelt with syllabic signs represent of course notonly items of vocabulary but also proper names. It has been

suggested that some tablets which do not apparently yield Greekwords are in some other language; but in most such cases it canbe shown, and it may be suspected in the rest, that the recalcitrantitems are personal names. M any names are of the typical Greekcompound pattern, such as Ma-na-si-we-ko = Mnasiwergos orPi-ro-pa-ta-ra = Philopatrd. But a much higher proportion thanin classical Greece does not yield clear interpretations of this sort.Some may be hypocoristics of Greek origin, but, especially atCnossus, we must clearly reckon with a large element in thepopulation who retained a non-Greek tradition at least in theirnames. The place names, as in classical times, are largely withoutGreek etymologies, but can hardly be classed as foreign on that

Fig. 19. KN Ca895 : horses and asses.account; Greek descriptive terms are also used as names (e.g.Ka-ra-do-ro = Kharadros ' the gully' , E-re-i = (dative) He lei ' themarsh ' ) .The true vocabulary contains many of the familiar classicalwords, though their form is often unfamiliar and the syllabicspelling impedes recognition. M an y words, however, can beregarded as certain because their meanings are confirmed by thecontex t. Th is happens not only when the word is accompanied bya clear pictogram (as i-qo = hiqq'os = ITTTTOS accompanied by adrawing of a horse's head),1 but also when the context confirmsthe kind of word to be expected (as ra-pte-re preceding an en try ofso many m en must be a nom inative plural of an agent noun in-rqp,z and the interpretation rhapteres 'sewing m en ' is thus highlyprobable).But other interpretations depend upon little but the resemblancebetween the phonetic shape indicated by the syllabic spelling anda classical word, and here it must be admitted that some wildconjectures have been published. Judgment must depend uponthe suitability of the meaning to all the contexts in which the word

1 KN Ca 895; Fig. 7. 2 PY An 207, An 424.



34/45

T H E T A B L E T S AS H I S T O R I C A L D O C U M E N T S 615is used, the closeness of the form to that attested later, whetherthe differences are accounted for by known developments,whether the interpretation is in agreement with the empiricallyderived rules, and so forth. It is strange how many scholarshave considered themselves competent to make such judgments,and how many more have ignored expert advice in pursuitof a cherished theory. Conjecture is a necessary first step, andverification may be impossible in the light of existing know-ledge; but many interpretations can be firmly dismissed as con-trary to the known facts.The presence in the vocabulary of a num ber of words not to beidentified in any classical source need occasion no surprise;chronologically the nearest source is Homer, and it is generally

Fig. 20. PY Ae 303 : the slaves of the priestess.

accepted that the Hom eric text, whatever its antecedents, dates toabout five centuries after th e fall of Py lus. For many purposes wemust use material eight or more centuries later than the tablets.Thus the disappearance from the later tradition of many My-cenaean words must be expected ; and this is especially true of thetechnical vocabulary which is liable to replacement as techniqueschange. In some cases a word survives to classical times bu tproves to have had a different meaning in Mycenaean Greek(for instance, harmota 'wh eels' must be equated with apfxara' chariots'; ophelos' deficit' recalls 6


35/45

616 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T Scertain, yet the implications of the statement entirely escape us.The writer and his immediate circle knew which priestess wasmeant, why she had fourteen slaves, and what part the sacred goldplayed in the transaction; we can only speculate on a situationwhich would have led to the writing of that note, and it is unlikelythat we shall ever achieve an agreed solution.This is because the tablet in question is, to us, an isolateddocum ent. Fortuna tely many tablets belong to series dealingwith the same subject, and progress is being made in some casesin restoring the original grouping of the tablets, as they werefiled away in baskets or boxes. This is largely due to the fact thatthe handwriting of individual scribes can be identified, and sincethe Palaces employed a large number of clerks, separate sets ofdocuments can sometimes be identified by the difference ofhand.1 If we were able to restore all the tablets to their originalfiles, we should vastly increase our knowledge of the archive; buteven the progress which has been made has led to significantresults.To quote one minor instance, we know that for administrativepurposes the kingdom of Pylus was divided into two Provinces;a group of tablets recording women and children was written bytwo different officials, and it is now possible to demonstrate thatthe group, apparently homogeneous, falls into two sets, eachdealing w ith a different province. W here it is possible to establishthe grouping of tablets into sets, it follows that instead of anumber of isolated statements we have a large document, con-taining in some cases as many as sixty or a hundred entries, allrelating to the same subject. Thus the records of flax productionat Pylus are contained in a series of about a hundred tablets, eachof which conveys little information; but taken as a whole we canjudge the way in which production was organized and drawconclusions about the economic system.Although limited progress in this sense is now possible, it willprobably never become possible to understand fully all the docu-ments which have been recovered. W e shall have to content o ur-selves with partial knowledge of part of the system; for not onlyare the surviving records incomplete, but even when intact theycan hardly have covered more than some parts of the economy,and in the archives known to us much m ust have gone unrecorded,at least upon clay tablets . Tha t other records existed on perishablematerials is highly probable, and it is galling to realize that thesewould have contained the most interesting facts, for clay was a

1 G, 3; 11.



36/45

T H E T A B L E T S AS H I S T O R I C A L D O C U M E N T S 617second-class writing material in Greece, so that it was used for thecollection of raw facts or the making of rough drafts, rather thanthe final digests which we may suppose the royal administrationwould have required of its staff.

I I I . C O N C L U S I O N SThe basic historical fact which emerges from the tablets is thepresence of the Greek language in Mycenaean Greece; all doubtsabout the Greekness of the Late Helladic masters of Greece canbe set aside. By Greek we mean here speakers of a language notmerely ancestral to the dialects of classical Greece, but actuallyshowing already many of the characteristic features of phonology ,morphology and vocabulary which distinguish Greek from otherlanguages. The presence of a non-Greek element is perhaps to beinferred from the personal names which are not of Greek type;and Greek names of the 'sobriquet' type (such as Xanthos,Eruthros, Korudallos, Tripodiskos) may perhaps have been given byGreek masters to their barbarian serfs.1The presence of Greeks at Cnossus at the beginning of thefourteenth century B.C. is of course a fundamental blow to E vans'sreconstruction of a Minoan civilization destroyed by Greekinvaders; but the only correction necessary is to date the end ofM inoan civilization to L .M . Ib , leaving the last phase as a con-tinuation in modified form under Greek rule. It would seemthat non-Greek names are more frequent at Cnossus than on themainland, but it is hard to judge the extent of admixture evenamong the persons named on the tablets. It is perhaps significantthat yokes of oxen were given Greek epithets as names, for thiswould be difficult to reconcile with a theory of a small Greekaristocracy dominating a non-Greek population.2 The catastrophewhich terminated the Minoan period must have brought about avery large influx of Greek blood into the island.It is also worth noticing that all Linear B documents so farknown employ a similar dialect, and that this cannot be ancestralto the W es t Greek (Doric) dialects of classical times. It thereforefollows that a branch of the Greek-speaking people existed at thisdate outside southern and central Greece; and the suggestion thatthey were still located outside the south Balkans encounterssevere difficulties. No positive statement beyond this can beproved; but any historical reconstruction should leave room forthe Dorians, perhaps in the north-west of Greece.

1 G, 7. 2 G, 14, 105.



37/45

618 T H E L I N E A R S C R I P T SThat the perusal of administrative archives should give theimpression of a bureaucracy is perhaps inevitable; but the

absence of literacy in any other context reinforces the picturewhich emerges of a society dominated by officials and clerks.Homer of course knows nothing of this side of Mycenaean life,nor can archaeology demonstrate it. Apparently comparablestates like contemporary Troy seem to have managed their affairswithout committing anything to writing; but viewed in terms ofadministrative efficiency, the introduction of a system of writtenrecords must mark a great advance. Above a critical size ofkingdom the need for written records is obvious, and this suggeststhat writing must have been introduced from Crete to the main-land long before it is attested by extant documents. The uni-formity of the tablets from four scattered sites bespeaks a uniformsystem of accounting, and perhaps even centralized schools wherethe appropriate techniques were learnt.On forms of government the tablets confirm the deductionfrom the existence of palaces that Cnossus and Pylus weremonarchies, and add the information that the king was calledWanax. There was also a high-ranking officer called Lawagetas,but his functions are not to be securely deduced from his title.There was also an important class called te/estai, possibly land-holders, tho ug h this may not have been their prime function. W ealso hear of heq"etai 'followers', doubtless of the king; theypossessed slaves and had distinctive garments and chariot-wheels.This suggests that they may have formed an elite corps ofcharioteers. At a local level there were officials whose title(ko-re-te-re) cannot be satisfactorily interpreted, each of whomseems to have been in charge of a small area and to have had adeputy. These men are, for instance, charged with making con-tributions of bronze or gold.T he existence of slavery is proved by mentions of doeloi, a formancestral to SouXoi, but nothing can be deduced about theirstatus. It is probably unwise to project back to Mycenaean timesthe classical dichotomy of the population into slave and free.A special category of people, both men and women, is describedby the title theoio doelos 'servant of the deity', but they do notappear to be slaves, since they can hold land; the translation'servant' may perhaps be more appropriate in all cases fordoelos.An elaborate series of records at Pylus,1 apparently intendedfor the calculation or issue of rations, details a force of more than

1 PY Aa, Ab.



38/45

T H E T A B L E T S AS H I S T O R I C A L D O C U M E N T S 619750 women and a similar number of children.1 Of these aboutthree-quarters were located at Pylus itself, the remainder atvarious places in both provinces of the kingdom . A large num berof these groups are described by terms which relate to textileproduction: spinners, weavers, carders, flax-workers, and so on.Th is indica