+- RomanArmyTalk (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat)
+-- Forum: Research Arena (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: Greek Military History & Archaeology (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/forumdisplay.php?fid=9)
+--- Thread: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B (/showthread.php?tid=5666)
Pages:
1
2
THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - Robert Vermaat - 05-14-2006
I found this here:
THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B
A Cautionary Tale of Crime and Punishment
in Bronze Age Greece
![[Image: mycworldcover2.jpg]](http://www.uta.edu/anthropology/petruso/mycworldcover2.jpg)
Nestor, esteemed wa-na-ka1 of Pu-ro2 went on a royal bender one night, draining his famous golden di-pa3 of many <|-units4 of wine.
He awoke the next day badly hung over, with a splitting headache and in a very dark mood. Nonetheless, duty summoned. His royal schedule called for him to adjudicate several routine civil disputes that morning. He pulled on his po-pu-re-ja pu-ka-ta-ri-ja5 and headed for his to-no6, cursing as he stepped outside where the blinding Greek Bronze Age sun7 struck his eyes.
First in the docket was an a-re-pa-zo-o8 who had lodged a grievance against a pu-ka-wo9 named A-ke-ra-wo, whom he had accused of burning down his house. King Nestor was outraged at this transgression; he immediately determined that the punishment for the arsonous A-ke-ra-wo was to be death. Now Nestor was a pious king; in order to get the most mileage out of the judgment, he decreed that the man be sacrificed to A-pa-i-ti-jo10, chuckling to himself at the delicious irony of offering up a firebug to the god of the forge. The royal scribe in attendance dutifully recorded the decree on a tablet, and sent it to the archives to be logged in; judicial protocol dictated that the death sentence be carried out immediately thereafter. Later that morning, the decree was read to the captain on duty, who dispatched a contingent of palace guards to find the miscreant and carry out the king's decision posthaste.
After a few more summary (and similarly draconian) judgments, the old king grew weary. He dismissed his do-e-ro-i11, and headed back to the royal apartments for a much-needed nap.
Late that afternoon, he awoke. His headache had abated somewhat, but he was still in a foul mood, and decided he needed some cheering up. He told his footman to summon his e-qe-ta12 and close friend, A2-ke-ra-wo.
"But sire," the footman replied anxiously, "I, Pi-ro-we-ko thy servant, the dirt under thy feet--at the feet of the king, my lord, my pantheon, my Sun-god, seven times seven times I fall!13--must humbly beg to inform my radiance that A2-ke-ra-wo was sacrificed this morning, according to thine order."
"What??," roared the king, a look of deep anguish on the royal visage. "We gave no such order!!"
The footman called for the scribe in attendance, who appeared soon thereafter with the relevant tablet. The scribe read aloud: "PU-RO i-je-to-qe A-pa-i-ti-jo A2-ke-ra-wo14."
King Nestor was horrified. "No!! Not A2-ke-ra-wo!! A-ke-ra-wo!!", he cried out, collapsing in tears.
"Damn this Linear B," muttered the scribe under his breath.
The moral of this tragic story:
Strive for precision in your writing.
And for God's sake, use an alphabet, not a syllabary.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPARATUS CRITICUS
1 King.
2 Pylos (modern Ano Englianos, in southwestern Greece), site of a major Mycenaean palace excavated by the University of Cincinnati beginning in 1939.
3 Depas, the name of a particular shape of goblet. The cup of Nestor was featured in an aside in the Iliad (Book IX, lines 631-635). Homer tells us that when his cup was full of wine, another man could lift it only with great effort; but Nestor, aged though he was, could raise it without straining.
4 The Linear B ideogram <| represents a unit of liquid measure thought to correspond to approximately 2 liters.
5 Purple double cloak (?). This term, found on Knossos tabet L 474, suggests that the color purple (a fast but expensive textile dye made from a fluid extracted from the Mediterranean Murex trunculus seashell) was already by this time associated with royalty in Greece (Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek, 2nd ed. [Cambridge University Press, 1973], p. 321).
6 Throne (located in the Megaron, the focal point of the Mycenaean palace).
7 The sun of Bronze Age Greece was doubtless even brighter and hotter than the sun of modern Greece, where the sky is occasionally obscured by smog.
8 Unguent-boiler (an official occupation).
9 Fire-kindler (an official occupation).
10 Hephaistos, Greek god of the forge.
11 Slaves or servants.
12 Official companion to the king; perhaps a member of the warrior class.
13 Okay, okay. This is not really a Linear B formula. I have lifted it from Amarna Tablet no. 254 (a letter from Labayu, a prince of Shechem in Palestine, to the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton) because I love the imagery of groveling. Functionaries in antiquity--not to mention slaves--were pathetically obsequious when addressing royalty. This particular phrase was boilerplate, and prefaces every statement addressed to the king in that series of correspondence (translation in James Pritchard, ed., The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures [Princeton University Press, 1958], p. 266). Mycenaean kings, to judge from their vivid depictions in the Homeric epics, were every bit as fearsome as their Near Eastern counterparts, and would surely have been treated by their lackeys with equal deference.
14 "PYLOS: Perform a certain action at the [shrine] of Hephaistos: A2-ke-ra-wo" (cf. the notorious Linear B tablet Tn316, q.v. Ventris and Chadwick, op. cit., pp. 284-289; pace Thomas Palaima, "The Last Days of the Pylos Polity," Aegaeum 12 [1995], pp. 623-637).
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - Matthew Amt - 05-15-2006
Brilliant, Robert, Thank you! An excellent giggle. I'm going to post this to the Bronze Age Center, they'll love it. GOT to learn my some Linear B! When we read the Illiad back in high school, everyone in the class was assigned a part--and I was Nestor! He's been a favorite of mine ever since.
Khaire,
Matthew
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - hoplite14gr - 05-15-2006
Trully good one Robert.
And actually grammar and spelling was formalised by the Alexandrine scholars. All the works that came to us were copied observing the rules they set. We are really not sure about the original spelling of the Classics much less of Bronze Age Greeks!
Kind regards
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - Robert Vermaat - 05-15-2006
Like I said, it's not mine, I just stumbled across it. It might be from the hand of a dr. Petruso from Arlington U.
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - P. Lilius Frugius Simius - 05-17-2006
LOL :-D D
Great story, indeed... Poor fellow, though... hehehe.
I recall reading in a book by Dr. Chadwick about wa-na-ka and how it was thought to be ancient Greek wanax, which would be more modern anax, appearing in the Illiad from time to time and one of the clues that the Myceaneans really were early Greeks in language...
cool stuff... :-) )
thanks for the sharing!
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - hoplite14gr - 05-17-2006
David,
Dr. Chadwick is to be greatly respected because he opened the way for us but there is no reson not to think Myceneans spoke wanax and not wa-na-ka.
There are may "classical" words endind in X
like
PORPAX = shield arm handle
STYRAX = spear butt
MEIRAX = boy
MOTHAX = half-helot (Spartan)
Kind regards
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - P. Lilius Frugius Simius - 05-19-2006
Stefanos,
Nod, my wording was probably imprecise.
By 'was thought to be' what I mean is his own wording, because he explicitely says in that little book that they were not completely sure how to match the inadequate syllabery of linear B to the language of the Myceaneans, which had been recently decyphered as pre-Classical Greek.
It's the second edition of a book of the 70s (I think) and there are some updates at the end, but the wording is there.
As for the certainty os transliterated wa-na-ka to be ancient Greek wanax I think there's little doubt nowadays, and that linear B tablets wanax is Homer's Iliad's anax I don't think there are many who doubt it, but as most things in Linguistics you can only be 99%...
I certainly use wanax and potnia quite liberally in my Myceanean-themed historical fiction reconstruction (or, probably more precisely, "negadeconstruction", as I call the creation of a probable history that's compatible with the myths that the real history helped to create) of the myths of OEdypus of Thebes, writing them as if they were based in real events... (to be finished! but it's fun, indeed! I'm about to "negadeconstruct" the 'Seven against Thebes', which is a favourite play of mine... :-) ) )
thanks for your comments!
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - Dan Diffendale - 05-19-2006
Yes, Linear B writing wa-na-ka represented a spoken wanax. The idea of the syllabary had been adopted from the Minoans, which is apparently a completely unrelated language.
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - hoplite14gr - 05-19-2006
Danno
Well actually if we take the evolution of Greek language it goes like
[pre]
Proto-European
| |
(Greek) Pelasgic Minoic
| | \\
(Greek) Aeolic Achaic --- Ionic
\\ /
(Greek) Doric
[/pre]
The "official" version of pronouciation came to be the Attic version of the Ionic dialect because Alexnadrine scholars said so.
Anything not regonized like that becomes suspect if does not relate obvoisly to the "mutilated" version the had the nerve to name "Helliniki Koini". Just to make our lives difficult.
Kind regards
PS. the diagram does not look as I intented so feel free to disregard its apearence
David yes most myths "hide" history.
Actually MYTHIMI = tell a tale - not necessarily untrue.
The "fairy tail" is called PARAMYTHOS (mod. Greek: paramythi)
Actually the "real" events of the 7 agiaist Thebes started coming to light with the latest geological stdy of Beotia and the state of the ancient lake Kopais (not existing now). 14th century B.C was quite a time!
Kind regards
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - drsrob - 05-20-2006
Linear A is definitely not Greek. Woudhuizen/Best conclude that it basically is a Luwian dialect, like Lydian.
They propose that Etruscan belongs to the Luwian language groep as well.
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - Dan Diffendale - 05-22-2006
Pelasgian/Pelasgic is a basically meaningless term when it comes to linguistics. If by Minoic/Minoan you mean Linear A, Rob is correct, Linear A is definitely not genetically related to the Greek language.
As for Woudhuizen and Best, their theories should be viewed with extreme caution.
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - P. Lilius Frugius Simius - 05-22-2006
Stefanos,
nod! the 1400s and 1300s BCE were certainly fascinating, all over the place (and not just in Greece, but basically everywhere in the Old World)! We have a host of very important advances in societies and in sciences and technology through the middle and late Bronze which, in the Eastern Mediterranean, culminated with the (in)famous People of the Sea and the "Catastrophe" in the XII BCE...
Following the legends, and considering some of the Epigonoà (or their sons) were said to be in the War at Troy, I've moved back and determined that the beginning of the myth (with Laios's crime) to be the end of the XIV, beginning of the XIII Century, where warfare was still very much over chariot mounted archers with infantry support; later weaponry developments towards the Seven against Thebes siege and the War at Troy made the infantry much more capable of dealing with the chariots and they started to lose their importance in the battlefield... Once I have the novel finished, I hope this, and other things, will be clearly seen, as well as other social developments.
Do you have info about those archaeological findings? I'd love to "compare notes" with History (and the archaeologists that made the findings), maybe I'll be forced to move things back some years... Thanks!
Bronze Age is one of the most fascinating times in all History, as we see how things started from Neolithic and how civilizations began to sprout here and there, and how many traditions we have to day can be traced back to those days, in one way or another... It's certainly cool (and frustrating, but mainly cool)! :-) )
thanks for the help to everybody, now I know I'm going the good way with this... ;-) )
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - hoplite14gr - 05-22-2006
On the laguage/script argument more when I gather my references.
David as for the events of the time my friend G. Iliopoulos wrote 9 articles on the warrior fraternities of the Bronze Age. I will try to post a synopsis as fast as possible.
Kind regards
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - P. Lilius Frugius Simius - 05-22-2006
Stefanos,
that would be great! if you can include the full reference, I can try and get my hand on them on an Unversity library over here...
My main sources for things Mykeanean are Chadwick and Robert Drews (specific books, more or less), and then from several ancient Greece and ancient times books and encyclopedias (and such), I can always enjoy new information... :-) )
khaire!
Re: THE INFURIATINGLY IMPRECISE ORTHOGRAPHY OF LINEAR B - hoplite14gr - 05-23-2006
David,
Warrior Fraternities
TITANES (Titans) 23rd 19th centuty B.C.
Monocultivation-only grain; fight to control flatlands of Thessaly and Beotia
Their god Kronos (Saturn) krini/krana = fountain (God fountain of life?)
TITAX= ruler - Hysicheos Lexikon
TITANA=high lady - Pausanias Harkadika
White masks of the Titans orfic cycle of Dionysos
TITANOS= white plaster - Hysicheos Lexikon
FLEGYES(Flamers/incendiaries) 19th 16th centuty B.C
Polycultivation-grain and peas/beans alleviate starvation.
Conquer the flatlands of Thessaly and Beotia and raid Delfi - Homer Apollonius.
Flegys=flaming one , species of “blond/goldenâ€