Minoan Linear A Reza Adureza Tereza. Do they measure up? PART 3 = tereza

Minoan Linear A Reza Adureza Tereza. Do they measure up? PART 3 = tereza




If the root Minoan Linear A for a specific unit of measurement is reza, and the compound unit adureza refers to a specific unit of dry measurement, it follows that tereza, used in combination with the ideogram for “wine” must reference a specific unit of wet measurement. The problem is, what specific unit? Note that the number of specific units of wet measurement on Haghia Triada tablet HT 31 is small, 5 1/2. This would imply that we are not dealing with a whole lot of specific units of small containers of wine, but with a very small number of specific units of (very) large containers of wine. It strikes me as very peculiar that either Minoan Linear A or Mycenaean Linear B scribes would ever bother inventorying scores or even hundreds of small standard units of wine, as it is perfectly obvious that at the Palace of Knossos, at least in Mycenaean times, Late Minoan IIIb, wine was always stored in very large amphorae, known in much later classical Greece as pithoi, as illustrated here:




As for the notion that Linear A or Linear B scribes would ever even bother to inventory 5 1/2 small units, such as say the standard Minoan/Mycenaean small unit approximately equivalent to a standard bottle or a modern litre of wine, it begs credulity! Either the scribes would have polished off those 5 1/2 bottles of wine at day’s end or some of the staff administration or the king or queen would have taken them off their hands the same day. So the only alternative we are left with is to assume (with a reasonable degree of logic and practicality) that what the Minoan Linear A scribes were inventorying on this tablet was the standard large unit for the storage of wine, which would almost certainly have been the standard large amphora size in use at the Middle Minoan II to Late Minoan II Palace of  Knossos, which in and of itself must have been closely if not exactly equivalent to the standard amphora or pithos size at the Late Minoan IIIB Palace of Knossos, when Mycenaean Linear B was the lingua franca of inventories.

But there is more, much more to this intriguing and possibly highly revealing Minoan Linear A tablet. We know that it deals specifically with the inventorying of wine. And by that I mean that in all probability the entire tablet deals with wine. If that is the case, then at least some of these words: [1] teki [2] quqani [3] re + scales (referring to, guess what, the measurement of wine!) [4] sedu? (if my spelling is right) [5] nere [6] adu = “dry”? [7] si*307* [8] daweda [9] pa2 or pa3+? (effaced) [10] u *306*za [11] daru [12] teke & [13] re = possibly an abbreviation for reza should yield themselves up to decipherment in the near future.

NOTE that, even if all of my decipherments of reza, adureza and tereza are way off the mark, i.e. plain wrong, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I say, be bold and forge ahead! 

Advertisement