Reduplication in the perfect active of the verb pine = to drink, derived (D) from the attested (A) perfect active of kaue = to burn in Mycenaean Linear B: The attested perfect active of the Mycenaean Linear B verb, kaue = to burn, serves as the template upon which any number of derived (D) verbs in the active perfect may be extrapolated. This table illustrates this process:In order to form the active perfect tense, the ancient Greeks usually (but not always) resorted to the technique of reduplication, whereby the first syllable of the verb is prepended to the initial syllable of the conjugation of the same verb in the aorist (simple past), with this proviso, that the orthography of first syllable, or in Mycenaean Linear B, the vowel of the first syllabogram, is morphed into e from the initial vowel of the first syllable of the aorist, which is usually a or o in the aorist, prior to reduplication. Thus, in Mycenaean Linear B, the first syllabogram must reflect the same change. Hence, ekausa (aorist) = I burned (once only) becomes kekausa (perfect) = I have burned, while epoka (aorist) = I drank (once only) becomes pepoka= I have drunk. This transformation is critical, since both the aorist and the perfect active tense are very common in ancient Greek.
Tag: PROGRESSIVE LINEAR B
For the first time in history, the complete conjugations of 5 major derived (D) active indicative tenses of thematic verbs in Linear B progressive grammar
For the first time in history, the complete conjugations of 5 major derived (D) active indicative tenses of thematic verbs in Linear B progressive grammar: The tenses of active thematic verbs are: the present indicative active the future indicative active the imperfect indicative active the aorist indicative active the perfect indicative active Here is are the 2 tables (A & B) of the complete derived (D) conjugations of these 5 tenses of the active thematic verb kaue = the archaic ancient Greek kauein (Latinized), “to set on fire”:
The ability of a linguist specializing in Mycenaean Linear B, i.e. myself, to cognitively restore no fewer than 5 active tenses of thematic verbs by means of progressive Mycenaean Greek derived (D) grammar boils down to one impressive feat. However, I have omitted the pluperfect indicative active, since it was rarely used in any and all of the numerous dialects of ancient Greek, right on down from Mycenaean to Arcado-Cypriot to Aeolic, Ionic and Attic Greek, and indeed right on through the Hellenistic and New Testament eras. So since the pluperfect tense is as rare as it is, why bother reconstructing it? At least, this is my rationale. Other researchers and linguists specializing in Mycenaean Linear B may disagree. That is their perfect right. Is Mycenaean Greek in Linear B a proto-Greek dialect? Absolutely not! There are still a few researchers and historical linguists specializing in Mycenaean Linear B who would have us believe that Mycenaean Greek is a proto-Greek dialect. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact that so many fully developed grammatical forms are attested (A) on Linear B tablets confirms once and for all that Mycenaean Greek is the earliest intact East Greek dialect. Among the numerous grammatical forms attested (A) in Mycenaean Greek, we count: [1] verbs, including infinitives active and some passive for both thematic and athematic MI verbs; a sufficient number of verbs either in the active present or aorist tenses; a considerable number of participles, especially perfect passive; and even the optative case in the present tense, [2] nouns & adjectives, for which we find enough attested (A) examples of these declined in the nominative singular and plural, the genitive singular and plural and the dative/instrumental/ablative singular & plural. The accusative singular and plural appear to be largely absent from the Linear B tablets, but appearances can be deceiving, as I shall soon convincingly demonstrate. Also found on the extant Linear B tablets are the comparative and superlative of adjectives, and [3] almost all of the prepositions to be found in later ancient Greek dialects. Taken altogether, these extant attributed (A) grammatical elements form a foundation firm enough to recreate templates for all of the aforementioned elements in a comprehensive derived (D) progressive Mycenaean Linear B grammar. If you are still not convinced, I simply refer you to the previous post, where examples of many of these grammatical elements are accounted for. Moreover, once I have completely recompiled ancient Mycenaean Greek grammar, you should be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mycenaean Greek was the very first true ancient Greek dialect. What is progressive derived (D) Mycenaean Linear B grammar? By progressive I mean nothing less than as full a restoration as possible of the corpus of ancient Mycenaean Greek grammar by means of the procedure of regressive extrapolation of the (exact) equivalents of any and all grammatical elements I shall have reconstructed from the two major sources of slightly later archaic Greek, namely: (a) the Arcado-Cypriot dialect, in which documents were composed in the Linear C syllabary, a direct offshoot of Mycenaean Linear B (Even though the two syllabaries look scarcely alike, the symbolic values of their syllabograms are in almost all instances practically identical), and from so-called Epic Greek, which was comprised of diverse elements haphazardly drawn from various archaic Greek dialects, in other words yielding nothing less than a mess, but a viable one nonetheless. At this juncture, I must emphatically stress that, contrary to common opinion among ancient Greek literary scholars not familiar with either Mycenaean Linear B or Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, the gap between the scribal Linear B tablets and the next appearance of written ancient Greek is not around 400 years (1200-800 BCE), as they would have it, but only one century. Why so? Hard on the heels of the collapse of the Mycenaean Empire and of its official script, Linear B, ca. 1200 BCE, Arcado-Cypriot Linear C first appeared in writing a mere 100 years after, give or take. The revised timeline for the disappearance and reappearance of written Greek is illustrated here:
If this is not convincing enough, Mycenaean Greek’s intimate cousin, Arcado-Cypriot, of which the syllabary is Linear C, is even more closely related to Mycenaean Greek than Ionic is to Attic Greek. In fact, you could say that they are kissing cousins. Now it stands to reason that, if Arcado-Cypriot in Linear C is a fully developed East Greek dialect, as it most certainly is (subsisting at least 700 years, from 1100 – 400 BCE), then it follows as day does night that Mycenaean Linear B must also be a fully functional East Greek dialect (in fact, the first). The two factors addressed above should lay to rest once and for all that Mycenaean Greek is merely proto-Greek. That is sheer nonsense.
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Mycenaean Linear B Progressive Grammar: Derived (D) Verbs/Infinitives in U = 516
Mycenaean Linear B Progressive Grammar: Derived (D) Verbs/Infinitives in U = 516 In this post we find derived (D) infinitives in U. Here is the table of derived (D) thematic and athematic active present infinitives starting with the Greek letter U:This constitutes the very last table of present infinitives active we are posting. The grand total of present infinitives we have tabulated thus comes to 516. Of course, this is but a small representative cross-sampling of the present infinitives we could have covered. However, I decided from the very outset to limit myself to those present infinitives which would be the most likely to have been used the most frequently in natural, spoken and written Mycenaean Greek. So the list is of necessity arbitrary. It was highly likely that official documents, poetry (if any) and religious texts were written in natural Mycenaean Greek on papyrus. However, the moist climate of Crete and the Greek mainland meant that papyrus, unlike in the arid climate of Egypt, was doomed to rot away. So we shall never really know whether or not there were documents in natural Mycenaean Greek. But my educated hunch is that there were. The GRAND TOTAL of natural Mycenaean Greek derived (D) infinitives we have posted comes to 516. Now that we are finished with both present and future infinitives active in Mycenaean Greek, the next step is to address aorist or simple past infinitives. If anything, the aorist infinitive active, which was used very frequently in ancient Greek, right on down from the Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot dialects to the Ionic, Athenian and New Testament Greek, is conceptually rather difficult for modern day students of Greek to grasp. However, we shall do our best to make the experience less painful. Once we have tabulated a dozen or so examples of aorist infinitives, we shall then proceed to reconstruct Mycenaean Greek grammar from the ground up. This is a huge undertaking which of course has never been assayed before. But it is my profound belief and conviction that it must be done. The post immediately following the one on the aorist infinitive will introduce the outline of all aspects of Mycenaean grammar I intend to cover... and there is a lot of it.
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Progressive Linear B Grammar: Verbs/Derived (D) Infinitives: A = 24
Progressive Linear B Grammar: Verbs/Derived (D) Infinitives: A = 24
Beginning with this post, we shall be constructing a Lexicon of Derived (D) Infinitives in Mycenaean Linear B. This post lists all 24 derived verbs I have selected classed under A. The methodology whereby we reconstruct derived verbs, not attested (A) anywhere on any Linear B tablets, is termed retrogressive extrapolation, by which I mean that we draw each entry in alphabetical order from an ancient Greek dictionary, accounting for throwbacks to archaic East Greek, since that is what the Mycenaean dialect is. The dictionary we are using is the Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary. Since the entries in the classical dictionary are in Attic Greek, they frequently require readjustment to reflect their much earlier orthography in archaic Greek. I have also taken the liberty of selecting only those verbs of which the spelling is identical or very close to what would have been their orthography in Mycenaean Greek. This is because Mycenaean orthography is often problematic, insofar as it frequently omits a consonant preceding the consonant which follows it. Additionally, since Mycenaean Greek is represented by a syllabary, in which each syllable must end in a vowel, it is impossible for the spelling of a great many words (let alone verbs) to accurately correspond to the orthography of the same words in later ancient Greek dialects. So I have decided to omit such verbs for the sake of simplicity. Finally, since there are so many verbs under each letter of the Greek alphabet, I have had to be very selective in choosing the verbs I have decided to include in this Lexicon, omitting scores of verbs which would have qualified just as well for inclusion as the verbs I have chosen.
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Illustrations of 5 Minoan Linear A tablets (Figures) in Archaeology and Science (2016)
Illustrations of 5 Minoan Linear A tablets (Figures) in Archaeology and Science (2016):
Above are 5 illustrations of some (not all) of the Minoan Linear A tablets, reduced to 620 pixels, as they will appear as Figures (with the Figure nos. assigned only to Figures 1 & 2, other Figure nos. not yet assigned) in my upcoming article, “Pylos Tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris), the ‘Rosetta Stone’ for Minoan Linear A tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada) vessels and pottery” in the prestigious international annual Archaeology and Science, Vol. 12 (2016) ISSN 1452-7448. This is to be the third major article in a row which I will see published in Archaeology and Science. This paper represents the first genuine breakthrough in the decipherment of Minoan Linear A vocabulary (not the language!) in the 116 years since the first Linear A tablets were unearthed by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos in 1900.
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Richard Vallance Twitter KONOSO 1602 & Rita Roberts 548 followers for a total of 2,150!
Richard Vallance Twitter KONOSO 1602 & Rita Roberts 548 followers for a total of 2,150!
Richard Vallance’s Twitter account, KONOSO, has now reached 1602 followers & Rita Roberts’ 548 followers, for a total of 2,150 followers! Amazing, considering how esoteric Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C are. Of course, Rita’s twitter account covers a far greater range of topics on the ancient world, archaeology, early modern historical goodies, and modern stuff too! The last time we checked in about 4 months ago, we only had about 1,500 followers between us. We are growing like gangbusters!
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MAJOR DEVELOPMENT! 24 Supersyllabograms in Minoan Linear A just discovered, 8 of them deciphered (versus 36 in Mycenaean Linear B)
MAJOR DEVELOPMENT! 24 Supersyllabograms in Minoan Linear A just discovered, 8 of them deciphered (versus 36 in Mycenaean Linear B):In case you were wondering whether or not the Mycenaeans invented supersyllabograms, think again. It was the Minoan Linear A scribes who invented them, and passed them on to their Mycenaean heirs. I never even suspected there were supersyllabograms in Minoan Linear A until I started trying to decipher at least some Minoan terms in May of 2016. Lo and behold, to my astonishment, there are 24 of them in Linear A, a substantial number, amounting to 66 % of the number of supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B = 36. It is now obvious that if I can decipher any more than the 8 supersyllabograms I have already translated in Minoan Linear A, I may very well be able to decipher more Minoan Linear A words. It remains to be seen. However, I am greatly encouraged by the fact that the apparent meanings of the 8 supersyllabograms I have already deciphered in Minoan Linear A seem to match almost perfectly the actual translations of the Minoan Linear A words to which they apparently correspond. See my decipherments of 8 Minoan Linear A SSYLS (supersyllabograms) following the table of SSYLs in Linear A immediately below. If it had not been for the fact that I successfully deciphered the 36 supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, I would never have stumbled upon the 24 SSYLs in Minoan Linear A, nor would I have been able to cross-correlate these 8 supersyllabograms, DA KA KI NI PA RA SA TE. These 8 supersyllabograms account for 33 % of all the SSYLs in Minoan Linear A. My decipherments of the 8 SSYLs is quite an achievement, considering I, like everyone else in the world, do not know what the Minoan language actually is. I stress again, I have only managed to decipher some of its vocabulary, not the language itself. This is in stark contrast to the 36 supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B which I have been able to decipher with relative ease, in view of the fact that I am intimately familiar with Mycenaean Linear B, having already translated at least 1,000 Linear B tablets. So the fact that I have been able to decipher even 8 of 24 supersyllabograms in Minoan Linear A is almost a miracle in itself. You can be sure that my decipherments of these 8 Linear A supersyllabograms will figure largely in my upcoming article in Archaeology and Science, Vol. 16 (2016) (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448, “Linear B tablet Pylos TA 641-1952 (Ventris), the “Rosetta Stone” for Minoan Linear A tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada) vessels and pottery”. You can just imagine how exciting a development this has been for me! Moreover, this development has allowed me to add yet another Minoan Linear A term to my Glossary of Minoan Linear A, samuku, which almost certainly refers to the harvest(ing) of grains (barley or wheat). See SPECIAL NOTES at the end of this post. The Table of 24 Minoan Linear A supersyllabograms From Haghia Triada (HT) & Khania (KH): A HT2 olive oil HT39 vase (v) DA HT133 (g) DI * HT12 olive oil (qatidate) HT14 (oo) HT28 HT50 HT90 HT121 HT129 E * HT2 olive oil HT21 HT34 (g) (+ sumuku huge nos.) HT50 HT58 (oo) KA * HT28 man (m) HT88 HT97 HT100 KE HT26 (vase) KI * HT8 olive oil HT18 HT28 HT44 HT50 HT91 HT101 HT125 HT129 HT140 KU HT32 cloth (c) HT61 (g) HT128 X4! MI * HT28 (oo) HT50 HT90 HT91 HT100 HT101 HT116 X2 b HT125 HT137 NE * HT23 (oo) HT32 HT100 NI appears on several Linear A tablets all by itself, and invariably means figs. It is the only supersyllabogram shared with Mycenaean Linear B, which apparently simply inherited it lock, stock and barrel from Minoan Linear A. QE * HT18 grains (g) HT28 HT36 HT99 HT101 HT121 (oo) PA * HT43 (g) HT93 X3! HT102 X2 HT120 X2 HT125 HT128 KT27 RA HT44 (oo) KH91 (v) RI HT23 (oo) HT35 HT60 HT110 (v) KH82 (oo) RU * KH12 (v) KH63 KH84 KH85 KH91 SA HT27
(g) HT131
The meanings of the supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B do NOT correspond in any way with those in Minoan Linear A. This table appears in my soon to be published article, “The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B” in Vol. 15 (2015) of the prestigious international annual, Archaeology and Science (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448. SPECIAL NOTES: [1] The SSYL KI for olive oil has something to do with sara2 (sarai) = small unit of measurement: dry approx. 1 kg., liquid approx. 1 litre OR kireta2 (kiritai) = delivery = Linear B apudosis + kiretana = (having been) delivered (past participle passive) = Linear B amoiyeto OR kireza = unit of measurement for figs, probably 1 basket OR kiro = owed = Linear B oporo = they owed. [2] Although I have been unable to decipher the supersyllabogram E for olives, it has facilitated my translation of yet another Minoan Linear A word, samuku, which appears in such huge numbers (245 + 100) on Minoan Linear A tablet HT 34, dealing specifically with grains (barley or wheat) that is almost certainly means the “harvest” of a total of 345 large units of grains, corresponding to something like our modern bushels.
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Minoan Linear A, Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae reaches the threshold of 100,000 visitors
Minoan Linear A, Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae reaches the threshold of 100,000 visitors: (Click the banner to visit)Minoan Linear A, Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae reaches the threshold of 100,000 visitors after 3 1/2 years in existence. This may not sound very impressive to a lot of people, but when we pause consider, even for a moment, that our blog deals specifically and almost solely with Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B and Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, the statistics look much more healthy. No-one on earth, apart from myself, can read any Minoan Linear A at all, and very very few can read Mycenaean Linear B or Arcado-Cypriot Linear C. So in this light, the statistics are all the more impressive. After all, even most of our our most loyal visitors cannot read at least 2 of these three syllabaries, even though several are adept with Homer and Classical Greek, as am I. By the way, our blog also features my own translation of the Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad, which has a direct bearing on the features of Homeric vocabulary and syntax inherited directly from Mycenaean Linear B. In this period, we have posted well over 1,300 posts, with translations of hundreds of Mycenaean Linear B tablets, scores of Minoan Linear A tablets and even a few Arcado-Cypriot tablets. Our media library consists of 10s of thousands of photos, images and frescoes & paintings. We are, in a word, the largest Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C site on the internet. Even omitting Linear A and Linear C, we rank in the top 3 of official Mycenaean Linear B sites.
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3 of my articles in Archaeology and Science ISSN 1452-7448 (2014, 2015, & 2016) + Vol. 12 (2016) Figure 1 & 2 Tables
3 of my articles in Archaeology and Science ISSN 1452-7448 (2014, 2015, & 2016) + Vol. 12 (2016) Figure 1 & 2 Tables: Figure 1and 2 Tables (nos. To be assigned)
as they will appear in the prestigious international hard-bound annual Archaeology and Science ISSN 1452-7448. Vol. 12 (2016). This annual generally runs to 250-300 pp. It is impossible to cross-correlate Minoan Linear A tablets from Mycenaean Linear B tablets by means of retrogressive extrapolation without explicitly taking into account the fact that almost all Minoan Linear A tablets are vertical in their orientation (just as with modern inventories), while the vast majority of Mycenaean Linear B tablets are horizontal in their orientation. For more on this critical factor in the reasonably accurate decipherment of Minoan Linear A tablet, see (Click on the banner):
Articles published and to be published in Archaeology and Science (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448: [1] My article, “An Archaeologist’s Translation of Pylos Tablet 641-1952 (Ventris)” has already been published in Archaeology and Science (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448 Vol. 10 (2014). pp. 133-161 (Click banner to download it):
[2] My article, “The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B” is already slated for publication in the prestigious international annual Archaeology and Science (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448 Vol. 11 (2015), to be released in the spring of 2017. (Click the banner for the announcement):
[3] My article, “Pylos tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris), the ‘Rosetta Stone’ for Minoan Linear B tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada) vessels and pottery” is to be published in the prestigious international annual Archaeology and Science (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448 Vol. 12 (2016) (Click the banner for the announcement):
This major announcement is shortly to appear on my academia.edu account.
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Symbaloo/Google search ranks Minoan Linear A, Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae as fourth largest on the Internet
Symbaloo/Google search ranks Minoan Linear A, Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae as fourth largest on the Internet:Since this is a Boolean AND search, if we omit sites dealing with only Minoan Linear A or only Mycenaean Linear B, which do not fulfill this requirement, our site ranks fourth. But since the site, Linear A and Linear B script: Britannica.com is a minor site, we actually rank third. Also, our PINTEREST board is ranked fifth (actually fourth). We have over 1.7 K Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B translations, photos, maps & images on our PINTEREST board, Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B, Progressive Grammar and Vocabulary. Click the banner to visit and join if you like!
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An idea of how many impressions (tweets & retweets) a day my Twitter account, Konoso, gets = 6,552 today alone!… correction 7,114. I cannot keep up!
An idea of how many impressions (tweets & retweets) a day my Twitter account, Konoso, gets = 6,552 today alone! Click to visit & FOLLOW if you like!The snapshot of my Twitter account, Konoso, informs us that it has had 6,552 impressions (tweets & retweets) in the past 24 hours alone. This number varies daily from a low of about 1,200 to highs in around 6,500, as seen here. Busy Twitter account for something as esoteric as Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B, n’est-ce pas? These are at least my impressions, though certainly not all of them (pun!)
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KEY POST: 2 vastly different decipherments of Minoan Linear A tablet HT 13 (Haghia Triada). Does either measure up?
KEY POST: 2 vastly different decipherments of Minoan Linear A tablet HT 13 (Haghia Triada). Does either measure up? In this post we compare two vastly different decipherments of Minoan Linear A tablet HT 13 (Haghia Triada). The key question here can be posed in three different ways: 1. Does one of these two decipherments measure up significantly more than the other? 2. Does either measure up? 3. Does neither measure up? Here are the two decipherments, first that of Pavel Serafimov and Anton Perdih:and secondly, my own decipherment:
According to option 3 above, it is of course possible that neither of these translations forms a faithful semantic and semiotic map of the original Linear A text (whatever it actually means). On the other hand, it is much more likely that option 1. above is applicable, namely that only one of the two decipherments at least approaches a faithful semantic and semiotic map of the original Linear A text , although we can never really know how faithfully until such time as Minoan Linear B is properly and fully deciphered. And that will not happen anytime soon, due to the extreme paucity of extant Linear B tablets and fragments (< 500), of which the vast majority are fragments, and thus ineffectual in providing any impetus to even a partial decipherment of Minoan Linear A. However, all is not lost. Far from it. There quite a few (almost) full intact Minoan Linear A tablets, all of which are very much more susceptible to contributing positively to at least a partial decipherment of Linear A. To date, the Linear A tablets which I have been able to decipher, more or less accurately, are HT 13, HT 14, (HT 17), HT 21, HT 31, HT 38, HT 91, HT 92, HT 94 and HT 132 (all from Haghia Triada) ZA 1 ZA 8 ZA 10 (Zakros) GO Wc 1 (Gournia) and the Troy spindle whorls I have also managed to decipher one or two words on several other tablets from Haghia Triada, Zakros and elsewhere, without however being able to decipher the remainder of the integral text, which utterly escapes me, and is therefore still to be considered undecipherable, at least for the time being. There is no telling whether or not either I myself or someone else will be able to decipher more words from the rest of these tablets or even some of the tablets entire in the near future. Only time will tell, but I believe the prospects are much better now than they were even a few months ago, i.e. prior to May 2016, when I embarked on the exciting journey to decipher as much of Minoan Linear A as I could. It is no small achievement, I believe, for me to have been able to decipher at least the 12 Linear A tablets listed above, if indeed my decipherments approach cohesive accuracy, both internally and by means of cross-correlative regressive extrapolation from almost identical to similar Mycenaean Linear B tablets. With respect to my own decipherment of HT 13 (Haghia Triada) above, I wish to make the following highly pertinent observations. I leave it up to you to decide for yourself (yourselves) whether or not the assumptions I have meticulously made with specific reference to what appear to be derivational standard units of measurement in Minoan Linear A are in fact that. Immediately pursuant to my highly accurate decipherment of HT 31 (Haghia Triada) on vessels and pottery, for which Mycenaean Linear B tablet Pylos Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris) is the quasi Rosetta Stone (as I have re-iterated many times since that decipherment), I turned my attention to three words which appeared over and over on several Minoan Linear A tablets, these being reza, adureza & tereza. Philologists such as Andras Zeke of the Minoan Language Blog had previously and consistently “deciphered” these three terms as being toponyms or place names, but I was immediately suspicious of such an interpretation, given that both adureza and tereza have the prefixes adu and te prepended to what strikingly appears to be their own root, reza. Subsequent research revealed two more terms most likely derived from the root, reza = the standard unit of linear measurement in Minoan Linear A (as far as I can tell... more on this to come). These are dureza and kireza. So the total number of terms relative to measurement of large, not minute, quantities in Minoan Linear A appear to be 5. That is quite a tally. + units of measurement in Minoan Linear A: exact values unknown reza = standard unit of measurement (linear) adureza = dry unit of measurement (something like a “bushel”) dureza = unit of measurement (unknown) [1] kireza = dry measurement for figs (a basket) [2] tereza = liquid unit of measurement (something like “a gallon” or at the bare minimum “a litre” [3] NOTES: [1] While I have been utterly unable to surmise what standard unit of measurement dureza is supposed to represent, even the standard units for reza, adureza & tereza are mere approximations. For more on this see the concluding paragraph of this post. [2] While I am virtually certain that kireza is the standard unit for the measurement of a basket of figs, this still begs the question, what size is the basket? At any rate, it is pretty obvious that the basket size cannot be larger than can reasonably be carried on one shoulder, since that is the way baskets are carried in practically every culture, ancient or modern. So in this case, the approximation for the standard unit of measurement figs, kireza, is considerably more accurate than all of the others. [3] Obviously, in light of [1] above, my guesstimates for the standard units of dry and wet measurement (adureza and tereza respectively) are just that, and nothing more.
Now if we compare the variables in the prefixes to the root, reza (adu, du, ki & te) with the similar practice of suffixes appended to word roots in Mycenaean Linear B, which is the direct opposite practice we have just propounded for Minoan Linear A, we nevertheless discover that the same level of consistency and coherence applies equally to both languages, as clearly illustrated by the following table, in which the prefixes listed above for Minoan Linear A appear at the end, preceded by no fewer than three roots (which are invariable) and appear in front of highly variable suffixes in Mycenaean Linear B. The roots are, respectively, raw, which references anything to do with people, tri, which references anything related to the number 3 and wana, which references any connotation of kingship or royalty in Mycenaean Greek. While the practices for affixing are appositive in Minoan Linear A (which prepends affixes to the root) and in Mycenaean Linear B (which appends suffixes to the root or stem), the procedure the two languages follows is one and the same, flipped on its head either way you view it, i.e. from the perspective of Mycenaean Linear B or vice versa, from that of Minoan Linear A. The underlying principle which defines this procedure is the cognitive frame, as propounded by my colleague and friend, Eugenio R. Luján. So let us simply call the procedure (whether from the perspective of Minoan Linear or its opposite in Mycenaean Linear B) just that, the cognitive frame, which is also the template for the procedure, actually proceeding forward in both languages, each in its own way. Either way, the procedure works like a charm. As Eugenio R. Luján so succinctly summarizes it in his article, “Semantic Maps and Word Formation: Agents, Instruments, and Related Semantic Roles”, in Linguistic Discovery (Dartmouth College), Vol 8, Issue 1, 2010. pp. 162-175, and I quote: ... The methodology of semantic maps has been applied mainly to the analysis of grammatical morphemes (affixes and adpositions) pg. 162 and again, Previous work on semantic maps has shown how the polysemy of grammatical morphemes is not random, but structured according to underlying principles.... Although the semantic map methodology has not been applied to the analysis of word formation patterns, there is no reason to suppose that derivational morphemes behave differently from grammatical morphemes. In fact, taking into account the findings of the intensive work done in the field of grammaticalization in the last thirty years or so, we know now that lexical and grammatical morphemes constitute a continuum, and their meanings are organized in the same way—inside a cognitive frame,... pg. 163 and most significantly, In contrast to the lexicon, the number of derivational morphemes and word formation patterns in any given language is limited. pg. 163. I wish to lay particular stress on this last observation by Eugenio R. Luján, because he is right on the money. In terms of the way I have expounded my own explanation of how the procedure of the cognitive frame works, as I see it, what he is actually saying here is this: the derivational morphemes (i.e. the prefixes in Minoan Linear A and the suffixes in Mycenaean Linear B) is limited, and in fact very limited in comparison with the orthographic and grammatical lexicon in either language, or for that matter, in any language, ancient or modern. All of this brings us full circle back to my own original assumption, namely, that adureza, dureza, kireza and tereza are all derivational morphemes of reza in Minoan Linear A and that the suffixes appended to the roots raw, tri and wana in Mycenaean Linear B are also derivational morphemes. The gravest problem with the decipherment of HT 13 (Haghia Triada) advanced by Pavel Serafimov and Anton Perdih is that it does not take the cognitive frame or map of derivational morphemes into account at all. So instead, the authors advance entirely different meanings for each of these terms (reza, adureza, dureza, kireza & tereza), entirely oblivious to the the fact that they all share the same root, reza. This factor alone throws profound doubt on their decipherment. On the other hand, my own decipherment of HT 13 (Haghia Triada) takes the procedure of the cognitive frame or map of derivational morphemes fully into account, with the very same procedure applied to derivational morphemes in Mycenaean Linear B, though in the opposite direction). For the sake of consistency, let us refer to the the cognitive frame or map of derivational morphemes in Minoan Linear A as regressive, given that the variables (the prefixes, adureza, dureza, kireza & tereza) precede the root, reza, and the same frame as progressive in Mycenaean Linear B, in light of the fact that the root or stem is followed by the variable suffixes (derivational morphemes). Be it as it may, prefixes and suffixes are both classed under the umbrella term, affixes, and again, I repeat, the procedure is the same either way. An affix is an affix is an affix, whether or not it comes first (prefix) or last (suffix). For this reason alone I am convinced that my decipherment of HT 13 is on the right track, even if it is not totally accurate... which it cannot be anyway, in light of the fact that the standard units of measurement for large quantities in Minoan Linear A (reza, adureza, dureza, kireza and tereza) will never be known with any measure of accuracy, given that we can have no idea whatsoever that the “standard” units for anything in either Minoan Linear A or Mycenaean Linear B can ever be really determined. The farther we as philologists or historical linguists go back diachronistically in the historical timeline, the less determinable are units of measurement or, for that matter, different kinds of textiles or pottery, few of which we can know with any measure of certainty either in Minoan Linear A or Mycenaean Linear B.
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This is an extremely comprehensive academic video on the decipherment and interpretation of Mycenaean Linear B
This is an extremely comprehensive academic video on the decipherment and interpretation of Mycenaean Linear B:It is very long (34:53 minutes) but extremely worthwhile reading.
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Can folks please vote the number of stars you think this post is worth? Someone voted only 3 stars, and I am virtually certain I know who…
Can folks please vote the number of stars you think this post is worth? Someone voted only 3 stars, and I am virtually certain I know who...If you believe the post is worth 4 or 5 stars, please vote to counteract the low vote (3 stars) one unhappy person accorded it. Thanks so much Richard
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PINTEREST: Someone loves us! Richard Vallance — Linear Scripts Superhero
PINTEREST: Someone loves us! Richard Vallance — Linear Scripts Superhero
You have simply got to see Thalassas Farkas’ new PINTEREST board, where he is reposting ALL of my recent posts from my own PINTEREST board, Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B: Progressive Grammar and B Vocabulary: (1.5 K pins!)
and from my premier Minoan Linear A, Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae site:
I would be delighted if you followed both Thalassas Farkas’ and my own PINTEREST boards, because nowhere else will you find so much information about Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B and Arcado-Cypriot Linear C!
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Rita Roberts has finished her first year of university with a great mark of 83 % = A!
Rita Roberts has finished her first year of university with a great mark of 83 % = A!Rita Roberts has finished her first year of university with a great mark of 83 % = A! Her first year was devoted entirely to the military sector of the Mycenaean economy. She had to translate scores and scores of Linear B military tablets, and thoroughly master all the supersyllabograms in the military sector.
Rita has already started her second year of three, and she is focusing on the agricultural sector of the Mycenaean economy. In this sector, she will have, not scores, but hundreds of Linear B tablets to translate. Congratulations, Rita.
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Mycenaean Linear B tablet KN 791 G c 101 & the co-dependent supersyllabograms O & KI
Mycenaean Linear B tablet KN 791 G c 101 & the co-dependent supersyllabograms O & KI:On Mycenaean Linear B tablet KN 791 G c 101, we find the co-dependent supersyllabograms O & KI. In Mycenaean Greek, the SSYL (supersyllabogram) O = onato = a lease field & the SSYL KI = kitimena = a plot of land. When these two SSYLS are combined, they become co-dependent, each one delimiting the other. Hence, on the second line of this tablet, O KI + the ideogram for “rams” or “ewes” (we are unsure which, since the ideogram is right-truncated) means “an unknown number (right-truncated) of sheep -or- rams -or- ewes on a settled plot of land in a lease field.” When two or more co-dependent supersyllabograms are used with the ideograms for “sheep”, “rams” or “ewes”, both must be nouns. Adjectives are never used for associative co-dependent supersyllabograms, which is precisely what O + KI are on the second line. Associative SSYLS never define the ideogram(s) with which they are linked, since the ideograms themselves already mean exactly what they mean, in this case, “sheep”, “rams” or “ewes”. What associative SSYLS do is modify the ideograms with which they are associated. NOTE that all supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B were handed down from Minoan Linear A, which invented them.
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Our new PINTEREST board, Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B: Progressive Grammar
Our new PINTEREST board, Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B: Progressive Grammar: Our PINTEREST board, previously called Mycenaean Linear B: Progressive Grammar, has changed its name to Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B: Progressive Grammar:to better reflect the new aims of our primary site, Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae. We cordially invite you to join our new PINTEREST board by clicking on its logo above, where you can download to your heart’s content thousands of pictures, illustrations and photographs from our primary site, including all the newest ones on our ongoing decipherment of Minoan Linear A. We need more followers at any rate, so please help us out.
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Happy Third Anniversary to Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae!
Happy Third Anniversary to Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae!
Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae was founded in March 2013, and since then it has grown to become the premier Linear B blog on the entire Internet. Our blog covers every conceivable aspect of research into Mycenaean Linear B, including, but not exclusively, decipherment of hundreds of tablets from every single sector of the Minoan/Mycenaean economy (agriculture, military, textiles, spices & condiments, vessels and pottery and the religious sector); the translation of the introduction to Book II of the Iliad, plus the entire Catalogue of Ships in Book II, with particular emphasis on the extensive influence of Mycenaean Linear B and of he Mycenaean world on the Catalogue of Ships; extensive vocabulary, lexicons and glossaries of Linear B; lessons in Linear B; progressive grammar of Linear B; extensive research into the 3,500 Scripta Minoa tablets from Knossos; and above all other considerations, the isolation, classification and decipherment of all 35+ supersyllabograms in every sector of the Minoan/Mycenaen economy (see above). Supersyllabograms were previously and erroneously referred to as “adjuncts” in Mycenaean Linear B. The decipherment of supersyllabograms is the major development of the further decipherment of Linear B since the genius, Michael Ventris, first deciphered it in 1952.
But that is not all. Our blog also zeroes in on Minoan Linear A, with at least one successful attempt at deciphering at least one word on a major Linear A tablet, and that is the Linear A word for “tripod”, a truly serendipitous development, given that the same word was the first word ever translated in Mycenaean Linear B. Our blog also focuses on Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, with a few translations of tablets in that script. In short, no other blog on the Internet deals as extensively with all three of these scripts, Linear A, Linear B and Linear C together.
It is also remarkable that we have had in excess of 80,000 visitors since our blog’s inception in March 2013. While this figure may seem rather smallish to many visitors, may I remind you that Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B and Arcado-Cypriot Linear C are extremely esoteric in the field of ancient linguistics. To put it another way, how many people in the entire world do you imagine can read Mycenaean Linear B, and even fewer who can read Arcado-Cypriot Linear C? Scarcely more than a very few thousand out of a population of 7+ billion. So I believe that we have made great strides in the past three years, and I fully expect that we shall top 100,000 visitors by the end of this year, 2016.
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Linear B tablet K 04.5 from the Knossos Armoury: the redoubtable challenges for translation
Linear B tablet K 04.5 from the Knossos Armoury: the redoubtable challenges for translationLinear B tablet K 04.5 from the Knossos Armoury: the redoubtable challenges for translation While some of the military tablets from the Knossos Armoury dealing with the construction and design of chariots pose a few problems in the translation of certain words which yield at least two or possibly even three different possible meanings, others are much more of a challenge to the translator. Some vocabulary in the more challenging tablets proves to be much more fractious. There are several reasons for this phenomenon when we are dealing with Mycenaean Greek vocabulary, let alone that of any truly archaic ancient language, such as Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics. These are: 1 Some words in Mycenaean Greek may closely or somewhat resemble their later counterparts in Homeric Greek or Classical Greek, conveying the same or a similar meaning. Such is the case with – wanax – = “king” in Mycenaean Greek. 2 Some of the words in Mycenaean Greek may closely or somewhat resemble their later counterparts in Homeric Greek, and yet not convey precisely the same meaning or might even mean something more remotely associated, such as – qasireu – , which does not mean the same thing as “basileus” = “king” in Homeric Greek. A – qasireu – in Mycenaean Greek is merely a local leader of a town, citadel, redoubt or similar small centre and nothing more. A king in Mycenaean Greek is a – wanax – , for which there is an almost exact match in Homer’s Iliad. 3 Some words in Mycenaean Greek may look like variants of later Homeric or Classic Greek words, although they are spelled in a fashion alien to the latter, never appearing in them. 4 Some of the words in Mycenaean Greek may closely or somewhat resemble their later counterparts in Classical Ionic or Attic Greek, and yet convey an entirely different meaning. 5 Some vocabulary in Mycenaean Greek may be archaic Greek which later fell entirely out of use even prior to Homeric Greek, in which case it may be next to impossible to confirm that such words are even archaic Greek at all. 6 Some vocabulary in Mycenaean Greek may possibly be proto-Greek or even more ancient proto Indo-European, but we can never be certain of this at all. 7 Some vocabulary in Mycenaean Greek may possibly or even likely be Minoan or of Minoan origin. Such is the case with the word – kidapa – on tablet KN 894 N v 01, the very first tablet I translated in this series of tablets on chariots. L.R. Palmer assumes this word refers to a kind of wood, and I agree. This assumption is based on the fact that two other kinds of wood are referenced on the same tablet, i.e. elm and willow. With this evidence in hand, I have gone even further than L. R. Palmer and have taken the calculated risk to identify this word as meaning “ash (wood)”, a wood which Homer uses for weapons. 8 Just as is the case with Classical Greek, in which a few thousand words are not of Indo-European origin, Mycenaean Greek contains a fair proportion of such vocabulary. Words such as – sasama – (sesame) & – serino – (celery) come to mind. This is the scenario which confronts us in the translation of at least two of the words on this tablet, namely, – piriniyo – and – mano –, both of which are certainly open to more than one possible interpretation. The first word - piriniyo – meets the criteria outlined in 1 & 3 above. It probably means “an ivory worker”, but we cannot be sure of this. Since the latter – mano – may not have any relation to later Homeric or Classical Greek at all, it is a crap shoot to try and translate it. This word meets the criteria in 1,2 and 4 above. But I took the chance (as I always do), on the assumption, however fanciful, that – mano – may be related to the Classical Greek word – manos – , meaning “thin”, as defined in Liddell & Scott. And what applies to Mycenaean vocabulary on this and all other tablets dealing with chariots, whether or not they originate from Knossos, equally applies to all of the vocabulary on each and every tablet in the military sector of the Mycenaean economy. By extension, this principle must also apply to all of the vocabulary on Linear B tablets, regardless of provenance (Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae, Thebes etc.) and regardless of the sector of the Mycenaean economy with which they are concerned. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. In short, the 8 criteria outlined above must be applied on an equal footing, through the procedure of cross-comparative extrapolation, to all of the vocabulary of Mycenaean Greek. We shall return to this phenomenon in our article on chariot construction and design, which is to appear on my
account under the auspices of Koryvantes, the Association of Historical Studies (Athens):
sometime later this winter.
Canadian Zen Haiku canadien ISSN 1705-4508 
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