My translation of Knossos tablet KN 1548 O k 02 (xc) with original and facsimile

My translation of Knossos tablet KN 1548 O k 02 (xc) with original and facsimile: Click to ENLARGE


While the text of this fascinating tablet is largely straightforward, the word “tirisate” at first posed problems for me. But even at first glance, I could see that “tirisate” had the prefix “tiri”, which almost certainly means “three”, and I quickly deduced that the second part of the word, “sate” was a verbal form. Consulting Liddell & Scotts' Greek-English Lexicon (1986), I was rewarded with the translation you see for this word, which I take indeed to be the present participle of the verb, “to arm, furnish, equip”. Hence the translation. This is not the first time I have encountered compound lexemes in Mycenaean Greek, which were rendered into separate components (words) in later ancient dialects in the Greek alphabet.

NOTE: we have now exceeded 900 posts on our blog!

Richard

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