Article, Linear B Lexicon for the Construction of Mycenaean Chariots just published on academia.edu

Article, Linear B Lexicon for the Construction of Mycenaean Chariots just published on academia.edu:

Click on the TITLE to view and download the article:

just uploaded to my academia.edu account at the link above. To download it, click the green DOWNLOAD button on the right side of the document.

Illustrations from the article:

This Lexicon is the only one of its kind in the entire world. To date, no one has ever published a Linear B Lexicon on a subject as focused as the Construction of Mycenaean Chariots.

This article has just been published in the prestigious European journal, Epohi (Epochs), Vol. 25, Issue 2 (2017), published bi-annually by the Department of History of St. Cyril and St. Methodius, University of Veliko, Tarnovo, Bulgaria. I have been invited by the Editor-in-Chief, Stefan Iordanov, to publish new papers in the near future (sometime in 2018) and again in 2019. Considering that the Editor-in-Chief, Stefan Iordanov, solicited me to submit this article sight unseen, you can be sure I shall submit more papers to the journal.

Advertisement

POST 1600: On academia.edu: Minoan Linear A tablet HT 95, emmer and einkorn wheat, other grains and flax

POST 1600: On academia.edu: Minoan Linear A tablet HT 95, emmer and einkorn wheat, other grains and flax:

I have just uploaded an article on academia.edu: Minoan Linear A tablet HT 95, emmer and einkorn wheat, other grains and flax, which you can find here (Click on the banner):

I encourage you to download it and read it, as it is only 4 pages long.

 

Preview of the most Complete Linear A Lexicon of 1029 words ever compiled in history soon to be published on academia.edu just uploaded:

Preview of the most Complete Linear A Lexicon of 1029 words ever compiled in history soon to be published on academia.edu just uploaded:



This Preview of the most Complete Linear A Lexicon of 1029 words ever compiled in history soon to be published on academia.edu.pdf is in and of itself a lengthy article (14 pages long), offering full insight into the massive extent and impact of the actual lexicon, Comprehensive Lexicon of 1029 New Minoan, pre-Greek substratum and Old Minoan words, with extensive commentaries, soon to be published on my academia.edu account (sometime in July 2017). The actual Lexicon will be at least 45 pages long, and will include all of the following elements:

1. An in-depth introduction, comparing this Lexicon, with its 1029 Linear A terms with the Linear A Reverse Lexicon of Prof. John G. Younger, containing 774 intact Linear A words. To date, Prof. Younger’ Lexicon has always been considered the de facto standard of Linear A lexicons; but it falls far short of the mark. From scanning through every last Linear A tablet on Prof. Younger’s site, Linear A texts in phonetic transcription, I discovered scores of Linear A words which he missed in his Reverse Lexicon. I have also spent the last two years ransacking the Internet for every last scrap of evidence of extant Linear A tablets, fragments, roundels, pendants and inscriptions on pottery, only to unearth even more Linear words entirely overlooked by Prof. Younger, to the extent that I uncovered a total of 1029 Linear A exograms, 225 more than he did. Thus, our Comprehensive Linear A Lexicon is 27.7 % larger than his.
2. The Lexicon itself, containing 1029 words, of which over 160 are Mycenaean-derived New Minoan, some 85 are either toponyms or eponyms, a few score fall within the pre-Greek substratum and at least 80 are Old Minoan words I have been able to decipher, more or less conclusively. As for the remainder of the Old Minoan substratum, i.e. the original pre-Greek Minoan language, I have been unable to decipher the rest of its vocabulary. But believe it or not, this factor is less of an impediment to the decipherment of Linear A than we might otherwise believe. I have been able to decipher at least 350 words out of a total of 1029, which is to say about 33 % of Linear A.
3. Each section of the final Comprehensive Lexicon, i.e. A: Mycenaean-derived New Minoan NM1 B: the pre-Greek substratum C: eponyms and toponyms D: Old Minoan vocabulary and E: ligatured logograms is accompanied by a detailed analysis and survey of its contents.
4. The final Lexicon contains a comprehensive bibliography of 84 items on every aspect I have detailed of the decipherment of Linear A as outlined in this preview.  

 

 

Credible decipherment of several grains mentioned on of Linear A tablet HT 10 (Haghia Triada)

Credible decipherment of several grains mentioned on of Linear A tablet HT 10 (Haghia Triada):



After several abortive attempts at realizing a relatively convincing decipherment of Linear A tablet HT 10 (Haghia Triada), I believe I have finally managed to come through. This has to be one of the most challenging Linear A tablets I have ever been confronted with. Any credible decipherment eluded me for months on end, until it finally struck me that all I needed to do was to identify the grain crops most commonly cultivated in the Neolithic and Bronze Age Mediterranean. And this is precisely what I have just done.  

Neolithic and Bronze age grains cultivated in the Mediterranean during the Neolithic and Bronze Age eras (the most common italicized):

barley (sara2/sarai?) *
einkorn (dideru) *
emmer (kunisu) *
flax (sara2/sarai?) *
freekeh (sara2/sarai?) *
and
bran (less common)
bulgur (less common)
groats (less common)
lentils (less common)
millet (dare -or- kasaru)
spelt (dare -or- kasaru)
vetch for fodder (less common)

Now it strikes me that if we find any of these grains recurring on several Linear A tablets, and we do, these grains must be the most common cultivated then. As it so happens, the 3 grain crops most frequently referenced in Linear A tablets are dideru, kunisu and sarai2 (sarai). They appear over and over and in abundant quantities on several Linear A tablets from Haghia Triada (HT 8 HT 10 HT 28 HT 85-68 HT 91 HT 93 HT 95 HT 114 HT 121 & HT 133), on HM 570, on Khania KH 10, Kophinas KO Za 1 and on Zakros ZA 20. We now know for certain that dideru means “einkorn (wheat)” and kunisu “emmer (wheat)”. It is also highly likely that sara2 (sarai) references “barley”, “flax” or “freekah”. Which one we cannot be sure, but it almost certainly has to be one of these. In addition, we also find dare and kasaru on HT 10. It stands to reason that, by elimination, dare and kasaru are probably either “millet” or “spelt” or vice versa. I have eliminated bran, bulgur, groats, lentils and vetch, as these crops appear to have been relatively less common. 

Free translation of HT 10:

emmer wheat on 4 hills + PA? + 16 1/2 bushel-like units of another type of grain (millet or spelt) *333? + RO + 6 *u325 + 14 bushel-like units of groats (?) + 2 1/2  of *301 (whatever that is), all stored in 8 vases, of which 2 are pithoi (very large) and also stored in 1 vessel of another type + 2 bushel-like units of bran, flax, millet or spelt & 16 young shoots of grain + 6 /12 of *312 TA ? & 6 bushel-like units of millet or spelt, of which 9 1/4 units were lost to death (i.e. never matured)...

My preliminary research into the types of grains cultivated in the Neolithic and Bronze Age Mediterranean has clearly facilitated this plausible decipherment of HT 10, and has moreover confirmed my even more accurate translations of several other Linear A tablets dealing with grain, almost all of them co-incidentally from Haghia Triada.

2 Minoan Linear A words under SI-SU of possible proto-Greek and 1 of probable proto-Semitic origin

2 Minoan Linear A words under SI-SU of possible proto-Greek and 1 of probable proto-Semitic origin:



In this table, two of the words are quite likely of proto-Greek origin, while the third, SURIA, probably means “Syria”, especially in light of the fact that since approximately 10,000 BC, Syria was one of the Neolithic centres of culture (known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A), where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time in the world. 

This brings our cumulative total of Minoan Linear A words of proto-Greek, proto-Hebrew and proto-Semitic origin to 46.

The so-called (invalid) relationship between the markings on the Neolithic Dispilio tablet and some of the syllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B

The so-called (invalid) relationship between the markings on the Neolithic Dispilio tablet and some of the syllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B:



The Dispilio tablet is a wooden tablet bearing inscribed markings, unearthed during George Hourmouziadis's excavations of Dispilio in Greece and carbon 14-dated to 7300 ± 40 BP or 5260 ± 40 BC. [1] It was discovered in 1993 in a Neolithic lakeshore settlement that occupied an artificial island [2] near the modern village of Dispilio on Lake Kastoria in Kastoria, Greece. 

Source: Wikipedia: Dispilio Tablet



Almost all the markings (Are they even writing?) on the Neolithic Dispilio Tablet (at least 5,200 years old) cannot conceivably be correlated with either the Minoan Linear A syllabary (some 3,200 years later) and the Mycenaean Linear B syllabary (some 3,500 years later). Even the markings on the Dispilio tablet which look remarkably like syllabograms in either Minoan Linear A and Mycenaean Linear B are almost certainly an accidental quirk. I simply cannot take seriously the so-called “correlations” the author of this bizarre tablets leaps upon. His imagination is clearly overactive, while his faculty of reasoning is sadly under-developed. Unfortunately, such so-called “correlations” between tablets in remotely ancient so-called “languages” and much later syllabaries which are the writing scripts of actual languages such as Minoan and Mycenaean Greek  recurs much too often with all to many “researchers” who indulge in such clearly illogical leaps of the imagination. I have marked with an X in BOLD all such clearly invalid correlations. I might just as well have marked every last one of the markings on the Dispilio tablet with an X in BOLD, for that matter. All such correlations are merely accidental. No professional researcher would ever be caught making such outrageous assumptions.

I shall demonstrate this sort of “cracked” reasoning made by certain “researchers” with other remotely ancient “languages” over and over. Of course, there are exceptions to such poor correlations. Some markings on some tablets in much more ancient “languages” (imagined or real) than Minoan Linear A or Mycenaean Linear B may conceivably be cross-correlated, at least to some extent, though never fully.