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Homer and the Mycenaean Tablets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

T. B. L. Webster
T. B. L. Webster*
Affiliation:
University College, London
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Extract

Now that more than a year has elapsed since the publication of Dr Michael Ventris’ brilliant discovery that the Mycenaean tablets inscribed in Linear B contained Greek, a preliminary answer may be given to the question of their bearing on the interpretation of Homer. My purpose here is to indicate where our 8th century Iliad and Odyssey agree with the tablets and where they differ.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 29 , Issue 113 , March 1955 , pp. 10 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1955

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References

1 This essential article, ‘Evidence for Greek dialect in the Mycenaean Archives’, by M. Ventris and J. Chadwick, JHS 73 (1953), is available in offprint form from the Hellenic Society, 50 Bedford Square, W.C.I. Mr Chadwick gave a general account of the tablets in ANTIQUITY 1953, 108 f. ; since then Professor A. Furumark has published two long papers (obtainable in offprint form) and Professor G. Bjõrck two discussions of detailed points in Eranos, vols. 51 and 52 ; E. L. Bennett has transcribed the Mycenae tablets in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, 1953, 422 ; Professor C. W. Blegen has described the Tripod tablet (PY Ta 641) in Ephemeris Archaiologike, 1953, 59 ; Professor L. R. Palmer has given his Inaugural Lecture on ‘Mycenaeans and Indo-Europeans’ and a paper in the Transactions of the Philological Society on ‘Mycenaean Greek Texts from Pylos’. I have also had the advantage of using Dr Ventris’ privately circulated Glossary (1953) and of attending the Linear B Seminar of the London Classical Institute ; some of the results of this have been published in the first Bulletin of the Institute, which also gives the latest list of identifications and Dr Ventris’ suggested code of practice in transcription.

2 Text in JHS 73 (1953), 84. The meanings of the nouns translated ‘pole’, ‘breastwork’, ‘guide-rings’ are uncertain, but I believe that they are all in the instrumental case, governed by a-ra-ro-mo-te-me-na, though this can also be used absolutely ‘with joinery work’. A generally similar tablet is illustrated in ANTIQUITY 1953, 206 ; compare for its syntax Iliad 18, 389–90.

3 Published AJA 1954, pl. 7.

4 ANTIQUITY, 1953, 198 ; JHS, 73 (1953), 95. 98.

5 B. Hemberg, Eranos, 52 (1954), 172 f.

6 H. T. Wade-Gery, The Poet of the Iliad, 13.