WHATS ALL THIS ABOUT LINEAR B?

On 5^th April 1900 archaeologists excavating a site at Knossos, on the island of Crete, discovered the first large cache ever of Linear B tablets among the remains of a wooden box in a disused terracotta bathtub. Subsequently caches turned up at multiple locations (of later disputed date) including the Room of the Chariot Tablets (called that by British archaeologist Arthur J. Evans in his report) where over 350 pieces from four boxes were found. The tablets were 4.5 cm (1.8 in) to 19.5 cm (7.7 in) long by 1.2 cm (0.47 in) to 7.2 cm (2.8 in) wide and were scored with horizontal lines over which text was written in about 70 characters. Even in this earliest excavation report Evans could tell that "...a certain number of quasi-pictorial characters also occur which seem to have an ideographic or determinative meaning."

Linear B has roughly 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs with phonetic values and ideograms with semantic values. The representations and naming of these signs has been standardized by a series of international colloquia starting with the first in Paris in 1956. After the third meeting in 1961 at the Wingspread Conference Centre in Racine, Wisconsin, a standard proposed primarily by Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. (1918-2011), became known as the Wingspread Convention, which was adopted by a new organization, the Comité International Permanent des Études Mycéniennes (CIPEM), affiliated in 1970 by the fifth colloquium with UNESCO. Colloquia continue: the 13th occurred in 2010 in Paris.

Many of the signs are identical or similar to Linear A signs; however, Linear A, which encoded the unknown Minoan language, remains undeciphered and we cannot be sure that similar signs had similar phonetic values. 

The story of Arthur Evans and the pursuit of Linear B makes a wonderful performance. It’s a bit of Indiana Jones stuff.

Evans

Arthur Evans became keeper of the Ashmolean in Oxford in 1884, delivering an inaugural address advocating that the Ashmolean become a "home of archaeology in Oxford." Thus when presented by Greville Chester in 1886 with an engraved gemstone purchased in Athens but reportedly from Crete he began to study publications of these stones suspecting that the "hieroglyphs", with which they were said to be inscribed, were part of a writing system. In 1893 after the death of his wife Margaret he visited Athens to view the exhibition of artefacts from Mycenae and try to acquire more gemstones. While there he received a tour conducted personally by Heinrich Schliemann and noticed that a few of the signs occurred on Mycenaean artefacts. He began to call the supposed writing system "Mycenaean." Heinrich Schliemann had never identified the signs clearly as writing, relating in his major work on Mycenae that "of combinations of signs resembling inscriptions I have hitherto only found three or four ...." Evans also verified from the antiquarian dealers that the stones came from Crete.

Losing no time Evans and a friend, John Myres, embarked for Crete and in 1893, 1895 and 1896 travelled over the entire island looking for the sources of the stones. They found that the stones were worn by Cretan women as amulets and were called γαλόπετρες (galopetres, "milk-stones") and had come from the extensive Mycenaean ruins. Starting in 1894 Evans published his theories that the signs evidenced various phases in the development of a writing system in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, the first article being the much-cited "Primitive Pictographs and a Prae-Phoenician Script from Crete". In these articles Evans distinguished between "pictographic writing" and "a linear system of writing." He did not explicitly define these terms, causing some confusion among subsequent writers concerning what he meant but in 1898 he wrote" These linear forms indeed consist of simple geometrical figures which unlike the more complicated pictorial class were little susceptible to modification," the idea being that the pictographs were communications of meaning by pictures, but the linear characters were mere outlines standing for sounds and strung out like alphabetic writing. Although he called the writing alphabetic Evans believed it also might be syllabic signs. At the conclusion of the 1898 article Evans asserted "That the linear or quasi-alphabetic signs ... were in the main ultimately derived from the rudely scratched line pictures belonging to the infancy of art can hardly be doubted."

The site at Knossos had been identified as a major one (even though underestimated) and excavation by part owners had begun twice previously in 1878 by Minos Kalokairinos and in 1890 by W.S. Stillman but were stopped in each case by the refusal of the Ottoman Empire to grant permission (firman). Evans began in 1894 to negotiate for its purchase in competition with French archaeologists. By 1896 he had Kephala Hill. In January, 1897, the Christian population of Crete revolted and for the next few years Crete was occupied by forces of Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Austria, Greece and defending garrisons of Ottoman forces supported by the Muslim population of Crete. In 1898 Prince George of Greece was appointed high commissioner of a Crete of equivocal status: independent, under the king of Greece and still under Ottoman rule. The Ottomans agreed to withdraw and the last troops were ferried off the island by the British fleet on December 5, 1898. In that year also Evans completed the purchase of the rest of the site, although it still had to be paid for. Although he had a reputation for being a "rich man" he had not yet inherited any money. The site and initial excavations were paid for by contributions, subscription and Evans' own limited personal funds. By 1899 the political context had stabilized, the sale was completed and Evans had acquired sufficient resources to begin. He hired Duncan Mackenzie, a noted archaeologist, by telegram as director of excavation and on March 23, 1900, began to excavate.  The tablets were discovered on 5^th April.

The subsequent examination of material uncovered a number of difficulties. The Knossos tablets had been found at various locations in the palace and Evans had not kept exact records. Recourse was had to the daybooks of Evans' assistant, Duncan Mackenzie, who had conducted the day-to-day excavations. There were discrepancies between the notes in the daybooks and Evans' excavation reports. Worse, the two men had quarrelled over the location and strata of the tablets, Mackenzie had called Evans a liar, and Evans had not only sacked him but made sure he did not excavate anywhere else.

The results of the reinvestigation were eventually published in a definitive work: Palmer, L.R.; John Boardman (1963). On the Knossos Tablets. Oxford: Clarendon Press. It consists of two works, Leonard Palmer's The Find-Places of the Knossos Tablets and John Boardman's The Date of the Knossos Tablets. In this book Palmer plays the role, so to speak, of prosecuting attorney and Boardman of defending attorney; consequently, the dispute was known for a time as "the Palmer-Boardman dispute".

Like questions concerning the veracity of Heinrich Schliemann, the controversy soon escalated beyond the evidence, which set the world of classical scholarship looking for a way to resolve the question once and for all, a still unfulfilled hope. There appeared to be no "smoking gun" of Evans' mendacity; that is, he could in his excavation reports have simply been generalizing to resolve contradictions in the data. Moreover Carl Blegen's (*) arguments depended more on a preponderance of evidence rather than any single incontrovertible proof. No such incontrovertible proof has ever been found.

*Carl Blegen had excavated the site of ancient Pylos in 1939 and uncovered tablets inscribed in Linear B, one of the two scripts discovered at Knossos and named by Evans. Those tablets were fired in the conflagration that destroyed Pylos about 1200 BC, at the end of Late Helladic IIIB (LHIIIB). With the decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris in 1952, serious questions about Evans' date began to be considered. Most notably, Blegen said that the inscribed stirrup jars (an oil flask with stirrup-shaped handles) imported from Crete around 1200 were of the same type as those dated by Evans to the destruction of 1400. Blegen found a number of similarities between 1200 BC Pylos and 1400 BC Knossos and suggested the Knossian evidence be re-examined, as he was sure of the 1200 Pylian date.