Is Linear B Deciphered?

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Is Linear B Deciphered?Author(s): Douglas YoungSource: Arion, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn, 1965), pp. 512-542Published by: Trustees of Boston UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20162981 .

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IS LINEAR B DECIPHERED?

Douglas Young

PROFESSOR SAUL LEVIN HAS MADE A MOST HELPFUL CONTRIBUTION

in The Linear B Decipherment Controversy Re-examined (State University of New York. 1964. $7.50. Pp. xvi+255). He studies

closely Michael Ventris's procedures in assigning values to the

supposed phonetic signs of the Linear B signary, and criticizes in detail the values assigned, concluding that only a minority of them can be verified by strict criteria. He goes on to advance the thesis that the Linear B texts contain at least one non-Greek language,

with non-Greek vocabulary and non-Greek structural features, in addition to whatever Greek elements they contain. This doctrine

will be hotly disputed by many "Ventrisians," followers of Ventris more dogmatic than their coryphaeus. Levin liimself writes in a

non-partisan tone, clearly and often with wit. In spite of its title, his book is not primarily a re-examination of the controversy about the proposed decipherment; but it may help in assessing it if, be fore discussing in detail Levin's own views, I sketch the main lines on which the battle has been raging for the past dozen years. I write as a

reporter, not as a controversialist, suppressing my in

nate "praefervidum ingenium Scotorum," and have in fact an

open mind on the extent to which Ventris may have been right in his theory about the Linear B documents. For lack of sufficient evidence I continue to suspend judgment, like very many Greek scholars who have not rushed into print on the subject.

In 1965 the leading Ventrisian philologist Leonard R. Palmer testified that ". . .

opposition continues, and agnosticism is still

widespread among professional classical scholars, who maintain that there is still no strict 'proof that the decipherment is correct"

(Mycenaeans and Minoans, ed. 2,1965, p. 62). In 1953 the Journal of Hellenic Studies published the article by

Ventris and John Chadwick, his collaborator since July 1952, on

"Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenean Archives." (=JHS, Evidence) In 1956 they issued their fine volume, Documents in

Mycenaean Greek (=Docs.), in which 300 selected tablets of Linear B were printed, in a transcription based upon Ventris's evaluation of about two thirds of the total Linear B signary, with translations and commentaries, and a vocabulary of supposed My cenaean Greek words. The Ventris system thus set forth has been

widely accepted by Greek scholars, including many of the highest eminence, in many countries. It has also been widely rejected by scholars of eminence, in varying degrees. The names of its sup



Douglas Young 513

porters are listed in Chadwick's popular account, The Decipher ment of Linear B (1958; 2 84if.) (=Deciph.); and one may read very competent and to some extant plausible defences of the

system by L. R. Palmer, Professor of Comparative Philology at

Oxford, as in his Mycenaeans and Minoans (2 ed. 1965), by F. Schachermeyr, in Saeculum 10 (1959), 48-72; 374-379; and

by others. Among its opponents the best known are Professor Ernst Grumach, editor of the review KADMOS, and Professor Arthur J. Beattie, of Edinburgh, formerly lecturer in Greek dia lects at Cambridge University, and tutor of Dr. John Chadwick.

The veteran Belgian Hellenist Henri Gr?goire listed some more of the opponents who had printed objections to the Ventris

scheme, in La Nouvelle Clio, 10-12 (1958-1962), 193-198, in his article 'Le Lin?aire B est-il d?chiffr??' Among exponents of a

scepticism which he found to be gaining ground dafly, Gr?goire noted Sundwall, Pallottino, McPheeters, Buchholz, Levin, Oka, Eilers, and Dr. W. C. Brice, of Manchester University, the man chosen by Sir John Myres to publish the material classed by Evans as Linear A. Brice is a diligent, scrupulous, and modest researcher, thoroughly familiar with both the Linear A and the Linear B ma

terial, and with other writing systems from the East Mediterranean and Near Eastern background, which makes his scepticism the

more significant.

So far as personalities go, a most impressive fact is the result of the seminar on Linear B material conducted for years in the Uni

versity of London, with the lead taken by my old friend, and former Aberdeen colleague, Eric G. Turner, Professor of Papyrol ogy, Ventris himself participated, till his lamented death in a car crash in 1956. With a galaxy of indisputably excellent philologists contributing, the London seminar was, I understand, unanimous

in accepting the basic features of Ventris's proposed decipher ment, while admitting a great deal of room for disagreement on details. The unanimity of so many well qualified Hellenists is re

markable. There has been no comparable concerted study by op ponents of the Ventris theory, though Professor Beattie organized some useful symposia at Edinburgh.

London may be considered the centre of what may be called "The Bible Belt" of the Ventrisian faithful. Cambridge, England, is also a stronghold, with Chadwick installed there. Its Regius Professor of Greek, Denys Page, is himself a believer, though sometimes a bit of a liability to the Ventrisians, as when, in his

book History and the Homeric Iliad (1959.p.204, n.26) he wrote about "the stark unrealiability of the evidence." In some 3,500 Lin B tablets studied about 75 per cent, of the supposed phonetic sign-groups are interpreted as names of persons or places. About these names Page remarks (p. 196) : "The ambiguity inherent in the spelling-system obscures all distinction between Antiphos and



514 IS LINEAR B DECIPHERED?

Artipous, between Hagetas and Akestas, between Charon and

Kallon, and so forth. A very high proportion of the total number is thus ambiguous or else wholly unintelligible."

At Oxford Palmer is fugleman of the Ventrisians, but a good deal of unco-ordinated dissent is occasionally voiced. Dons are

apt privately to repeat the bon mot of an eminent former Oxonian

scholar, "I suppose we may take it that Ventris proved that Linear B is not Greek." It has become a kind of parlour-game to

exploit the spelling rules devised by Ventris. These Ventrisian rules enable bits of a curious sort of Greek to be got out of Lin B

texts; but experiments have shown that bits of English or Latin or other tongues, when spelt out in syllables according to the Ven trisian system, are capable often of yielding bits of Greek just as

plausible as anything in the Ventris-Chadwick Documents volume. One eminent Oxonian, dining at a high table, amused himself by taking the names of the Fellows of the College present and turn

ing them into Ventrisian syllables, from which he made a new translation of them into Greek, in which they all turned out to be

Greek gods. For some British Hellenists this game has replaced the crossword-puzzle

as a pastime for journeys.

Reviewing sceptical attacks in general, I find that they have

proceeded on four fronts: (1) the cryptographic, regarding Ven tris's use of a "grid" for classifying signs before evaluation; (2) the personal or biographical, relating to Ventris's proceedings as revealed in his Work Notes (=WN) and elsewhere; (3) the

general plausibility of the results; (4) particular conflicts between

supposed phonetic content and relevant numerals or

ideograms. On the cryptographic front, Beattie led the main attack, and

Levin has done some useful mopping-up. The Ventris decipher ment is a proposal for breaking the code of a hitherto secret script, possibly used for an unknown language,

or for more than one un

known language. Hence the importance of testing the validity of Ventris's grid-arrangements, and his use of them. Ventris and

Chadwick claimed that the grid was basic to the decipherment. In their 1953 JHS Evidence article they wrote (p. 88) : "The con sonant and vowel equations tabulated below had all been de duced from internal evidence before any phonetic values were

allotted. They are based partly on inflectional evidence, partly on

accidental or deliberate spelling variations. If correctly deter

mined, these equations enable the most frequent signs of the syl labary to be arranged in a two-dimensional pattern, or 'grid,'

which we must expect to be adhered to by any suggested system of phonetic values. The problem of decipherment is in this way reduced to the correct distribution of five vowels and twelve con sonants to the columns of the grid; and, since a

proposed reading of only

two or three words may, by a 'chain-reaction,' predeter

mine rigid values for almost the entire syllabary, a very severe

discipline is imposed on the earliest stages of a decipherment. If



Douglas Young 515

the initial moves are wrong, it should be quite impossible to force

any part of the texts into showing the slightest conformity with the vocabulary

or grammar of a known language; even

though that might be quite easy if one were free to juggle with the values of 88 mutually unconnected signs."

Later, in 1956, (Docs. p. 20) Ventris and Chadwick discussed

again the grid as it stood in February 1952 ( = Grid III of a clas

sification to be discussed shortly), before decipherment began, and they claimed: ". . . in spite of its incomplete nature the grid had the virtue of being founded entirely on internal evidence dis

passionately sifted, and not on any biased attempt to identify the

language or give values to the signs." They go on to state: "It was tempting to compare Cypriot values, but clearly unrealistic:

[sign] 3 might be taken at its Cypriot value of pa, but it was then

impossible to read 75, in quite another line of the grid, as pe by the same

analogy." In fact, as some critics allege, including Levin, it can be shown

that Ventris used Cypriot values for several of the signs in the

system he finally evolved. Further, some who have read Ventris's Work Notes, circulated to fellow-students in the year 1950-1952

(of which microfilm copies are available from the University of London Institute of Classical Studies), found reasons to suspect a series of what they considered biased attempts to identify the

language as Greek and to give values to the signs accordingly. At this point let it be recalled that Ventris in 1936, aged 14,

heard a lecture on Minoan scripts by Sir Arthur Evans, and made a schoolboy vow to solve their problems. Early in 1950 he issued a

questionnaire to scholars working on the Minoan scripts, 'The

Languages of the Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations,' usually called the 'Mid-Century Report.' After that he sent out a series of

20 Work Notes (=WN), totalling 176 foolscap pages. These contain three states of the grid, which may conveniently be called Grid I (WN 1, 28 January 1951), Grid II (WN 15, 28 Septem ber 1951), and Grid III (WN 17, 20 February 1952). Grid IV is that found in JHS Evidence (p. 86) in 1953 and, further modi

fied, in Docs. (p. 23) in 1956. Before beginning

to make a grid, Ventris made certain assump

tions about the signary called by Evans Minoan Linear B. He assumed that about 87 signs were phonetic (Docs. p. 41) and the rest, over 150, were ideograms (Docs. 50 ff.). The difficulty in

giving exact figures is that students do not agree when a particular form is an independent sign, and when it is a variant, local or tem

poral or

personal, of some other sign. Note that some phonetic

signs also serve as ideograms, and it is not always possible

to dis

tinguish phonetic signs, which usually occur in groups, the groups separated by word-dividers, from ideograms, which usually occur

singly. There are those who entertain the possibility that the sign ary is basically a repertory of about 240 ideographic signs, used



5l6 IS LINEAR B DECIPHERED?

for restricted ritual purposes. From early Egyptian cult practice it is suggested that a cult-signary of such dfinensions is perfectly feasible and plausible; and it would be in fine with theories about

Greek importation of deities and rituals from Egypt. Be that as it may, Ventries assumed that about one third of the

240 or so signs were phonetic, not ideographic. Of his 87 sup posedly phonetic signs, about 70 were common or very common on the tablets and fragments available for study. Studies in their relative frequencies had been pursued by, among others, Mr.

Konstantinos D. Ktistopoulos, in Greece, and Dr. Emmett L. Ben

nett, Jr., in U.S.A. Apparent alternations of signs, related possibly to gender or number, had been studied also, notably by the Amer ican Miss Alice Kober.

Grid III (February 1952) was reprinted in Docs. (p. 20, fig. 2), to show the state of Ventris's gridding of signs before his decipher

ment began. It had 80 spaces, arranged in five vertical columns and 16 horizontal rows. The vowels a, e, i, and o were tentatively assigned to the first four columns; but no vowel was given to the fifth column. Of the 16 horizontal rows the sixteenth contained

signs that Ventris thought he had identified only for their vowels, not for their consonants. Apart from the fifth vowel-column and the sixteenth consonant-row, the grid had 60 spaces, (4 by 15).

Of the larger total of 80 spaces, 54 were filled, and 26 blank. Of the 54 filled spaces four had more than one entry. Of the smaller total of 60 spaces, 46 spaces were filled and 14 blank. Now note

that, in Grid III, of the 87 phonetic signs, only 55 appear, and 32 do not appear, including some common signs. As 4 appear twice, in different spaces, there are in all 59 entries of signs.

Consider then Ventris's changes from Grid III (February 1952) to Grid IV (the final form found in the 1953 and 1956 publica tions). We find 25 displacements of signs between Grid III and Grid IV, and only 34 signs retain positions assigned in February 1952 before the decipherment started. So far from rigorous ad herence to a dispassionately tabulated grid of signs, we are faced with a strange juggling about of the material. In Grid III only two-thirds of the supposedly phonetic signs had been placed on

the grid, and in Grid IV only two-thirds of that two-thirds had stood their ground.

Some of the changes are particularly odd. In Grid III no value was assigned to the vowel of the fifth column, which in Grid IV was held to have u value. Of the 6 signs put in the fifth column on Grid III only one was assigned a u value on Grid IV. Among the consonantal signs, sign 72, held in Grid III to begin with m-,

was on Grid IV valued as pe. Sign 55, from being valued as se on Grid III, became nu on Grid IV.

Specially important is the vowel o; and the sign for it strayed

during Ventris's juggling. On Grid III it headed the list of signs with i quality. It is what Evans termed the "throne-and-sceptre"



Douglas Young 517

sign, and is also used as an ideogram, tentatively thought to be for a commodity measured by weight, like metals or beeswax.

In view of these, and other, facts, one line of sceptical argu ment was that Ventris's gridding procedure, in its various stages, was not a simple record of facts objectively observed. Here I

quote A. J. Beattie, in a publication of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin, Mitteilungen des Instituts fuer Orientforschung, 6 (1958), 45: "The decipherers

... in order to arrange their ob servations on a

grid. . . . had to select certain facts and discard

others, and they had to make tentative deductions of far-reaching importance about such things

as number, gender and case-inflec

tion." Further, when Ventris started using his grid in relation to his experiment with Cretan place-name values, with words based on Knosos, Amnisos, Phaistos and the rest, Professor Beattie com

ments that: "[The decipherers] did not always accept the evi dence of the grid. They transferred signs to different columns and

rows, and they brought in ungridded signs, without considering the effect that these changes would have on the correlation of the

signs that had been 'dispassionately observed' . . ." (as Ventris and Chadwick claimed).

What significance are we to attach to the facts that Ventris, in his basic Grid III (February 1952), out of 87 signs involved, failed to place 32, placed 25 wrongly, and adhered in Grid IV to his earlier placings of little more than a third of the supposedly phonetic signs? Some sceptics are inclined to think that Beattie

successfully debunked as false pretence the claim of Ventris and Chadwick to scientific rigour in regard to the grid. Levin terms their claim "regrettably misleading" (p. 51).

As to the reasonings, if any, involved in Ventris's grid-placings, we have to consult Ventris's Work Notes, the second main field of

controversy, and the article by Grumach about them, in Gnomon 32 (1960) 681-695, which is a review of Chadwick's Decipher

ment book of 1958. Chadwick there (p. 49) referred to Ventris's Work Notes, and

claimed: "By means of these we are able to follow the complete history of the decipherment and the stages by which he reached it." Similarly M. I. Finley, in Nature no. 4650, p. 1627, called the

WN "a kind of diary." Grumach had received the WN from the

start, and contends that they are nothing like a diary, and that

they do not enable us to follow the complete history of the de

cipherment. Grumach emphasizes particularly Ventris's statement in WN no. 8, dated 1st May 1951, which runs: "Worknotes 9,10, 11, 14, 15 have been sketched out, but won't be ready for dupli cating for a couple of months." Grumach asserts that from no. 9 on the Work Notes came out at dates by no means corresponding to their nominal numeration. Thus WN no. 12 came out on 3 May 1951, two days after WN no. 8. Next came WN no. 13, undated.

Then came numbers 11 and 11B (an addendum to no. 11), on



5l8 IS LINEAR B DECIPHERED?

27 May, 1951; then a set of so-called Acknowledgements, 28 June; then WN no. 10, dated 25 June; then no. 10B, dated 20 June; then no. 9, dated 24 July; then, following the nominal no. 9, came nominal no. 14, on 28 August; no. 14B, on 2 September; no. 15, on 3 September, 1951. From all this one gathers an im

pression that Ventris, from WN no. 8, dated 1st May, 1951, was

using his Work Notes to feed gradually into the circle of his col laborators a scheme he already had framed somehow in his mind.

Work Notes numbers 9 to 15, from May 3 to September 3-27, 1951, are examined by Grumach in relation to Grid II, the state of Ventris's grid as it stood on 28 September, 1951. No. 15, dated 3-27 September, 1951, contains the prognosis (p. 145) : "I am convinced that a decipherment of Minoan B will be possible to achieve within two years of the publication of the Knossos tab

lets," by which he meant Myres's Scripta Minoa, vol. II, issued in February 1952. WN 15 belongs to the series sketched out by

Ventris before 1st May, 1951, and issued in an order very dif ferent from the nominal order. Grumach contends that already at the start of this series of Work Notes Ventris had Greek in mind. Chadwick contends, on the contrary, that Ventris did not at this

stage have Greek in mind as the language of Linear B; if he had

any language in mind it was Etruscan. The Ventrisian believers assert that the grid was all built up regardless of Greek, and then

suddenly began to yield Greek to the astonishment of Ventris, who was still somewhat expecting Etruscan. Grumach argues, on

the basis of the Work Notes, which he had been receiving from the beginning, that Ventris had in fact been feeding in Greek values into his grid during its construction. For this complicated

matter those who read German can study Grumach's arguments

in detail; readers of English can look at the Work Notes with reference to Grumach's thesis.

An example Grumach gives is Ventris's treatment of those sign

groups which in his final decipherment became do-e-ro (?doulos) and do-e-ra (= doula), for which in WN 11 (27 May 1951: p. 37) Ventris offered a "token translation," namely "the male

servant/ the female servant." The signs 14-38-2/60 had in Grid I the values x- xi- lo/li (ro/ri). Ventris then manipulated three of the four signs, to give finally do-e-lo/la (ro/ra). The remain

ing sign, sign 2, retains its Cypriot value, which is lo, but with an extension to include ro.

As a second example, Grumach refers to the influence of the

Cypriot syllabary in fixing the signs evaluated as po and lo. In deed Ventris and Chadwick admit (Docs., p. 66) that Cypriot values may have been an unconscious influence in their choice of

sound-values for testing.

Similarly, in regard to the sign-groups 70 + 40 and 70 + 54, Ventris was influenced by Cowley's suggestion (1927) that they could stand for korwos and korwa, which, in Ventris's spelling



Douglas Young 519

system, are ko-wo and ko-wa, in familiar Greek kouros and kor?.

Beattie and others further think that Ventris employed in the fabrication of his grids values derived from conjectures about

Greek words corresponding to some of those ideograms which look somewhat like natural or artificial objects, such as a pig's

head and an amphora. The pig's head ideogram is thought to function also as

phonetic sign no. 85, which was valued tenta

tively as si-ja (Docs., p. 23, fig. 4). Palmer later valued it as sa2, that is palatalized s'a =

sja (The Interpretation of Mycenaean Greek Texts, 1963: p. 21).

Grumach concludes, in his Gnomon article (685f.), that Ven

tris, while framing his grid, had been working with Greek in serted words, Einsatzw?rtern; that already in May 1951 Ventris had essential parts of his scheme of decipherment ready in his

mind; and that he had by that time devised some of his spelling rules, e.g. the use of the same set of signs for the two liquids r and I with different vowels, as in do-e-ro = doulos; the non

expression in writing of a final -s, as in do-e-ro = doulos; and the

non-writing of liquids before consonants, as in ko-wo = korwos,

kouros. Grumach thus contends that by May 1951 the decipher ment had taken the direction towards Greek which Ventris pro fessed to be surprised by a year later, in his Work Note 20, dated 1 June, 1952.

Grumach's views have had some influence on scholarly opinion,

notably in Germany, and have tended to increase scepticism. Consider, for instance, Professor H. Bengston, in the second edi

tion (1960) of his Griechische Geschichte, a standard work, in the Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft series. Bengston recom

mends a prudent reserve, "eine vorsichtige Zur?ckhaltung,"

on

Ventris's theory that Linear B is a very ancient Greek dialect

(p. ix), and comments on the very skimpy real results even if one were to believe the decipherment correct (p. 21). Bengtson's attitude is commended as the proper one by his English reviewer in Gnomon 33 ( 1961 ), Professor J. A. Graham.

Linguists, too, have had second thoughts, for example Professor A. C. Moorhouse, in his Studies in the Greek Negatives (1959, p. 13, n. 4), where he adds an afterthought to qualify his treat ment of ou and m? in Mycenaean: "It may need to be stated that the decipherment and interpretation of the inscriptions have raised considerable difficulties, and the identifications proposed cannot yet be regarded

as certain."

F. Schachermeyr, though a convinced adherent of the de

cipherment, yet regrets that in the JHS Evidence paper of 1953 the account of the stages of the decipherment was too brief

(Saeculum, 10 (1959) 52). He remarks that the Documents volume of 1956 similarly disappointed wide circles, because most students wanted an exact demonstration that could be checked

(ibid. p. 54). Schachermeyr observes that, if Ventris had pre




supposed Greek ex hypothesi, there was a danger of petitio prin cipa, that is to say, of assuming in the premises what needs to be

proved in the conclusion. On Grumach's view, that is just what

happened. Grumach, Gr?goire, and others challenged Chadwick to de

scribe in detail the stages of making the grids and assigning values. In particular he was asked to state the use made of Cypriot values. It may be doubted, however, whether Chadwick is truly in a position to answer for Ventris's operations at the relevant

stages, because Chadwick had no contact with Ventris till July 1952 (Deciph. p. 69). Moreover, even if Ventris were still alive, it may be wondered whether he could give the sort of step-by-step demonstration the sceptics are demanding. I think Schachermeyr is right in referring to the "irrational and intuitive elements," das Irrationale und Intuitive, in the processes whereby Ventris ar rived at his scheme (op. cit. 52). My colleague T. B. Mitford,

expert on Cypriot epigraphy, whom Ventris consulted about the

Cypriot syllabary, regards the demand for a detailed account of the grid-making and all that as irrelevant, because, Mitford

thinks, Ventris reached his decipherment by "a stroke of genius." A good many Ventrisian believers are content to go along on this

line, and to say that, no matter how Ventris hit upon his decipher ment, his system is sufficiently confirmed by the results it pro duces. This brings us to the third battle-front in the controversy, the general plausibility of the results, with special reference to the

ambiguities frequently residing in the multivalency of the spelling system assumed by Ventris.

Even in alphabetic systems of writing there can be ambiguities, as in the Latin utterance, "Nescio quid p?tes pastor. Cur oblitus

ovis mala comes et mora et commixta alia rapis?" (It depends whether one takes the most natural meanings for prose, or reads

it aloud as a couple of hexameters. ) The manuscript tradition of

Aeschylus offers more than one puzzle where letters can be

interpreted more than one way. A syllabary naturally is less

adequate to express meaning than an alphabet. But the Linear B

syllabary, on Ventris's theory, is outstandingly inadequate. Ex

cept in one particular, having a separate series of signs for delta and for tau/theta, Linear B, on Ventris's view, is far less efficient and more multivalent than the historic Cypriot syllabary, used till the third century b.c. for Greek, and for some still unknown

"Eteocyprian" tongue. O. Masson, in Les Inscriptions Chypriotes Syllabiques (1961, p. 53), comments that the Cypriot syllabary is much more practical than Linear B, because in it the am

biguities inherent in all syllabaries are reduced to a minimum.

Also, with merely 55 signs, it makes no use of ideograms to

supplement syllabic content. Masson notes the relative exuberance

and lack of symmetry of Linear B, with two distinct series of

signs for dentals, its labio-velar series, its complex signs for nwa,



Douglas Young 521

pte, and other clusters, and its doublets, such as ra, ra2, ra3.

What keeps many sceptics specially sceptical is the laxity of the spelling rules assumed by Ventris for Linear B. Even the faithful Schachermeyr repeatedly deplores them (op. cit. 53, die so peinliche mykenische Orthographie; 56, der a?sserst hinder lichen Orthographie; p. 66, he has "noch einige Bedenken" by reason especially of the orthography, which, from our point of view is "eine Groteske," p. 67).

Among the troublesome rules of the Ventrisian orthography are the following: Linear B does not discriminate between beta, phi, and pi, nor between gamma, kappa, and chi, nor between lambda and rho, though there are numerous homophone or doublet signs for the lambda/rho series. Before consonants, lambda, mu, nu,

rho, and sigma disappear in writing. Particularly disturbing is the non-expression of nu, sigma, rho, and diphthongal iota in terminal inflections. Thus ka-ko can stand for kakos, kak?s, kakon, kak?n, kakoi, kak?i, kakous, and also for khalkos, khalkou, khalk?i, etc. a-ko can stand for ag?, arkh?, agos, agoi, argos, algos, askos, angos, ankkh?, ag?n, etc. Final -to can stand for -to, -t?,

-thos, -sto, -tos, -ntos, -ton, -nt?n, -sth?n, -t?r, -nthos, -th?n, etc.

Sceptics find ground for further suspicion in the fact that Ventris claimed to have used evidence of inflections for the construction of his grid, and yet his spelling rules abolish most of the charac teristic Greek inflections of nouns, the commonest grammatical class of words in the texts as he claimed to interpret them.

About the non-expression of diphthongal iota Levin states (p. 185) : "The alleged omission of the second vowel of the diphthong is a fictitious rule set by Ventris to facilitate the manipulation of

his decipherment." American academics will appreciate better than I do Levin's further comment (p. 238): "If the missing sounds are simply to be supplied wherever convenient, it is like

playing poker with deuces wild." He thinks that, by assuming omission of post-nuclear sounds, Ventris

"opened the door to

self-deception" (p. 239). The laxity of Ventris's spelling rules, and the ambiguity of the

results of their application, are, I think, the main sources of scepti cism for most Greek scholars today. I quoted Denys Page on the fact that 75 per cent of the sign-groups on extant tablets are

thought by Ventris and Chadwick to be names of persons or

places, and the further fact that "the ambiguity inherent in the

spelling-system obscures all distinction between Antiphos and

Artipous, between Hagetas and Akestas. . . ." Consider how use

less, and indeed dangerous, this might make the system in prac tice. Take the sign-group transcribed by Ventris as e-u-po-ro.

Under his rules this could stand for Euporos, Euphoros, Euboros, Eup?los, Eusporos, etc. Now suppose King Nestor at Pylos to wake up some morning with a sore head, after plying the famous winecup of Nestor into the wee smaa hours ayont the




twal, of which Burns writes. Nestor summons a flunkey to fetch a

secretary, and then dictates an order for the hanging of Eusporos. The scribe writes down the syllabic signs e-u-po-ro on a slip of

clay, which is then sent off to the police department of pu-ro, Pylos. A police official reads the name e-u-po-ro, and proceeds to

get out a halter and hang Eup?los. A day or two later Nestor wants Eup?los to be invited to lunch, and is sorry to learn that

Eup?los has been hanged, by a very excusable mistake, instead of Eusporos. Nestor in his wisdom then exclaims, "Damn this Linear B. It's a menace."

Again, gentle reader, pray perpend the syllable-groups (refer ence number Dy 401), that run: a-ma

wi-ru-qe ka-no to-ro-ja

qi-pi-ri-mu a-po-ri. Here we have two specimens of the labio

velars, the syllables with q-, discovered by Ventris, to the aston ishment of philologists who had not expected to find them in

Bronze Age Greek, qe is, of course, equivalent to Latin -que, Greek te, while qi doubtless here shows the development to a voiced dental noted by Ventris and Chadwick in their "My cenaean

Vocabulary," s.v.

qe-qi-no-me-no (Docs., p. 406; cf. p.

341). The Greek evaluation of the sentence would be, according to Ventris's spelling rules, halmai wiluite koines Tholoiai Diphili

mus apolis: "With brine and slime in novel fashion at Tholoia

(the place of tholoi, beehive tombs) Diphilimus (is) cityless." No doubt this is a record relating to a Bronze Age tidal wave. It is by coincidence that the acumen of Mr. Michael C. Stokes, the Edinburgh authority on ancient philosophy, has extracted the

Virgilian hexameter, Arma uirumque cano Troiae qui primus ab

oris. . . . Note that in this sentence one need assume only

two of

the six words to be names of persons or places, whereas, in the

Lin B material as a whole, 75 per cent of the sign-groups have to be, on Ventris's system, evaluated as names of persons or

places, as Denys Page stressed. Further, no special pleading is here needed about scribal errors or archaic forms, except that, in

wilui, one has to note a digamma not otherwise attested for the Greek word for "slime."

However, to play fair with less acute readers, let me confess that Mr. Stokes, in the document Dy 401, started with Virgil, turned his fine into Ventrisian syllables, and then extracted Greek from it.

This is not the place to multiply examples of the ease with which sentences in non-Greek languages, when expressed

in

Ventrisian syllables, can be made to yield bits of some sort of

Greek, according to Ventris's system. Whether there be truly Greek in the real Linear B tablets, or not, Ventris's system cer

tainly enables quite a lot of some sort of Greek to be got out of them. But it is seldom free from difficult problems of interpre tation.

Take, for instance, such a longer tablet as Ta 711, of which



Douglas Young 523

the initial sentence is printed by Ventris and Chadwick (Docs. p. 335) as follows: o-wi-de pu2 ?-ke-qi-ri

o-te wa-na-ka te-ke *85-ke-wa da-mo-ko-ro.

They translate it this way: "Thus P. (fem.?) made inspection, on the occasion when the king appointed Sigewas (?) to be a

damokoros." Palmer prefers

to render it: "Inspection

carried out

by pu2-ke-qi-ri when the King buried *85-ke-wa Damoklos."

(Interp. 340) There is quite a substantial difference, for admin istrative purposes, between burying somebody and appointing

him to be a "village functionary" (Docs. p. 390, s.v. da-mo-ko-ro).

For the plausibility of the Ventris decipherment the showpiece is probably the "tripods" tablet Ta 641, from Pylos (Docs., p. 336), which some have argued to be by itself a sufficient proof of the validity of Ventris's theory. It was unearthed by Professor

Biegen on 4th June, 1952, but not examined by him till the spring of 1953, when he wrote about it to Ventris on 16th May, 1953. On this tablet, Ta 641, the sign-groups are accompanied by ideograms and numerals, the ideograms apparently representing vessels of different types, with or without feet and handles.

Biegen wrote: "The first word (tripod) by your system seems to be ti-ri-po-de, and it recurs twice as

ti-ri-po (singular?). The

four-handled pot is preceded by qe-to-ro-we, the three-handled

pot by ti-ri-o-we-e or ti-ri-jo-we, the handleless pot by

a-no-we.

All this seems too good to be true. Is coincidence excluded?"

Among the many plausibilities emerging on the Ventrisian side of the controversy undoubtedly one of the most plausible is the first sign group of line one of Tablet Ta 641, where we find Ventris's values yielding ti-ri-po-de, followed, after three other

sign-groups, by a

cauldron-on-tripod ideogram and the numerical

symbol for 2. The Greek dual tr?pode would be correctly repre sented in a

syllabary by ti-ri-po-de. Thereafter, however, the

plausibility thins out, for later in the same first line we find four

sign-groups evaluated as ti-ri-po

e-me po-de o-wo-we, followed

by an ideogram of a cauldron-on-tripod with three feet and two handles. These sign-groups

are translated by Ventris and Chad

wick as "one tripod cauldron with a single handle on one foot."

(Their italics here indicate some degree of doubt on their part.) Now that translation twice flatly contradicts the relevant ideo

gram, which shows two handles and three feet. Even with the initial phrase of the first line, the impeccable dual ti-ri-po-de is followed by the three controversial sign-groups ai-ke-u ke-re-si-jo

we-ke, Ventris at first translated that as "Aigeus the Cretan brings them." Later he was

persuaded by Palmer to accept the version,

"Of Cretan work, with goat decorations." But Palmer's version

involves three scribal errors: (1) ai-ke-u is singular where it

ought to be dual; (2) the word-divider has to be neglected in

ke-re-si-jo we-ke, to make it Greek kr?siowerg?s"; and (3) that form too ought to be dual and is not dual.




The Pylos tripods tablet Ta 641 has three lines of signs, with a bit broken off from the right tip. On the top line there are extant two examples of the TRIPOD ideogram, each with three feet and two lugs or handles, but the second having a less deep cauldron. Each of these two ideograms is preceded at some distance by groups of signs evaluated as

ti-ri-po-de and ti-ri-po. The third

system of sign-groups on fine one starts with a

sign-group valued

as ti-ri-po, and Ventris and Chadwick assumed the loss of a third TRIPOD ideogram at the end of line 1, which at present ends with the sign doubtfully read as no-. They supplement it with two

signs, -pe-re, to make the word no-pe-re, which they think =

anopheles, "useless." They assume that this word was originally followed by a third TRIPOD ideogram and the numeral 1. From their photograph (Plate Illb, facing p. Ill in Docs.) it is doubt ful whether there is room for all they supply. Line 2 begins with a two-sign group, read as qe-to, thought to be equal to Greek

pithoi, "jars," followed by an ideogram which they term dubiously ?WINE-JAR, followed by the numeral 3. There is room for scepti cism whether the possible WINE-JAR ideogram after qe-to and the numeral 3 did not form the true original end of the third

word-group. Scepticism is further aroused by the vagaries of the scribe's spelling. Taking the tablet as a whole, on three lines the scribe has put word-dividers wrongly thrice (twice in ke-re-si-jo

we-ke, once in a-pu ke-ka-u-me-no) ; has written dual for singular once (the first me-zo-e); has put the singular for the dual twice (ai-ke-u and the first occurrence of ke-re-si-jo we-ke); has twice

misspelt me-wi-jo with wi, where no digamma should exist; and must be wrong in either ti-ri-jo-we

or ti-ri-o-we-e, which are

reciprocally inconsistent. Thus, besides the two contradictions between ideogram and syllabic contents in the second phrase of line 1 as translated by Ventris and Chadwick, one has to assume at least nine errors by the scribe in three lines if one is to accept as valid the Ventris decipherment in this showpiece tablet, Ta 641, with its 30 sign-groups, yielding 16 lexical units, some of them occurring more than once. Besides sympathizing with the

wise Nestor's secretarial difficulties, one must wonder how to calculate the balance of plausibility in the result of the Ventris evaluation here.

Biegen asked Ventris, "Is coincidence excluded?" It is argued, for example, that the combinations with ti-ri-, implying threeness, cannot be due to coincidence. Yet it is by mere coincidence that the sign-group qe-to has, on the Ventris theory, nothing to do here

with qe-to- in the adjacent sign-group qe-to-ro-we, supposed to

mean "four-handled." How are we to delimit the bounds of co

incidence? And what limits are we to assign to scribal carelessness and error?

In assuming errors by Linear B scribes Chadwick allows him self a lot of elbowroom. For example,

in a contribution to Ben



Douglas Young 525

nett's book, The Mycenae Tablets, II (TAPA 48, 1958), Chad wick accuses the scribe of tablet Ge 602 of having written pu-ke pe-ro-ro when he

ought to have written

pu-ke-o o-pe-ro. Bennett

likewise, in regard to tablet Ge 604, thinks ke-e-pe was a mistake for ke-pe-e, and he argues that his imaginary ke-pe-e could be an

irregular dative of ke-po, which he takes to be a neuter personal name of the third declension. Levin objects (p. 183) that it is "idle self-delusion" to suspect

a scribe of a series of blunders. In

Eo 247 the last character in the sign-group 43-37-36-32 was erased by the scribe, and 78 written over it. Ventris, in Work Note 9 (p. 73, item B 5), thought the scribe was wrong; and later wrote (Docs., p. 248) : "The scribe's original Ai-ti-jo-qo

. . .

is, of course, correct." On this Levin remarks (p. 113): "The

audacity of Ventris's presumption leaves me gasping. A person in

Pylos long ago, accustomed to the Linear B script and language, took the trouble to erase a character and write another over it.

Some one else, three thousand years later, ignorant of the lan

guage and hoping to find material for a decipherment, judges that the mistake consisted in changing what was right in the first

place." The mild Levin goes on to accuse Ventris of "vitiating the material that the decipherment needs to take into account." Else where (p. 135, n. 22) Levin writes that Ventris "vitiates the material" in a different connection. W. C. Brice noted 33 instances where the vocabulary of the Documents volume assumes a scribal error. Levin also comments on the "rash procedure" of Palmer in

assuming scribal errors (p. 136, n. 24). Now it is indisputable that there must be some scribal errors

and possibly bad grammar in a corpus of some 3,500 tablets, just as there are in the manuscripts of Aeschylus or Aristophanes. But

every time one is driven to assume an ancient scribal error, the

decipherment becomes a little less plausible. Even without assuming scribal errors and bad grammar, one

might have thought that would-be translators have enough scope through the laxity of the spelling system devised by Ventris. The

most nimble-witted translator is assuredly Palmer, a philologist of admirable learning and fertility of mind, and a resolute infanticide of his own versions when they

cease to please him. For example,

he suddenly decides that a series of signs no longer means, as he had fancied, "with golden rivets round the hilt." He now asks us to

accept it as meaning ". . . two

golden necklaces and a pair of

double axes." Levin, in his methodical way, deprecates these

flights of fancy, which, he writes (p. 169), "(abuse) every license of far-fetched interpretation to create an imaginary language under the guise of recovering

an ancient one."

How are we to judge by results in regard to a particular tablet when different translators come up with different results from the

same sign-groups, and sometimes a

single translator comes up with different results at different times? M. C. Stokes points out




that "Every time the decipherers produce more than one in

terpretation of a sign-group they admit by implication that some Greek interpretations can arise by accident." (Abstract of the

Edinburgh Symposium on Mycenaean Writing, March 1961, p. 2. ) Again we are troubled by Blegen's question, "Is coincidence excluded?" How can we quantify the balance of probability?

In regard to Blegen's tripods tablet from Pylos, Ta 641, many think that the balance of plausibility is heavily in its favour, as the high proportion of scribal errors is outweighed, to their minds,

by the constellation of agreements, on the semi-bilingual prin ciple, between certain sign-groups and nearby ideograms of Cauldrons on tripods or of pots with three, four, or no ears. That tablet is the chief showpiece of the Ventrisians, and there are few that come near it in plausibility. Hundreds of the tablets are too brief or fragmentary to suggest anything at all, whether plausible or unplausible. But many of the longer tablets leave even the nimblest-witted would-be translator somewhat baffled. I suppose all who have looked much into the tablets have, in their own

minds, weighed and balanced a variety of details pointing this

way or that. In trying to focus for myself the general balance of

probability I have largely confined myself to the 300 tablets selected for the 1956 Documents volume, which I worked through from various angles, the first being an examination of supposed prepositions in their contexts.

I had the good fortune to meet Michael Ventris personally, at dinner in the home of my colleague T. B. Mitford, and later heard him talk on supposed furniture tablets. I asked him how many prepositions he had discovered, my point being that a constella tion of Greek prepositions would be more probative than a few names of deities or plants or artefacts, which might be Greek

borrowings into a non-Greek language. Ventris replied, "Nine or

ten." On obtaining the Documents volume I analysed the tablets with supposed prepositions, thus making a kind of trial trench

through the material, like the cross-section of a mound in which an archaeologist picks up spindle whorls or calcined femurs, or even some exciting fragment of a statuette of a steatopygous

Mother Goddess. There occur, used supposedly as prepositions, amphi, apo,

heneka, epi (and opi), meta (and peda), xun, and para; as

adverbs only pros and hupo; in composition only ana, en, peri, and

pro. Not found are anti, dia, eis, ek, kata, and huper,?a rather

surprising constellation of omissions considering their frequency in ordinary and in official Greek. Innumerable were the implausi bilities that thrust themselves upon my astonished eyes as I pur sued this prepositional inquiry into the Documents book. Con

sider, for instance, what happens with tablet Un 03 (p. 221), which starts:

pa-ki-ja-si mu?-jo-me-no e-pi wa-na-ka-te a-pi-e-ke

o-pi-te- (u) -ke-e-u BARLEY 16 T 4 *125_Ventris and Chad



Douglas Young 527

wick translate (with italics indicating their doubts) :' "at Pa-ki-ja ... for the king, the rigger keeps: 1968 litres of barley, 18 litres of

cyperus (deficit 10 litres), 144 1. of flour, 384 1. of olives, 24 1. of . . . , 12 1. of honey, 120 1. of figs,

one ox, 26 rams, 6 ewes, 2 he

goats, 2 she-goats, one fat hog, 6 sows, 732 litres of wine, two cloths." What is the balance of plausibility in this, whether

linguistically or in terms of an actual administrative situation? With pa-ki-ja-si, and its translation "At Pa-ki-ja,"

we are on

neutral ground, for nothing controls place-names

or personal

names occurring isolated on a tablet. With the sign-group mu?-jo-me-no Ventris and Chadwick (V & C) comment: ". . . this

might be a middle or passive participle, but hardly muomenos unless = muoumenos." Now this arouses

suspicion, for elsewhere

(p. 78) V & C remark that vowel contraction seems to be un known. They go ahead, however, tacitly accepting mu?-jo-me-no as a passive participle contracted, and suggest, "It is possible that it is dative: 'on the occasion of the initiation of the king'." The

word-order arouses suspicion. About the word a-pi-e-ke they

doubt whether it is amphiekhei, 'keeps,' or aph-ieke, =

apheeke, has sent

away.' Clearly, for administrative use, the ancient reader

of tablet Un 03 would have needed to know whether the man was keeping or had sent away this curious assemblage of barley, flour, honey, rams, sows, wine, etc., not

forgetting the two cloths.

Since the two he-goats have the company of two she-goats, the 26 rams must have felt slightly frustrated in the proximity of only 6 ewes. One wonders why, besides 1968 litres of barley, a scribe should solemnly record 18 litres of the common grazing stuff

cyperus, and a deficit of 10 litres of it. Surely not even the most bureaucratic state would bother about 18 or 28 litres of cyperus in relation to the keeping

or sending away of 26 rams, plus other

graminivorous quadrupeds. The man in

charge is an o-pi-te-(u)-ke-e-u, alleged

to be an

opiteukheeus, and we look that up in the "Mycenaean Vocabu

lary" (p. 402), which gives us some

quaint reading: "o-pi-te-u-ke e-we: . . . Nom.

plur., a class of men:

opiteukhe?wes? 'riggers'? . . .

o-pi-te-u-ke-we: . . . Shorter spelling of the preceding.

o-pi-te-ke-e-u: . . . Nom. sing.: (?)-eus, defective spelling." Some

sceptics prefer to believe the whole decipherment defective, rather than this or that embarrassing spelling.

In that tablet Un 03 nothing proves, or makes at all plausible, that the sign-group rendered e-pi is the preposition epi, or that

o-pi in the mysterious opiteukeeus is a variant form of epi. Work

ing similarly through dozens of tablets for the other contexts of fourteen prepositions, I did not find a single tablet where a sign group must indubitably stand for a preposition, used preposition ally, adverbially, or in composition.

Thus the prepositional trial trench worked out unfavorably to Ventris's theory. Later I tried another cross-section of the Docu




ments compilation, this time having regard to the two sign-values most prominent in the controversy about Blegen's tripods tablet, Ta 641, namely ti and ri/li, the start of the word ti-ri-po-de. Consulting the "Mycenaean Vocabulary," I began with the word

a-ke-ti-ri-ja, allegedly an "alternative spelling"

of a-ke-ti-ra2, said

to mean "a woman's trade," tentatively identified as ask?tria,

"craftswoman," or akestria, "sempstress," or, the notion preferred

by V & C, ag?tria, explained as "nurse, fostermother, midwife." It is a Tarentine dialectal word, preserved by Hesychios. Looking it up in context, I was astonished to find, on a tablet from

Mycenae, Fo 101, line 10, (Docs., p. 218), midwives suddenly appearing in a list of male personnel. But a-ke-ti-ri-ja has a further variant a-ze-ti-ri-ja, on which V & C write: "Alternative spelling, with z- for k- (see p. 44) ?" Turning to page 44, on the Mycenaean writing system, I was further amazed to be told that z- can even

stand on occasion for I-, e.g. me-za-ne = melones, "black." With

such latitude of interpretation, making z- into k- or I- at will, one feels the decipherers demand too many concessions. One begins to feel the decipherment is not so much a scientific operation as some sort of "Alice in Wonderland' parlor game. But some faith ful believers are like some people at parties. After swallowing a few drinks they no longer notice or appreciate what they are asked to swallow.

In the sign-group rendered ti-ri-po-de the initial ti-ri- was taken by Biegen and others to indicate threeness, referring to the three feet of the tripod in the ideogram near the sign-group, in

Ta 641. We have, however, another Pylos tablet, Tn 316, showing an

ideogram of a vase or goblet

on an undivided pedestal, a vessel

form unique to this tablet. It is accompanied by a sign-group rendered ti-ri-se-ro-e, which is not obviously explicable

in terms

of threeness. Palmer, however, the most fertile in special plead ing, surmises that it may be the name of a deity, tris?r?ei, "Clan

Ancestor" (?). But he admits that "The formation tris-?ros is

peculiar" (Interpretations, p. 263).

Taking one tablet with another, in working through all the contexts where ti and ri/li occur, together or separately, my find

ing was that the great majority of tablets either gave no sub stantial support to the Ventris theory, or actually told against it.

The fourth sector of the controversial battlefield to be surveyed is one where disputes

concern ideograms

and numerals. Here we

have to consider the semi-bilingual principle, first emphasized by V. Georgiev.

Among the 240 or so signs of the Linear B signary Ventris

thought about 150 to be not phonetic signs but ideograms. Most of these are not obviously pictorial representations of anything, but about a

quarter, roughly forty, are more or less representa

tional. V & C thought that "the syllabary evidently forms a

virtually closed system, but new ideograms could at any time be



Douglas Young 529

extemporized to describe new objects" (Docs., p. 48). Among the

ideograms least disputably pictorial are sign 100 = man, 102 =

woman, 104 = deer, 201 = tripod, 209 =

amphora, 240 = chariot with wheels. Of these 40 pictorial ideograms V & C assign word

equivalents for 21, just over half, with varying degrees of assur ance and plausibility.

In a general way, it is reasonable enough to entertain the

possibility that, say, a boar's head represents the quadruped, and not, in terms of heraldry, the Duke of Argyll. Some odd symboli zations occur when people adopt animals or artefacts as heraldic

badges, such as the salamander of Francis I of France, the

porcupine of Louis XII, the bees of the Barberini, or the ladder of the Scaligers, not to mention the donkey and elephant of the

leading parties contending for the favor of Uncle Sam. In inter

preting the formula H20, one would be unwise to take H as

representing a rugby football goalpost, and O a ball, and then go on to infer that H20 symbolizes a rugby football field or match.

However, with due circumspection, it is more reasonable than not to accept the postulate that a tripod ideogram indicates that the context of the tablet has to do with a tripod, and that a pig's head has something to do with a pig, unless it happens to be

serving as the phonetic sign for sja (no. 85). Ideograms have a

good chance of indicating in some way the context of the tablets

they occur in. But, as Chadwick remarks regarding Ta 641, "The trouble with the descriptions of the tripods is not that we cannot translate them, but that we have too many possible translations and insufficient criteria to enable us to pick the right one"

(Decipherment, p. 83). As he and Ventris translated the sign groups in Ta 641 preceding the second tripod ideogram, ti-ri-po e-me

po-de o-wo-we, "one tripod cauldron with a single handle on

one foot," their translation involved a double contradiction of the

ideogram, which shows two handles and three feet. Palmer, how ever, argues that o-wo-we represents ow(w)owens, "with ear

shaped handles," and that the tripod has one foot because it is in a damaged condition, just as the following item is said to be

a-pu ke-ka-u-me-no ke-re-a2, "with its legs burnt off" (Interpreta tions, p. 344). Special pleading on these lines certainly reduces the unplausibility of the decipherment here. Levin, however, states

(p. 94) : ". . . we cannot extract any meaning from e-me

po-de o-wo-we. . . . We are left with an uneasy feeling

that the

text may not be Greek, even though the one word ti-ri-po passes so well for Greek by itself."

The highest concentration of pictorial ideograms relative to

phonetic signs is on Ca 895, the so-called "equine heads" tablet, of which the left portion was found and attached to the main part by Chadwick in 1955. Evans had noted that beside a maneless

equine head were two signs that, if given their Cypriot values

po and lo, would spell polo, the dual of the Greek word for a foal.




Evans rejected this as mere coincidence, holding as he did that Linear B was not used for Greek. The brief document, as restored

by Chadwick, is given thus by Palmer (Interpretation, 181 f.):

i-qo EQUINEb 5 EQUINEmane 4 po-ro FOAL o-no EQUINEb 3 po-ro FOAL 2 EQUINEa 4 Palmer writes: "All the words are self-evident and they explain the variations in the HORSE ideogram: i-qo

= hippoi, po-ro

=

p?loi, o-no = onoi."

Ventris and Chadwick in 1956 translated the piece thus (Docs., p. 210) : "Horses: five mares, four (full-grown) horses, x foals. Asses: three she-asses, two foals, four he-asses." They remarked:

"Whether any distinction is intended between the ideograms of lines 1 and 2 is hard to say; no immediate differences are ap

parent, and if the latter are really intended for asses the charac teristic long ears do not seem to be adequately represented." Chadwick in 1958 addressed himself again to the problem (Decipherment, 86), to answer critics who had queried why the

asses were not more markedly distinguished from the horses in the drawings. Chadwick suggested, "Perhaps the simple answer is that the scribe, having written the appropriate words, did not feel it was worth the effort. It is also probable that there was a standard ideographic sign for horse,' but none for 'ass'; what could be more natural than to employ the same sign but with the

phonetic indication to show the difference?" Chadwick's argu ment here is curious: it is as if one were to say that a scribe might

naturally use the standard ideogram for dollar, $, to indicate also

cents, by adding the phonetic indication "cents." Levin, however, in 1964, writes (p. 76) that "With the advantage of hindsight we can now

safely argue that the drawings themselves, even without

the words, adequately distinguished the two equine species." He thinks that two parallel lines, coming out of the top rear of all the heads in the second line, "must represent asses' ears, lacking

in

the three horse heads. It is fair to add that nobody seems to have

recognized asses distinct from horses in the drawings till after Chadwick in 1955 found the fragment." It supplies the words

i-qo and o-no.

But there is a further point to notice, that in Kn 1171 po-ro, the word rendered "foals" on Ca 895, occurs before ideograms 106a and 106b, which V & C took as rams and ewes, while Sundwall thought them bulls and cows. At any rate the semi

bilingual principle would seem to entail that these po-lo, foals, had horns. Very well then, a Ventrisian believer might say, let us

admit foals with horns, just as Homer describes a creature that was a lion in front, a snake behind, and a chimaira in the middle.

There is plenty of fantasy in the Mycenaean background of Homeric poetry and the age of Agamemnon.

As for o-no, rendered "asses" in the "equine heads" tablet,

V & C admit that elsewhere it is never in contexts suggesting an



Douglas Young 531

animal (Docs., p. 211). Elsewhere, o-no occurs before the MAN

ideogram, before that ideogram which V. thought stood for

CLOTH, and Grumach takes to be the Egyptian ideogram for a

banner; and before ideograms apparently for vegetables and other items (Grumach, Gnomon, 693). Beattie also argues (Mit teilungen, 54) that i-qo elsewhere occurs where the context is

against its interpretation as "horse."

A frequent ideogram is that for WOMAN, which it is reason able to find with signs valued as ko-wa = korwa, Attic kor?,

"girl," in the absence of an ideogram for GIRL. But why should ko-wo = korwos, kouros, "boy," be accompanied by the ideogram

WOMAN? Does it mean an effeminate boy, milksop? Scepticism has been increased also by the failure of numbers,

weights, and measures to agree plausibly with the lists of items disclosed by accompanying sign-groups.

Take, for example, the large tablet, Au 102, displayed as

frontispiece of the Documents volume, (discussed at p. 179). It has 14 lines, of which 10 to 13 are vacant, and displays the MAN

ideogram nine times, each time followed by a number. V & C write: "It is a mere list of names, and the trade-name is a

separate

entry at the bottom." For their interpretation of the names one has to go to their Index of Personal Names (pp. 414-427), where, however, not all are translated. The list runs thus (with V & C

suggestions on the right) : 1. wa-ra-pi-si-ro i-jo-qe MEN 2 Wrapsilos? and "Apparently not

Ion."

2. na-su-to MAN 1 (No translation offered) 3. te-ra-wo

ka-ri-se-u-qe MEN 2 Telawon? and Khariseus

4. e-ke-ne e-u-po-ro-qe MEN 2 Engenes? and Euporos or

Euphoros; Eup?los 5. *85-ja-to ko-no-pu2 MEN 2 ? and ?

?-du-ro-qe 6. ke-re-no MEN 2 Ger?nos ? cf. Ger?nios, epithet

of Nestor 7. wa-a2-ta de-u-ki-jo-qe MEN 2 ? and Deukios, Deuki?n ?

8. mo-i-da MAN 1 (No translation) 9. o-ri-ko MEN 3 Oligos? (Or cf. place-name

Orikos?) Lines 10 to 13 are vacant. Line 14. a-to-po-qo (Some damage to the surface of the

tablet) V & C note: "Where there are two names the second is linked with -que. The numerals in lines 6 and 9 are puzzling if these are

men's names." Indeed they are puzzling, and embarrassing to the

Ventrisians, who, however, can still come up with some special pleading. Are the men in line 6 twins called Ger?nos, and those in fine 9 triplets called Oligos? Then again, consider the entry on line 14, a-to-po-qo, which V & C render by Greek artokopoi,




"bakers." They comment: "the lacuna may have contained the

summation MEN 17. If so, seventeen bakers seems a large

num

ber to figure in a tablet from a private house." Too many cooks are said to spoil a broth, and 17 bakers may be thought to suggest a half-baked decipherment.

Another tablet where one is puzzled by the ideogram and numeral situation is Ad 684 (Docs., p. 161), which runs:

a-pu-ne-we e-re-ta-o ko-wo

pu-ro ti-nwa-ti-ja-o i-te-ja-o ko-wo MEN 5 ko-wo 2

V & C render: "At Pylos: five sons of the Ti-nwa-sian weavers

(sons of rowers at A-pu-ne-we), two boys." They tell us: "The

top line is to be read together with the lower; i.e. the parentage is recorded on both sides." The whole principle of reading the top line as a parenthetical insert into the second line is dubious, as if it were an afterthought in a medieval manuscript. But why should the ideogram for MAN accompany ko-wo, which is supposed to

mean "boys"; and why should two ko-wo be added outside the nexus of ko-wo who precede the MAN ideogram with the numeral 5? About this tablet Denys Page writes (History and the Homeric Iliad, p. 181) : "A glance at these documents enables you at once to answer such questions

as these. . . . How many sons did the

weaving-women from Ti-nwa-to bear to the rowing men at

A-pu-ne-we?" Mr. Michael A. Stewart, of the University of Lan

caster, pertinently asks: "Well, how many? Five? Or two? And

why two sets of figures? And does Professor Page seriously main

tain that one section of the population, viz. the rowers of

Apunewe, was betrothed en bloc to another section, viz. the

weavers of Tinwato, and that the accumulated offspring totalled

(as the tablet in fact reads) 5 MEN (pictogram) and 2 ko-wo?" V & C do not appear to see that there is any problem, and occupy their space discussing such a matter as the interpretation of

ti-nwa-ti-ja-o, which they think is the same as ti-nwa-si-ja (a

nominative form), and probably an ethnic adjective from an unrecorded plain-name *ti-nwa-to, which would normally form its ethnic in -si-jo (not -ti-jo).

Concerning tablet An 22, about work groups of men at Pylos, V & C observe (Docs., p. 172) that "the numbers seem to be much larger than the totals of the individual entries." Again, when they examine the problem of rowers and troops at Pylos, they find the numbers concerned very small compared with the

ninety ships that Nestor took to Troy, according to Homer's tradi tion (p. 184). Denys Page is decidedly scornful about the results of this part of the decipherment (History and the Homeric Iliad, pp. 193 f.).

In their general discussion of Mycenaean arithmetic V & C admit (p. 118) that items and totals sometimes do not agree. Like the supposed scribal errors, the mathematical errors certainly cannot add to anyone's faith in the decipherment, even though it



Douglas Young 533

is reasonable to allow for some error in hundreds of tablets. A good deal of special pleading is needed to get any plausibility

in regard to quantities of seed, if pe-mo can be taken to mean

sperma, "seed," on the E series of tablets from Pylos (Docs., 237 f.). There is also a numerical puzzle about the exiguous amounts of bronze involved on Jn 09 (Docs., 357 f.), the V & C translation of which runs rather delightfully: "Thus the mayors and their wives, and the vice-mayors and key-bearers and super visors of figs and hoeing, will contribute bronze for ships and the

points for arrows and spears: Pi-*82, the mayor: 2 kg. bronze-" As V & C remark, "It is difficult to see why these miscellaneous

officials, rather than the khalk?wes of the other Jn-tablets, should be contributing such specialized items of bronzework." One

explanation suggested is that an accumulation of votive offerings is being confiscated as a desperate defence measure. We are asked to believe that the wise Nestor's kingdom was so bureau

cratically organized that, in a desperate crisis, it could assess a

mayor at 2 kilograms and a vice-mayor at 75 grammes for an

emergency levy of bronze scrap. The Ventrisians, especially Palmer, are currently inclined to

attach more importance to context in regard to interpretations. Here one would expect the contextual control to be specially strong where the scribe has continued his writing on the reverse of a tablet, which, with clay, must be done within a few hours; but V & C confess (Docs., 112) that, on some such opisthograph tablets, the connexion between front and back is obscure.

The general plausibility of the decipherment is marginally affected by a far from negligible argument from silence. After

adducing comparable material from palace archives in the Near East with Akkadian or Ugaritic documents, V & C remark (Docs., p. 106) : "Conspicuously absent from the Mycenaean records are the contracts of sale, loan, exchange and marriage common in the

other sets." Linear B texts do not record either any payments in

gold or silver for services rendered (ibid. 113). There is an odd paucity of horned cattle in Linear B, consider

ing Homeric emphasis on them, and the Knosos bull-leaping. But tablet C 5544, from Knosos, records 91 bulls (?+), which Levin finds startling (p. 117).

In the alleged "furniture" tablets there are odd puzzles. At Ta 721 the scribe repeats the same five sign-groups twice on successive lines, each time adding the FOOTSTOOL ideogram and numeral 1. On Ta 722 the scribe repeats four sign-groups likewise, each time followed by FOOTSTOOL 1. On both tablets one would expect the man to write the appropriate sign-groups once, followed by FOOTSTOOL 2. (See Docs., p. 345, and Levin's note 16 (3), p. 134). Repetition would be appropriate to a prayer or magical formula, perhaps, but hardly to an inventory of furniture.




A high proportion of the Knosos archive has to do supposedly with sheep, and the production of lambs and of wool, a subject investigated by Dr. J. T. Killen (BSA, 59 (1964) 1-15). His

imaginative thesis is that the D series tablets are records of flock

management, giving accounts of the animals and their production,

with the targets aimed at and the extent of any deficiency. On this theory the results from the data, taken as a whole, abound

with anomalies, for example that, on the Dl tablets, 13 flocks of ewes are set targets of lambs amounting to 100 per cent, and their

deficiency is also 100 per cent. (See D. Young in KADMOS, IV

(1965) 111-122.) For the reasons sketched above, and others, scepticism has

persisted, and grown. There was naturally a time lag between the

launching of the theory by Ventris and the making up of minds

by those who took seriously the statement by Ventris and Chad

wick, in their 1953 JHS Evidence paper (p. 90), that "the reality of a proposed transliteration can only be tested by applying it to the material as a whole." Pending full publication of all the

tablets, and thorough digestion of their contents, it was un scientific for any philologist to make up his mind on the issue of the decipherment.

Today one notes a certain amount of scepticism coupled

even

with theoretical acceptance of the decipherment, as expounded, for instance, by Geoffrey S. Kirk, now a professor of Classics at

Yale, in The Songs of Homer (1962). Kirk allows only "a chance or two in a thousand" that Ventris's decipherment of the Linear B

material as Greek is not correct (p. 24); but he immediately remarks that "only a small proportion of the tablets found up to 1955 have yielded convincing Greek." Out of all the words found on some 3,500 tablets Kirk admits only "some 150 independent lexical units that are convincing as Greek (to which a few others should probably be added from the compound personal names )."

He concludes (p. 26) that "fewer than one in three words on the

tablets, excluding proper names, can be accepted as Greek with

comparative safety." Kirk emphasizes that "the laxity of the

Mycenaean spelling rules . . . increases, rather than diminishes,

the occurrence of apparent Greek words." He goes on to advance

the possibility that at least some of the words on some of the tablets are written not in Greek but in some other language.

Now this ought to alarm the Ventrisians of the Bible Belts in London and Paris. Here is the strong-minded interpreter of the Presocratics accepting as Greek only 150 words out of 3,500 tablets. I happen to have been doing an English verse translation of the Oresteia of Aeschylus, which has roughly as many lines as the number of Linear B tablets. Suppose I had translated only 150 lines of Aeschylus's 3,796, would any one call that a translation?

Worse still, suppose I could not even translate plausibly 150

complete lines, but could only put down here and there, in ones



Douglas Young 535

and twos, 150 English words, would the enlightened public buy that as a translation? Here is a problem for semantics and philoso phy: when is a decipherment not a decipherment?

Kirk, so far as he is a sceptic, is a hedger, not a ditcher, like Grumach and Beattie, who would ditch the whole Ventris theory and begin again with a new analysis of the Linear B material.

Hedgers of the Kirk type would be ditchers, perhaps, but for such

plausible showpieces as the tripods tablet Ta 641, which has been claimed as

giving a

retrospective confirmation to Ventris's de

cipherment, regardless of the cryptographic methods by which he reached it. Appeals are heard to mathematical probability, and the astronomical odds against any theory that it was by mere coincidence that Ventris's proposed values gave the reading ti-ri-po-de for a group of four signs accompanied by the ideogram of a tripod cauldron and the numeral 2. Biegen rightly asked, "Is coincidence excluded?" Which prompts another question:

what do we know about the bounds of coincidence? Professor W. S. Watt, of Aberdeen, mentions in this connection

the fact that, if you assume a code in which A is valued at 100, B at 101, C at 102, and so on through the alphabet, then the word HITLER adds up to 666, the number of the Beast in the Revela tion of St. John.

Again, I recall being in Italy not long after the Munich Pact of

1938, when an Italian showed me a diagram based on the names

of the four statesmen signing it, in the order in which an Italian would naturally think of them, with two additional lines, thus: MuSsolini HiTler ChAmberlain DaLadier Chi ViNcer?? (Italian for "Who will win?") Reading down the third letters of the six words one gets the name STALIN. What are the odds against that result?

From 1840 to 1960 the American Presidents elected in every twentieth year have died in their terms of office. Again, what odds? For the past century and a half, as Italians have noted,

Popes have been alternately fat men with an r in their names, like Ratti or Roncalli, and lean men with no r, like Pacelli and Montini.

What odds?

Leaving to statisticians of probability the great question mark

overhanging the controversial battlefield, namely Blegen's "Is coincidence excluded?", let us look in more detail at Levin's contribution. He professes "an intermediate position on the de

cipherment as a whole" (p. 5). He asserts the principle that "in the solution of a problem every detail is tentative and provisional until individually proved" (p. 10). He desires critics to demand




undeniable evidence in positive proof of a point, rather than

acquiesce in everything that they cannot prove to be wrong; and he places the burden of proof on the discoverer of something new

(p. 11). As he sees it, the "whole issue" is this (p. 13): "By applying the Ventris decipherment to the Linear B tablets, do we

make them into comprehensible Greek texts?" His eventual an swer is that almost no tablet can be wholly transcribed into a

comprehensible Greek text. But I enter a caveat about his formu lation of the issue. Ventris's spelling rules are such that compre

hensible Greek texts emerge sometimes even when what is in

dubitably non-Greek material is expressed in Ventrisian syllables, as Stokes showed with Virgil's Arma uirumque ... I have found it

possible to get out Latin from German, or Greek from French or Turkish or Red Indian material, or from lists of place-names taken at random from all over the world. The genius of Ventris at least devised an orthographical machine that can produce Greek even sometimes when non-Greek is fed in at the start of the process.

How then can we know if the Linear B material that is tran scribed as Greek really is Greek? Levin seems not to know about

experiments made in this operation; but he quotes Pallottino's reservations about Ventris's theory in view of "highly systematic but illusory decipherments of Etruscan" (p. 17, n. 8).

Traversing the first two sectors of the battlefield, in regard to the grids and Work Notes, Levin concludes (p. 18) that "the

decipherment is right only in part," and "that the method was valid up to a point, but not without serious faults." He remarks that "Ventris's use of a cryptographic grid has led people to

presume that the solution must be practically all right or all

wrong." Levin argues (p. 19) that "the proper function of the

grid could only be, at best, to suggest tentative phonetic values for the Linear B characters, and that then each value needs to be

individually proved by occurring in contexts that do not admit of a reasonable difference of opinion." He observes that "no authority on the art of cryptanalysis has come forward with a critique favorable or not?of Ventris's procedure." It depends how au

thoritative an "authority" must be. Page and Chadwick, for

example, among Ventrisians, had some wartime cryptographic experience, as had Levin.

Levin has rendered a service, following Beattie and Grumach but adding details of his own, in getting the facts straight about Ventris's claim that his consonant and vowel equations in the final state of his grid, Grid IV, 'had all been deduced from internal evidence before any phonetic values were allotted." Levin finds this claim irreconcilable with what Ventris (= V.) had actually done in WN 1 (28 January 1951),?"so irreconcilable that his later statement in 'Evidence' must be an idealization (not a wilful

falsification) of his procedure. But readers took these published



Douglas Young 537

words at their face value, and thus their judgment of V.'s work was gravely, even fatally, misguided" (p. 21).

In his "Mid-Century Report" (1950), V. had opined that "9-odd" characters common to Linear A and Linear B are

readily identifiable in the Cypriotic syllabary, viz. li, lo, na, pa, si, ta, ti, to, zo. In the same 1950 document V. ventured on a

pho netic transcription of 25 other characters. V. thus made 34 tenta

tive evaluations of signs before constructing any grid; and of this 34 almost one third, 11 signs, re-appear in Grid IV, 6 of them

unchanged, 5 with a modification. Thus Cypriot lo was extended to include ro, while Cypriot ti was retained. In putting together

Grid II (September 1951), V. specifically claimed that he had

completely ignored the Cypriot syllabary. Levin finds this hard to believe (p. 25), and shows in detail why he is incredulous. At the same time he refuses to suspect a dishonest intention in V.'s

statements, and remarks: "His sincerity hinges on a distinction between Ventris as an amateur prone to hunches and whims, and

V. as a disciplined researcher intent on demonstrating his case to learned colleagues and professors."

V. had a special regard for the American scholars Alice Kober and Emmett Bennett; and his Grid II, with the relevant Work

Notes, showed a new start, "more in conformity with the rigorous standards of Kober and Bennett." Levin subtly analyses V.'s

compromise between Cypriot values he still had in his mind and the internal Linear B evidence emerging from a gridding pro cedure based on alternations and frequencies.

Interesting is Levin's study of V.'s handling of sign 11, long ago noted by Evans as similar to Cypriot po. It occurs in the group 11-02 to the left of a maneless equine head, twice, on Ca 895.

Georgiev and Hrozny had accepted 11 as po, but V. in 1950 refused to do so. Levin writes (p. 28): "V.'s early reluctance to

identify 11 with the Cypriotic character seems explicable only by his avowed hunch that the Linear B language was Etruscan or related to Etruscan." But, in the end, Levin believes (p. 29): "Ventris must have decided upon po for the sake of obtaining

Greek words on the horse tablet and elsewhere. . . ." Personally I

find this inference dubious, like all other "must have" statements about the workings of Ventris's mind. It was through a series of "must have" assumptions that Beattie concluded "that the words and ideograms of Ta 641 [the Pylos tripods tablet] were known to Ventris at latest by 1st June 1951 and that Ta 641 itself or a similar tablet, still unknown, was found long before that" (Sae culum, 10 (1960) 373). Levin comments (p. 95, n. 2) that Beattie has "quite misunderstood the workings of Ventris's mind, how he would sometimes linger inordinately on a point and some times bounce from one to another." Believers will hold that these inconsecutive mental processes were the leaps of genius. Levin

remarks that Ventris had "something of the brashness of a




prophet," but that "His bright and clever mind deserved some

thing better from the world than the uncritical veneration he

got . . ." (p. 56). Levin deplores the fact that V. minimized, to the point of denying, his dependence on the Cypriot syllabary, and exaggerated the role of the grid (p. 34). The grid method, he finds, was only a supplement to the Cypriot syllabary method

(p. 35), and V. was "not candid on the matter of his dependence upon Cypriotic values" (p. 65).

In making his final grid V. reconciled it as much as he could with Cypriot values (p. 36), and even after the grid was far evolved (Grid III) his adherence to it was desultory. Thus,

"Respect for his grid did not deter him from suddenly revaluing two characters in the first word of 08-60-26-57 08-30-57-39, in order to get a-ra-ru-ja a-ni-ja-pi, 'fitted with reins,' instead of

a-ri-ra-ja ... by the values of Grid III. Even with the shifts of ri to ra and ra to ru, V.'s final evaluation still had to face the embar rassment of the chariot tablet Sd 0408 + 0411, with its a-ra-ru

wo-ja, which Levin notes (p. 37) is not a Greek formation. Palmer

(Interpretations, p. 409) finds it to be an "Alternative spelling of

a-ra-ru-ja." Levin admits, however, that it was "not unsound cryptanalysis"

to use the grid merely as ancillary to fixing values for signs. V.'s shifts from Grid III to Grid IV were all of values that gave no tolerable Greek words in Work Note 20 and later. As for the

valuing of ungridded signs, which were numerous, Levin con

tends that there was only one adequate criterion, that the sign with the appropriate value must occur in a vocabulary word whose Greek identification was absolutely certain from the con text (pp. 37f.). For a great majority of the phonetic signs of

Linear B, Levin finds that no proof is available by this criterion

(p. 38). He observes, too, that V.'s "reliance on 'probable

con

text' set up a particularly unwise criterion and lured Ventris into a

vicious circle" (p. 39). Furthermore, "In the majority of the tablets the ideographic part of the text is not identifiable, and

will neither prove nor disprove a proposed interpretation of the verbal part." He believes, however, that the tripod-and-jug tablet Ta 641 (Pylos) and the equine heads tablet Ca 895 (Knosos) furnish direct and conclusive proof of the value of several charac ters (p. 39).

Levin holds (p. 46) that no objective demonstration of any

part of V.'s decipherment was possible before the tripod-and jug tablet (Ta 641) came to light. Here the "objective demonstra tion" depends on the semi-bilingual principle, where, for example, there is an

equivalence between the sign-group valued as ti-ri

po-de, dual of the Greek for 'tripod,' and the adjacent ideogram, showing a cauldron on a tripod, followed by the numeral 2.

Elsewhere (p. 105), Levin writes: "It seems to me doubtful, a priori, whether or not the Linear texts (A as well as B) should



Douglas Young 539

be assumed to follow the Near Eastern practice, which was op posed to the writing of words in phonetic characters that only repeat

or anticipate what is shown in

ideograms." One may re

mark, too, that the Cypriot syllabary does not supplement its 55

signs by ideograms. However, in general, Levin accepts the semi

bilingual principle happily enough. Thus, on Ca 895, foals' heads beside the signs valued in Cypriot as po-lo,

= "foals," seem to him a specimen of perfect identity unlikely to be due to coinci

dence, to which Evans had thought it due (p. 50). And the

tripods tablet, Ta 641, "at once supplied what had been lacking? a clue to the precise meaning of a Linear B text, regardless of the

language." He finds (p. 52) that most of the values authenticated

by Ta 641 had not depended on the grid. Levin accepts "the verified words in Ta 641 as proof of the

correctness of some of the decipherment" (p. 54). He goes on: "Palmer and others have taken them for a token of its total cor rectness. No doubt it is not by choice that they rest their case

upon so little." After much detailed discussion of individual values on the tripods tablet, with regard to their occurrence on the

equine heads tablet or elsewhere, Levin concludes (p. 93) that

"Precisely eight words on the tablet are securely identified." In

fact, they are four lexical units, some of which occur with variant forms or more than once: viz. ti-ri-po, qe-to-ro-we, ti-ri-jo-we, and

a-no-we. Levin goes on: "Yet twenty-two fully preserved words

out of thirty remain in the dark. No two consecutive words can be read and understood; no two words that are construed together." Levin (p. 103, n. 62) rejects Palmer's theories about ai-ke-u and o-wo-we, and finds that the attempt to read the phrases in which

they occur, except for the words ti-ri-po-de and ti-ri-po, "is des

perate and contravenes the rules of Greek at every point." Levin examines in detail a good many other tablets, applying

his criterion for the verification of sign-values, and reaches, as he

thinks, exhaustion of the objective aids to decipherment, writing: "I do not see how to prove the phonetic value of any more Linear B characters by the same rigorous method" (p. 125). In sum, he found authentication for 9 of Ventris's values. A further 8 he re

ported as occurring in one unmistakable Greek word, but lacking sure confirmation. A third group of 8 he takes to be demonstrated

more or less probably, in one word at least. That makes a total of 25 values certain or probable to Levin's thinking (pp. 27-8. At 163-4 he inclines to admit a further seven "probables," making 32 in all).

Ventrisians will hardly welcome a detailed report that authenti cated, more or less, 25 to 32 of Ventris's sign values. But Levin stresses (p. 128) that he has not refuted a single one of V.'s values. "When I conclude that the greater part of his work is far from acceptable as it stands, I mean that it is in need not so much of correction as of verification." He

challenges the adherents to




corroborate methodically point by point all or most of the remain

ing sign values; and suggests that if no such methodical corrobo ration be forthcoming the rest of the transcription will be en feebled (p. 129). His verdict is that "Most of the Linear B corpus does not come out like Greek at all, or does so only at the price of violent readjustments."

The only Linear B text of several words which has the appear ance of being Greek Levin finds to be Gn (or Fr) 1184, "Kokalos

aped?ke elaiwon toson Eum?dei"..., "Kokalos repaid so much oil to Eumedes. . . ." (p. 141). But even here Levin finds that noth

ing Greek can be made of the three words of the last line, pa-ro i-pe-se-wa ka-ra-re-we. Thus, of 8 words, 3 make no Greek, and 2

have to be personal names. We are then left with aped?ke elaiwon toson. Note that apedoke affords the unique specimen of

syllabic augment in Linear B, and that elsewhere one finds a-pu do-ke. Levin writes (p. 151): ". . . the words a-pe-do-ke and

e-u-me-de-i. . . fall admirably into a Greek construction. . . . the

nexus in 'gave back to E.' is too good to let by as a coincidence." But consider again text Dy 401, halmai wiluite kainos Tholoiai

Diphilimus apolis, where the datives halmai and wilui, connected

by the Greek copulative enclitic te, are construed with apolis. Is coincidence excluded? Further, the syllabic augment in a-pe-do-ke depends on the evaluation of sign 72 as pe, and, Levin writes (p. 156), "What prompted Ventris to give 72 the value pe is a mys tery." Much the same

applies to the evaluation of 14 =

do, 28 =

i, and 33 = ra3, some more of the signs involved in the "Kokalos"

tablet. Levin writes (p. 164): "Offhand I would call it a fluke that they fit the subsequently discovered tablet [Gnll84] so

well." Beattie attempted a "rational explanation" of the way in which V. valued 33 as ra3. Levin thinks "The most rational course is to acknowledge that V. indulged his hunches in advance of any adequate reasons, and that the future bore out his hunches to an extent beyond the random" (p. 164).

For nine of V.'s evaluations of signs, Levin feels certainty in adherence: "those nine can be doubted only in defiance of reason"

(p. 159). The biggest number he allows to have "more or less

trustworthy phonetic values" is 32 (p. 167). out of 88. Yet, he

goes on, "the few deciphered words . . . promptly lead us to a

dead end" (p. 168). Hence he develops his thesis of the presence of another language besides Greek in the Linear B texts. He notes

that, in classical Crete, the Greek alphabet was used for non Greek writing as well as for Greek, and the Cypriot syllabary was used for non-Greek besides Greek. In Linear B he finds non-Greek

vocabulary and non-Greek structural features; indeed, Greek

features seem to him fewer than the undeniably non-Greek fea

tures (p. 189). For example, initial jo- he takes to be non-Greek

(p. 181); also the repetition of one -i- sound after another in

o-pi-i-ja-pe (p. 182). The variation between -we and -wo in ter



Douglas Young 541

minations is inexplicable in Greek (p. 181). If one looks at the

groups evaluated o-pe-ro and pe-ro-ro, and again o-na-to and

na-to-to, one may entertain the notion of a meaning being modi

fied by a prefixed 0- and by a suffixed reduplication of the stem, which would be non-Greek (p. 184). The diphthongal sign for ai

(sign 43), is found almost exclusively at the beginning of

words, a limited distribution hardly compatible with Greek (p. 235). The Ventrisian attempt to interpret 38-44-78 as

e-ke-qe, = Greek ekhei te, Levin denounces as "altogether irreconcilable with the syntax of te in Greek and its cognates in other languages"

(p. 119). On tablet Fr 1217 is an eight-syllabled word, in which Levin finds every value but one more or less justified; yet he thinks the whole word has a structure irreconcilable with Greek

morphology (p. 168). It is re-ke-e-to-ro-te-ri-jo. Personally I do

not find this specially difficult to swallow, in view of Palmer's ex

planation (Interpretations, p. 251), as lekheestr?terion, a festival of preparation of a pair of couches; though the dual in the first

part of the compound is odd, it is not more anomalous than many Ventrisian propositions.

Levin thinks Ventris and his followers made a misstep in jump ing from the position "There is Greek in Linear B" to the position "Linear B is Greek" (p. 196). He judges that, "From the small amount of Greek that has been authenticated in Linear B writing,

we can (if we will) imagine either that a large part of the corpus is Greek or that only a little of it is" .... "There is no sound pre sumption

a priori that a

given word is Greek; a particular

reason

needs to be adduced in every case" .... "The ambiguity of the

syllabary is liable to allow several phonetically possible Greek identifications" (p. 197 f.). By

a circular argument, "the Greek

words have been taken to prove the decipherment, and the de

cipherment has in turn been taken to guarantee the words" (p. 198). Even when one has an eight-sign word that can be given a

Greek interpretation, like e-te-wo-ke-re-we-i-jo, which could be

the patronymic Etewoklew?ios, Levin argues that there is nothing in the context to prove that a

patronymic ,or any noun, is suitable.

There is no MAN ideogram adjacent. And even if the Etewokle w?ios explanation were right, that would not prove the rest of the text Greek, any more than the patronymic Macauley would prove it Gaelic (p. 202).

This is a specimen of numerous delightfully shrewd particular observations that help to make Professor Levin's book an unusual

pleasure to read. For his general assessment of Ventris and his

decipherment, it is, in sum, that several of V.'s hunches turned out to be good, and a small part of the decipherment is unassail able fact; but most of the Linear B corpus is still unintelligible, and the decipherment as a whole is warranted neither by an ample array of facts nor by a well-thought-out theory. The scholars have been content with tokens of proof that it works. "Their attitude




of trustful admiration would have been intellectually disreputable in the world of higher learning, had it not been for the misconcep

tion that V. deduced his transcription by a rigorous cryptanalytic method . . . The grid inspired in them an esteem that it did not deserve" (p. 166).



Is Linear B Deciphered?

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