A Companion to Linear B - The University of Texas at Austin

52 T.G. PALAIMA §12.1.1.4
signs and given them a conventional numbering. But the work of Kober and
Bennett was undertaken with the knowledge that even small mistakes could be
serious impediments to decipherment.
Bennett and Kober proposed to provide a modern conventional equivalent
for the ‘Minoan’ ABC’s. Evans’ system was arbitrary. Kober and Bennett
debated whether the order of standard signs should be based on sign frequency
within the corpus of inscriptions (Kober’s preference, because it would be helpful
in the decipherment process), or on groupings of signs according to their
shapes (Bennett’s preference because it is likely the way that at least some of
the signs were generated in the first place). Eventually, the order based on
shapes, simple and straight linear to more complex and curvilinear, was adopted
(Fig. 12.11). This order is still used today.
(2) Identifying the handwriting styles of individual tablet-writers as a preliminary
(and necessary) step for the identification of the signs.
As a means to this end, Bennett undertook a wholesale study of all available
Pylos and Knossos material. All the Linear B tablets are anonymous, 31 thus
this kind of work required exacting attention to the way in which the signs of
the script were written, both the ca 90 signs for phonetic values (phonograms)
and the greater number of signs for things or the words that identified things
(ideograms or logograms). 32
Kober and Bennett both understood that it was a sine qua non to get this
correct. Otherwise ‘noise’ (i.e., false elements) would be introduced into the
fundamental data. Scientific use of these data depended on the correct identification
of different scribal versions of the standard signs of the syllabary.
The identification of the basic signs of the syllabary was further complicated
by the appearance, on transport pottery (called stirrup jars), of painted signs in
(RUIPÉREZ – MELENA 1990, 110, who compare the iroha of Japanese kana writing) they are a
mnemonic for the first signs of the syllabary, memorized by users of the Linear B script in
learning how to write. See here DUHOUX 2008.
We may compare the modern acrophonic mnemonics used to represent the standard sequence
of letters of the alphabet. For purposes of telephonic communication NATO, the International
Civil Aviation Organization and the Federal Aviation Administration use the following: Alfa,
Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo = a, b, c, d, e. Likewise, see the mnemonic sequence used for the
early Cyrillic alphabet: Az, Buki, Vedi, Glagol, Dobro, Est = /a, b, v, g, d, e/.
31 BENNETT 1960b.
32 The bookkeeping structure of the Linear B records clearly separates the ideograms/logograms
from the syntax of the phonetically represented words (see DUHOUX 1985, 16-17; PALAIMA
2004b). Thus it was not difficult for Evans, Kober and Bennett to identify the chief ideograms
(cf. BENNETT 1947, 21).