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

56 T.G. PALAIMA §12.1.2.1
Bennett also developed categories for distinguishing coherent ‘sets’ of
tablets. These sets (he called them ‘stylus groups’) are generally tablets of the
same shape and format and contain information on the same subject(s). They
also often share the same fixed categories of formulaic information and have a
coherent overall style of handwriting and textual presentation. 40 With his characteristically
‘Koberian’ rigor and his appreciation for differentiating degrees
of probability, Bennett also set up principles for attaching these ‘stylus groups’
to individual hands with greater or lesser certainty. 41 Thus, if we assign a particular
‘stylus group’ of tablets to a particular hand, and it is later proved that
it does not belong to that hand, we can reassign that particular stylus group
without having to redo all the other assignments of tablets we have made to
that particular hand.
Bennett also took the lead in demonstrating what could be gained by using
the identifications of scribal hands to study further how and why the Linear B
documents were written as they were and how tablets, or various groups of
tablets, related to one another. The Pylos series Aa, Ab and Ad written by the
Hands 1, 4, 21 and 23 were used by Bennett as his first major illustration of
this point. After Bennett, the evidence derived from palaeographical analyses
has been used widely within Mycenaean studies to help us understand the
meaning of the texts that have survived.
§12.1.2. Palaeographical studies after the decipherment: Emmett L. Bennett,
Jr. and others
§12.1.2.1. Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. and the scribes of Pylos and other
sites
Here are some examples of the results reached by the work of Emmett L.
Bennett, Jr. on the tablets of Pylos and other Mycenaean sites.
40 This definition of set differs from that of John Chadwick: ‘a group of several tablets intended
to be read as a single document.” It emphasizes that tablets belong together as the work of a
single scribe and within a single record-keeping task. It is used as a safeguard and tool, enabling
tablets that clearly belong together to be separated out from other tablets by a single
scribe, if future palaeographical study so warrants. In many cases sets as defined by Bennett
will satisfy the definition of Chadwick and vice versa. So the difference between the two
definitions is mainly one of perspective. Bennett’s is palaeographical and epigraphical, focused
on the physical records and their handwriting. Chadwick’s is focused on the messages of the
texts and their purpose as documents, or, as he conceives of it, several texts taken together as
a unified document.
41 PTT II, 7-9; Scribes Pylos, 30-31 and n. 37; and most recently DRIESSEN 2000, 31-32.