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

58 T.G. PALAIMA §12.1.2.1.1
are associated with these women 44 and what look like phonetically abbreviated
entries (TA and DA). Here Bennett had identified tablets like Aa 792 as the
work of Hand 1.
Other tablets (series Ab) list the location of the women, their place of origin
and/or work specialisation, numbers of boys and girls, and then quantities of
grain and figs, and the abbreviations TA and DA. Ab 189 and all other Ab tablets
are the work of Hand 21.
Still other tablets (series Ad) differentiate between older and younger
pre-adult males among the children associated with the different women
work groups. They specify that these pre-adult males are ‘of’ the women
designated on the tablets. Ad 683 and all other Ad tablets are the work of
Hand 23.
Finally two clay labels by Hand 1 (Wa 114 and Wa 1008) refer explicitly
to one of the two major provinces of the territory of which the Palace of Nestor
at Pylos is the principal palatial centre. The labels also specify that the foodstuffs
allotted in the Ab texts are ‘monthly rations’ (me-ni-jo, menion) and that
the women somehow here are receiving, or have received, si-to, sitos, i.e.,
‘food’ or ‘grain’.
In Figure 12.14, we may observe drawings of these tablets 45 of series Aa
(Aa 792 Hand 1), Ad (Ad 683 Hand 23), and Ab (Ab 189 Hand 21) and the
two transport or filing labels associated with this series (Wa 1008 and Wa 114
Hand 1). Tablet Aa 792 serves as a kind of census. It does not designate the
location of the women and children being counted and recorded. The scribe
here (Hand 1) assumes and knows that these women are ‘at Pylos’ (as they are
designated here on the texts of Hands 23 and 21).
On all three tablets the women are identified by what we might call ‘placename
adjectives’. These adjectives are tricky to work with because we do not
know for this period whether in fact the women themselves would claim that
they were ki-ni-di-ja ‘women of Knidos’ in ethnicity, or whether the word
ki-ni-di-ja simply identifies for the palatial administrators at Pylos the area (in
Anatolia) from which the women came to Pylos. This would not imply that
they were residents or inhabitants of Knidos and the territory of Knidos. They
could, for example, have been gathered, forcibly or willingly, from elsewhere
in Anatolia, near to or far from Knidos.
Tablet Ad 683 differentiates between male children of two different age
groups, one called ko-wo, korwoi ‘boys’ and the other, older group, called
44 We do not know that all or any of these non-adult males and females are the biological children
of these women.
45
CHADWICK 1988, 50, Group 9.