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

60 T.G. PALAIMA §12.1.2.1.2-3
idiosyncrasy (namely that no designation of a location in a text by Hand 1
indicates that the women involved are ‘at Pylos’ by default). Also here we see
just a few indications of the supervisory ‘status’ of Hand 1. We shall see below
that Hand 1 elsewhere, too, interacts with tablets of Hand 21 (who here writes
the Ab series), even directly modifying a tablet of this other scribe.
Scholars have continued studying the historical, social and economic implications
of these ‘women worker’ tablets from Pylos. 48 All their interpretations
of the texts begin with their classification according to scribal hands and sets.
§12.1.2.1.2. The language situation in Mycenaean Pylos
The identification of scribal hands, i.e., of the individual tablet-writers, is
also crucial in understanding the language situation in the Mycenaean period.
It is sometimes possible to link specific spellings to certain hands. This may
point to tablet writers who spoke different language varieties and perhaps themselves
had different origins or circulated in different environments. The matter
is still controversial since the evidence is limited. Particularly surprising is how
uniform the language in the texts is, relatively speaking, at all sites and time
periods that have so far yielded Linear B evidence.
But on the basis of analyzing language differences according to scribal
attributions, it was suggested by Ernst Risch (1966) that in the Pylos tablets we
may identify two different dialects (the so called ‘normal’ and ‘special’ Mycenaean
49 ). Because of the startling overall uniformity of language that we have
just mentioned, Risch was able to isolate only three features where scribes seem
to vary in their treatment of the sounds in words (although other scholars have
tried to expand this list slightly). These differences have been pursued and
debated at the level of individual scribes by several scholars. 50 If some form of
agreement is reached, this can have consequences that are not purely linguistic,
but would affect our understanding of the ethnic and social diversity of the
Mycenaean scribes and of the population groups with whom they interact.
§12.1.2.1.3. The link between hands and find-spots
Another major principle was worked out by Bennett. In addition to studying
the texts according to their classes, series, sets and hands, he pointed out that
48 CHADWICK 1988; NOSCH 2001 and 2003; RUTTER 2003.
49 RISCH 1966.
50 DUHOUX 1986 and 1987, PALAIMA 2002, RISCH 1966 and 1979, THOMPSON 1997 and 2002-
2003, and WOODARD 1986, among others.