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

§12.1.2.1.5 SCRIBES, SCRIBAL HANDS AND PALAEOGRAPHY 69
information required of this particular assignment. In the Ta tablets, the administrators
involved had to identify and describe unequivocally individual items
among the precious and exquisite implements, furniture and vessels that were
to be used in a ceremonial and ritually important banqueting ceremony.
Quite literally throughout these tablets, words and ideograms are omitted, or
erased and replaced or otherwise modified. In some cases, information is squeezed
in on the upper part of a line or on the upper edge of a tablet. On tablet Ta 707.1a,
(Fig. 12.19) the word ku-te-ta-jo is written above the rest of the first entry in line
.1 and even continues onto the latus superius. The first two lines of Ta 707 contain
five instances of erasure and rewriting. Tablet Ta 708 (Fig. 12.20) was originally
intended as a two-line tablet for two entries. But Hand 2 irregularly divided line
.2 after entering two words of the second entry. Likewise he erased a five-word
entry in line .1; and in line .2B, he erased the word a-di-ri-ja-pi (andriamphi, ‘with
male figures’) and rewrote it after writing the word he had forgotten (e-re-pa-te-jo
elephanteiois, ‘of ivory’) over the erasure. There are two erasures on the three
lines of Ta 709, an erasure on each of the three lines of Ta 711, two probable
erasures on Ta 713, three probable erasures (one sizable, of three words) on the
three lines of Ta 714, and the ideogram for qe-ra-na may well be omitted from
line Ta 711.3. There are three significant erasures in the first two lines of Ta 641.
And Ta 642 line .3 contains three erasures in a single line.
Fig. 12.19. Pylos tablet Ta 707 (photo from PASP archives, annotation by K. Pluta)
Fig. 12.20. Pylos tablet Ta 708 (photo from PASP archives, annotation by K. Pluta)