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

§12.1.2.3 SCRIBES, SCRIBAL HANDS AND PALAEOGRAPHY 79
For example, Hand 1, the master scribe at the site, 89 is almost obsessive
about not using any more clay than is necessary for given records. He even
trims excess clay away from his tablets (see below). This is done for two reasons
of economy. First, not to waste any of the finely levigated clay from which
the tablets are generally made. Second, to make sure the records are not bigger
than they need to be and therefore can be efficiently and compactly filed away,
generally in Room 8 of the Archives Complex (see Figures 12.15 and 12.16).
It was also possible at Pylos to trace how scribes interacted with one another,
directly within tablets and in regard to the information that they recorded.
Besides the ‘women-worker’ tablets (series Aa, Ab, and Ad, discussed in
§12.1.2.1.1), scribes interacted prominently in the sheep tablets (series Cn), the
tablets that deal with allocation of bronze to bronze workers (series Jn) and the
records of landholdings (E-series).
Figure 12.25 shows the interaction between two scribes (Hand 21, the main
scribe of palaeographical class ii, 90 and Hand 1, the chief scribe of the entire
site) on a single tablet (Cn 599) of the Cn livestock series. Figs. 12.26 and 27
show how Hand 1 and Hand 21 respectively write the standard signs of the
Linear B syllabary (arranged according to the template in Fig. 12.29). Note
especially the very different shapes of sign *07 (di) and the placement of the
‘s’-shaped thumb on the right side of sign *52 (no). On Cn 599 ideograms in
lines .1-.3 are male goats, .4-.6 female goats, and .7-.8 female pigs. On the tablet,
Hand 21 wrote what is still there on lines .1-.7. He also originally wrote line
.8 and the partially preserved line .9. Hand 1, whose ideogram for female pig is
radically different from Hand 21’s, erased the original text of lines .8 and .9.
He then wrote a new entry in line .8 and trimmed the tablet above line .1 and
through the original line .9. He characteristically begins his line of text flush
with the left hand side of the tablet. Hand 1 also added the missing preposition
pa-ro, paro between and slightly above the fifth and sixth characters in line .1.
The ear of Hand 21’s pig-ideogram is still visible at the right of what had been
line .9. There are also traces there of the vertical strokes signifying ‘one’.
Palaima also went back, and with Bennett’s help, reread all the excavation notebooks
from Pylos for clues as to tablet locations. 91 This became the basis for the
renewed concern shown now for more than two decades with the tablets as archaeological
artifacts and with understanding texts in their archaeological contexts. 92
89 Scribes Pylos, 35-58.
90 Scribes Pylos, 80-86; on the definition of palaeographical classes, see note 36.
91 Scribes Pylos, 135-169.
92 BENNET, D.J.L. 1983; BENNET, J. 1984; DRIESSEN 2000; FIRTH 2000-2001; PALAIMA – SHELMER-
DINE 1984; PALAIMA – WRIGHT 1985; Pylos Comes Alive.