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

90 T.G. PALAIMA §12.1.2.6
Fig. 12.33. Signs nu (second sign on Sc 238: top) and to (first large sign on Ce 59:
bottom) on tablets of “124” h (after CoMIK 1, 103, 54)
Driessen’s work represents so far the culmination of work on the palaeography
of tablets from any single Mycenaean site. Focusing on a discrete massing of
texts from a single location (we might hesitate to call it a deposit, but it also is
not comparable to the Pylos archives), he made what can best be described as
an all-out assault on the texts. He studied all aspects of tablet manufacture and
handling: texture, color, 108 shape, palm and fingerprints, size and dimensions,
procedures for text entering and formatting, even the use, or not, of such elements
as word-dividers and majuscule and minuscule signs. Driessen’s diachronic
analyses of sign forms (beginning with Linear A, examining the RCT
and other Knossos tablets, and proceeding to mainland traditions) are laudably
thorough, and are now the starting point for critical discussions of diachronic
and comparative palaeography. See Fig. 12.34 for Driessen’s diachronic analysis
of sign *36 jo (and compare Fig. 12.31 for Hand 124).
Driessen also examined linguistic variations among the ‘scribes’ of the
RCT 109 and looked for other elements that might be used to help fix the chronology,
e.g., the greater ‘Greekness’ of the names on tablets from the RCT. 110
He concluded with observations on literacy 111 and how the scribal administrative
system(s) of the RCT and other deposits at Knossos, 112 from clearly dif-
108 Driessen did not, however, use the universally accepted system of absolute references used by
PALAIMA 1988, i.e., Munsell Soil Color Charts readings. He considered them (DRIESSEN 2000,
38 n. 51) ‘a time-consuming and not rewarding enterprise.”
109 DRIESSEN 2000, 159-186.
110 DRIESSEN 2000, 188-194.
111 DRIESSEN 2000, 186-187.
112 DRIESSEN 2000, 217-232.