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

98 T.G. PALAIMA §12.2.1
i.e., cases where the execution of the signs, whether in the conception of its overall
form and component parts or in the manner of drawing the particular instance,
is diagnostic of distinct individual tablet-writers. In case a.) we can see how sign
di is drawn with a rather extreme and unusual variation in the disposition of
strokes by Hand 1 at the site of Pylos as opposed to the widely shared way of
drawing the sign by Hand 21. In case b.) scribes differ in the unvarying order in
which they draw strokes that cross one another. In case c.) the number of strokes
making up a standard variant of a sign differ, again habitually within different
hands. In cases d.) and e.) the position or the shape of constituent elements of
individual signs differ. In all cases such differences are habitual and are not dictated
by other factors related to the physical aspects or contents of the records.
Fig. 12.37, by contrast, gives examples within single hands where signs differ
slightly from one another in ways that are not habitual or indicative of a
change in scribal hand or in the diagnostic writing style of a scribe. Elements
of signs may be left out or put back in because of the desire to simplify or to
formalize signs in particular instances. The scale at which a sign is drawn is
sometimes a factor, e.g., cases a.) (sign wi written large-scale as a component
of a sign-group on Ma 335 and written very small on Ma 221 as an element
inside the ideogram for hide, where it stands as an abbreviation for wi-ri-no vel
sim. = ‘oxhide’) and b.) (signs qo and o). In the latter case, Hand 43 in the Ea
series is writing many records of landholdings. He writes the names of the main
landholder for each record in the equivalent of ‘capital letters’, that is to say,
in very large signs. Otherwise on these tablets he has to write repeatedly, and,
we are sure, rather monotonously, the formulaic phrases and vocabulary relating
to landholdings. He has to write the sign o again and again in the word for
a ‘beneficial plot of land’ (o-na-to); and he also is writing about animal herdsmen
who are designated by words containing the sign qo (e.g., qo-qo-ta-o and
su-qo-ta-o). It is therefore understandable that he writes simplified versions of
these signs when he has to write them over and over many times. The examples
in d.) are similarly related to repetition, which causes Hand 41 to omit a simple
element of a sign. In the same way in writing the Roman alphabetic characters
‘i’ and ‘t’, we sometimes forget to dot the ‘i’ and cross the ‘t’. In g.) the shape
of an important element of a sign (in this case the main vertical stroke of the
sign ta) is distorted when it has to be written in an awkward place on a tablet.
In all these cases, we are dealing with large, coherent sets of tablets, where
there is no question that one and the same scribe in each set has written the
particular variants under the effects of the circumstances just described.
Scribes will also vary from one another in how their tablets are finished off.
Leaf-shaped tablets particularly have a range of features. In Fig. 12.38, notice
the symmetrical and full-bodied shape of Ta 713 by Hand 2, a tablet of very