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

§12.2.2.1 SCRIBES, SCRIBAL HANDS AND PALAEOGRAPHY 103
Note how in the layout of the text on the tablet (Figs. 12.39 and 40), the
word for ‘fatted animals’ (si-a 2-ro, sihalons) is placed at the right end of the
first line and directly over the entries of SUS+SI (SI is an abbreviation for
si-a 2-ro) in the following nine lines (lines .3-.11) which give on the left side
each of the nine major districts of the Hither Province of the palatial territory
of Pylos. Meanwhile o-pi-da-mi-jo sits above the toponyms for each of the nine
districts where these individuals operate. Thus the two columns of textual data
have their own headers.
On Mycenae tablet Oe 106 (Fig. 12.40), a tablet from the so-called House
of the Oil Merchant, the layout of the text is oriented in the other direction
on the tablet. It accommodates a shorter text that has three entries pertaining
to allocations of small quantities of wool that is designated as ko-ro-to ‘to be
coloured’ (?) to a man and two women. The verso of Oe 106 bears one of a
handful of generally well-executed scribal doodles (Fig. 12.41) that are found
on the Linear B tablets. 133
Fig. 12.41. Scribal doodle of a man from
the reverse of Mycenae tablet Oe 106 (after
MT I, 430)
133 See PALAIMA 1992, for what the doodles and figural logograms tell us about the artistic skills
of scribes and their relationship to higher forms of art.