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

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116 T.G. PALAIMA §12.2.4 tablets. 155 We have already seen, however, that there is considerable variation within the categories of palm- and leaf-shaped records in size and in particular details of shape. To some extent the categories blur and merge. Once the Mycenaean script was developed — and the Linear B writing system is remarkably stable in its sign repertories and principles of use throughout its attested history — it then had to be taught to the number of people required to keep the records deemed necessary by the individuals and power groups who controlled, or at least heavily influenced, how Mycenaean society itself developed and operated within different palatial territories. Whoever the individuals were who wrote our extant tablets and whatever status they had, it was necessary for them to acquire knowledge of the art of writing. How was this accomplished? Here palaeography and hand identification offer clues. The instances wherein the styles of different scribal hands clearly fall into groups or classes (the clustering of the hands of the Room of the Chariot Tablets at Knossos; the close similarity of Khania Hand 115 and Knossos Hand 115; the very close resemblance of Pylos Hands 1 and 2; the three distinctive palaeographical classes of writing style from tablets dated to the destruction level at Pylos) offer our best evidence for how scribes of this period would have been trained. Such similarities clearly argue for training underneath senior masters who would transmit thereby a consistent and fairly traditional style to apprentices who were learning how to use the Linear B script. Finally, how many persons besides the generously estimated 150 hands or potential hands identifiable in all our extant tablets might have known, during any generation, how to read and write in Linear B? Any speculations here are complicated by the evidence that Linear B writing could be used on ephemeral documents. The strongest argument for this is the fact that the signs of the Linear B script maintain a curvilinear and complex style throughout 200 years of use, instead of developing simple forms that would have been easier to write, as they often are, repeatedly into moist clay surfaces. This raises the possibility that the Linear B records, as we have them, served in some ways as preliminary archives with information of longer term importance being transferred to records done in ink upon parchment or papyrus. That there has been some simplification in sign forms over time is clear if we compare, as Driessen has conveniently done, the signs painted on inscribed stirrup jars with their earlier RCT forms and then with the developed Pylos and other mainland forms (see Figs. 12.47-49). Enough signs retain some of the 155 See PALMER 2008b, 61, fig. 2.1.
§12.2.4 SCRIBES, SCRIBAL HANDS AND PALAEOGRAPHY 117 Fig. 12.47. Palaeographic chart for Linear B sign du (after DRIESSEN 2000, 360 pl. 71)
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BIBLIOTHÈQUE DES CAHIERS DE L'INST
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SUMMARY CHAPTER 12 SCRIBES, SCRIBAL
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