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

§12.2.5 SCRIBES, SCRIBAL HANDS AND PALAEOGRAPHY 123
The extant tablets from Pylos, in cases where their contents and contexts are
best understood, suggest that there was a hierarchy of tablet-writers according
to their proficiency at recording information accurately and effectively. The main
scribes of each of the three palaeographical classes cover diverse topics and
were entrusted with the more important administrative assignments. Of course,
we must always remember that our view is limited to the period of at most
5 months 162 from which our surviving tablets come. A scribe like Hand 21
writes 72 tablets in at least six different spheres of activity. Hand 25, by contrast,
has written a single tablet (Vn 20) dealing with wine allocation to the
principal districts of the Hither Province.
Before we consider an example, we should say a few words of caution.
New finds (or even joins) of tablets have often brought new revelations that have
overturned old theories. Two conspicuous examples are: (1) the clear attestation
of the god Dionysus in the texts from Khania (Gq 5) and in a new join from Pylos
(Ea 102) 163 that overturned theories that this god entered the Greek pantheon in
post-Mycenaean times; (2) the discovery in the Thebes tablets (Av 106) of our
first clear reference to lyre players, long known to exist from wall and vase
paintings and the finds of the remains of the instruments themselves. 164
A prominent individual at Pylos known as a-ko-so-ta is recorded as performing
an inspection of fields (Eq 213), as having received at least sixty-two of an
item that might be something like ‘beds’ (Pn 30), as having distributed to an
unguent-boiler aromatics that will be used as scents in perfumed oil (Un 267),
as an owner (‘collector’) of livestock, and finally in connection with a label referring
to distribution (most likely of flax) at Pylos (Wa 917, cf. also Wa 948). 165
All these tablets are written by the same hand, Hand 1, who is the ‘master
scribe’ of the site, i.e., the tablet-writer who writes what are among the most
important texts and who, in a singular fashion, edits, and otherwise interacts
with, the work of other scribes. Wa 917, as we have seen (§12.2.2.2), seems
to refer to a set of records wherein a-ko-so-ta has the status of an e-qe-ta and
operates in relationship to an ‘inspector’ (e-re-u-te-re[). But it is impossible to
prove 166 whether (a) a-ko-so-ta is in fact Hand 1, keeping track of his own
administrative activities, or (b) the scribe known as Hand 1 was responsible for
writing down information about the important activities of a-ko-so-ta because
of his own high degree of competence as a record-maker.
162 PALAIMA 1995a, 629-630 and n. 26.
163 MELENA 2001, 36-37, 48.
164 MELENA 2001, 30-31; YOUNGER 1998.
165 Scribes Pylos, 40-41.
166 See KYRIAKIDIS 1996-97, 220-224.