Translation of Knossos tablet KN 711a M h 01 according to Sir Arthur Evans by Rita Roberts:This translation pretty much speaks for itself. Rita amazed me by mastering the archaic ancient letter digamma #.
Tag Archive: linear b ideograms
Rita Roberts’ translation of Knossos tablet KN 160a J j 11, dealing with wine, corrected:
Rita Roberts’ translation of Knossos tablet KN 160a J j 11, dealing with wine, corrected, is trickier than the previous one she has translated to fulfill the requirements for her second year of university, KN 906 Da 02, dealing with livestock. Because this tablet is damaged, truncated left and right, it can be more difficult to establish meaning for certain terms. But not necessarily so. Rita struggled gainfully with this tablet. And this is understandable. What determines everything in the decipherment of any tablet, Linear A or B, is CONTEXT. If we cannot determine what any given word(s) mean in the actual context of the tablet, we sometimes fail to grasp the meanings of these words. But in the end, everything falls into place, and a relatively convincing translation can be gleaned from it, as we see in the illustration above.
The only character which occasions real difficulty is the supersyllabogram PE, which usually stands for “seed(s)”. But if this the meaning to be extracted, it does not really make all that much sense, since grape seeds do not contribute much to wine, only the grapes do. The only explanation I can muster here is this: the grape seeds had to be extracted, i.e. removed, from the grapes to produce the wine. That makes sense. Finally, we find the ideogram for “olive oil” on this tablet, but how olive oil mixes with wine is a mystery to me, unless the olive oil is being served with bread along with the wine. But there is no mention of bread on this tablet. So some issues remain unresolved.
Richard
Rita Roberts’ translation of Knossos tablet KN 906 Da 02 corrected, livestock from the marketplace:
This is one of three tablets which Rita Roberts had to translate to qualify for her second year of university. This tablet is the easiest of the three, on an ascending scale of difficulty. Rita achieved the excellent mark of 91 % = A + for this tablet. Congratulations, Rita!
The other two tablets are extremely challenging, even for experts in Linear B.
Translation of Linear B tablet KN 903 Da 01 by Rita Roberts:
Here we have Rita Roberts’ translation of Linear B B tablet KN 903 Da 01. In her own decipherment, Rita translated Watoakoraya as a personal name of a shepherd or herdsman, but this is clearly wrong, because akoraya is genitive singular and means “from the market” and Wato is archaic dative singular for Watos, which is a place name. So the proper translation is “from the market at Watos”. Otherwise, her translation is sound.
Translation of Linear B tablet KN 894 Do 04 by Rita Roberts:
Here we have Rita Roberts’ translation of Linear B B tablet KN 894 Do 04, which I find quite fascinating, even though it is so short. This is because of the supersyllabogram ZE, which literally means “yoked with a pair of” or as Rita Roberts puts it “a team of oxen”. In addition, we have the enclitic QE following the name Tomako, which means “and”, implying that there was another herdsman mentioned before Tomako; hence, the tablet is left-truncated as well as right-truncated.
Linear B numerals 100, 1k and 10k are atemporal, like those in the movie. Arrival:
It is quite clear from the following illustration of the numbers 1-12 in the Heptapod circular language, which correspond to the number of ships landing on earth, that their numbers, occurring in a circle, are similar to the numerals for 100, 1k and 10k in Mycenaean Linear A. This correspondence reveals an intriguing characteristic of these Linear B numerals, namely, that they can serve as ideograms for extraterrestrial communication. In other words, just as the Heptapod numbers serve to communicate from the extraterrestrials, the Linear B numerals can serve to communicate with them or any other extraterrestrial civilization.
Rita Roberts’ decipherment of Linear B tablet KN 669 K j 21 (Knossos) on grains and saffron:
This is the latest in the most recent run of Linear B tablets deciphered by Rita Roberts, who is in her second term, second year of university. The tablets she must now decipher are much more challenging than anything she has ever encountered before. Given that she is up against tablets that get progressively more and more difficult, her progress towards total mastery of Linear B is nothing short of first rate. Because she forgot to provide a free translation of Line 2, Rita scored 90 % on this tablet. But that is, as we say in French, un petit péché.
You do not want to miss this Fantastic Twitter account, FONT design company of the highest calibre! I have just fortuitously come across what I consider to be the most fantastic font site or Twitter account on newly designed, mostly serif, extremely attractive fonts, some of which they offer for FREE!!! You simply have to check them out. Click here to follow typo graphias:Here is a composite of some of the astonishing font graphics on this amazing site!
Serendipitously happening on this account put a bee in my bonnet. I simply had to send you all on the fast track to downloading and installing the Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C + several beautiful ancient Greek fonts, of which the most heavily used is SPIonic, used for Ionic, Attic, Hellenistic and New Testament writings and documents. Hre are the links where you can download them, and much more besides! Colour coded keyboard layout for the Mycenaean Linear B Syllabary:
includes font download sites for the SpIonic & LinearB TTFs
The first ever keyboard map for the Arcado-Cypriot Linear C TTF font!
which also includes the direct link to the only site where you can download the beautiful Arcado-Cypriot Linear B font, here:
How to download and use the Linear B font by Curtis Clark:
Easy guide to the Linear B font by Curtis Clark, keyboard layout:
Here is the Linear B keyboard. You must download the Linear B font as instructed below:
And here is the actual cursive Linear B font as it actually appears on the most famous of all Linear B tablet, Pylos Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris):
What’s more, you can read my full-length extremely comprehensive article, An Archaeologist’s Translation of Pylos Tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris) by Rita Roberts, in Archaeology and Science (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448, Vol. 10 (2014), pp. 133-161, here:
in which I introduce to the world for the first time the phenomenon of the decipherment of what I designate as the supersyllabogram, which no philologist has ever properly identified since the initial decipherment of Mycenaean Linear B by Michael Ventris in 1952. Unless we understand the significance of supersyllabograms in Linear B, parts or sometimes even all of at least 800 Linear B tablets from Knossos alone cannot be properly deciphered. This lacuna stood out like a sore thumb for 64 years, until I finally identified, categorized and deciphered all 36 (!) of them from 2013 to 2014. This is the last and most significant frontier in the complete decipherment of Mycenaean Linear B. Stay posted for my comprehensive, in-depth analysis and synopsis of The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B, which is to appear early in 2017 in Vol. 11 of Archaeology and Science. This ground-breaking article, which runs from page 73 to page 108 (35 pages on a 12 inch page size or at least 50 pages on a standard North American page size) constitutes the final and definitive decipherment of 36 supersyllabograms, accounting for fully 59 % of all Linear B syllabograms. Without a full understanding of the application of supersyllabograms on Linear B tablets, it is impossible to fully decipher at least 800 Linear B tablets from Knossos.
International Historical Linguistics journals I will contact to review my articles in Archaeology and Science, 2016 & 2017: Following is a list in 2 PARTS of international Historical Linguistics journals I will contact to review my articles in Archaeology and Science: [1] Janke, Richard Vallance. The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B, Archaeology and Science. Vol. 11 (2015), pp. 73-108. As soon as this ground-breaking article is published in early 2017, I shall submit it for review in every one of the international journals below. [2] Janke, Richard Vallance. Pylos tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris), the “Rosetta Stone” to Minoan Linear A tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada) vessels and pottery, Archaeology and Science. Vol. 12 (2016) Since this article is not going to be published before mid-2017, and as yet has no pagination, I shall have to wait until then before I submit it for review to all of the periodicals below.![]()
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First WORD draft of “Pylos tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris), the ‘Rosetta Stone’ for Linear A tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada)” completed for publication in... I have just completed the first full WORD draft of “Pylos tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris), the ‘Rosetta Stone’ for Linear A tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada) for publication in Vol. 12 (2016) of the prestigious international annual, Archaeology and Science (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448. Here is the cover of the current issue of Archaeology and Science:And here you see 4 consecutive non-contiguous brief excerpts from this article, which is to run to at least 35 pages,
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as has the article about to be published in Vol. 11 (2015), “The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B”, which runs from page 73-108, for a total of 35 pages. See previous post for details on that article.
MASTER Article, “The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B”, Archaeology and Science, Vol. 11 (2015) received: excerpts follow I have just received the DRAFT of the entire issue of Vol. 11 (2015) Archaeology and Science (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448, in which my ground-breaking article, “The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B” appears on pp. 73-108 (35 pages long). I have proof-read it and I found errors only in the transcription of the SPIonic.ttf Greek font, which causes all the Greek text to be printed in Latin characters, such that they appear garbled. But this error will be eliminated in the actual article when it appears this coming winter (2017). Here you see the title page plus three consecutive but non-contiguous excerpts from my article:![]()
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NOTE that the decipherment of the 36 supersyllabograms is the first and last major breakthrough in the final decipherment of Mycenaean Linear B, which was first deciphered by Michael Ventris in June-July 1952 (with the exception of supersyllabograms, which account for at least 20 % of the text on Linear B tablets). Thanks! Richard