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The discovery in 1939, just before the outbreak of war, at Pylos in Messenia, the home of Homer's Nestor, of clay tablets written in a script (Linear B) hitherto found only in the Late Minoan II palace (c. 1500–1400 b.c.) at Knossos in Minoan Crete, created a stir at the time and brought to the fore an acute problem which had already been taxing the ingenuity of classical scholars for many a year in their attempts at a solution. Unfortunately, though the discovery was seen in its proper perspective by some, all thoughts and energies were soon devoted to the purposes of the war; Greece was occupied by the enemy and excavations were suspended. Thus it is only within the last few years that the Pylos tablets have been found to be decipherable; and with this has come the solution of a problem of outstanding importance not only to classical scholars but to prehistorians generally. It is perhaps as well to state briefly how this problem arose and then to discuss the resultant increase in our knowledge due to its solution.
page 159 note 1 American Journal of Archaeology, xliii (1939), 557 ff., 571 ff.Google Scholar
page 159 note 2 Il. xi. 46.
page 160 note 1 Robertson, D. S., Greek and Roman Architecture (Cambridge, 1929), 18 f., 23, 27, 30, 64.Google Scholar
page 160 note 2 Robertson, op. cit. 16. ‘Labyrinthine’, it may be worth mentioning, is really derived from labrys, the double axe, a sacred symbol often seen on columns in the palace at Knossos and on Cretan vases. Thus the palace at Knossos is the ‘Palace of the Double Axe’. It came to mean a maze—for such did the palace seem to a stranger.
The double axe appears to be the symbol of the young male deity of Crete whom the Greeks later identified with Zeus. The symbol and its cult were diffused all over western Anatolia, for Plutarch, Mor. 301 f–302 a, states that ἔ⋯λβρυς is the Lydian word for ‘double axe’ and, according to Strabo 659, at Labraunda in Karia there was an ancient shrine of Zeus Labrandeus whose image held the π⋯λεκυς or double axe.
page 160 note 3 Robertson, op. cit. 22 f.
page 160 note 4 Goldman, H., Excavations at Eutresis in Boeotia (Cambridge, Mass., 1931), 37.Google Scholar
page 160 note 5 A.J.A. xli (1937), 18.Google Scholar
page 160 note 6 Ill. Land. News, 3 06 1939, 5 12 1953, 16 01 1954.Google Scholar
page 161 note 1 Journ. of Hellenic Studies, lxxii (1952), 98Google Scholar; Ill. Land. News, 27 09 1953, 6 03 1954.Google Scholar
page 161 note 2 J.H.S. lix (1939), 203 f.Google Scholar, lxxii (1952), 107 f.; Ill. Land. News, 2 03 1940.Google Scholar
page 161 note 3 Nilsson, M. P., Homer and Mycenae (London, 1933), 75, 151Google Scholar; Figs. 4 and 51, 5 and 33.
page 161 note 4 Cf. Lorimer, H. L., Homer and the Monuments (London, 1950), 20.Google Scholar As regards the series of gold masks from the shaft-graves at Mykenai—while they are not death masks and their only real parallels are the gold or gilded masks of Egyptian mummy cases (ibid., note 3)—three of them have moustaches and one in addition a beard of peculiar cut. The Cretans, however, were cleanshaven.
page 162 note 1 M. P. Nilsson, op. cit. 143.
page 162 note 2 Il. xi. 632.
page 162 note 3 Il. x. 261 ff.
page 162 note 4 Od. vii. 87.
page 162 note 5 Il. vi. 320; viii. 495.
page 162 note 6 Od. xix. 226.
page 162 note 7 Il. xi. 20.
page 162 note 8 M. P. Nilsson, op. cit. 140.
page 162 note 9 H. L. Lorimer, op. cit. 464 ff.
page 162 note 10 Ibid. 452 ff.
page 163 note 1 Buschor, E., Greek Vase Painting (London, 1921), 7, Figs. 4, 6, 10.Google Scholar
page 163 note 2 Nilsson, M. P., The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (Berkeley, 1932), 21 ff.Google Scholar; A History of Greek Religion 2 (Oxford, 1949), 38 ff.Google Scholar; The Minoan-Myce-naean Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion 2 (Lund, 1950), 447 ff.Google Scholar
page 164 note 1 See Nilsson, M. P., A History of Greek Religion 2, 39 ff.Google Scholar The chief personages or events of the myths are here listed under important Mycenaean sites:
page 164 note 2 Nilsson, M. P., Homer and Mycenae, 153.Google Scholar For evidence from the new gravecircle discovered by Dr. J. Papadimitriou see Ill. Land. News, 6 03 1954, 363.Google Scholar Cf. H. L. Lorimer, op. cit. 15.
page 165 note 1 H. L. Lorimer, op. cit. 35, 68; Gurney, O. R., The Hittites (Harmondsworth, 1952), 46 ff.Google Scholar
page 165 note 2 Horace, , Odes, i. 7. 37–29.Google Scholar
page 165 note 3 Recently excavated by Dr. P. Dikaios of the Cyprus Museum and Professor C. F. A. Shaeffer of the French Archaeological Institute; see Ill. Land. News, 24 05 1952, 885 ff., and 31 May 1952, 936 ff.Google Scholar
page 165 note 4 H. L. Lorimer, op. cit. 31, 37, 48–51.
page 165 note 5 O. R. Gurney, loc. cit.
page 166 note 1 H. L. Lorimer, op. cit. 40.
page 166 note 2 Bury, J. B., History of Greece 3 (London, 1951), 61 f.Google Scholar
page 166 note 3 Persson, A. W., Schrift und Sprache in Alt-Kreta (Programm, Uppsala, 1930)Google Scholar; ‘Die spätmykenische Inschrift aus Asine’, Corolla Archaeologica (Lund, 1932), 208.Google Scholar Cf. Pendlebury, J. D. S., The Archaeology of Crete (London, 1939), 269.Google Scholar
page 166 note 4 See Nilsson, M. P., Homer and Mycenae, 79Google Scholar and Fig. 10, for the inscription and its translation. Cf. also Ventris's criticism of Persson's identifications in Chadwick's, T.The Decipherment of Linear B (Cambridge, 1958), 30.Google Scholar
page 167 note 1 H. L. Lorimer, op. cit. 453.
page 167 note 2 Cf. Chadwick, J. in Antiquity, xxvii (1953), 198Google Scholar: ‘The decipherment is still far from complete, but it has brought no surprises as far as the contents of the tablets are concerned. There are no histories, no letters, no decrees, no literature. We have only some scraps, often fragmentary, recording the day-to-day activities of the households concerned. Since the archives from Knossos and Pylos are of royal households we may hope to deduce from them something of the extent and administration of these kingdoms.’
page 167 note 3 Cf. A. J. B. Wace, ‘The Discovery of Inscribed Clay Tablets at Mycenae’, ibid., xxvii (1953), 84–86. A jar inscribed with the same script was found at Orchomenos in 1903, and in subsequent years others were found at Tiryns, Thebes, and Eleusis. Cf. Ill. Lond. News, 27 03 1954, 489.Google Scholar A text described as being in Cypro-Minoan script has only recently been discovered at Ugarit (Ras Shamra) in northern Syria by Professor C. F. A. Schaeffer; cf. Antiquity, xxviii (1954), 38.Google Scholar
page 167 note 4 See Chadwick, J., ‘Greek Records and the Minoan Script’Google Scholar, ibid., xxvii (1953), 196–206; Ventris, M. and Chadwick, J., ‘Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives’, J.H.S. lxxiii (1953), 84–103Google Scholar, and Documents in Mycenaean Greek (Cambridge, 1956).Google Scholar
page 168 note 1 Cf. Davis, S., Race-relations in Ancient Egypt (London, 1951), 1.Google Scholar There are striking resemblances between Troy and mainland Greece. Apart from the megaron common to both, the Achaeans felt themselves much less apart from the Trojans than the Greeks of the classical age from the Persians. The Trojans, too, were northerners as the Achaeans were—such seems the general impression. Cf. Antiquity, xxviii (1954), 63Google Scholar, where V. Gordon Childe, in a review of Blegen's work at Troy, states of Troy VI that ‘it was, judging by the pottery, founded by a new people … akin to those who destroyed the early Helladic townships of Greece and initiated the Middle Helladic culture. … The native pottery was throughout “Minyan ware”, predominantly the classic grey variety but in cluding red-washed and other variants.’ Cf. ibid. 64, ‘The rite of cremation is likewise quite alien to Anatolian traditions. … It is a priori likely that the new rite was introduced at the same time as the new pottery and the horse.’
page 168 note 2 Thuc. i. 4; Hdt. iii. 122, vii. 170.
page 168 note 3 Antiquity, xxvii (1953), 194Google Scholar, Diod. Sic. iv. 78–79, SirEvans, A., Palace of Minos (London, 1921–1935), iv. 959 ff.Google Scholar
page 169 note 1 Stubbings, F. H., Mycenaean Pottery from the Levant (Cambridge, 1951), 102.Google Scholar In pottery the amount of Late Helladic I and II ware from Egypt is about eight times that of Late Minoan I; and Dr. Stubbings asks, ‘If, as is generally assumed, Crete was at this time the dominant Aegean power, and Greece not more than a tributary ally, how could Greece trade more freely with Egypt than did Crete, which lies geographically between the two?’ Cf. H. L. Lorimer, op. cit. 30.
page 169 note 2 J. D. S. Pendlebury, op. cit. 229.
page 169 note 3 Cf. F. H. Stubbings, 1.c.
page 169 note 4 Antiquity, xxvii (1953), 198 f.Google Scholar
page 169 note 5 Cf. Glotz, G., The Aegean Civilization (London, 1925), 392.Google Scholar Gymnastic and musical contests, as also sport, were, according to Glotz, derived by the Greeks from Minoan Crete.
page 170 note 1 Antiquity, xxvii (1953), 65 f.Google Scholar
page 170 note 2 The bull, so frequent a feature of Minoan cult, is not indigenous to Crete, and the Cretan snake-goddess has her counterparts in Asia and Africa.