The Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Western Messenia. Vol. IV. The Inscribed Documents
Emmett L. Bennett Jr., José L. Melena, Dimitri Nakassis, Jean-Pierre Olivier & Thomas G. Palaima (eds)
City: Columbus
Year: 2025
Description: 2 τόμοι, lxxii + 746 pages
In 1939, on the first day of excavation on a hill in western Messenia, Carl W. Blegen uncovered a Mycenaean palace that he called The Palace of Nestor. Its archives contained clay tablets inscribed in the so-called Linear B script, a syllabary employed to record the Greek language. These documents had been unintentionally baked in a conflagration that destroyed the palace early in the 12th century B.C. Blegen, who died in 1971, planned to see published in a final volume of his excavation report all Linear B texts from Pylos. This publication in two parts fulfills his commitment and is the work of several generations of scholars who have remained dedicated to the enterprise. After a preliminary detailed introduction, Linear B tablets 1–1589 are here presented accompanied by color photographs, transcriptions, and definitive epigraphical and palaeographical notes. The Palace of Nestor IV will be fundamental for any future study of Mycenaean economy and society.
Contents
Part 1
Documents 1–616
List of Figures [vi]
List of Tables [vii]
Foreword [viii]
Preface [ix]
Acknowledgments [xi]
Introduction [xiii]
History of the Text [xiii]
The Excavation of the Tablets [xvii]
The Classification and Numbering of the Documents [xviii]
The Find Spots [xx]
The Reconstruction of the Documents [xxv]
The Identification of the Scribes [xxvi]
The Making of the Records [xxix]
Record Keeping [xxxi]
Incidental Aspects of the Process of Writing [xxxii]
The Drying of the Tablets [xxxiv]
Labels [xxxvi]
Nodules [xxxvi]
The Date and the Traces of the Final Catastrophe [xxxvii]
Photographic Recording of the Documents [xxxviii]
Facsimile Drawings [xl]
Conventions [xl]
Classification [xlvi]
Lemmatized Information [lxi]
Abbreviations [lxix]
References [lxxi]
Photographs, Text, and Apparatus of the Pylos Linear B Documents (1–616) [1]
Part 2, Documents 622–1589
Photographs, Text, and Apparatus of the Pylos Linear B Documents (622–1589) [357]
Indices
1. Concordance to document numbers [716]
2. Index of documents arranged by classificatory prefixes and sets [723]
3. Index of documents classified according to hands, stylus groups, and classes [733]