Alice E. Kober (1906-1950) was a Classical scholar and academician whose fastidiously detailed and documented life’s work contributed to the decipherment of Linear B. Until just days before her death from cancer at the age of 43, she employed a unique heuristic approach that proved conclusively the Mycenaean script (circa 1500-1100 BC) is inflected. Her findings and methods were subsumed by Michael Ventris (1922-1956) who in 1952 successfully deciphered Linear B as a syllabic language of archaic Greek etymology. Research material, publications, manuscripts, lectures, correspondence, and professional material are included in the approximately 188,825 items that comprise the Alice E. Kober Papers (1932-1950) of the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory. The bulk of the items support the decipherment of Linear B while correspondence, lectures, and professional material add context to the research material.
Inclusion in the collection does not mean that the works are in the public domain. They may still be protected by copyright. We provide access only for nonprofit, educational, scholarly, research and teaching uses, and personal use, in accordance with copyright's fair use provision. If a reader wishes to make other uses, they are responsible for determining whether permission is required and obtaining it if it is. We would be happy to hear from any reader who has information about a work in the collection. A reader who has any concerns about a work in the collection should feel free to contact us.
For questions about the Alice E. Kober Papers contact: Professor Thomas Palaima, tpalaima@austin.utexas.edu.
For questions about Texas ScholarWorks contact tsw@utlists.utexas.edu
Sub-communities within this community
Collections in this community
Alice E. Kober Papers Finding Aid
Finding Aid
Showing posts with label Mycenaean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mycenaean. Show all posts
Saturday, September 11, 2021
Alice E. Kober Papers Online
Alice E. Kober Papers
Thursday, March 25, 2021
LiBER (Linear B Electronic Resources)
[First posted in AWOL 6 November 2013, relainched 25 March 2021]
LiBER (Linear B Electronic Resources)
LiBER (Linear B Electronic Resources)
At the beginning of the 20th century, during the excavation of the palace of Knossos, the British archaeologist Arthur Evans found a large number of archival documents written in three different scripts. In his book Scripta Minoa I (Oxford 1909) he called these scripts “Cretan Hieroglyphic”, “Linear A”, and “Linear B”, where the term linear alluded to the stylized and cursive shape of the signs compared to the more decorative and calligraphic form of the Cretan Hieroglyphics. Subsequently, Linear B texts were brought to light also in various palatial sites of mainland Greece, including Pylos and Mycenae.
The decipherment of Linear B, which is a logo-syllabic script, is due to the British architect Michael Ventris. Based on the study of sign frequencies and alternations (made possible by the work of Emmett Bennett), Ventris gradually developed a phonetic grid, until, in his last work note, dated 1 June 1952, moving from some observations previously made by Alice Kober, he suggested the possibility that Linear B was used to write Greek.
Friday, October 18, 2019
DĀMOS: Database of Mycenaean at Oslo
[First posted on AWOL 15 February 2013, updated 16 October 2019]
DĀMOS: Database of Mycenaean at Oslo
DĀMOS: Database of Mycenaean at Oslo
DAMOS (Database of Mycenaean at Oslo) is an annotated electronic corpus of all the published Mycenaean texts, the earliest (ca. XV-XII B.C.) written evidence of the Greek language, comprised of inscriptions in the Linear B syllabic script.
Mycenaean texts are generally administrative documents, dating from ca 1450 to 1150 B.C., written mostly on clay tablets in a syllabic script that we call Linear B. They have been found within the rests of the Mycenaean palaces both on Crete and mainland Greece. They amount to something less then 6000 documents, although many of them are brief or fragmentary texts.
Linear B is a syllabic script not related to the later Greek alphabets. It belongs to a family of writing systems used in the Aegean area in the II and I millennium B.C., of which only Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary of the I millennium have been satisfactorily deciphered. It is important to remark that although Linear B as a writing system seems to have functioned well as a tool for recording administrative information, it is not in fact a very efficient instrument for rendering the phonetic system of Greek, since it presents many inaccuracies and deficiencies in this regard. This fact, together with the nature of the texts, sometimes makes our interpretation of the texts and of their language quite uncertain. This, in turn, shows well how important the opportunity is, which an annotated electronic corpus offers, of systematically crossing all the information available at the different levels of analysis and within the whole of the extant Mycenaean texts.
The language of the documents, being the oldest attestation of an Indo-European language after Hittite and the only attestation of a Greek dialect in the II millennium B.C., presents several archaic and interesting linguistic features and poses some questions crucial for the history of the Greek language (and for the field of comparative Indo-European linguistics in general), which, especially because of the mentioned limitations of the content of the documents and the shortcomings of the writing system, are still in need of an appropriate, if not definitive, answer.
15.10.2019
Links to texts, images and data in LiBER (Mycenaea, Midea, Tiryns) have been added.
26.09.2019
References to Mycenaean documents in M. Del Freo, M. Perna (eds.) Manuale di Epigrafia Micenea have been added to the Basic Tablet Bibliography of the single tablets.
15.09.2019
Links to the Pylos images in CaLiBRA have been added.
13.09.2019
The Knossos tablets have been updated according to The Knossos Tablet, Sixth Edition, A Transliteration by José L. MELENA with the collaboration of Richard J. FIRTH, 2018:
Series, Subseries and Set changes,
Scribal hand changes,
New Joins.
Caveat: a few minor textual differences might have escaped. A revision of the texts is ongoing.
10.10.2018
The find places of the Pylos tablets have been updated according to Firth(2017).
Saturday, March 12, 2016
GRAVE OF THE “GRIFFIN WARRIOR”, PALACE OF NESTOR, PYLOS, GREECE
Centuries before the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces, a warrior died and was buried alone near the site of the later “Palace of Nestor at Pylos.” His burial was accompanied by one of the most magnificent displays of wealth discovered in Greece in recent decades. The character of the objects that followed him to the afterlife prove that this part of Greece, like Mycenae, was being indelibly shaped by close contact with Crete. This was the time of the very birth of European civilization.The warrior’s tomb was discovered and excavated in summer 2015 by a team sponsored by the University of Cincinnati: students, professors, and professional archaeologists from a dozen different universities, representing as many different nationalities. Project co-directors Sharon R. Stocker and Jack L. Davis of the University of Cincinnati note: “The team did not discover the grave of the legendary King Nestor, who headed a contingent in the Greek forces at Troy. Nor did it find the grave of his father, Neleus. They found something perhaps of even greater importance: the tomb of one of the powerful men who laid foundations for the Mycenaean civilization, the earliest in Europe.”Overlooking the bay of Navarino, high above the sea on the ridge of Englianos, sits the “Palace of Nestor at Pylos,” the most completely preserved of all Bronze Age palaces on the Greek mainland...
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Open Access Journal: SMID Online
SMID Online
ISSN: 0081-8275
ISSN: 0081-8275
Welcome to the online version of the Studies in Mycenaean Inscriptions and Dialect (SMID). SMID is an analytical bibliography of Mycenaean text studies, including short summaries of scholarly works, cross-references of reviews, and indices of Linear B and Linear A signs, words and texts, as well as a fully cross-referenced subject index. SMID is a unit of the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory in the Department of Classics at The University of Texas at Austin.
PASP director Tom Palaima initiated the revival of SMID at the University of Texas at Austin and published the first volume (for the year 1979) in 1995. The database and print format were set up by Elizabeth Sikkenga, the new series' 1st editor & project director. Successors as editor are: Peter van Alfen, Nick Dobson, and Amy Dill. At this website you can search the volumes of SMID that have been published by PASP. Publication was suspended in 2010, leaving three unpublished volumes.
Search By Keyword | Search By Author
See the full List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
Stumble It!
