Exploring Writing Systems and Practices in the Bronze Age Aegean

Front matter

Exploring Writing Systems and Practices in the Bronze Age Aegean

Philippa M. Steele

Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems Vol. 7

Introduction

Exploring Writing Systems and Practices in the Bronze Age Aegean is intended to do just what the title indicates - to explore particular problems in the study of the Bronze Age Aegean scripts via a combination of system-based and context-based approaches. The book grew out of research conducted during my time as Principal Investigator of the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) project, whose remit underpins the theoretical approaches taken here. The final stages of manuscript revision were, however, completed just after the CREWS project ended, when I had begun to act as PI for the new Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems (VIEWS) project. It may at times be obvious how some of the concerns related to this subsequent project, particularly in relation to visual features and visibility of writing, grew out of what was essentially CREWS research.

I would like to mention at the outset that this book was largely worked on during the COVID-19 pandemic and the complications that ensued, which for me involved health issues, caring responsibilities and the impossibility of travelling abroad for research purposes - so my plan to spend a period in Greece consulting the Minoan and Mycenaean archives by autopsy unfortunately had to be abandoned. I decided in the end that a planned chapter on palaeographic developments in Linear A and B (which would have followed up on some methodological observations published during the pandemic’) would have to be omitted, even though I had assembled rather a lot of data (with thanks to the many colleagues who shared photographs and gave access to RTI images) and had begun to work on some initial results. Without direct access to the clay documents under study, I simply could not accomplish the kinds of analysis I wanted to, which would have involved looking closely at sign shapes and the material properties of the styli used to make them, in order to understand better how stylus use changed over time across the Minoan and Mycenaean worlds, with implications for the ways in which writing practices spread. I will not make any great claims to what I might have discovered, and I hope to pick up these themes in future research one day, when time and circumstances allow.

The three chapters that remain have three separate areas of focus. Chapter 1 looks at the concept of script adoption, concentrating on the development of the syllabographic repertoire of Linear B from the pre-existing Linear A writing system. Chapter 2 then explores logographic writing, and highlights the very different ways in which logography is employed in each of the Bronze Age Aegean scripts. Finally, Chapter 3 focuses on what I have labelled as the concept of ‘vitality’, considering what

1 Steele 2020.

xiv Introduction factors underpinned the success and the eventual loss of the writing traditions of the Bronze Age Aegean, with a long excursus on the related Cypriot scripts as an important source of comparanda. It was not intentional that each chapter is considerably longer than the previous one, but this structure perhaps reflects the way in which my views of writing developments build over the course of the book. The last chapter includes an epilogue pointing towards what I hope will be relevant uses in the modern day for some of the observations arising from this ancient world research.

Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B (and their Cypriot cousins)

I will begin with a brief introduction to the main three writing systems under focus in this book: Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B. It is also worth mentioning the related writing systems of Cyprus, which will sometimes deserve mention in the context of themes discussed here, and occasionally a whole section of their own (as in Chapter 3: Exploring Vitality, where a discussion of Cypriot syllabic writing proves a very helpful comparison for the fate of writing in the Aegean).

There is a huge disparity in the state of attestation of each system: very roughly, there are around 6,000 Linear B inscriptions, with some 70,000 signs, but only around 1,500 Linear A inscriptions, with 8,000 signs, and fewer than 400 inscriptions in Cretan Hieroglyphic, with just 1,500 signs.” It hardly needs saying that this makes it comparatively very difficult to reach the level of nuanced interpretation of surviving Linear A and Cretan Hieroglyphic epigraphy that is possible for Linear B - and it also makes it quite tempting to read what we know about Linear B and its context of use backwards onto the other systems. As we will see, sometimes this works (for instance when using Linear B sign values to help reconstruct those of Linear A; see Chapter 1: Exploring Script Adoption) and sometimes it doesn’t (for instance in the assumptions often made about how logograms work in each system; see Chapter 2: Exploring Logography).

The earliest examples of writing on Crete are sometimes grouped as the Archanes Script, the earliest seal-based writing, appearing on seals from the end of the 3rd or beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, possibly related to the inception of what we call Cretan Hieroglyphic. Cretan Hieroglyphic writing then emerged in the first century or two of the 2nd millennium BCE, first appearing on seals before quickly being adapted to writing directly on clay for administrative purposes. Meanwhile, Linear A heavily overlapped with Cretan Hieroglyphic in its first periods of use, albeit with a quite different visual appearance (which led to the hieroglyphic vs. linear terminology introduced by Arthur Evans) and typically at different sites; it was not used on seals, but clay became its main attested medium of use in administration,

2I borrow here the estimates of Perna 2014, 253. For Cretan Hieroglyphic, the problem of counting inscriptions has been exacerbated by scholarly disagreement as to what counts as a script sign - and so what counts as an inscription - and a reanalysis of the corpus is much needed on this basis: see Jasink 2009; Decorte 2017, 2018c; Ferrara, Montecchi and Valério 2023.

Introduction XV with inscriptions also appearing on a range of other objects. These are the writing traditions of what has usually been characterised as the Minoan period. Neither Cretan Hieroglyphic nor Linear A has been deciphered, in the sense that we do not understand the language(s) in which they are written, but some progress can be made in reconstructing sign values. It was in the mid-2nd millennium BCE that Linear B first appeared, clearly derived directly from Linear A but used to write Greek, heralding what is usually termed the Mycenaean period. Writing progressively spread outside Crete, with Linear A making appearances (in very small numbers of finds) on several Greek islands as well as the mainland, while Linear B writing was used and is well attested across a number of mainland sites, particularly across the Peloponnese, and appears as far north as Thessaly.

Over in Cyprus, writing first appeared at around the same time as the later phase of writing in Linear A, in the 16th century BCE (the first phase of the Cypriot Late Bronze Age). The new system is labelled Cypro-Minoan and was used continuously through to the Early Iron Age. Around the turn of the millennium, Greek began to appear, and throughout most of the 1st millennium BCE Greek and one or two other local languages were written in what is usually termed the Cypriot syllabic script, a descendant of Cypro-Minoan.

Chronology

The dates of objects and features referred to in this book are given either with an approximate absolute date or with a reference to the relevant ceramic phase (thus a relative rather than absolute date). The issue of chronology does not affect the arguments presented in any significant way, and readers who wish to follow up on the many questions surrounding the way in which dates have traditionally been assigned, and the ongoing debate over ‘high’ or ‘low’ dating for the ceramic phases, may look elsewhere for instructive guides.’ The following encapsulates a fairly typical division of the main periods in question (i.e. the ones relevant to writing), following the model of high dating:

Crete Proto-palatial period: MM II (1900-1800), MM III (1800-1700): Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A.

Neo-palatial period: LM IA (1700-1600), LM IB (1600-1450): Linear A.

3 Shelmderdine 2008 is particularly helpful. On high dating, see the seminal treatment of Warren and Hankey 1989. On further issues related to low dating, see Manning 2010 and some of the papers in Manning and Bruce 2009. On the specific issue of site destructions across the Aegean world and our ability to reconstruct how they relate to each other, see recently the papers in Jung and Kardamaki (2022). Schoep in prep gives an enlightening discussion of the ramifications of different approaches to archaeological dating and phases for our understanding of the epigraphic record.

xvi Introduction

Final palatial period: LM II (1450-1400), LM IIIA 1 (1400-1375): Last examples of Linear A? Linear B emerging in later phase.

Post-palatial period: LM IIIA 2 (1375-1300), LM IIIB (1300-1200), LM IIIC (1200- 1050): Linear B only in first two phases.

Mainland Greece

Early Mycenaean period: LH I (1700-1600), LH ITA (1600-1450), LH IIB (1450-1400): Small amount of evidence for Linear A in earliest phase.

Late Mycenaean period: LH IIIA 1 (1400-1375), LH IIIA 2 (1375-1300), LH IIIB (1300-1200), LH IIC (1200-1050): Linear B up to the beginning of the final phase.

Theoretical perspectives and terminology

The direction this book eventually took was strongly influenced by the overall research remit of the CREWS project, particularly as time went on and the various case studies at the heart of the project matured and developed new areas of interest. As the project’s title makes clear, there were two primary items on the agenda from the beginning: contexts and relations. Contexts came to encompass a range of different types of context, and to depend on seeing writing as far more than a way of encoding language: it became clear that it is important to view writing also as an embodied and socially embedded practice, bound up with other social practices and involving material resources, technical equipment, physical locations, visibility to a range of audiences, sociolinguistic backgrounds and cultural attitudes about what writing might be used for and who ought to be involved in it. Relations, meanwhile, refers to how we visualise the ways in which writing systems are related to each other. Although it is quite common to try to capture relationships by placing writing systems on a family tree and seeing them as mothers, daughters, sisters and cousins, any close look at the relationship between any two systems will inevitably throw up a number of complexities that spoil such a picture. As I have tried to argue elsewhere, modelling writing relationships along the lines of the linguistic Stammbaumtheorie (‘family tree model’) is overly simplistic, and we would be better placed to think in terms of ‘graphic contact’ between communities passing on aspects of their writing traditions (which may go beyond the basic notation systems to encompass, for example, visual inspirations or aspects of practice).'

Here we meet two possible ways of looking at writing, one of which is associated more with linguistic research and the other more with archaeological or anthropological research - and I will point out from the beginning that they are not mutually exclusive even if there is sometimes a desire in certain scholarship to make them appear so.° Firstly, we can talk about writing systems from a structuralist perspective, which

* Steele forthcoming a (specifically looking at the Greek alphabets and Cypriot syllabic writing). See also Steele and Boyes forthcoming on the adoption of cuneiform techniques by Cypriot writers, for example. 5 For a more detailed review, see Boyes, Steele and Elvira Astoreca 2021.

Introduction xvii typically casts them as encoding systems subservient to language, following the line of thinking of early scholars such as de Saussure.‘ If structuralist approaches to writing have started to acquire a bad name, it is perhaps because Gelb’s seminal study of what he called ‘grammatology’ (the first major iteration of a study of writing systems) is associated with some very outdated thinking and rather a lot of cultural baggage in the quest to present alphabetic writing in the Greco-Roman tradition as a pinnacle of human achievement.’ To him we owe unhelpful and long-lasting ideas about the unidirectional ‘evolution’ of writing systems from pictographic to syllabic to alphabetic, and thus the intellectual sidelining of non-alphabetic systems (and even more so the many communicative systems that lie around the edges of what is usually classed as ‘proper’ writing). But these were nevertheless the foundations of a great deal of ongoing linguistic research on writing, which has come a long way to lose these unwanted associations with cultural supremacy, and other problematic aspects of early theories, in order to focus on the specifics of language encoding and notation systems. A review of the current state of the literature and the various recent developments in grapholinguistics and graphematics would go far beyond the scope of the present book; however, I will point out that some of the case studies arising from CREWS research, specifically by Elvira Astoreca and Crellin, are themselves important examples of the advancement of this general field.* It remains to say that these approaches to writing have given us a range of useful ways of categorising script signs and grapholinguistic systems, to which this book inevitably owes a debt (and we will return to the terminology adopted here shortly).

Standing on the other side is an approach that views writing as a practice, and that focuses on its social context and the agency of people and things involved. While materiality-based studies of inscribed objects have been gaining traction for some time now, wider perspectives are still fairly new and are finding their feet in terms of the range of possible areas of investigation (bearing in mind, of course, that it can be difficult to reconstruct practices and social contexts in the ancient world, depending on the state of preservation of the archaeological record in any given case). This is again an area where CREWS research has made progress and led to theoretical advancements, and Boyes has argued for an archaeology of writing that uses agency-based and relational approaches to writing in its social context (for example, seeing the practice of writing as enmeshed and entangled with a whole range of other practices and attitudes).? While the considerable benefits of these perspectives are clear, I want to return to my earlier point that they do not

8 Elvira Astoreca 2021 (a graphematic approach to the Greek alphabets); Crellin 2022 (word notation and conceptualisation in a range of writing systems); Crellin and Tamponi 2020 (vowel notation in Neo-Punic). ° Boyes 2021a (on the application of these approaches to the case study of writing at Ugarit), 2021b (on the theory and methods). Also Boyes 2022 (on social diversity in Ugaritian writing practices); Steele 2020 (on the agency of the stylus in Aegean and Cypriot writing); Steele and Boyes 2023 (on materiality and the interactions between Cypriot writing and cuneiform).

xviii Introduction need to be seen as incompatible with more structuralist views of writing. There are several disciplinary areas that bring together both structuralist and practice-based approaches, for example in cognitive studies that increasingly emphasise not only the cognitive system behind the mapping of graphic features onto linguistic ones, but also the way in which the brain is trained and changes as it responds to the materiality of practised writing and the embodied techniques associated with it. The study of palaeography in the Bronze Age Aegean, particularly in the case of Linear B, is also an excellent case in joined-up thinking: studies of the writing system repertoire and variation in sign shapes have been associated not only with material concerns, but have also formed the basis for the identification of individual ‘hands’ (i.e. writers), and when combined with close study of the content and find spots of the documents they wrote, this allows some very fine-tuned observation of the roles and movements of individuals involved in Mycenaean administration."

In applying such a range of approaches to the research in the present book, it was necessary to make some initial decisions as to how particular concepts related to writing would be referred to. The choices do not reflect any great adherence to particular viewpoints, but it may be helpful to the reader if I end this brief introductory chapter by explaining what is intended by certain terms. The main terms of interest throughout the book can be grouped as follows:”

Writing systems and scripts

Overall, the terms writing system and script are used quite interchangeably here. This is not to ignore the valid points made by recent scholars that graphematic approaches to writing, which encourage different definitions of the two terms, can be helpful when thinking about how writing functions at different levels. For example, in her CREWS research, Elvira Astoreca uses a graphematic approach to demonstrate that the regional alphabets of Archaic Greece functioned as independent writing systems; meanwhile, Salgarella uses the separation of the two terms to argue that while Linear A and B may be thought of as distinct writing systems, they shared the same script (i.e. the core of syllabographic signs). However, on balance, the distinction seemed less useful to the central discussions of this book, which focus instead on the fine-grained details of how particular features work (e.g. logography) as well as much wider views of writing and its context (e.g. script adoption and the vitality of writing).

Units of writing systems There are many sets of terminology applied to the units of writing systems, and individual grapholinguistic scholars will often settle on a set of variant terms that

1 E.g, Overmann 2021, which builds on cognitive studies of materiality (e.g. Malafouris 2004, 2013). " See Palaima 2011 for an overview.

” Terms that will be explained later, such as ‘vitality’ (Chapter 3), are omitted here.

3 Elvira Astoreca 2021.

4 Salgarella 2020.

Introduction xix suit their particular argumentation, without too much regard for their universal acceptance. It is impossible to talk about such units without using some terminology that may be agreeable to some but disagreeable to others, so I am largely using quite basic terms that are not intended to be especially controversial.” For an individual unit of a writing system, I generally use the term ‘sign’ and occasionally the term ‘grapheme’. For a writing system that expresses sound units, its signs can be referred to as phonographic, which can be broken into two types: correspondences between signs and individual phonemes (ie. the individual sound building blocks of a given language: phonemographic) and correspondences between signs and whole syllables (i.e. units typically comprised of consonant-vowel-consonant, vowel-consonant, consonant-vowel: syllabographic).’° In systems containing signs that represent whole words or concepts, I am consistently using the term ‘logographic’ to refer to such signs, though not without awareness of some potential problems - but since one of the points of this book is to problematise the whole concept of logography (on which see the discussion in Chapter 2: Exploring Logography for more detailed discussion), I think it is more helpful to settle on a single, relatively neutral term here. I generally avoid the term ‘pictogram’; where a sign bears a close visual relationship with a thing depicted (whether it is a logographic sign representing the word for it directly or a syllabographic sign that perhaps takes its syllabic value from the word for it), I usually use the term ‘iconicity’ to denote this aspect.

Another term that could cause some confusion is ‘orthography’, by which in general I mean the system of spelling and the way in which arrangements of syllabographic signs (for these particular systems) are used to represent features of language - an issue that comes up primarily where there are difficulties such as the representation of consonant clusters and word-final consonants in a system where all signs have values ending in a vowel (vowel-only or consonant-vowel, rarely consonant-consonant-vowel). But the term orthography has another specific usage in the field of modern writing system developments: when a pre-existing writing system is adopted for the use of a new language, the new product will typically be referred to as an orthography of the pre-existing system. This issue will come up in Chapter 1: Exploring Script Adoption, where I hope the context will ensure clarity.

Writing traditions and practices

A term that will come up frequently is ‘writing tradition’. While this is hardly a new coinage, I do mean something quite specific by this term, namely a whole set of

15 Fortunately in this book on syllabic systems we do not need to engage with the alphabet vs. abjad debate, but I will briefly mention that I have argued for seeing such systems as encoding language on exactly the same level (thus making alphabet the more useful catch-all term): Boyes and Steele 2019. 16 It is perhaps worth pointing out that phonemographic scripts are rarely fully phonemographic (for instance they may contravene the phonemic principle by having signs for consonant clusters or by underrepresenting parts of the phonological repertoire of the language), and that syllables can also, obviously, have consonant clusters in onset and/or coda (depending on the syllabification rules of the language).

XX Introduction features and aspects that encompass the way writing is practised in a given society or community, at a given time. The writing system itself is an important part of that, both the repertoire of signs and the way they are applied to a given language (or multiple languages). But the writing tradition also encompasses the domains of writing (i.e. what writing is used for), the materials and equipment used for it, the cultural attitudes to writing, its social visibility (a term that will be discussed in Chapter 3: Exploring Vitality) and potentially a range of other factors related to the way it is practised, when, where and by whom. The tradition need not be static and may change over time. In this way I hope that the term ‘writing tradition’ is a useful way of expressing writing as a combination of system and practice.

Social contexts of writing

More neutral terminology is generally preferred also when talking about aspects of the social context of writing. For example, the word ‘writers’ is used in preference to the traditional but loaded term ‘scribes’, for many of the same reasons cited by Boyes in his CREWS monograph on Ugaritic writing:” writers in the Bronze Age Aegean world may have come from a range of backgrounds, and many of the best-attested ones will have been administrators in some sense (as we will see), but to call their activities scribal would be to recall many associations from the wider ancient Mediterranean and its surroundings that are probably not valid in this case (e.g. writing as a profession rather than incidental to a person’s other professional activities), On a similar basis, the term ‘administrative centre’ is preferred over ‘palace’ because of the varied nature of places where administrative archives are found - though this is not intended to detract from the clear association of many of these places with elite activities. The term ‘elite’ could itself be seen as loaded or problematic, but I use it in the general sense of people who may benefit from the accrual of wealth, resources and power, whose imprint on the world of writing may at times be quite considerable (perhaps most obvious in Chapter 3: Exploring Vitality). Finally, on matters of gender, which are not discussed in any detail in this book, I again adopt a position of neutrality, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that writing took place across a spectrum of different genders in different cases.

Exploration

A final concern is what is intended by the word ‘exploring’ in the title of this book. I chose this word, over other terms, such as ‘analysing’ or ‘interpreting’, to convey the idea that the theoretical remit is deliberately expansive. In this spirit, the emphasis is usually on understanding complexity rather than narrowing down to single interpretations - even if it is occasionally unavoidable to take a stance on a particular issue (such as the applicability of Linear B sign values to Linear A, or the degree to

Introduction xxi which writing was restricted in the Mycenaean world, both questions that will be explored in some detail). I hope that this research has brought some interesting and perhaps unusual perspectives into conversation with each other, particularly showing the mutual relevance of the study of writing in the ancient world and the study of writing in the modern day. The latter involves a number of concerns that are not usually encapsulated in ancient world research, where developments are historical and therefore appear as a series of ‘facts’ and ‘snapshots’: for instance, ongoing developments and attitudes as writing systems are adopted for new languages, or the problem of creating or maintaining a writing tradition for an underrepresented indigenous, minority and/or endangered language. I will leave it to the reader to decide whether these approaches have been effective or useful.

Chapter 1

The main focus of this chapter will be the development of the Linear B syllabographic repertoire from a Linear A template,’ a process that has attracted much discussion over the years. Despite the doubts of many scholars, extensive study of the repertoires used in each writing tradition shows that it is valid to apply the values of Linear B signs to Linear A, as will be discussed below. The idea that there might have been an extensive restructuring of the Linear A syllabary in the creation of Linear B, as suggested by a range of scholars over the years (even Ventris and Chadwick wondered whether there had been a ‘wholescale reshuffling process”), is not only unnecessarily cautious, but also out of step with the evidence we have.’ The number of shared sign shapes in Linear A and B, the evidence for shared values in individual cases and the implications of statistical distributions will all play a role in confirming that the syllabographic repertoire of Linear A was borrowed with its values intact in the creation of Linear B. This will then allow us to look more closely at the process of adoption and to try to understand how it took place and in what context.

It is important to point out from the beginning that this chapter focuses only on the syllabographic, and not the logographic, repertoire. While the demonstrable overlap between the Linear A and B syllabaries is very considerable (something like a 72% match on the signs about which we can be certain,‘ or higher if we focus on the core syllabary), it is also striking that Linear B does not appear to inherit most of its logographic repertoire from Linear A. It has been suggested that as many as 80% of the logographic signs of Linear A were abandoned in the creation of Linear B, with a series of signs for wool and textiles representing one of the most notable exceptions (pointing also towards continuity in this technological sphere).> Meanwhile, Linear B appears to have created a large set of new logographic signs covering numerous

1 It would be premature to try to discuss the relationship between Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A, since it is not at all clear that the latter developed directly from the former and we lack significant amounts of evidence for the important periods when these scripts emerged. The Cypriot scripts will provide some interesting comparanda but will not be discussed in detail as script adoptions here (see Steele 2018, chapters 1 and 2, for further thoughts on these issues).

? Ventris and Chadwick 1973, 39.

> E.g. Olivier 1975.

1 Steele and Meißner 2017, 95-96.

5 Nosch 2016; Nosch and Weilhartner forthcoming.

industries and commodity types: in part these changes may be administrative, though some may be more language driven (e.g. where a logographic sign was originally used with reference to a Minoan word that may not have continued to be used in Greek®). Although the state of preservation of Linear A makes it difficult to know how accurate our assessments of the percentage of adopted or created signs are, a greater problem is the way in which logography works in each system; Chapter 2: Exploring Logography, will consider these issues in much more detail. For the purposes of the present chapter, logographic writing will largely be set aside in order to concentrate on the syllabographic repertoire, which also allows us to draw comparisons with the ways in which sets of phonographic signs have been borrowed and adapted in other writing systems.

While the adoption or development of ancient writing systems are never helpfully described by their users, the modern world can offer some useful parallels. There are numerous documented cases of unwritten languages acquiring a written form by developing an orthography in a pre-existing writing system,’ whether devised by the speaker community themselves or, as is more often the case, by linguists or missionaries working with the community to give their language written representation.’ Sometimes these will be minority or endangered languages, but sometimes they will be widely spoken languages with high vitality that are minoritised by popular or state preference for other languages that therefore become regionally (or supra-regionally) dominant from a social or political perspective. The adaptation of any writing system to a new language will present problems because each language has its own phonological repertoire, which may or may not be well represented by the writing system being adapted to its use. Typically the new system will be referred to as an orthography of the old system, rather than a new system in its own right, which brings us to some interesting questions surrounding the shared use of a core set of signs by more than one language - Salgarella, for instance, has argued strongly that Linear B used the same script as Linear A,’ ie. its core set of syllabographic signs and their values, while other elements of the wider system (such as the metrical signs or the way logograms are used) could differ much more substantially. Is Linear B simply an orthography of Linear A used to write Greek rather than Minoan language then, and if so, how and why was it devised? These are questions we will return to.