collection

The Knossos corpus of Linear B inscribed documents is the largest found anywhere. The first entry in the ‘Inventory of Inscriptions and Sealings’ of the Heraklion Archaeological Museum Prehistoric Collections is a Linear B tablet, stated as excavated by Arthur Evans, published by Luigi Pernier in Monumenti Antichi dei Lincei, and exhibited in the old showcase 44. Among the rest of the inventoried tablets, feature prominently the tablets from the Room of the Chariot tablets, some of the earliest Linear B inscriptions excavated by Evans. While 9947 pieces on the whole have been officially published in the COMIK, the Heraklion Museum holdings comprise a corpus of 10126 tablet fragments, as of today. The count of the more or less complete is estimated to approximately 3400, but work on joins over the past few decades has altered the number of documents (Palaima – Melena 2001).

In particular, many of the Knossian tablets are small incomplete or even minuscule fragments of clay documents, which were studied gradually. For instance, the so-called 5000-Series had not been recorded by Evans in his Handlist of tablets or other excavation notes in the Ashmolean Museum. They were eventually numbered by E.L. Bennett, Jr., 5000-6068 and first published in Scripta Minoa II by early 1952 and, more extensively, in KT0 and KT1 (see Firth – Melena 2000-2001). Moreover, numerous fragments that Ventris had studied in 1955 were re-discovered in the Heraklion Museum in 1984 along with old uninscribed clay pieces. These were numbered 9001-9947 and 10001-10009, and formed the focus of a project of Joins by an international team of Mycenologists (see 20 Raccords de Fragments dans les tablettes de Cnossos; Melena 1996). The project has made many significant associations between Linear B fragments, which often take the form of actual physical joins between fragments that were accordingly mended and stored together; in other cases, though, they represent suggested joins between fragments that do not fit together physically, although they probably belong to one and the same inscription. The latter ‘quasi-joins’ are sometimes stored separately in the drawers of the Heraklion Museum collection.

Dr. Georgia Flouda

Head of the Department of Minoan and Prehistoric Antiquities, Heraklion Archaeological Museum

CLASS A-

   

Ak 828               Ap 5864         As 1516

CLASS B-

Bg 5584

CLASS D-

               

Da 1156            Da 1163             Da 1164             Da 1170            Da 1172         Da 1173 lat inf   Da 1173 recto        Da 1341          Da 1341 join

               

Da 1352             Da 1378             Da 1495            Da 8201              Db 1159            Db 1160             Db 1344             Db 1464            Db 1507

               

Dd 1157             Dd 1342            Dd 1429             Dd 5174           De 1084         De 1084 verso        De 1585             Dg 1158            Dg 5185

               

Dk 1067             Dm 1180           Dm 1184            Dn 1094             Dp 1061             Dq 7126            Dq 7137             Dq 7852            De 1085

               

Dv 1509             Dv 1607             Dv 5075            Dv 5322             Dv 8413            Dv 8742             Dv 9568            Dv 9591             Dv 9603

 

Dv 9603 verso        Dv 9604      

CLASS E-

 

E 36                  E 669

CLASS F-

     

F 51 recto          F 51 verso           F 841                   F 852

CLASS G-

           

       Ga 416                 Ga 421              Ga 1536             Ga 7367             Gg 701             Gg 708          Gg 708 verso

CLASS L-

             

L 469                  L 695                L 8025           Lc 504 recto      Lc 504 verso          Lc 546                Le 641              Le 5629

CLASS O-

       

Od 502               Od 681              Od 765           Og 180 recto      Og 180 verso

CLASS P-

Pp 698

CLASS S-

   

Sd 4406             Sd 4413             So 4448

CLASS U-

U 1539

CLASS V-

 

V 655                 V 1583

CLASS W-

 

Wb 2001 recto   Wb 2001 verso

CLASS X-

               

X 522                X 697                 X 6029              X 7546               X 7554               X 7629               X 7749              X 8502               X 9020

               

X 9196              X 9209              X 9375               X 9721               Xd 107               Xd 149          Xd 149 verso         Xd 7914             Xf 5104

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