The Knossos Tablets

The sixth edition of The Knossos Tablets brings for now to completion nearly 120 years of the study of the texts of the Linear B inscriptions from the preeminent Cretan palatial site of the late Minoan Bronze Age. Based on his career-long mastery of the many scholarly tools needed to interpret the contents and historical meaning of Mycenaean Greek clay tablet inscriptions, Jose L. Melena, with assistance on find-spots from Richard Firth and a check of the accuracy of each and every text by an editorial team of the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory, offers here definitive readings of these archaeologically, linguistically and historically important records. The book presents accurate information on tablet joins, find-spots, assignments of texts to scribes, sets of texts identified by subject matter and administrative purpose, and conjectural readings of partially preserved texts. The systems of reference to tablets by inventory numbers and to coherent sets of tablets by alphabetic prefixes have been streamlined. Helpful appendices make clear the classification of series and sets, tablet find locations, and the history of reconstruction of tablets through fragment joins. The volume closes with an up-to-date overall ground plan and close-up sector plans of the Palace of Minos at Knossos keyed to tablet find-spots.