Alexander Uchitel
Assignment of Personnel to Cultic Households in Mycenaean Greece and the Hittite Empire (PY Tn 316 and KBo XVI.65)
The Pylian tablet Tn 316 is one of the most difficult for interpretation and one of the most discussed documents in the Linear B corpus. Record of human sacrifices, calendar of purification rites, description of a cultic procession have been proposed so far as an overall interpretation of this text. The main difficulty in the interpretation of this text is the phrase i-je-to-qe GN (dat.-loc.) do-ra-qe pe-re po-re-na-qe a-ke DN (dat.) repeated four times in the text. None of the three translations proposed so far is entirely satisfactory. The main weakness of the earlier translation of Ventris–Chadwick: “(he) sacrifices at GN and brings gifts and leads victims”, is the absence of the obvious subject of this sentence. Palmer's translation: “a ceremony of consecration was held at GN, gifts were brought and po-re-na were purified” introduces, as interpretation of all Greek verbs, unattested forms. Nagy's translation: “a procession is to take place at PN and he bears gifts and takes along for his bearing to DN”, interprets po-re-na as a verbal form, which is difficult to reconcile with the appearance of the dative plural form of this word (po-re-si) on TH Of 26.
Kadmos, Walter de Gruyter
Print ISSN: 0022-7498
Volume: 44, 12/2005
Pages: 51 - 59
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