Re: Bellerophon date

On Mar 15, 1:30 pm, Horace LaBadie <hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In article
<6c32910e-658f-455b-9d33-4f811b969...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
 Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Mar 14, 6:01 pm, Horace LaBadie <hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In article
<26defae2-a4f0-4898-a381-06645194f...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
 Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mar 14, 3:48 pm, Horace LaBadie <hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In article
<811b95dd-7a8a-45ff-a77e-8a11bfeb8...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
 Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mar 14, 1:07 pm, Horace LaBadie
<hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In article
<628d97a1-84fe-4936-9510-a7aabd197...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
 Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mar 13, 5:14 pm, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Is there any accepted date for Bellerophon? I ask, because I
have a
problem pertaining to the writing of Linear B and the creation
of a
Greek alphabet. Homer in the Iliad says Bellerophon was sent in
exile
to Iobates king of Lycia. He carried a message in a folded
tablet
that
said to "eliminate" the carrier, Bellerophon.

My question was in what script was that message written? If
Bellerophon was pre invention of the Greek alphabet, the script
has
to
be Linear B or, theoretically, Linear A. Either way it would be
the
first evidence that the Linear scripts were used to write
messages,
as
well as ledgers.

We have recovered copies of the tablets from a ship sunk about
1300
BC. A ship could conceivably have had the tablets for ledgers
and
cargo manifests.

Sorry, if this seems to be off-topic, but those tablets from
the
ship
were recovered through maritime archaeology.

I did a bit of extra searching and got one of Bellerophon's
grandsons
in the Trojan War, on the Trojan side. This would put Bellerophon
solidly in the era of Linear B and contemporary with the writing
boards found on the Ulu Burun shipwreck.

This gives me the writing board used to send a message to King
Iobates, the writing system used, and the "evidence" of Linear B
being
used to do more than tally sheep.

extra bit:

Readers with a literalist bent, following Clement's reasoning,
have
asserted from this remark that, since Heracles ruled over Tiryns
in
Argos at the same time that Eurystheus ruled over Mycenae, and
since
at about this time Linus was Heracles' teacher, one can conclude,
based on Jerome's date‹in his universal history, his
Chronicon‹given
to Linus' notoriety in teaching Heracles in 1264 BC, that
Heracles'
death and deification occurred 38 years later, in approximately
1226
BC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracles

and Bellerophon is claimed to have preceded Heracles in heroic
deeds.

Presumably, this also gives us a firm date for flying horses.

How's that? The date is for Heracles.

For three-headed dogs, then.

One, do you know if Bellerophon's story is even Greek? Two, what makes
you think it isn't an anachronism, like so much else in "The Iliad?"

It wouldn't make any difference if it wasn't Greek. .

 So into Lycia
he sent him, charged to bear a deadly cipher,
magical marks Proetus engraved and hid
in folded tablets. He commanded him
to show thee to his father-in-law,
thinking in this way he should meet his end.

"Deadly cipher" and "magical marks" are writing, hid in the folded
tablets that the Mycenaeans used as notebooks. The use of text to
convey a message says that the script was used to write something
other than tallies. The folded tablets are older than the Trojan War,
you, therefore, would have Homer using a new system (Alphabetical
writing) on an ancient system of carrying that message. This leaves
you with explaining how Proteus really sent the message in the story,
since the story hangs on Iobates not reading the folded tablet before
greeting Belelrophon and making him a guest.

Writing predates Greeks. Tablets predate the Greeks. Stories in Homer
predate the Greeks.

And, of course, "Homer" could very well have ignored any temporal
anomalies, as he did with so many other things. Thus, anachronisms. Or
Bellerophon could be a contemporary Homeric invention, inserted into the
story.

The writing boards appear in other contexts, but the concept of Morris
and Powell that it came with the alphabet is key. Homer makes writing
"cipher" and "magic" ,suggesting that his audience might know of such
but not able to handle it. I find this bit about Bellerophon as
critical as Gutenberg and his printing press.

"Perhaps the ship's lading, along with information about
its home port and destination, was included in the two ivory-
hinged boxwood writing boards, with wax writing surfaces
(now lost). These boards represent the earliest examples of
their type and suggest that Bronze Age literacy was more
common than previously thought."
www.saa.org/pubEdu/A&PE/vol7no2/vol7no2-article3.pdf

A New Companion to Homer,  By Ian Morris, Barry B. Powell

http://books.google.com/books?id=JuPiXNhC-fIC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=anc...
k+writing+boards+ulu+burun&source=bl&ots=WX85QEm2Xh&sig=XN9sD1u0neWnk6fPt9SdDE
M8VxY&hl=en&ei=NNC8Sb3WBMHctgeTvOj4Cw&sa=X&oi=book result&resnum=5&ct=result

page 28

"The writing board must have come to Greece at the moment of
transmission (of the alphabet)"

The date of transmission being 800 B.C.

They also note that the tale of Bellerophon is Semitic in origin, and
that it is merely interpolated by "Homer" into Iliad. Any writing in the
story, therefore, originally referred to a locale far from Greece and
much older than Greek writing. They further note that "Homer" probably
was not literate, nor were his audience, and that the marks themselves
were probably not even writing as such. They call the idea that it was
writing "misguided."

"Bachhuber states there is nothing at the site that clearly points to
a palatial destination in the Aegean. He highlights the presence of
two writing boards which imply some of the activities that may have
occurred on the ship. There is no other evidence that inhabitants of
the Bronze Age Aegean used such boards.

Messengers were dispatched with wooden writing tablets and the elite
elements of the cargo suggest some palatial interest on the voyage.
Could the board indicate the existence of messengers on board as Puluk
suggests? Given the fact that diplomatic documents were recorded on
clay this scenario seems unlikely. It is more likely that the boards
recorded the ship’s register. The leaves of these writing boards were
covered in wax and could be easily edited as the cargo changed during
the journey. [Bachhuber, 2006, p.354] "

http://webster-smalley.co.uk/wiki/TheUluburun shipwreck

But Homer uses the word "grayas"

The word Homer uses in this verse is not gramma (letter), but SEMA
(sign, as in semantics). The use of the word grayas, "having written",
is rather interesting.

Homer knew about writing!

http://www.srs.dl.ac.uk/people/pantos/Bellerephon.html

Here is an interesting article from Biblical Archaeological Review
about the recovery of the oldest "book," a 14th century BC wooden
folding tablet. Note how this "anachronism" in Homer was handled up
until the discovery of this book:

It was George Bass who first made the connection between the
Uluburun diptych and the reference to a "folding tablet" made by
Homer. In Book VI, line 169 of the Iliad, we learn that Bellerophon
carried a "folding tablet" containing "baneful signs" to Lycia. This
is the only reference to writing in Homer and, until the Uluburun
discovery, scholars regarded this reference to a "folding tablet" as
an anachronism, added to the text at a late date.

The scholars who thought this would clearly have assumed that prior to
the insertion, there was some other word for an archaic type of
writing receptacle in this place. Note as well that they did not go
"late-dating" all of Homer because of this single word, but assumed
that the word by itself was the work of a redactor.

http://tektonics.org/af/anachronisms.html
.

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