Re: Bellerophon date

Jack Linthicum wrote:

On Mar 15, 3:42 pm, Horace LaBadie
<hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <df9db938-0ac2-49bf-a46d-b1a280f9f...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:




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...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
om>, 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

Eurystheus was king of both Tiryns and Mycenae.
A historical Heracles/Alcides could be a leader of a troop
of mercenaries in the service of Mycenae.

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,

Linus wrote in Pelasgic letters (Diodorus thinks that
an early form of the Phoenician alphabet is meant, but one
may assume that it would rather have been linear-b).
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/3E*.html

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=XN9sD1u0neWnk6fPt9
SdDE 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/TheUluburunshipwreck


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

None of which ever suggests anything about Greek
writing in the Trojan War or pre-war age.

"Homer" knowing about writing ca. 800 B.C. is not the
same as "Homer" was literate.

Pronapides of Athens used Pelasgic letters. Homer may have
transscribed his works into alphabetic writing, with few
additions.

Nor does knowledge of tablets mean anything. Nor does
the wholesale importation of a Semitic tale into Iliad
mean that writing in Greece predates "Homer." It just
means that "Homer" knew the tale and thought that it
was clever.


Do you remember my first inquiry?

"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.

Linear-A was used at Milete.
Cuneiform if they spoke Luwian at Xanthus, or perhaps some
cursive form of hieroglyphic Luwian.
Or, since the Cypriot linear-C goes back to the 16th c. BCE,
may be that a similar script (along with the language) was
used in coastal south Anatolia, as there must've been
waystations between Crete and Cyprus.

Either way it would be the first evidence that the Linear
scripts were used to write messages, as well as ledgers."


The Kingdom of the Hittites, Trevor Bryce:
<http://www.esnips.com/doc/72d37fdf-6577-4964-a6f0-c56ddcf53d30/T.Bryce%20-%20Life%20and%20Society%20in%20the%20Hittite%20World>
p.69, 70:

"that there was some degree of specialization in the scribal
profession is suggested by the term ‘Scribe of the Wooden
Tablets’. From this title (and from other references) we
know that wood as well as clay and metal was used as a
writing medium in the Hittite world, and used commonly
enough to have a specially designated scribe in charge of
tablets of this material. For what purposes were wooden
tablets used? Not surprisingly, given the perishable nature
of the material, no such tablets have survived from the
Hittite world. However, the discovery of a folding wooden
tablet in the Late Bronze Age Ulu Burun shipwreck off the
Lycian coast near Kas¸, with ivory hinges and still bearing
traces of wax, probably provides a good indication of what
the tablets looked like. Indeed Homer’s description of the
wooden tablets which Bellerophon took to Lycia accords very
closely with the Ulu Burun find.*

*note:(Shear (1998) notes information provided by Professor
Bass of the remains of two other wooden tablets in the
wreck. She also refers to thediscovery of two groups of
bronze hinges from Pylos and Knossos of a size and nature
comparable to the Ulu Burun tablet-hinges, and thus
suggestive of the existence of Mycenaean writing tablets,
and a possible Mycenaean origin for Bellerophon’s tablet.)

A significant feature of the tablets with their wax-coated
surface was that they could be used repeatedly, by smoothing
over the wax surface and thus erasing an earlier inscription
to make way for a new one.This suggests that the wooden
tablets were used for purely temporary records—information
which could be deleted after a period of time when no longer
applicable, or raw data which was gathered, for example by
government officials, for subsequent incorporation in a
permanent record. (Conceivably the statistics relating to
transportees and captured livestock were first recorded in
this form, as also perhaps details of a farmer’s produce for
taxation purposes.) That is to say, wooden tablets may have
served much the same function as modern notebooks. But they
apparently served other purposes as well. Hoffner notes
their use, particularly in Kizzuwadna, to record the
traditional rites accorded to the gods in festivals and
rituals. It is also possible that they were in some cases
used for letters, or at least for written messages. Indeed
that was the function of Bellerophon’s wooden tablets. In
Roman times such tablets were regularly used for this
purpose. It may be, then, that amongst their other uses
wooden tablets in the Hittite world served to convey
informal letters or messages, with the possible advantage
that after reading the message the recipient could erase it
and inscribe a response on the same tablet.
All this of course is largely speculation. Until we have a
better knowledge of what exactly the Hittites used their
wooden tablets for, we are at a loss to explain why the
Hittite chancellery saw fit to assign them a bureaucratic
category of their own, with a scribe or scribes in charge."










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