Linear B TWO normalized
Günter Neumann put forward a hypothesis that caught my eye at the 2nd International Congress of Mycenology in 1991, which was published in Attí e memorie del secondo congresso internazionale di micenologia vol. 1 Filologia in 1996. The article, written in German, is “Zur Schaffung der Zeichen *91 two und *62 pte von Linear B”.
He proposes that *91 / two is an acrophonic abbreviation for the profile of a larnax from the Greek word σορός ‘vessel for holding; a cinerary urn or coffin’ with a Mycenaean pronunciation of *tworós.
PY An 261 TWO variant (after Neumann 1996)
Kerameikos Larnax Profile (after Neumann 1996)
Some of the larnakes from Crete fit this profile as well:
Note the lid’s side-view profile on this larnax at the Sitia Archaeological Museum (photo: Kim Raymoure)
TWO’s internal horizontal lines could represent the handles of the lid and larnax as shown here, so I do see the visual connection Neumann is suggesting.
The side-view profile of this larnax at the Sitia Archaeological Museum shows the top-to-bottom slendering and the feet in Neumann’s larnax profile (photo: Kim Raymoure)
TWO’s use in Linear B is restricted to its phonetic value, parallel with /tu-wo/ in o-two-we-o on PY An 261 and o-tu-wo-we on the PY Jn series. In the available Linear B corpus, there is no ideographic use of TWO, so if Neumann’s suggestion is correct, the acrophonic abbreviation is pre-Mycenaean.
This immediately made me wonder what the symbol might’ve looked like in Linear A or the Cretan Hieroglyphics. I’m going to run the latter part of this question past András Zeke who knows his hieroglyphs much better than I do. For Linear A, after some contemplation and sifting through the inscriptions, the nearest match seems to be:
*344 from HT96 (after GORILA)
John Younger lists this as a logogram. I agree, and I think it may form a conceptual digram with *323 which precedes it. When put together, the 2 symbols, isolated together by vertical delimiters, appear, when considering Neumann’s side-view profile of the larnax, to most resemble the lid (*323) and footed larnax (*344) of the larnakes shown above.
*323 *344 from HT96, side-view of lid and larnax?
Some immediate complications with this interpretation:
*323 appears prior on HT96 with *317; how to interpret?
*323 also appears on HT31 in a long sign group (ki-de-ma-*323-na) implying a plausible phonetic rather than ideographic value. It is also of interest to note, however, that HT31 is a tablet dealing with a variety of different large containers; contextually relevant to a larnax lid.
Neumann, Günter, 1996 Attí e memorie del secondo congresso internazionale di micenologia vol. 1 Filologia “Zur Schaffung der Zeichen *91 two und *62 pte von Linear B”
Hi Kim,
I like the idea of deriving Lin B *91 from a pure Mycenaean Greek development. Since vowel *o is rare in Linear A, the Minoan origins of Linear B signs with values like DWO and TWO are very questionable.
I did some quick research regarding Lin. A sign *344. This seems to be a hapax on tablet HT96. That tablet has an otherwise highly interesting context, with a lot of unique logograms (items) with integer quantities. It is possibly just me, but I get the impression from its header on side B: A-PA-RA-NE • I-QA-*118-RA-RE, that it deals with some kind of state gifts to a sanctuary. QA-*118 or *qazir (often mentioned) might be the predecessor of the Mycenaean QA-SI-RE-U. This would explain the mention of these rare entities (but without any ideas about what on earth they could have been). Logogram *323 is equally mysterious, its reading on HT31 is dubious to say the least (I am leaning towards reading TI there instead of rare sign *323, but this is not a closed issue). On HT29, the “official” transcription of J. Younger is faulty, line 4 should read SA-MA-RE instead of SA-*323-MI.
Actually, you are right about the existence of a Cretan Hieroglyphic sign with a similar shape. The sign in question is labelled Hiero *36. It looks like an image of a cave below the mountains, with a shape of peaks almost like a “medieval castle”. It most frequently occurs in the Hiero sign-series (word) *36-*92-*31 (tentatively perhaps ?-RU-RE or ?-PU2-RE), common on seals and seen some clay bars, with possibly religious context. Unfortunately, I was unable to decipher the exact phonetic value of that sign yet (candidate values include – among others – KE and DU) The only thing I can tell that it was apparently a regularly-used hieroglyphic sign, and as such, likely corresponds to a frequently-used Linear A syllabogram, not a logogram. Thus any connections towards Linear A logogram *344 are unlikely (except the shape or depicted object).