The Riddle of the Labyrinth (48 page)

Though the Mycenaeans had no money as we know it, they most assuredly paid taxes, and many Linear B tablets turn out to be tax records. The central palaces exacted payment from their constituent districts in the form of raw materials and other articles of value, including oil, olives, grain, honey, spices, horn, wood, animal hides, and cyperus, an aromatic grass. The tablets also show that members of certain professions, including bronzesmiths, had tax-exempt status: They were relieved of the obligation to make payments in kind, though it can be assumed that their contributions were taken out in the form of labor.

THE MAKING OF useful and beautiful things—from chariots, wheels, and weapons to furniture, vessels, textiles, and perfume—was a thriving enterprise in the Mycenaean world, and the results are copiously recorded in its archives.

Four metals are mentioned on the tablets. Foremost was bronze, “used for a variety of purposes and no doubt . . . the most important metal for everyday life in the upper classes,” as the scholars Alberto Bernabé and Eugenio R. Luján write. It was used, among other things, to make vessels, braziers, certain chariot components, and weaponry, including the heads of spears and javelins. (Such spearheads, the two scholars point out, are mentioned in Homer, as in these lines from book 4 of the
Iliad
: “He held a spear of eleven cubits; / at the front, the bronze spear-point blazed.”) Gold was used to decorate furniture, silver to decorate chariot wheels. Lead was also used: Recall the lead-lined cist full of tablets discovered in Emperor Nero's day.

From wood, furniture was made, and it is inventoried extensively in the Linear B records. Wooden furniture included stools, chairs, beds, and the nine-legged tables, characteristic of Mycenaean carpentry, that were often inlaid with ivory (the Mycenaean word for which was
elephas
, spelled
e-re-pa)
, gold, lapis, or other precious materials. Chairs, recorded as being made of ebony, could also be lavishly ornamented. They often had matching footstools, itemized on the tablets with the logogram
.

Chariots and their wheels were also made of wood. Drawn by two horses, a Mycenaean chariot could accommodate two men, the driver and a warrior. Their building and upkeep were so essential to the well-being of the kingdoms that the Linear B archives contain detailed chariot construction and maintenance records. (Alice Kober's seminal paper of 1945, “Evidence of Inflection in the ‘Chariot' Tablets from Knossos,” concerned a set of these tablets.) From such tablets, Bernabé and Luján write:

Another tablet from Pylos, they write, “is a delivery record concerning the fabrication of chariots and wheels,” and makes note of wooden axles. It reads, “Thus the wood-cutters give to the wheeler's workshop 50 new branches and 50 axles.”

The production of woven textiles, a major industry, is also well documented. Woolens are sometimes described as being white or gray, natural colors for undyed fleece. But the tablets show that the Mycenaeans also produced colored textiles, dyed in hues of purple and red, with dyes made from natural ingredients like minerals and plants. They also describe the production of various kinds of cloth. One type, pharweha (
pa-we-a)
, has a Homeric counterpart in
pharos
: In the
Odyssey
, the word denotes the cloth the faithful Penelope weaves—and rips out nightly to thwart a stream of gentleman callers—while she waits for her husband, Odysseus, to return from the Trojan War.

Potters and metalsmiths made storage containers of all sorts, and the archives list not only the vessels themselves but also what was kept in them. “Remarkable at Pylos is the amount of ground floor space given over to storage,” Cynthia Shelmerdine writes. “Hundreds of drinking and eating vessels stood on shelves in the pantries; storerooms housed olive oil, some of it perfumed, as tablets found with the storage jars make clear. More oil tablets fell from above when the building burnt down
ca
1200 BC, so another such storeroom must have stood on the upper storey. Other objects that fell from above include jewellery, ivory inlays from furniture, and tablets dealing with linen textiles. These finds suggest that the upstairs too was a mix of private quarters, storage and business areas.”

On Crete and in mainland Greece, archaeologists have unearthed Mycenaean “stirrup-jars” (traditional clay vases with handles and spouts, used to hold oil and wine); the jars were often painted with Linear B words. The texts they bear are utilitarian—they tend to document the production, transport, and delivery of the jar's contents—functioning much as inventory, shipping, and tracking labels on modern packages do.

The Mycenaeans were master perfumers. “The production of perfumes,” Bernabé and Luján write, “was one of the most important industrial activities in Mycenaean times,” and many storage vessels contained perfumed oil. The steps involved in making perfume, or “ointment,” as the tablets often called it, are well documented: First, the ointment-maker infused wine with spices like cumin, coriander, fennel, sesame, or sage—or with herbs and flowers like rush, rose, and perhaps iris—to extract their fragrance. Other ingredients, like fruit, honey, and possibly lanolin, might be included.

Next, he added a thickener like natural gum or resin to a quantity of olive oil. The wine and herbs were mixed with the oil and the mixture was concentrated by boiling. Finally, a coloring agent like henna might be added to the finished perfume. These fragrant products appear to have been used for personal adornment as well as in religious ritual, offered frequently as gifts to the gods. (Mycenaean cloth and perfumed oil were also traded overseas for precious metals like gold and silver.)

THE TABLETS ALSO document the threat of war. Though there was no Talos, the bronze giant said to have policed the Cretan coast, it is clear from the tablets that all the kingdoms took great pains to protect against attack. This imperative appears to have arrived with the Greeks. As John Chadwick writes in
The Mycenaean World
: “Minoan society in Crete seems to have been relatively peaceful; military scenes are not common in art. . . . No Minoan town seems to have been fortified. But with the coming of the Greeks to Crete in the . . . fifteenth century, a change comes over the pacific face of society. . . . Greek rule in Crete is distinguished by this warlike aspect.”

Many Linear B records deal with military preparedness: Some tablets itemize the horses, chariots, weapons, and other equipment issued to soldiers. This included suits of armor, comprising a helmet with earflaps (identified by the logogram
) and a leather corselet with shoulder pieces
, along with arrows, spears, and swords, some inlaid with silver or gold.

Other tablets list the names of men, including archers and rowers, assigned to military duty on land or sea. A tablet from Pylos records men's names under the heading, “Thus the watchers are guarding the coastal regions.” Another lists eight hundred rowers assigned to patrol various points along the shoreline. Similar conscription records are found at Knossos.

RELIGION CAN BE found between the lines. Much has been gleaned obliquely from certain inventories on the tablets, including lists of gifts to the gods and supplies for religious feasts. “The Linear B documents concern the economic administration of the palace in its various aspects,” the scholar Stefan Hiller writes. “Therefore, there are no religious texts in the strict sense of the word—no prayers, hymn, manuals of religious instruction. All that we can use are the records of economic transactions. . . . In addition the records that list palace personnel or provide for their subsistence sometimes mention titles of religious dignitaries.”

The tablets capture a theology in transition. On the one hand, Hiller writes, they offer “striking proof of a high degree of continuity between Mycenaean and Classical Greek religion”: Gods' names listed there include some of the most renowned figures in the Olympian pantheon, like Dionysus (long thought by scholars not to have appeared till the first millennium B.C.), Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and Artemis.

But these names appear side by side with more curious ones, many of them pre-Greek, long forgotten by Classical times. Among them are various female names—most likely those of local deities—beginning with the word
potnia
, “mistress”: Mistress of Wild Beasts, Mistress of Horses, Mistress of Grain, Mistress of Asia, Mistress of the Labyrinth. The tablets also mention a few goddesses who were early female counterparts of male Olympians. They include Posidaeia, the opposite number of Poseidon, and Diwjā, that of Zeus. They, too, were gone by the Classical Age.

Some tablets contain lists of gifts offered to the gods. One, from Knossos, records twenty-two linen cloths presented to the Mistress of the Labyrinth. Others note gifts of manufactured items like gold vessels and perfume, as well as agricultural products like oil, olives, barley, spelt, figs, spices, wool, honey, and wine. Quantities of livestock, including sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs, were also sacrificed in the gods' honor: As recorded on one tablet from Pylos, Hiller writes, “3 bulls are sent by military contingents (troops) to the
di-wi-je-we e-re-u-te-re
, presumably the ‘priest of Zeus.'”

Mycenaean state banquets served theological as well as political ends. “We know that from Homer onwards these banquets included a religious section, when the animals were slaughtered,” Hiller writes. “That in Pylos state banquets were performed was concluded from archaeological evidence even before it was understood that several important tablets concerned this topic.”

One tablet from Pylos documents the supplies required for such a banquet, possibly the initiation ceremony for the wanax. These include, Chadwick writes, “1,574 litres of barley, 14½ litres of cyperus, 115 litres of flour, 307 litres of olives, 19 litres of honey, 96 litres of figs, 1 ox, 26 rams, 6 ewes, 2 he-goats, 2 she-goats, 1 fattened pig, 6 sows [and] 585½ litres of wine,” adding: “The barley alone would provide rations for 43 people for a month.” That the entertainment at these banquets included music is known both from a mural in the Pylos palace depicting lyre players and from a tablet from Thebes, recording rations dispensed to various personnel, including two lÅ«rastāe (
ru-ra-ta-e)
, “lyre players.”

Such meticulous accounts of banqueting supplies may have had a very particular function in Mycenaean religious life. “The book-keeping testifies to the practice of piety toward the gods,” Stefan Hiller writes. He continues: