Linear A and BThe Discovery

Clay, Fire and Survival

The tablets were sun-dried clay meant for one season's records; the fires that destroyed the palaces baked them and saved them.

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The tablets that Evans and Blegen found (Carl Blegen at Pylos) have lasted more than three thousand years. You might think they were made to last. They were not. They survived by accident, and the accident was fire.

Key idea

Linear B tablets were made of damp clay, dried in the sun and meant for one season's records; the clay could be softened and reused. When the palaces burned, the fires baked the tablets hard and preserved them.

Everyday notes in clay

A scribe pressed a lump of damp clay into a flat page or a long, narrow leaf and drew the signs with a pointed stylus. The tablet dried in the air. It was a working note: a count of sheep, a delivery of oil, a list of workers. Most records seem to cover only the current year; older ones were thrown away or the clay was reused. Important totals may have been copied onto something else, perhaps a material that has not survived.

A single-entry leaf in the style of the Knossos sheep tablets. A tablet like this was a quick note, not a document meant for the ages.

Why it works

Why did fire save the tablets? Unbaked clay is soft; in water it slowly turns back into mud. Heat changes clay chemically into a hard, stable material, like a pot from a kiln. When Pylos burned around 1200 BC, the archive room was baked, and so were about a thousand tablets. At Knossos, fire did the same. We have the tablets because the buildings were destroyed.

Common mistake

Thinking the tablets were fired on purpose to last. Scribes did not bake them; they were meant to be temporary. Check: a tablet's date is the date of the fire that baked it, so each archive is a snapshot of the palace's last months, not a long history.

A snapshot in time

This has a big consequence for what we can learn. Each archive shows a short slice of time, roughly the last year of the palace. At Pylos we see the palace's business in its final season: flocks, rations, bronze for smiths and offerings to the gods. We do not see how things changed over generations.

FactConsequence
Tablets were unbaked clayMost tablets ever written have crumbled away
Fire baked the archivesWe have the records of the palaces' last months
Records covered the current yearThe tablets are a snapshot, not a history
Destruction dates each archiveArguments about when Knossos burned are also arguments about the tablets' date

Worked example: Why so few?

Linear A, used for centuries, survives in only about 1,400 inscriptions. Give one reason that clay records survive so rarely.
  1. Clay tablets were unbaked.
  2. Only those caught in a fire were baked hard; the rest returned to mud or were reused.

Answer: Unbaked clay crumbles; only tablets baked by fire last.

Worked example: What date?

The Pylos tablets were baked when the palace burned around 1200 BC. Roughly what time do they record?
  1. They were working notes for the current season.
  2. The fire caught them as they were.

Answer: The palace's last months, around 1200 BC.

Practice

Pass with 3 right answers, the last 2 in a row. Each right answer earns 1 XP.

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Sources and further reading

@teddyrookbook GitHub