Bronze Age · c. 1200 BC · Pylos, Messenia, Greece
Two Linear B signs read as perfume ingredients on Mycenaean tablets from Pylos
Researchers read one sign as a plant root and argue that another, long taken to mean fruit, records a dry stalk such as cinnamon or fenugreek.
Peer-reviewed paper
Pylos, Greece Researchers have proposed meanings for two long-unexplained signs in Linear B, the script of the Mycenaean palaces. Both appear on clay tablets from the Palace of Pylos in south-western Greece, dated to around 1200 BC, that list raw materials for making perfumed oil. One sign, the team argues, stands for a plant root. The other stands for a "dry stalk", possibly cinnamon or fenugreek, and does not mean "fruit" as scholars have long assumed.
The study is by Ester Salgarella, Laura Bellinato and Silvia Ferrara, described in reports as a University of Cambridge team, and is published in the journal Kadmos.
The Mycenaeans flourished between about 1450 and 1200 BC in mainland Greece and on Crete, and were known for perfumed olive oil. Records from the palaces at Pylos, in Messenia, and Knossos, on Crete, show specialised workers preparing spices and oils. Reconstructions based on commercial models suggest that most of the oil went into trade networks reaching Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean coast.
The tablets themselves say little about how the oil was made or what recipes the perfumers followed. Several of the signs that might name ingredients are logograms, signs that stand for a whole word or commodity rather than a syllable, and many Linear B logograms remain unidentified because they occur rarely or without helpful context.
A root, kept apart from wool
The first sign, numbered *157, appears on only three Pylos tablets, all recording the distribution of raw materials to perfumers. It sits alongside cyperus, coriander, wool, wine and honey. The sign has two parts: an upper element that looks like the syllabic sign for "wi", and a lower S-shaped element that never appears on its own. The researchers propose that the lower part is a drawing of a tuberous root similar to calamus.
In Mycenaean Greek, wi-ri-za means "root", so the team reads the upper "wi" as the first syllable of that word, added as a clue. The same word written out in full, however, appears elsewhere only in connection with wool. The authors suggest that scribes wrote wi-ri-za in full for wool and created a separate sign for the root used in perfume, so that the two could not be confused.
The tablets record *157 in amounts of 10, 16 and 28 units. Each unit could be a single root. If it is a standard dry measure of up to 120 litres, one tablet would record 1,920 litres of roots and another up to 3,360 litres.
The team also points to a parallel in Linear A, the earlier Minoan script used on Crete between about 1800 and 1450 BC. A compound sign known as A646 appears once, on tablet HT 33 from Hagia Triada in central Crete. It has the same S-shaped lower part, with the syllable "pi" on top. The researchers propose that it too means "root", and that the Minoan word for root began with a sound like "pi", although that word survives in no other text. HT 33 lists agricultural products in fractions of a unit, which the authors note is what one would expect for spices used in small doses.
Fruit or spice
The second case concerns ka-po, written sign by sign, and KA+PO, the same two signs fused into a single monogram. Both had been read as karpos, "fruit", and treated as interchangeable. The researchers found that the two forms never occur on the same tablet or in the same entry. Ka-po appears only on one Knossos tablet, beside su-za (figs) and e-ra-wa (olive), where it works as a general word for fruits that needs a further term to specify them. KA+PO appears only at Pylos, always in perfume ingredient lists with spices, wool, wine, honey and *157, and never with fruit.
Following a proposal made by Anna Sacconi in 1972, the team reads KA+PO as a different word with the same spelling, meaning "dry stalk" or "dry branch". In antiquity this word could refer to cinnamon or fenugreek.
The authors argue that both cases show how scribes reduced the ambiguity of a script in which, for example, pa-te could be read as "father" or "all". Easily drawn goods such as sheep, pigs, olives and wine had pictorial signs. Goods that were hard to draw, such as honey, were either written in full (me-ri) or fused into a monogram (ME+RI). The researchers trace this practice to Linear A, where compound signs were the main way of recording commodities and full spellings were kept for personal names, place names and transaction terms.
After all, the purpose of Linear B (and Linear A) administrative documents was to record the inflow and outflow of goods within palace centers as accurately and unambiguously as possible.
Silvia Ferrara, Ester Salgarella and Laura Bellinato, authors of the Kadmos paper
The authors end by asking whether the same strategies apply to other unidentified, non-pictorial logograms in Linear A and B that are built from combined signs, which they describe as a working hypothesis worth exploring further.
Sources
- Two Logograms of Linear B Writing Deciphered, Revealing Ingredients of Mycenaean Perfumed Oils from the Bronze Age (La Brújula Verde)
Paper: Ferrara, Silvia, Salgarella, Ester and Bellinato, Laura. On Aegean spices: decipherment prospects on Linear A and B spice-related signs. Kadmos, vol. 64, no. 1-2, 2025, pp. 29-44. doi:10.1515/kadmos-2025-0002
Spotted a mistake? Tell the editor about a spelling error or a fact that is wrong. We correct stories openly.
Readers' picks show on the front page.
Follow @AncientHeraldHQ on X for the day's finds as they come in.
Comments
House rules. Stay on the subject, be kind to other readers and say where your facts come from. No advertising and no personal attacks. The editor reads along and hides comments that break these rules.
Loading comments…