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Many Minoan Linear A Ritual Supply Texts Surrounding a Drought Translated in Alphabetic Akkadian (1700 BCE)
- Author(s):
- David Olmsted (see profile)
- Date:
- 2021
- Group(s):
- Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean archaeology, Alphabetic Akkadian, Pagan Studies, Writing Systems
- Subject(s):
- Religions, Mediterranean Region, History, Ancient, Akkadians, Archaeology and religion
- Item Type:
- Online publication
- Tag(s):
- Minoan Crete, Linear A, ritual magic, anceint drought, pagan, Ancient languages, Ancient Mediterranean religions, Akkadian, Archaeology of religions
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/5xms-3m71
- Abstract:
- The commercial level trading which emerged at the start of the Bronze Age was made possible by a common written language. That language was Akkadian in its syllabic (cuneiform) form, its phonetic form (Phaistos Disk and these Minoan Linear A tablets) and all the early alphabetic texts prior to the rise of Greek and Latin. These translated Minoan Linear A texts from Crete preserve a moment in time before being buried by an earthquake. At the time of the earthquake a severe drought was occurring which both increased the demand for temple services and caused a crisis of faith among the temples which began to blame one of the two possible spiritual power classes. The traditional fishing culture focused on spiritual motion powers while the newer agricultural culture focused on life-growth powers. The motion power class rituals were the “magical” rituals by their definition. The life-growth rituals centered around food and feasting. Prior to the drought both power classes were engaged equally by the temples but a split was now developing. The texts can be divided into three types: shipping tags, ritual item lists from various temples, and wall labels used in building construction. This paper supersedes the initial exploration paper on this subject (Olmsted July 2020) having a more complete sign assignment chart and lexicon. All texts are translated according to the scholar’s standard.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 2 years ago
- License:
- Attribution-ShareAlike
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