Die neuen Linear B-Texte aus Theben

In 2001, amazingly soon after their discovery in the 1990s, the Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean palace at Thebes were published by their excavator Vassilis Aravantinos, together with the epigraphists Louis Godart and Anna Sacconi. On the basis of this first critical edition, the new texts were discussed by the participants of an international and interdisciplinary colloquium held in 2002 in Vienna. Together with the editors, 16 leading scholars in the fields of epigraphy, linguistics, Greek philology and Greek history discussed the importance of the new corpus of texts for our picture of the Mycenaean language and culture. Papers were presented that broaden our insight into Mycenaean vocabulary, particularly with regard to personal names, toponymy and terminology, as well as how the newly-found texts contribute to the distribution map of Greek dialects. Several papers dealt with the semantics of words for real objects, while others compared the new material with texts found at other palace sites such as Pylos and Knossos. However, the Vienna colloquium made it clear that new questions and problems have been raised by the new material rather than solutions for old ones. Moreover, it became evident that two quite opposite patterns of approaching and interpreting the texts from Thebes have developed, and these two viewpoints have since dominated the discussion of this material.