Palaima Article on kosmos in Mycenaean palatial culture

—“Kosmos in the Mycenaean Texts: The Response of Mycenaean ‘Scribes’ to the Culture of Kosmos,” M.-L. Nosch and R. Laffineur eds., Kosmos: Jewellery, Adornment and Textile in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 33, Leuven – Liège 2012) 697-703 + figures CLIX-CLX.

In this article I discuss the significance of the etymology of the word ‘kosmos’ and the importance of the principle of ‘order’ in Mycenaean palatial culture as understood in the organizational system worked out by the palatial centers and structures, in the aesthetics of the ‘order’ of palatial architecture, and in the texts of the Mycenaean scribes. The very process of recording information was an imposition of order. We discuss passages from Homer and Hesiod and make reference to the Depression Era photography of Russell Lee.

An important footnote discusses in brief and in general the history of  palaeographical research on Pylos tablet Tn 316 from Michael Ventris and Emmett L. Bennett, Jr, through Jean-Pierre Olivier and Tom Palaima, and now Louis Godart. It asks us to wonder why the at all stages the current interpretation of the history of the writing of this much-studied tablet was accepted by such authorities as Bennett and Olivier and by the entire Mycenological community at two major conferences (in Austria and Switzerland). It is necessary to address the reasons for being persuaded by the old arguments while proposing a new one.

Palaima kosmos article