Ikliana Linear B Tablet

This fragment from about 1400 BCE is one of the earliest examples of record-keeping in mainland Europe. It is believed that the tablet was not intended to be preserved but was incidentally baked in a fire and hardened. It is inscribed with writing in Linear B, a Mycenaean language deciphered by Michael Ventris in the 1950s. One side of the fragment displays a word approximately meaning “prepare to manufacture”; the other side displays a list of men’s names next to numbers. Uncovered Linear B tablets usually contain evidence of Mycenaean bureaucracies: taxation records, lists of names, receipts from economic exchanges, and lists of scheduled religious sacrifices. Classicist Alain Bresson writes: “The tablets written in Linear B are exceptionally valuable, because they give us an idea of these kingdoms’ structure. They show us a sophisticated system of taxation or fees, paid exclusively in kind: bronze, hides, clothing, linen, livestock.” Dr. Michael Cosmopaulus, who works at the University of Missouri in Saint Louis and led the team that discovered the fragment, argues that this particular tablet indicates the existence of government scribes, and thus bureaucracy.

The meaning of the list of names and numbers is unknown; however, it is not unreasonable to posit that it could have served as some sort of census-adjacent document. The phrase “prepare to manufacture” indicates not only a plan to create goods, but a pre-existing intention to create that plan. This fragment represents the earliest, most rudimentary evidence of a system of ancient Greek bureaucracy. 

Bresson, Alain. The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy: Institutions, Markets, and Growth in the City-States. Princeton University Press, 2016.

Wilford, J. N. (2011, April 4). Greek tablet may shed light on early bureaucratic practices. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/science/05archeo.html


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