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Y. Duhoux and A. Morpurgo Davies (eds.) A Companion to Linear B. Mycenaean Greek Texts and their World, Volume 3. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters. 2014, viii + 292 pp. ISBN 978-90-4292932-6.
The third volume of the Companion to Linear B series, edited by Y. Duhoux the late A. Morpurgo Davies, contains two chapters: 17. "Mycenaean writing" (J. L. Melena, henceforth M.) and 18. "Linear B and Homer" (J. Bennet, henceforth B.). The bulk of the volume is made up by M.'s chapter, which accounts for 186 of its 233 pages (not counting the indices). The appearance of such a long chapter constitutes a break with the two preceding volumes, which contained nine and six chapters, respectively. The editors gave up on their initial plans when they were "confronted with a wealth of material and a depth of analysis which are unparalleled elsewhere" and "decided to (...) print it [M.'s chapter] in its entirety." (foreword, p. vii). The other chapters that had been announced in the second volume, "Greek and the Linear B script" (R. Viredaz) and "The Mycenaean language" (A. Morpurgo Davies), are now postponed to a fourth and final volume. As the editors indicate, the main reason for this delay has been the severe health problems encountered by Prof. Morpurgo Davies, who sadly passed away after the appearance of the present volume in September 2014. Her assiduous work and critical mind will be sorely missed in the fields of Mycenology and Greek dialectology.
M.'s "Mycenaean Writing" starts out with an Introduction (section 17.1, pp. 3-5) and the "basic facts" about the script (section 17.2, pp. 5-26), and then gives an "in-depth picture ... for the more informed reader" (p. 5), discussing the evidence for the actual phonological and phonetic interpretation of the individual signs (sections 17.3.1-3, pp. 26-89). Finally, there follows a detailed account of the writing system as a whole, where M. discusses both the syllabic signs (section 17.3.4, pp. 91-128) and the logograms (section 17.3.5, pp. 128-163). The chapter is preceded by a clear table of contents (pp. 1-3) and completed with a glossary of technical terms, as well as lists of abbreviations and figures.
The chapter is written in clear English. There are occasional hispanicisms like the superfluous use of the definite article,19...