Implicit Knowledge in the Ta Tablets of Pylos

Many of our difficulties with the understanding of the Linear B tablets arise from the numerous lacunae in the texts. Indeed, it seems to be a habit of the scribes to omit information that they regarded as unimportant or – conversely – as too important and therefore obvious. This is also true for the Ta tablets from Pylos which are now thought to refer to the furnishing of a precious feast, but which never actually mention the term ‘feast’ – despite their clear and relatively detailed descriptions. One could say that implicitness is one of the central features of the Mycenaean writing system, in which thought and script are tightly intertwined. The present paper discusses the relationship between thought and script in the Ta series. Drawing on insights from Cognitive Linguistics, it seeks to explain how the scribes could omit important pieces of information and yet remain confident that the text could be understood properly. For this purpose, the different entries in the Ta tablets are seen as cognitive structures called frames. Frames are knowledge structures gained from experience of living in the world and they are stored in long-term memory as parts of larger frame systems. Frames connect linguistic and world knowledge. By linking the Linear B texts with the insights from Cognitive Linguistics, we can access the implicit knowledge in the texts. This can help us better understand the emic perspective of the Mycenaean scribes on their own culture and how this perspective and the knowledge associated with it influenced the writing and understanding of the tablets.