This book addresses a great need in the study of women in antiquity. O. brings together textual analyses from 60 years of scholarship on women in Linear B, and sets them into the broader socio-economic context of Mycenaean Greece and Crete. O. limits her study to Pylos and Knossos, the sites with the largest archives. The book is organised into eight chapters, with endnotes after each chapter. Transcriptions and translations of the Linear B tablets discussed appear within the chapters and in the endnotes. Bibliography, subject and tablet indexes, and appendices listing the Pylos and Knossos tablets recording women, occur at the end.
Chapter 1 introduces the two main aims of the book: (1) to collect all the Pylos and Knossos tablets which list women, to analyse the roles and resources defining these women and compare them to men in similar contexts in order to define gender relationships; (2) to compare the contexts in which women appear at Pylos and Knossos to see how institutions differed between Mycenaean Greece and Crete. O. describes the palace economy shown in the tablets, and the history of scholarship of Linear B studies on women, and assesses the social and economic status of women in the tablets by comparing them with men listed by similar occupation or title.
Chapter 2 introduces the kinds of information in tablet series, and the division between tablets listing women and children in groups by ideogram, occupation (usually textiles or drudgework), kinship terms and ethnics versus individually by name and title, usually religious. Compared with the range of statuses for men attested in the tablets, women are recorded primarily in work groups and as mid-level religious personnel.
Chapter 3 presents female work groups at Pylos and compares them with the male social hierarchy, where men in similar jobs receive greater recompense than women. The Aa and Ab series list the working women, daughters and sons, rations and supervisors; the Ad series records older sons identified by their mothers' work or ethnic origin, often from the eastern Aegean. O. shows that the majority of work groups were at the capitals of the two provinces, while other groups were assigned to towns in both provinces. These women and children are slave labourers, isolated from family and community, receiving food rations, not wages.
In Chapter 4, ‘Women and Property Holdings at Pylos’, property is defined as commodities which the recipient controls enough ‘to be deemed responsible for its receipt, delivery, assignment or transfer’ (p. 135), i.e. resources given to the recipient in order to carry out responsibilities. Most of these women have religious titles. The priestess and the key-bearer receive the most valuable goods and their own personnel because of their cult offices. A-pi-qo-ro-i, attendants and a-ke-ti-ri-ja, decorators, also get food and oil in religious contexts (pp. 144–6). One woman, ke-sa-da-ra, receives a huge amount of grain and figs; O. interprets her as supervising a work group, with the grain as rations (pp. 149–50). Other women in the Jn, Ae, Fg, Fp and Fr tablets receive resources directly connected to their duties. Many of the religious women have o-na-to, leased land, which O. calls ‘property’. However, this distinction is confusing, as there is no indication that holding o-na-to is equivalent to receiving these other commodities.
Chapter 5 on the women of Knossos illustrates the different administrative and social patterns presented in the Knossos tablets, drawing upon Killen and Nosch's articles on sheep and textile production. O. demonstrates that most personnel tablets record female textile workers, their children and levels of training in their own towns; some tablets list names. The occupational titles for the women refer to specialisation in kinds of cloth or decoration, but groups usually produce more than one type of cloth. These women apparently weave cloth as corvée labour for the palace for part of the year (pp. 187–8). Other women in work groups connected to important male ‘collectors’ are slaves. Similar to Pylos, women with religious titles i-je-re-ja, priestess, and ki-ri-te-wi-ja receive grain and oil, but in addition, two women listed by name but not title are responsible for cloth, perhaps as workshop managers (pp. 193–5).
Chapter 6 analyses the vocabulary of the Pylos landholding series to demonstrate that women have limited access to land compared with men. O. presents all the landholding types and titles of men and women registered in the E- series. Of women, only women with religious titles are listed, making up 22% of the landholders. However, they have leased land only, comprising just 5.2% of the total land according to O., and their o-na-to plots are usually smaller than men's leased plots (pp. 224–5). The dispute between e-ri-ta the priestess and the damos in PY Ep 704.5 centres on whether her land is e-to-ni-jo of the god or o-na-to from the damos. O. shows that the presence of this claim on the tablets supports its plausibility (p. 217). E-ri-ta also gives o-na-to to u-wa-mi-ja do-e-ra te-o-jo, a female slave of the god, as geras, but it is not clear if the land is from e-ri-ta's own o-na-to holdings. However, e-ri-ta is not called a ko-to-no-o-ko, ‘ko-to-na holder’ on PY Eb 297.2 as O. says (p. 223). Instead ko-to-no-o-ko-de (nom. pl.) is equivalent to da-mo-de-mi in PY Ep 704.5 who contest e-ri-ta's claim (see Duhoux Companion to Linear B Vol. 1 [2008], pp. 300–1). Therefore, no women at Pylos are recorded among the upper level landholders. There is some indication, however, that women in Crete hold orchard land at a level equal to men (pp. 226–7).
Chapter 7 discusses gender differences among religious personnel. Priests command greater resources than priestesses and the keybearer. O-na-ta of the male do-e-ro te-o-jo are 50% larger than that of do-e-ra te-o-jo. But female religious personnel seem independent of male relatives. O. argues persuasively that the do-e-ra and do-e-ro te-o-jo who hold land, the do-e-ra do-qe-ja in PY An 607, and the men and women offered at shrines in PY Tn 316 are all mid-level independent religious personnel, not slaves controlled by the palace (pp. 239–41). Relatively few religious personnel are listed at Knossos; the women receive olive oil and honey for their gods but some male religious personnel are issued livestock and male workers apparently outside of their cult duties.
Chapter 8 presents O.'s conclusions. While these are unexceptional for Pylos, O. suggests that the Knossos tablets show women workers and religious personnel had greater independence than women at Pylos, and that this may reflect Minoan practices.
This is a valuable but flawed book. On p. 26, the two ideograms for MUL and VIR do not match any known scribal hand in the Knossos or Pylos tablets. The MUL ideogram in Fig. 2.1 is incorrect as the strokes never cross above the breasts. The tablet transcriptions are based on PTT (1973) and KT5 (1989). Proofreading could have caught many typographic mistakes in the Linear B words and Greek transcriptions. Other mistakes are more serious: cf. PY Eb 297.2 above, and the transliteration and translation of PY Ab 789b: me-re-ti-ra2 MUL 6 ko-wo 6 ko-wo 3 (p. 124 n. 178). The first ko-wo is the scribe's mistake for ko-wa, cf. PTT I p. 29. O.'s translation ‘6 flour-grinding women, 6 boys, 3 girls’ is incorrect as girls are always listed first in the Aa, Ab series. The opportunity to have in one place all the tablet transcriptions and references pertaining to women, and explanations of all the texts is very attractive. However, this book should be used with caution, always checking other recent readings of the texts.
