Mycenaean Dialect

Abstract The Linear B archives are written in a standard form of Greek (some- times called a chancellery language). This official language used by the scribes obscures the fact that a number of different dialects must already have existed within Greek. In the alphabetic period (first millennium BC) the Greek dialects can be divided into West Greek, comprising Doric and North-west Greek, and East Greek, comprising Attic-Ionic and Arcado-Cypriot (§15 below). The Aeolic dialects do not fit easily into this scheme (see §33 below). We can see in Mycenaean Greek that in verbal endings the third person ti(inherited from IE) has already become si(thus e-ko- si =  lχσ); and we can also see from alphabetic inscriptions of the first millennium that while the eastern dialects have siin this position, the dialects of western Greece retain original ti(thus West Greek lχτ= Attic-Ionic lχσ< lχσ). In this and other respects Mycenaean seems to be part of the eastern grouping: for example, Myc. o-te‘when’ represents τε, which is characteristic of eastern Greek (western Greek has κα); and i-je-re-u‘priest’ recalls eastern ερ- (rather than western αρ-). This indicates that the divergence between western and eastern Greek had already taken place in Mycenaean times, and that dialects of the western type must have existed somewhere in the Greek-speaking world (this in turn raises the question of where the Dorians were in the Bronze Age, and whether the Greek belief that they did not enter the Peloponnese until after the Trojan War should be given any credence).