Pisani podaci o zemljoposedničkim odnosima na Balkanu iz kasne bronzane epohe
Evidence for Landholding Interrelations on the Balkans in the Late Bronze Age

Summary/Abstract: This paper, based on the study of information on clay tablets, examines land-tenure relations at the Mycenaean palace of Pylos in comparison with the situation in the Near East countries in the late Bronze Age. Special attention is paid to the question of how the palace administered the landholding in some regions, and investigates what obligations the landholders had in return. The paper contains eight sections: 1. Among the Linear B documents from the Mycenaean archives, especially from those at Pylos, there are tablets classified in E series regarding landholding. Their content is of great importance for investigations of the economic life and the social system in Mycenaean times. They record very complicated interrelations which penetrated all spheres of the Mycenaean society. The most privileged personages (wanax, läwägetäs) are mentioned as holders of land as well as some palace and temple functionaries, people of different trades and professions (cowherd, shepherd, swineherd, charioteer, potter, fuller, etc.), and even slaves of some functionaries who used a part of the possessions of larger landholders. It is significant that in the documents of a fiscal character, some specialized craftsmen, e. g. bronze-smiths, are levied with impost in some agricultural products (flax), which they had to produce. The syntax, abundantly represented in these texts, is quite clear. One and the same thought is expressed here in several different ways (especially in Py Ea set). Along with short phrases long sentences (even with ACI constructions) appear in Eb/Ep tablets. The majority of the vocabulary words is also known from the classical and later Greek. In spite of all that, the interpretation of these texts encounters great difficulties because of the numerous technical terms, the meaning of which alters with the changes of the social organization. Even words which have been in use until the present day, e. g. da-mo dâmos, represent a great problem, because in Mycenaean times they had a special meaning. These texts, both partially and as a comprehensive whole, have often been carefully examined. However, there are questions still unsolved. After a survey of the PY E series, especially the Eo/En, En/Ep, Ed and Ea tablets, which represent a kind of cadastral list, the main technical terms used in these documents are reexamined and possible conclusions are derived about the organization of the economic life in the Mycenaean society. 2. The most complete documents about land ownership and land use are related to the district of Pa-ki-ja-ne, where the shrine of Potnija was located, as we can see from PY Tn 316. That is the reason why so many priestesses and theoio doelai are recorded in these texts. The surface of the land in Mycenaean times was measured by the quantity of seed required for sowing. That practice is in use up to the present day in the Near East, Mediterranean and Balkan countries, a„ well as in some places in our country. At the end of every line of the Pylos cadastral list the quantity of seed is indicated by the phrase to-so, pe-mol-ma; the ideogram *120 which very likely represents a monogram of si + to (si-to), a word probably from the pre-Greek supstrate; and then, by parts of the basic unit for dry measure, and the numerical signs of the decimal system. The other interpretations of the phrase to-so, pe-mol-ma (taxes, fénpo, seed from the palace granaries, etc.) are rejected as unsound. Counting the quantities of seed mentioned on the PY E tablets and presumed in the missing ones, one can conclude that about 400—500 hectares of land could be sown with it. Obviously' the entire cultivated land of the Pylos kingdom is not recorded, but only a small part, probably the land that belonged to the palace and the shrine in Pa-ki-ja-ne. In contemporary Messenia, 170.000 out of a total of 250.000 inhabitants cultivate 160.000 hectares of land, which is approximately a ratio of one rural inhabitant to one hectare. If we admit that in the Mycenaean Pylos kingdom there lived about 50.000 people, then we can conclude that the PY E series contains evidence only for about 10% of the arable land. 3. The land of the Pakijanija cadastral list is divided into two categories: a. Eo/En tablets record ko-to-na ki-ti-me-na ktoinai ktimenai, possessed by individual holders, called te-re-ta tclestai, and understood from the very beginning as ‘private land’; b. Eb/Ep tablets register keke- me-iia ko-to-na, held by da-mo dâmos, supposed to mean approximately ‘communal’. The Ed set contains a recapitulation of both kinds of land. Regarding the etymology of ko-to-na ki-ti-me-na there is a communis opinio that both words are from the same stem of the athematic verb *kteimi, from which the 3m person plur. of ind. pres, ki-ti-je-si ktiensi is documented, and in classical Greek the trans, verb ‘build, establish’ is derived. However, among the Mycenaeologists there is no argeement about the exact meaning of the medio-pass. pres, participle ki-ti-me-na. Taking into consideration several different suggestions it seems that the meaning ‘settled, inhabited’ is the most probable. It can be supported by other derivatives from the same stem: ki-ti-ta ktitai ‘inhabitants’, cf. Horn. ‘neighbours’, me-ta-ki-ti-ta ‘immigrants’, Horn, pexavdoxai, péxoïxoï. The original meaning of the Homeric epithet ‘a place with many ktitai’ was almost forgotten, but in IL 2.712 it was still kept. Its meaning ‘well built’ is of a later development. The adjective a-ki-ti-to with a-privativum, which was also disputed, denotes ‘land, without ktitai’ rather than ‘non cultivated’. In PY Na 926 we read that at Pa-ka-a-ka-ri (a place name) there was land a-ki-ti-to, but A^ku-mi-ni-jo (a personal name) holds it, and the place was levied with an impost of flax, which means that the land was cultivated. The meaning of a-ki-ti-to becomes clearer if it is investigated from a larger contextual aspect. It is well known that the tablets are from the year proceeding the disaster of the palace. In the tablets other than the E series, there is evidence that some ktitai were engaged in carrying out military service for the kingdom: some of them, e. g. ke-ki-de, were watchers at several coastral places, others were obliged (o-pe-ro-ta ophehmtajs) to row (e-re-e helehen). J. Chadwick, who previously thought that nothing indicates whether any of the obligations imposed on the occupiers of land include military service (Docs2 444), has now discovered the muster of the Pylian fleet (Traetata Mycenaea in press) by ktitai and metaktitai from some coastral places. That is the reason why some places are a-ki-ti-to, i. e. without ktitai. It is noticeable that in Ugarit in the second half of the II millennium there was a similar custom of impost levy on some villages to supply people for naval and land military service, as M. Heltzer pointed out (The Rural Community in Ancient Ugarit, 1976). The etymology of the perf. participle ke-ke-me-na is more problematic. There are several different interpretations of this term (cf. A. Heubeck, ŽA 17, 1967, 17ss.). The connection with *kikhëmi ‘abandon’, Skt. jahâmi ‘leave’, Gr. -/yjga ‘widow’ (Calderone, Ruijgh, etc.) is the most satisfactory one from the Linear B orthographic point of view, kekhemena ‘abandoned’, but the identification with ‘fallow’ is to be modified. According to the author’s opinion ke-ke-me-na denotes land usually left, unploughed for longer than one summer in order to rest and improve its quality. In the mountainous Balkan countries there is such a practice, and in the Slavonic languages there is a special term for such a land — prelog —, different from fallow. While the fallow is ploughed and usually sown in the autumn, prelog is left uncultivated for one or more years. A fallow left for more than one year is called „barren fallow” or prelog. 4. The participle ke-ke-me-na is closely related to the agricultural term ka-tna, which alternates with ke-ke-me-na ko-to-na. Etymologically the word is connected with xdpvto ‘toil, win by toil’, xdftaroç ‘trouble’, which corresponds well with work on such kind of land, especially when it is tilled with primitive means of production. In the Slavonic languages there is a semantic support for this explanation of ka-rna. Old Russian stradati, a semantic equivalent of xà/tvto, among the others is used for agricultural work: stradomaja zemlja = arable land. The gender of ka-ma has long been disputed. The Hesychian gloss xdpav xov âyoàv gives us reason to expect a feminine noun. However, the phrase aio-ro-ki-jo-ne-jo (not -ne-ja) ka-ma is a contradiction to the feminine gender. Ka-ma is very likely a neuter stem kamas. [...] The I.-E. etymology of damartes is dubious. The alternation of the stem vowel oju (da-majdu-ma) makes its connection with I.-E. *dom doubtful. It is very likely of pre-Greek origin. The words for masters are often borrowed from other languages. The holder of the ke-ke-me-na land was dämos, a board of a number of important ktoinookhoi. Their role was probably intermediary between the palace and the population in the villages. Very likely they had to organize military service and other activities connected with landholding just as it was in the Near East countries of the II millennium B. C. Analysing the Mycenaean landholding texts in comparison with similar ones from the Near East, one can conclude that the power of the Mycenaean palaces was relied upon landholders: telestai of ki-ti-me-na land, who send their ktitai for some services, and damos — of ke-ke-me-na land, who organized kamaëwes for such purposes, as one can conclude from An 724. 6 . Section six investigates different kinds of land use from the juridical point of view: o-na-to onâton, e-to-ni-jo etonion ‘truly’ + o-ni-jo ,a well known term from post-Mycenaean times (with some semantic differences). While the users of the first possession — onätcres — were obliged to do some service for the palace in return for onäton, the two others were privileged holdings. 7. The analysis of the E tablets shows that this text is related to a region near Pylos and Pakijane, because people of different trades and professions associated with the palace and the temple are mentioned here as holders of land. They were engaged in some service for the palace and temple functionaries,, e. g. charioteer and swineherd of the läzvägetäs, as well as king’s potter, fuller, etc. in Eo/En tablets. This spontaneously raises a question about the relation of different economic and social activities to the landholding and land use. It is remarkable that among the numerous qualifications of people according to their professions, the name for farmer does not appear in the tablets. Only the personal name of a shepherd from Crete A-ko-ro-qo-ro Agroquolos, which can be identified with Lat. Agricola, points out that the appelative agroquolos, also existed, but in the tablets known so far it does not occur. Certain personal names display some specialized branches of agriculture, e. g. A-pe-ri-ta-wo ‘viticulturist’, Pu-te perhaps Phutêr ‘planter’. However, a common name for a farmer is absent. According to the author’s opinion the reason for that is the fact that nearly everybody was associated in some way with land possession and land use, so that there was no need for using such a term. The statement that in Mycenaean times craftsmanship was absolutely separated from agriculture (cf. VDI 1, 1961, 33) is revised here. Although the specialization of labour was highly developed in Mycenaean Greece, the craftsmen owned land and had to cultivate it. That is the reason why so many khalkêwes (nearly 400), mentioned in the Pylos kingdom, had to produce only small quantity of finished bronze goods. Obviously they were not engaged full time at their trade. 8 . At the end the following two main conclusions can be derived: a. There is no doubt that in the ethnic and linguistic development there is a continuity between Mycenaean and Homeric Greece, but in the social organization there is a break. The Mycenaean society collapsed forever, and together with it the technical terms of that organization disapeared, because they were used no longer. The Homeric poems describe this epoch in an idealized form, but it does not correspond to the historical situation of a bureaucratic and centralized state. However in Homer there are examples of how wanax can give land to somebodv (cf. Od. 7. 31 lss.). b. The Mycenaean bureaucratic state was not the result of a natural development, but it was organized by imitating the Minoan model. Looking for the origin of the principles on which the Minoan and Mycenaean societies were organized, the author finds the pattern in the Near Eastern contemporary countries (of the II mill. B. C.), where the dominant system was an autocratic power and centralized state administration with the palace and the temple in the centre. They were, in fact, the main land-owners and distributed land to the citizens for some services. Besides, numerous documents from the Near East contain information about private possessors of land. On the Mycenaean tablets two centres, palace and temple, are well differentiated. But there is not a separate temple administration. As the tablets related to the Pakijane temple are found in the palace of Pylos, it is natural to conclude that the palace controlled the sanctuary. In the tablets there is no direct evidence that along with these two centres a private sector of landholders existed as in the Near East. However, there are indirect indications that in the Mycenaean society there were also private landholders, just as some people owned their own cattle along with the herds that belonged to the palaces; but this will be the subject of another study.

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