19 North End, 
LONDON N W 3
5 October 53




Dear Bennett,

	Thank you for your interesting letter. I'm glad you are 
fixed up with comfortable accommodation in Athens, and it was 
good to hear about the new tablets, and about your plans.
	I had a long talk with Blegen over the phone when he was 
here a couple of weeks ago, and he mentioned some of his specu-
lations on the new companion piece to 641; also that offprints 
of his note on 641 would shortly be out, in which I gather he 
gives sympathetic account of the translation of the tablet which 
results from our suggested values.
	I was glad to hear that more interesting E- tablets had 
been found: they seemed to be the most rewarding of the 1939 
lot. The word you quote, _-_-_-_-_-_, seems rather peculiar, 
and it would be interesting to see its context: grammatically, 
it looks like a reduplication, of the "dative" of the word
_-_  _-_-_-_-_	"year ?". But what could it mean: "from year
to year"? - but that's [_-_-_] _-_-_-_  _-_  _-_-_-_-_ in proper 
Greek. "On a yearly basis ?" - or is it really a compound of two 
dissimilar words?
	If you can spare copies, from time to time, of this and of 
other tablets which would whet our appetites, I should be very 
grateful; and I would promise to keep them between Chadwick, Huxley 
and myself.
	But for the moment I imagine that you will best be occupied
looking, as you say, at the grid without interpretational preoccu-
pation, while I myself ought not to be diverted on to any new 
tablets until I get finished with the card-index to the MLBIndex 
which I'm working on at the moment, in intervals between screwing 
things into the walls and digging up the garden. I hope to get 
through it in the next 2 months, and transfer it to foolscap form 
(about 50 pages I expect), get it photostatted, and send you a
copy. This is intended to give our first shot at interpreting as 
many as possible of the pre-1953 sign-groups, and it will be all 
the more interesting if we finalise it without reference to any 
more of the new tablets, beyond the 641 which is irresistible for 
inclusion. It may be that a good chunk of this "glossary" of ours 
will turn out to be complete nonsense, but it will at least form 
something to try out on the new tablets, and to form a basis for 
discussion and revision. After that we'll be all set to attack 
new material.
	I very much hope that you'll do as much as you can, and include 
it in publication, on the "hands" and technical aspects of the
tablets, without feeling that it isn't useful to decipherment, be-
cause it is all extremely interesting from the point of view of the 
history of writing: and no one will be better qualified to do it 
than yourself at the present with all the stuff in front of you. 
An interesting discussion of cuneiform technique is given in
Driver's "Semitic Writing" (Schweich Lectures, British Academy, 1944), 
and it's something Scripta Minoa has been very lax about.
	There is one point of text which has worried Chadwick, Sittig 
& myself on a Knossos tablet, which you may be able to throw light 
on. You suggest that the first word of "SPEAR" tablet 0481 bis
might be restored as the word _-_-_ e-ke-a . This of course suits 
us fine, as being the nominative plural of the word _-_  _-_-_-_-_ 
which occurs on Sc 226 and whose dative plural _-_-_-_ occurs 
on Jn09.3. It's the next two words which are worrying: the last 
sign of _-_  _-_ looks like a very poor _ , and if there 
was any chance of interpreting the spelling as being for _-_-_-_