47 Highpoint, 
North Hill, 
Highgate, 
LONDON, N6.

24 October 1950.

Dear Professor Hrozny,

Thank you very much for the offprint of the Journal
of Juristic Papyrology, which is extremly interesting, both with
regard to its publication of a new Pylos text, and to your own
adventurous translation of it. As the very valuable function of
your work is to promote discussion, perhaps I might make a comment
on it from my own point of view ?

The 15 lines of the inscription follow a rigid pattern:

A  AD-AC   B  C   commodity   numbers.

	Your proposal to read A, B, and C as the names of 3 divinities
in each case, linked by "and" and in no syntactic relationship one
the the other, comes up against 2 obstacles: -

1. 	AD-AC "field ?" is the second work in each sentence, which is
	not the simplest construction.
2. 	The occurences of A are grouped into paragraphs in a definite,
	if not entirely consistent, order; the groups B are different
	throughout the inscription; the groups C recur in a random way,
	one of them 4 times. None of the sign-groups occur outside their
	own positions. It seems a necessary conclusion that the positions
	of A, B and C in the sentences represent a functional
	distiction, which may or may not be reinforced by distinct
	case-endings.

	My own guess is that AD-AC represents a postposition "for??"
governing A, and that C is an adjective or dependent noun quali-
fying B.
	The structure of the inscription would be that a large number of
persons (?) B, who share the 5 attributes C, join in a livestock (?)
transaction for the benefit of a limited number of entities A.
	The sign-group which forms the second half of A in lines 1-4
I would guess to be a qualifying adjective or a noun preceded by the
genitive.

With best wishes.

Dear Bennett,
	I got this article from Hrozny today and thought you 
might like to see it. Here also is a copy of my comments to him,
which probably only state the obvious.
	I don't know whether you're back in the States at the moment,
but if not it can await your arrival.
	I hope you had a pleasant and successful summer. 
Best wishes,

Michael Ventris