197. The Third Edinburgh Conference on Minoan and Mycenaean Writing, 13-14 June, 1963Author(s): W. C. BriceSource: Man, Vol. 63 (Oct., 1963), p. 162Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2795706 .

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Nos. I96-I99 MAN OCTOBER, I963

'9 E. Piekarski and N. Popov, quoted in K. Moszyn'ski, Kultura Ludowa Slowian, Krakow, I934.

20 Stith Thomson and J. Balys, Finnish Folklore, in Funk & Wagnall's Standard Dictionary, I950, p. 387.

2 IR. Jakobson, Slavic Folklore, in Funk & Wagnall's Standard Dictionary, I950, p. IOI9.

22 A. Taylor, Germanic Folklore, in Funk & Wagnall's Standard Dictionary, I950, p. 445.

The Third Edinburgh Conference on Minoan and Mycen- man Writing, 13-14 June, 1963. Communicated by

197 W. C. Brice, Manchester University This meeting, arranged by the Department of

Greek at the University of Edinburgh, surveyed a wider range of topics than its precursors. Now that the basic principles of Minoan writing are becoming clearer, notably in the recurrence of certain combinations of signs, sometimes written separately and sometimes in ligature, it seemed that a useful further step would be to study the significance of these features when they occur in other scripts. Dr. E. A. E. Reymond therefore presented a survey of the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions, from Abydos, Sakkara and Hierakonpolis. They contain a strong ideographic element, and often display a rigid formulaic arrangement, with repetition and inversion of signs, which is reminiscent of certain Minoan texts. Dr. J. Eric S. Thompson gave a lucid analysis of the nature of Mayan writing. Though there was of course no question of any historical link between the two cultures, Dr. Thompson's demonstration of the wide range of expression possible in a script which was basically ideographic, especially by the varied use of ligatured combinations or 'compounds,' threw much fresh light on the question of how the Minoan

scripts may have operated. The Mayan signary was perhaps four times as large as that of the Minoan linear scripts, but at the same time the range of topics which it was used to express may have been much wider.

There were also three papers on Minoan topics. Dr. Jane E. Henle gave reasons why she considered that no simple system of open syllabic signs, of the type proposed by Ventris, could be accepted in any decipherment of Linear B into Greek. She was inclined on archaeological grounds to accept the language of this script as Greek, but argued that a proportion of the signs at least must have expressed closed syllables. Professor A. J. Beattie listed a number of 'inflectional endings' in Linear B, of the type which Dr. Kober collected in her studies of the nature of this writing. He showed that the phenomenon now seems, through the dis- covery of further texts since Dr. Kober's work was done, to be much more complex than she supposed, and certainly not explic- able in terms as simple as those chosen by Ventris. Certain texts of the Ta series involved an apparent use of elaborate prefixes and infixes as well as of suffixes, and in some cases at least an ideo- graphic interpretation of individual signs might be preferable to a phonetic interpretation. Mr. W. C. Brice dealt with the 'Libation Formula,' well known on some six vessels inscribed in linear script, and on two hieroglyphic seals, and already subjected to fourteen different interpretations, including five as the names of goddesses. From a study of similar inscriptions and of artistic evidence, he concluded that this group of signs appears to be an ideographic formula rather than a word spelt phonetically; and if this were so, there was a strong presumption that the remainder of the linear inscriptions in which it occurred should be under- stood in a like fashion.

CORRESPONDENCE Moslem Prayer Places. WVith a text figure

SIR,-During April of last year, I was passing by road 198 through the area north-west of Nok-Kondi in Balu-

chistan (c. 290 North, 620 East). The track is the one followed by most vehicles travelling between Pakistan and Iran, and has for a long time been used by the nomads on their joumeys.

The land lies about i,ooO metres above sea level, the surface is stony desert, with low dry hills as a background. There is no vege- tation.

The purpose of this note is to record the presence along the road- way of prayer places, musalla (fig. i). Their simple form is the basis

of all Islamic architecture; this is the fundamental unit that under- lies the splendours of the Umayyid Mosque of Damascus, the Sultan Ahmed of Istanbul, the Shah of Isfahan. While other world religions evolve into complexity, and their basic activities require buildings of some size or people set apart, it has been the strength of Islam that the basic unit of the individual and his prayer place have been retained. It is perhaps worth considering that stone-surrounded spaces found in archaeological contexts may also indicate places set apart rather than residences. London J. H. CHAPLIN

.......... ..

FIG. I. MOSLEM PRAYER PLACE IN BALUCHISTAN

Photograph:j. H. Chaplin, I962

The Determinants of Differential Cross-Cousin Marriage. Cf. MAN, I962, 47, 179, 238; I963, II, 87

J99 Sn,-In his latest comment on my theory of cross- cousin marriage, Dr. Leach puiports to disprove my

arguments by reference to his Kachin data. I do not understand his logic since it is very clear from his analysis that the Kachin do not practice any form of cross-cousin marriage. Dr. Leach maintains that a Kachin may marry a girl junior to himself who is a member of a wife-giving lineage. From his description it appears that the girl need have no particular genealogical relationship to her husband. Dr. Leach explicitly states that since there are a number of wife- giving lineages the girl will probably not belong to her husband's mother's lineage or even to his mother's clan.

Now the usual notion of cross-cousin marriage entails that a person marry a woman who is related to himself in one or another of a limited number of ways. If, for example, matrilateral cross- cousin marriage is practised among patrilineal descent groups, then this means that a man will marry his MBD, or MBSD, or MBSSD, or MFBSD, or MFBSSD, etc. Marriage with the MBD is regarded as true cross-cousin marriage; marriage with any of the remaining kin types as marriage with a classificatory cross-cousin.

If unilineal groups, not having any past relationship, began a

I62

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