In 1939, on the first day of excavation at the archaeological site that he called The Palace of Nestor, Carl W. Blegen uncovered a Mycenaean palace. Its archives contained clay tablets inscribed in the so-called Linear B script, a syllabary employed to record the Greek language. These documents had been unintentionally baked in a conflagration that destroyed the palace early in the 12th century B.C.


Blegen, who died in 1971, planned to see published in a final volume of his excavation report all Linear B texts from Pylos. In a postscript to his foreword to Volume III of The Palace of Nestor in Western Messenia dated February 1974, John Caskey, Blegen’s successor as director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, wrote: “Carl Blegen died in Athens on 24th August 1971. He had seen and verified all the manuscripts which make up the text of this book and had reviewed all the illustrations. [. . .] another task finished.” This publication of Volume IV, in two parts, finally fulfils Blegen's vision and commitment; it is the work of several generations of scholars who have remained dedicated to the enterprise.


After a preliminary detailed introduction, Linear B tablets 1–616 (in part 1) and 622–1589 (in part 2) are presented accompanied by colour photographs, transcriptions and definitive epigraphical and palaeographical notes.


The Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Western Messenia: The Inscribed Documents will be fundamental, a treasured resource, for all who study Mycenaean civilisation, its economy and its society. It is being offered at a reduced price owing to a grant from the Packard Humanities Institute.