Important evidence for a BA Kinyras comes from an unexpected quarter: Mycenaean Pylos. Although the texts present ‘Kinyras’ as a PN, not DN, the contexts are consistent with the attributes of the Kinyras. This material, I shall argue, indicates that by the thirteenth century Kinyras—as the Greeks would call him—had already outgrown his musical roots and begun to develop into the metamusical figure he was on historical Cyprus.

The first attestation is in a tablet from the so-called Northeast Building (NEB), excavated in 1957 by M. Rawson and C. W. Blegen, and belonging to the final phase of the ‘Palace of Nestor’ at Pylos. Long interpreted as a workshop for chariots and leather goods, [1] recent reassessment of its tablets and the associated small-finds has established the NEB’s broader function as a “storage facility and administrative clearinghouse that managed the collection and subsequent disbursal of livestock, various goods, raw materials, and groups of workers.” [2] The NEB was home to as many as seven scribes who recorded its diverse transactions in semi-archival documents that were eventually transferred to the central Archives Complex (AC). [3]

The Qa series of tablets, recovered from the NEB, is the largest single group outside the AC itself. [4] The twenty-four single-line, leaf-shaped tablets associate various individuals with the distribution (or perhaps receipt [5] ) of from one to five units of an unknown commodity. [6] The latter is designated by the ideogram *189, consisting of *44 (KE) in a rectangular frame, probably giving the first syllable of the item’s name. This is most plausibly interpreted as some form of ‘honor-gift’ (ke-ra, géras), but the material reality and occasion are both unknown. [7] A recent argument for the hides of sacrificial animals is attractive, but inconclusive. [8] The entries do not follow a single fixed formula, but exhibit at least four patterns. [9] Because of this variability, some tablets elude definite interpretation when they contain words not otherwise known, and/or when a word can be interpreted as PN or title. [10] The following table is based upon the re-edition with new joins by J. Melena, towards his forthcoming corpus of the Pylos texts in The Palace of Nestor IV. [11] Omitting tablets too damaged to be illuminating, [12] I have arranged the entries first by formula, where clear, and then by amount of *189, both known and presumed by analogy; the righthand column transliterates and translates only PNs and descriptors (where possible). [13] ‘Kinyras’ comes at the end among the tablets of uncertain formula:

The Qa Series

As a general principle, confidence in the identification of homonymous individuals depends upon their appearance in overlapping contexts. [25] Of the five PNs in the Qa series that are otherwise attested at Pylos, four—Amphihalos, Neik^uheus, Enkherr’awon, and Pythias—can be securely identified with homonymous individuals appearing, among a larger group of Pylian elite, in a cluster of prosopographically interdependent texts concerned with (among other things) landholding, payments or disbursements of gold, and positions of military authority (including the famous o-ka set, dealing with a ‘coast-guard’). [26] Neik^uheus and Enkherr’awon in particular were major landholders, the latter possessing as much in the district of Pakijane as all other known tenants combined. [27] If Enkherr’awon was not the king (wánax) himself, as some hold, he was at least “a man of the highest rank in Pylian society.” [28]

Thus, despite some ambiguities, the Qa series clearly deals with “persons of consequence.” [29] Its aristocratic character is further revealed by the high concentration of religious personnel among its entries. Two priests (1290, 1296) and two priestesses (1289, 1300) are itemized, with a third priestess plausibly restored (1303). Another figure is qualified as “Potnian” (Qa 1299, po-ti-ni-ja-wi-jo), thus serving the goddess Potinija/Potnia (‘Queen/Lady’) in some capacity. [30] These figures support cultic interpretations of other entries. Some kind of divination-­priest, oracle-singer, or ‘ritual purifier’ is probably meant by po-qa-te-u (1295). [31] Neik^uheus bears the title e-da-e-u both here (1298) and elsewhere; this has been interpreted as *hedaheús, ‘man of the abode (of the deity)’. [32] The broken ]pa-ke-u of Qa 1308 can be taken as sphageús, ‘sacrificial slaughterer’. [33] Pu-ti-ja (1294) too might be read as a cult-title (Pythía), [34] although this is more probably the same name and person attested elsewhere as a smith and military officer. [35] Still, the PN ‘Pythias’ may itself have carried cultic connotations: there are other examples of Mycenaeans whose names reflect their professions (see below). Enkherr’awon is implicated in other religious contexts elsewhere, contributing half the food for a feast of Poseidon, and allocated aromatics alongside deities and religious officials. [36] Moreover, the scribe who wrote all but three tablets of the Qa series (Hand 15) [37] also composed Un 219, a list of commodities assigned to various gods and religious functionaries. [38] It seems that this scribe’s special purview was “allocations to the religious sphere.” [39] It has been suggested indeed that the personnel of the Qa series be connected somehow with a cultic-­industrial interpretation of the NEB itself as a shrine of Potnia Hippeia—a natural patroness for a complex whose concerns included chariot construction and maintenance. [40]

Be this as it may, the Qa series itself is clearly connected with the cultic sphere. It is quite remarkable, therefore, to find the entry ki-nu-ra me-nu-a ₂ in 1301. Because me-nu-a ₂ also appears in 1293, and there is no certain case of an individual appearing twice in the series, it is generally assumed that me-nu-a ₂ is a title, and that consequently ki-nu-ra should be read as a PN—Kinyras. [41] The PN interpretation is well supported by a second attestation of ki-nu-ra at Pylos, where it must indeed be a PN (see below). Moreover, another tablet containing entries in the form PN + title has me-nu-a ₂ preceded by just enough space for the restoration of ki-nu-ra. [42]

Nevertheless, as with many other problems in Linear B texts, one must appreciate the provisional nature of this conclusion. First, it cannot be proven that the same person is not referred to in both Qa 1293 and 1301, since double-records in small sets are not unparalleled. [43] Next, while Palmer’s understanding of me-nu-a ₂ as a TN is generally rejected, [44] its interpretation as a title still lacks decisive etymological support. The word, with its probable graphic variant me-nu-wa, [45] is often read as *Miny(h)as or *Miny(w)as with reference to the Minyans (Minýai), legendary inhabitants of Boeotian Orkhomenos; but their obscure mythology offers no clarification. [46] A proposed linguistic link with Minos is equally unilluminating. [47] More promising, given the other entries in the Qa series, is a connection with mēnýein, to ‘disclose what is secret, reveal’. [48]

But any interpretation of me-nu-a ₂ as a title must still confront its unambiguous use as a PN at Knossos, and perhaps Pylos itself. [49] While vacillation between PN and title is a known phenomenon, [50] this makes it equally possible in principle that ki-nu-ra, though a PN elsewhere at Pylos, could nevertheless be a title in Qa 1301. [51] And even if it is a PN in the Qa series, one would still need to contemplate its etymology, since the PN might in itself have professional implications.

That the PN ‘Kinyras’ was already known in LBA Greece accords first with the divergent dialect forms of later sources. [52] The general agreement of the earliest authorities also encourages us to ignore the other possible phonetic renderings of the Pylian evidence—namely /Kinnýras/, /Kinȳ́ras/, /Kinnȳ́ras/—permitted by the ambiguities of Linear B, which distinguished neither vowel length nor double consonants. [53]

‘Kinyras’ is also consistent with Mycenaean name-forming patterns. [54] First, it joins the group of single-stem PNs that constitute seventy-five percent of those studied by O. Landau. [55] Of these, names in -ās are well represented at 3.7% of the total, ahead of many other suffixes (if well behind 6.4% in -tās and 11.2% in -eus). [56] According to the scheme of A. Leukart, -ās originally connoted adherence to a social group; but already by the Mycenaean period it was rather more general, appearing with a variety of nominal and adjectival stems. [57] Leukart grouped ‘Kinyras’ with adjectival nicknames like E-ru-ta-ra (Erythrās, ‘Ruddy’), seeing its root as kinyrós (‘plaintive’) rather than kinýra (‘lyre’) on the grounds that the former is found already in Homer, while the latter is “a late-attested Semitic loan-word”; but oddly enough he was open to deriving from kinýra the later attested examples of ‘Kinyras’ in the eastern Mediterranean. [58]

And yet—leaving aside the possible etymological relationship between kinyrós and kinýra, [59] and the complication of supposing two independent etymologies for what is surely a single PN—we have seen that the supposed lateness of kinýra is illusory; it derives rather from an early culture-word, very probably established on LBA Cyprus in some pre-Greek form. [60] That kinýra was not commonplace in pre-Hellenistic Greek is no argument against its currency, or at least peripheral presence, in the Mycenaean world. Consider that phórminx, the normal Homeric word for lyre, is unattested in Linear B; yet lýra, long considered a seventh-century novelty, [61] has now surfaced (indirectly) at Mycenaean Thebes. [62] So different lyre-names could easily have been used in different parts of the LBA Aegean, or side-by-side within different generic contexts. When this is combined with post-palatial disruptions, lexical discrepancies between LBA and later usage are only to be expected. [63]

There is no reason, therefore, not to place ‘Kinyras’ among the more numerous PNs in -ās that contain nominal stems. [64] Ki-nu-ra would thus be ‘man of the kinýra’, equally intelligible as PN and/or title. This interpretation is well paralleled by other Mycenaean PNs. For the addition of -ās to a concrete noun, compare for instance E-ke-a = *Enkhé(h)as, < énkhos, ‘spear’. [65] A still closer parallel is Ma-ke-ra = *Makéllas, < mákella (‘mattock’). [66] There are besides other PNs (of various formations) plausibly derived from musical instruments, including a-wo-ro (Aulṓn) and ru-ro (Lýros). [67] PNs from professions are also common, with some born by people working in the associated field. [68] Others reflect cult-­activity. [69] These patterns all neatly converge in the PN ‘Kinyras’ as ‘kinýra-man’ or ‘kinyrist’. [70]

There are good ANE parallels for this interpretation. Sum. balaĝ, equated with kinnārum at Ebla (ca. 2350), is found both as a PN-element and in the agent word balaĝ.di. [71] We saw a PN built on Kin(n)ar[- at LBA Alalakh, and Hurro-­Semitic agent-forms at both Alalakh and Hattusha. [72] These hybrids, inherently practical, reflect a living music-culture in diffusion, and generally support the idea that the Mycenaean world could constitute the western margin of Syro-Levantine lyre-culture—even if this was only secondarily or superficially through contact with Cyprus and Cypriots. [73] Ki-nu-ra as a title in Qa 1301 would establish a greater depth of exposure than as a PN; but with the hieratic context, a man called ‘Kinyras’ could still have executed a function akin to his name. Given Lupack’s hypothesis of a cultic-industrial character to the NEB and some direct involvement by the people of the Qa series, it is worth recalling the ‘industrial’ contexts in which Mesopotamian lamentation-singing is attested. [74]

That ‘Kinyras’ conforms to Greek word-building rules need not exclude special Cypriot connotations. Besides the ethnic character of kinýra itself (Chapters 9–12), and that already for Homer ‘Kinyras’ and Cyprus were indissolubly associated, [75] Kýprios (ku-pi-ri-jo) and *Alásios (a-ra-si-jo) are well attested at Pylos and Knossos as PNs or as TN-adjectives describing the destination or origin of various commodities, with the contexts often relating to typical Cypriot industries. [76] One Kyprios at Pylos was a bronze-worker who received an allotment of the metal. [77] Another is associated with alum, a versatile mineral of which Cyprus was a source. [78] Other instances involve oil and perfumed-oil making, an important industry for both LBA Pylos and Cyprus (recall Alkman’s “moist charm of Kinyras”). [79] These words, which one way or another indicate significant commercial and cultural interactions with Cyprus, are Greek in formation with Cypriot and/or Cyprocentric roots.

The page-shaped Vn tablets are not a coherent ancient series, but a modern grouping of texts lacking any ideogram and written by a variety of hands; most come from Room 8 in the AC. [80] Vn 865 is a list of twelve PNs after the heading na-u-do-mo. [81] Line 7 contains ]nu-ra, the final two syllables of a trisyllabic PN. C. Gallavotti’s supplement ki-]nu-ra, Kinyras, is the only restoration possible from words/PNs otherwise attested in Linear B, [82] and is generally accepted. [83]

Was this Kinyras the same or a different man than the ki-nu-ra of Qa 1301? Their identification finds no associative prosopographical support (that is, no other PN from Vn 865 reappears elsewhere alongside one from the Qa series). Evaluation of the alternative criterion—contextual overlap between Vn 865 and the Qa tablets—depends upon understanding the heading na-u-do-mo. The underlying word is clearly *naudómos (see below). Given the list structure, it must be either nominative plural introducing the following PNs, or dative singular describing the person to whom the other men are somehow assigned. Since the latter are individually named—a sign of social prominence—one may safely conclude that this is a list of *naudómoi, not laborers assigned to one *naudómos. [84]

As to the meaning of *naudómos, two views are viable on orthographical and morphological grounds: ‘(temple)-builder’ (cf. na[w]ós) and ‘shipbuilder’ (< naûs). [85] The minority favoring ‘temple-builder’ has advanced good arguments and responses, but the majority analysis does seem clinched by two further texts. A second Pylian tablet attesting na-u-do-mo is one of a large group recording exemptions from payments of flax to the palace. [86] Such concessions were evidently granted to those whose professional activity was important to the state; others enjoying this flax exemption include hunters and bronze-workers, where one may think of nets/snares and undershirts for bronze corselets. [87] While builders might perhaps employ flax-products (textiles, cords), the large amounts involved—fifty units, the highest in the series—tally better with naval needs like sails and ropes (whether or not Pylos was in a state of emergency in the months before its destruction). [88] The tablet also contains the final syllable of a TN that permits restoration as ro-o]ẉạ, the probable port of Pylos. [89] Finally, in a damaged tablet from Knossos, na-u-do-mo appears with the word e-to-ro-qa-ta and the ideogram *181, which has the shape of a loop. [90] This is most convincingly interpreted as *entrok^uatás and connected with several later Greek words from the same root referring to the ‘thongs’ through which oars passed (perhaps of flaxen rope at this time). [91]

We may conclude, therefore, that the Kinyras of Vn 865 is indeed a shipwright. [92] There being thus no obvious contextual overlap with the Qa series, Nakassis considered the basis for identifying ki-nu-ra in Qa 1301 and Vn 865 as merely “tenuous.” [93] Of course an individual might indeed be involved in two different spheres. [94]

When Kinnaru of Ugarit came to light, the Kinyras(es) of Pylos attracted renewed attention, with several scholars supporting the derivation both of the Pylian PNs and the mythological Kinyras from the root knr. [95] But the real question here has hardly been recognized: what is the precise relationship between the Kinyras of myth and the homonymous Pylian(s)?

C. Baurain rejected the idea of a ‘real’ god Kinnaru as “fort excessif.” [96] Hence, while admitting that the Myc. PN was very probably derived from knr, Baurain denied that the mythological Kinyras grew from a hieratic musical seed. That ki-nu-ra appeared in the priestly Qa series was rendered insignificant, he argued, by Kinyras the shipwright (“une mise en garde contre des implications religieuses trop précises”). [97] On this view, the Kinyras of myth, while his name did indeed mean ‘kinýra-man’, simply possessed an ordinary Mycenaean PN like many other heroes. [98] Consequently, his priestly dimension would have to be a special Cypriot innovation, specifically of Paphos and the Kinyrad dynasty. But this idea is now fatally undermined by the extra-Paphian evidence for hieratic lyre-culture on the island and its culmination in “Our Kenyristḗs Apollo.”

One might try to compromise with Baurain by admitting that a person named (or entitled) ‘kinýra-man’ would find a natural place among the Pylian priests without any necessary reference to the mythological Kinyras; the latter would then bear this same, ‘ordinary’ Mycenaean PN because it best described the divine, lyre-playing figure whom Aegean Greeks found ensconced on the island in (and before) the twelfth century. And what better place than Cyprus for a Mycenaean usage to persist? Such a survival would be all the more probable if kinýra was itself modeled on an originally Cypriot adaptation of a Canaanite form, as I have argued. [99] But then the specter of the Kinyras would rise again, given the early attestation of Kinnaru at Ugarit.

Moreover, while Baurain would use the shipbuilding Kinyras to discredit a connection between the mythical Kinyras and ki-nu-ra in Qa 1301, we must remember that the Cypriot king was himself associated with maritime matters. As Baurain himself conceded in a footnote, referring to the terracotta fleet, “nous ne pouvons nier que Kinyras est aussi lié à une étrange historie de bateaux.” [100] But this is a serious understatement, for Kinyras’ naval persona was as well developed as the priestly/mantic/musical (see Chapter 13). So Vn 865 cannot be used to eliminate the mythical Kinyras from discussion of the Pylian evidence.

We must therefore seriously consider whether the Pylian Kinyrases have as their namesake the Kinyras—a Divine Lyre who, having acquired secondary, metamusical attributes by the thirteenth century, was lending his name to ordinary mortals (and their children), especially those with appropriate professional interests. This question must be asked whether we are dealing with one or two separate names at Pylos—and for that matter whether the ki-nu-ra of Vn 865 was shipwright or temple-builder, since the latter was yet another role played by Kinyras. [101]

Contemplating this possibility raises further onomastic issues. While theophoric PNs are not especially common in the Mycenaean world, we do find De-wi-jo (< Zeús, gen. Diwós), A-pa-i-ti-jo (< Háphaistos), A-re-i-jo (< Árēs?), and several others. [102] These are typically adjectival constructions, but the quasi-agent formation proposed for Kinyras may be compared with Di-wi-je-u (= Dieús, < Zeús). [103] The attested Mycenaean theophorics are mostly single-stemmed—as would be Kinyras—rather than compounds roughly comparable to the familiar Semitic ‘sentence-names’. In at least three cases (all soldiers), the individual’s profession is relevant to the god whose name he bears (Zeus, Enyalios). [104]

So a theophoric etymology for Kinyras is paralleled from within Linear B. Yet if the underlying divine-element (knr) was indeed of Cypriot, and ultimately Syro-Levantine, extraction, we should not restrict our view to Mycenaean onomastics. After all, non-Greek PNs, born by resident foreigners or fashionable in the Aegean, are not uncommon in Linear B, and clearly attest the multicultural nature of the Mycenaean world. [105] These include, besides the pre-Greek Aegean PNs one expects, a fair few paralleled in Hittite sources and by Hurrian PNs from Alalakh. [106] The latter are especially suggestive: besides the aforementioned PN with the root kin(n)ar- from that city, a number of resident Alashiyans are attested at Alalakh in the eighteenth and fifteenth centuries. [107] One Alashiyan from Alalakh bears the single-stem name A-la-ši-ia, confirming that Mycenaean A-ra-si-jo is a genuine Cyprocentric PN, not just a Hellenocentric ethnic nickname. [108] Hurrian PNs are the most numerous after Semitic in the diverse Alashiyan onomasticon (compiled from, besides the Alalakh texts, Ugaritian, Hittite, and Egyptian sources). [109] Nor is it unlikely on general grounds that at least some Cypro-Minoan tablets record a Hurrian dialect. [110]

The Alashiyan PNs equally include Anatolian, Egyptian, and other unidentifiable (presumably indigenous) specimens. Despite divergent interpretations of specific PNs and the often loose relationship between a PN’s linguistic affiliation and the ethnic identity of its bearer, Alashiya was clearly as multicultural as Ugarit and Alalakh, and of a quite similar mixture. [111] The proposed LBA derivation of kinýra/Kinyras from (ultimately) a Canaanite dialect finds circumstantial support in six or seven Canaanite PNs, both single-stemmed and theophoric-sentences, in the Alashiya texts. There was also one or more Canaanite-speakers among the scribes who produced those from Amarna, [112] while the cuneiform sign-shapes in the new Alashiya texts from Ugarit seem to show Tyrian influence. [113]

We must also cast a glance at Ugarit. Canaanite PNs are found here too, north of the Canaanite dialect zone proper. [114] Alashiyans resident in Ugarit are also well attested. [115] Nor is the use of occupational designations (naturally single-stemmed) uncommon in Ugaritic PNs; especially suggestive are the PNs ‘Singer’ (šr) and ‘Priest’ (khn, kmry). [116] Also important are several theophoric PNs incorporating the craftsman god Kothar, one of which is professionally relevant (kšrmlk, ‘Kothar-is-king’, a silversmith). [117] The simple form is also attested as a PN, from an Amorite king Kwšr in the Execration Texts (ca. 1900) of MK Egypt, to ‘Khauthar’ in a third-century CE tombstone from Hama, an Aramaean area of Syria. [118] The special significance of these Kothar-PNs will emerge in the next chapter, when we study that god’s coalescence with Kinyras.

The foregoing catalogue, though somewhat scattershot, shows that a PN like ‘Kinyras’, in some pre-Greek prototype, is perfectly conceivable on pre-Greek Cyprus.

I find, therefore, that the Kinyras(es) of Pylos are best explained on the hypothesis that Kinyras already existed as a complex, metamusical figure on Cyprus by the thirteenth century. I have already sketched the cultural conditions under which such an expansion of a Divine Lyre’s powers could have occurred, and suggested that just such a development underlies the contemporary Kourion stands, where monarchy, music, metals, and other elite symbols are brought together in coherent, ‘significant’ compositions. [119] These conclusions about the Mycenaean evidence are not so alarming when it is seen within a larger Cypro-Near Eastern framework. After all, Kinnaru probably had a substantial prehistory to find himself in the pantheon of thirteenth-century Ugarit. Despite the deep antiquity these hypotheses entail, the chronological pieces of the puzzle actually fit together very well.