Incorporating New Evidence

The editors of Liddell and Scott (LSJ), whose final fascicle appeared in 1940, could scarcely have imagined the 1952 decipherment of Linear B and the wealth of information it provided about the Greek language and Mycenaean culture. The Preface to the 1968 Supplement justified the absence of Mycenaean Greek material with the assertion that ‘[t]he scholarly world is at present divided on the validity of the Ventris decipherment’. While it is true that pockets of resistance to the decipherment persisted until surprisingly late, the alleged scholarly division seems overstated for the mid-1960s, when major handbooks like those of Ventris and Chadwick, Vilborg, and Palmer were very much part of mainstream scholarship. However that may be, a decision was finally reached to incorporate Mycenaean Greek forms into the 1996 Revised Supplement. This chapter takes stock of that decision so as to assess some aspects of its implementation in LSJ Supplement, and then considers what this may mean for the treatment of Mycenaean Greek in future editions.