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One tablet, sign by sign

This is HT 13, a clay tablet from Haghia Triada. The tablets are lists: a word, a number, a word, a number, then a total. This is one. Nobody knows what its words mean, apart from ku-ro. Everybody agrees on the numbers.

The object

A small slab of clay, written on while it was soft. Found in the Villa Magazine at Haghia Triada. Heraklion Museum, number 7. Younger gives it to the hand he calls HT Scribe 8. It is a wine list.

Photograph of tablet HT 13
Tablet HT 13, the object. Photograph: lineara.xyz mirror. Published here with the permission of lineara.xyz. Image rights largely Ecole Francaise d'Athenes.

The tracing

A person drew the strokes from the object. Every crop below is cut from this drawing, not from a font.

Tracing of HT 13
Tablet HT 13, the tracing. Sign drawings from SigLA: The Signs of Linear A, a palaeographical database, by Ester Salgarella and Simon Castellan (https://sigla.phis.me/), licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

The signs, one by one

Each crop is one sign, in the order a scribe would read it. The label is the catalogue number and, where scholars agree, the sound. AB77 is read ka, for example. The AB numbers are shared with Linear B, which can be read. That is where the sounds come from, and it is an assumption, not a proof.

  1. Sign AB77 ka, HT 13, position 1 AB77 ka
  2. Sign AB10 u, HT 13, position 2 AB10 u
  3. Sign AB45 de, HT 13, position 3 AB45 de
  4. Sign AB59 ta, HT 13, position 4 AB59 ta
  5. Sign AB131a VIN, HT 13, position 5 AB131a VIN
  6. Sign AB04 te, HT 13, position 6 AB04 te
  7. Sign AB27 re, HT 13, position 7 AB27 re
  8. Sign AB17 za, HT 13, position 8 AB17 za
  9. Sign A707 J, HT 13, position 9 A707 J
  10. Sign AB04 te, HT 13, position 10 AB04 te
  11. Sign AB69 tu, HT 13, position 11 AB69 tu
  12. Sign AB04 te, HT 13, position 12 AB04 te
  13. Sign AB67 ki, HT 13, position 13 AB67 ki
  14. Sign A707 J, HT 13, position 14 A707 J
  15. Sign AB81 ku, HT 13, position 15 AB81 ku
  16. Sign AB79, HT 13, position 16 AB79
  17. Sign AB30 ni FIC, HT 13, position 17 AB30 ni FIC
  18. Sign AB01 da, HT 13, position 18 AB01 da
  19. Sign AB41 si, HT 13, position 19 AB41 si
  20. Sign AB118, HT 13, position 20 AB118
  21. Sign AB28 i, HT 13, position 21 AB28 i
  22. Sign AB51 du, HT 13, position 22 AB51 du
  23. Sign AB24 ne, HT 13, position 23 AB24 ne
  24. Sign AB41 si, HT 13, position 24 AB41 si
  25. Sign AB81 ku, HT 13, position 25 AB81 ku
  26. Sign AB02 ro, HT 13, position 26 AB02 ro
  27. Sign A707 J, HT 13, position 27 A707 J
The signs of HT 13 in reading order, each one cropped from the tracing. The label under each crop is the catalogue number and, where one is agreed, the sound value.

The numbers

Numerals are the easy part. A vertical stroke is one, a horizontal stroke is ten, a circle is a hundred. Add them up. This page adds them up for you:

The numbers of HT 13, line by line
LineWordAmount
Line 1 ka-u-de-ta, (wine), te (the heading) (no amount)
Line 2 re-za 5½ (damaged here)
Line 3 te-tu 56
Line 4 te-ki 27½
Line 5 ku-*79-ni 18
Line 6 da-si-*118 19
Line 7 i-du-ne-si 5
Line 8 ku-ro, the total 130½

Line 8, ku-ro: 5 + 56 + 27 + 18 + 19 + 5 = 130, and the total says 130. The whole numbers balance. Halves: the entries carry two, the total carries one. The clay is damaged in these lines.

½ is the fraction sign J, read as one half.

Show the signs
  1. line 1 ka AB77u AB10de AB45ta AB59AB131a|te AB04|
  2. line 2 re AB27za AB175?J A707?
  3. line 3 te AB04tu AB6956
  4. line 4 te AB04ki AB6727J A707
  5. line 5 ku AB81AB79ni_FIC AB3018
  6. line 6 da AB01si AB41AB11819
  7. line 7 i AB28du AB51ne AB24si AB415
  8. line 8 ku AB81ro AB02130J A707

Each sign by its catalogue number and, where one is agreed, its sound. A question mark is a damaged sign. A bar is a word divider.

The numbers of HT 13, one row for each word and its amount, read from the sign-by-sign text of the record.

The whole numbers balance. The halves do not. Two entries carry a half, on lines 2 and 4, and the total carries one. The likeliest reason is the damage on line 2. That half sits between two broken patches, so it may belong to an amount the clay has lost (our fraction review of 2026-08-14). Younger saw the same gap: by his count the entries make 131, and ku-ro says 130 and a half. A lost sign is our best guess. A guess, not a proof.

The total

The last line starts with two signs read ku and ro. Younger reads ku-ro as "total", after Schoep (2002). In our audit, 10 of 35 ku-ro totals tested in the sign-by-sign text balance exactly, and the other 25 each fail for a reason you can point at. See what is known. Here is the audit's own check for this tablet.

  1. Sign AB81 ku, HT 13, position 25AB81 ku
  2. Sign AB02 ro, HT 13, position 26AB02 ro

line 8 ku AB81ro AB02130J A707

In our ku-ro audit of 13 August 2026, the total on line 8 balances exactly.

The last line of HT 13: the word ku-ro and a number. The check compares that number with the sum of the entries above it, from the 2026-08-13 audit file.

Photograph against tracing

The tracing is one person's reading of the object. Drag the curtain and judge it yourself.

The comparator needs JavaScript. The layers are the photograph, the facsimile and the tracing of HT 13, registered into one frame.
Photograph against tracing for HT 13. Drag the curtain. The layers were registered offline; the browser computes no geometry.

The full record of HT 13

Four more

The same walk for four other objects from Haghia Triada.