THE SMELL OF BIG CHEESE : PERFUME PRODUCTION AND THE DIFFERING SPHERES OF INFLUENCE OF HIGH SCRIBES H1 AND H2 AT PYLOS Evangelos Kyriakidis * I t has often been assumed that H1, 1 the most proliic scribe in the Mycenaean administration of Pylos, is also the only high scribe, controling the entire Pylian economy. It has been argued previously, however, that this is not the case, since there are other scribes who do advanced work on parts of the economy which are not administered by H1, such as the leather industry 2 (H31 and H32), commodity *189 (H15), and most prominently bronze-work (H2 and H21), as well as the commodities recorded in the M-series (H2 and H14). 3 H2 is the second most proliic scribe in Pylos and the second in importance when it comes to the number of bureaucratically advanced tablets written by him/her, totalling 28 page-shaped tablets. Indeed the number of page-shaped tablets written by H2 is exceeded only by H1, who has written 54 page-shaped tablets. Although H2 does not seem to be as proliic as H1, (s)he does not seem to be supervised by H1 in any way. H1 specialises mainly in sheep, land tenure, female textile workers and other male workers, lax production and the perfume industry. 4 On the other hand, H2 works mainly on bronze ( Jn and Ja), the Ma and Mn-series (probably some type of textile), precious furniture, possibly in relation to a feast (the Ta series), and beds (Pn30). (S)he is also the author of Fn 187, a payment to various individuals for their services at a 3-day festival, as J. Killen has convincingly argued. 5 Last but not least, s(he) works on the perfume industry. In this paper we shall irst review the main themes of H2’s work, which will provide insights at his administrative role, which contrasts with that of H1. We shall then discuss extensively H2’s work with H1 in the group of tablets recording perfume production. This last tablet series will illuminate the distinct roles of the two scribes, an interpretation which shall be further supported by evidence on the scribes with which the two collaborate, the themes they work on and the parts of the palace they had access to. But let us start with the work of H2 in the Archives Complex (hence AC = rooms 7 and 8). In the AC, H2 is responsible for all but two of the Jn tablets (mainly Room 7), the Ta series (Room 7), the Ma and Mn tablets (Room 8), and two individual page-shaped texts in Room 8 – Pn 30 and Fn 187 (explained below). We will consider each of these series and documents in turn. It suices here to say that the rooms of the AC, as argued by K. Pluta, difer in function. Room 7 was the “active” room in the AC, where tablets came in to be copied, classiied, or corrected, whereas room 8 was the archive room of the AC, where tablets were iled and stored. 6 * University of Kent, Canterbury, e.kyriakidis@kent.ac.uk. 1 The scribal hands identiied in Pylos by Bennett 1947 and later by Palaima 1988 are given numbers preceded by H for Hand when it is a securely identiied scribe, or S for Stylus when the corpus of inscriptions related to this hand-writing style is not suiciently large to securely identify it as a separate individual. In several instances a Hand may include several Styluses. 2 By the word “industry” an “administrative bureau” is implied, a number of scribes and/or administrators working together in the same ield of the economy : see Kyriakidis 1996-1997, passim. 3 Kyriakidis 1996-1997, 207, 220. 4 Kyriakidis 1996-1997, 205-207. 5 Killen 2001, 435-443. It may be that these payments were of the same nature as the disbursements of perfumed oil, recorded by a number of scribes irrespective of their specialization. For more on this, see discussion below. 6 Pluta 1996-1997, 231-250, esp. 247-8 and 249-250.