From da-mo to kome

Abstract

The evidences of the Linear B land tenure tablets allow us to assume with certainty that the economic basis of the Mycenaean kingdoms was a kind of village community, and that the structure of this community way characterized with the combination of the two categories of land tenure (ki-ti-me-na and ke-ka-me-na holdings). From the view point of the world history, therefore, this characteristic form of the Mycenaean community is supposed to have been an intermediate form between the primitive or Asiatic community and the prototype (kome) of the classical polis-community. Considering the Homeric concept of equality of right of the brothers in a family (Il. 15. 174-217; 12. 421-3; Od. 14. 207-210), the rule of the members of a community over the temenos-holdings (Il. 6. 194-5; 9. 574-5; 12. 313-4; 20. 184-6; Od. 2. 335-6), and the beginning of dissolution of the Mycenaean family which is suggested by three Pylos tablets (En 659. 1-6; Eo 444; Eo 224), we may infer that the structure of the Mycenaean community was transformed during the dark age into the kome in which the kleros-holdings of the members of the community were dominant. The Mycenaean community was, therefore, not only an intermediate form but also a transitional form from the primitive to the classical community. This can be, I believe, a working hypothesis of the future study of the early Greek society.