Six sealings from the Northeastern Building at Pylos

Abstract The paper discusses a group of six sealings from the Northeastern Building at Pylos written by scribe 29. Three of these record a single animal (sheep or goat), while a fourth lists WI, almost certainly an oxhide. In addition, five of the six contain the term o-pa, which I have argued elsewhere refers to an obligation to finish the items which accompany the term: putting the finishing touches to chariots, refurbishing armour and weapons, fattening animals for consumption, etc. The question then arises of what the term refers to, not only in the five sealings at Pylos, but also at Thebes on the sealing Wu 76, which records a cow being sent to the capital by one a-e-ri-qo, doubtless for consumption at a state-sponsored banquet, and on the tablet Uq 434, where a-e-ri-qo is again mentioned, here as supplying a single oxhide, possibly the hide of the same cow as is mentioned on the sealing, with the delivery described as u-po-o-pa ‘subject to o-pa’. There is no problem explaining the appearance of o-pa on the sealing: this refers to the fattening of the animal. We might have expected o-pa to have had the same reference on the tablet; but this encounters the difficulty that o-pa always refers elsewhere to the object being finished, whereas the object on the tablet is not an animal but a hide. I suggest that the solution to the problem may be that in the case of livestock the o-pa obligation was a ‘cradle to grave’ one: a responsibility to fatten the live animal and to tan its hide after its slaughter. Finally, I suggest that the appearance of o-pa on the Pylos sealings with both animals and a hide may have the same explanation.