The Linear B tablets from Pylos and Mycenae reveal an administrative system of considerable sophistication underlying the heroic world portrayed in Homer. The gap between the bureaucratic reality and the epic representation is one of the most striking illustrations of how literature transforms history.

Linear B, deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952, proved to be an early form of Greek — a discovery that revolutionized understanding of Greek prehistory by pushing the attestation of the Greek language back by 600 years. The tablets are almost entirely administrative: inventories of goods, lists of personnel and their rations, records of tribute and offerings, land tenure records.

The Pylos tablets are particularly rich because they appear to have been written shortly before the palace's destruction (approximately 1180 BC) and preserve a snapshot of Mycenaean administrative activity in its final phase. Some tablets seem to record emergency military preparations — postings of rowing crews to coastal watch-stations — that may reflect awareness of the approaching threat that destroyed the palace.

The wanax (king) presided over a court of specialized officials: the lawagetas (perhaps a military commander), korete and prokorete (provincial administrators), and a range of craft specialists, priests, and religious officials whose exact functions are sometimes unclear. The redistributive economy documented in the tablets — collection of agricultural surplus and its redistribution to craft workers and officials — matches the model of palace economies that Near Eastern archaeology had already identified.