[2] Using Near Eastern cylinder seals associated with the finds, the editors of the published corpus of the whole archive now date the destruction of the Kadmeion, the Mycenaean palace complex at Thebes, and thus the writing of the tablets, some of which were still damp when they were unintentionally fired, to shortly after 1225 BC.
[3] A substantial additional portion, some 250 tablets, amounting roughly to 5% of the entire Mycenaean corpus from all sites, was discovered in Pelopidou Street and the "Arsenal" by Vassilis L. Aravantinos, the current archaeological superintendent of Thebes, from 1993 to 1995, in a rescue excavation.
The tablets contain a number of important terms previously unattested in Linear B, such as ra-ke-da-mi-ni-jo /Lakedaimnijos/ "a man from Lacedaemonia (Sparta)", or ma-ka, which some want to interpret as /Mā Gā/ "Mother Gaia" (a goddess still revered in Thebes in the 5th century BC, as reported, for example, in Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes); however, this is implausible, because ma-ka is a single word, and there are no examples in ca.
Vassilis L. Aravantinos, Louis Godart and Anna Sacconi read the tablets to indicate cult activity dedicated to Demeter, Zeus protector of crops, and to Kore, and they speculate that the roots of the Eleusinian Mysteries can be traced back to Mycenaean Thebes.
[7] Thomas G. Palaima, however, has criticized their suggestions as "subject to very dubious interpretations" and "highly suspect on linguistic and exegetical grounds".
[citation needed] Palaima attaches importance to one tablet (Uo 121) as evidence of linking sacrificial animals with foodstuffs at the end of LHIIIB.
79–110) specifically concludes (p. 103) that "the fact that ma-ka, o-po-re-i, and ko-wa never all occur together, and that it requires a special hypothesis to explain this fact, combined with what I believe are the continuing difficulties with explaining o-po-re-i as a theonym /Opo:rehi/, make me reluctant for the present to accept the ma-ka = Ma:i Ga:i [i.e., Mother Earth] equation".