XIII.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 5O/ 



of Mr Evans in Crete 1 . Here were found, not one, but two 

 systems, a pictorial or hieroglyphic quite independent of the 

 Egyptian, and a linear or syllabic, the latter, it would seem, 

 developed from the former, while both overlapped each other, 

 i.e. were in concurrent use. Although some of the pictographs 

 resemble the Hittite symbols, they form as a whole an inde- 

 pendent group possibly of Cretan origin, though possibly also 

 belonging to an extensive hieroglyphic system spread over all the 

 ^Egean lands, including Asia Minor and Peloponnesus. Similarly 

 the linear characters, assumed to be degraded Cretan pictographs, 

 show analogies with the Cypriote, Lycian, and other syllabaries, so 

 that we may here also have a syllabic system current in the same 

 region in Mykenaean times, or even earlier. Was it in this script 

 that King Proetus wrote his o-^ara \vypd? If so, 

 should the document be recovered (archaeologists scripts. g< 

 have accustomed us to such surprises) there are 

 prospects that it would not long remain undeciphered. Dr M. 

 Much has already set to work with German patience on the 

 syllabary with not unpromising results' 2 , despite a somewhat 

 doubtful initial assumption. Supposing that the script is in some 

 archaic form of the Greek language, he takes a given symbol to 

 have the sound of the first letter of the corresponding Greek word, 

 on the principle of A for an Apple in children's pictorial alphabets. 

 Thus the character representing an axe would have the phonetic 

 value of A, this being the first letter of the Greek word 'A&'n/, an 

 axe, and so on. Of course everything depends on the language, 

 which, considering some ascertained dates such as that ofSargon I. 

 (3800 B.C.), was more probably Pelasgic or pre-Hellenic. So the 

 matter stands at present. 



It is agreed that the ^-Egean culture was antecedent to a 

 knowledge of iron, and belonged in fact to the Bronze Age, with 

 its roots buried deeply in the preceding Neolithic period. Mr 

 Evans's view 3 is that the arts and industries were developed first 

 in the Archipelago (Crete, Cyprus, etc.), and later on the Greek 

 mainland (Mykenae, Argos, etc.), and in Asia Minor (Lycia, the 



Cretan Pictographs and Pra-Phccnician Script, 1896; and elsewhere. 



2 Globus, LXXI. p. 74 sq. 



3 Paper read at the Meeting of the Brit. Assoc. Liverpool, 1896. 



