26 



ARCHAEOLOGY. 



Cephala to which Mr. Stillmann had directed at- 

 tention, but was still not able to excavate. Finally, 

 ;ifter a succession of difficulties, including a law- 

 suit, a forced sale of the property, and other com- 

 plications. Mr. Evans became sole owner of the 

 site and began excavations early in 1900. A build- 

 ing was revealed, which there seemed every reason 

 to believe was a palace of the Mycenaean kings. 

 Nothing was found that could be regarded as later 

 1 han the fourteenth century n. c. The structure 

 appeared to be of unsurpassed magnitude and 

 magnificence, with fresco paintings and stone 

 carvings of which the author declared, in the first 

 letter announcing his discovery, " the remains ex- 

 celled any tiling of the time yet found in Greece," 

 the royal bathroom displaying a luxury not found 

 in Mycense itself. Of even greater interest than 

 this palace were the clay tablets bearing the char- 

 acters which had already attracted attention. 

 They were in shape generally more elongated than 

 the cuneiform tablets of Babylon, but otherwise 

 analogous to them, except that the records they 

 bore were in Mycenaean script. These tablets were 

 oblong slips of hand-molded clay, flat on the en- 

 graven side, with almost adzelike ends, but thick- 

 ening toward the center of the back, and of lengths 

 varying from about 2 inches to 7 inches, and 

 in breadth from half an inch to 3 inches. Lines 

 were ruled at intervals for the convenience of 

 the scribes, one of the largest of the tablets 

 showing 18 such lines a certain proportion of 

 them left blank. The most usual type consisted 

 of two lines, or even a single line, of inscription, 

 written from left to right lengthwise along the 

 tablet, but some of the broader tablets had the 

 lines arranged across the narrower diameter. The 

 majority of the tablets were broken in consequence 

 of a great conflagration they had passed through, 

 but it may be possible to reconstitute some of 

 them. The tablets had been deposited in several 

 chambers and corridors. Some of them were in a 

 clay chest shaped like a bath, some in wooden 

 coffers, the remains of some of which have come 

 to light, with the bronze hinges, and even the 

 clay seals with which they were secured, still bear- 

 ing impressions of Mycenaean gems. Fresh mate- 

 rial of this sort was accumulating daily. Some 

 of the signs in the inscriptions are identical with 

 later forms, others suggest forms of the Cypriote 

 syllabary, as well as Lycian and Carian charac- 

 ters ; others are ideographic, and others are " un- 

 questionably numerals." Some of the tablets have 

 indorsements and additional inscriptions on the 

 back. " These palace archives of Cnossus," says 

 Mr. Evans, " not only prove to demonstration that 

 a system of writing existed on the soil of Greece 

 at least centuries before the introduction of the 

 I'hu-nician alphabet, but they show that already 

 at that remote date this indigenous system had 

 attained a most elaborate development. These in- 

 scriptions are the work of practiced scribes, follow- 

 ing conventional methods and arrangements which 

 point to long traditional usage. Yet this develop- 

 ment has been arrived at on independent lines: it 

 is neither r.ahylonian nor Kgyptian, neither Hit- 

 tite nor I'luenician ; it is the work on Cretan soil 

 of an /Kgean people. It is the fitting product of 

 a country to which all later Greek tradition looked 

 back as having supplied the earliest model of civi- 

 lized legislation. There is, indeed, an air of legal 

 nicety about these documents themselves the ef- 

 fect of which i enhanced by an interesting par- 

 ticular as to the method by which they were orig- 

 inally secured. Tt was no't thought sufficient for 

 the official concerned with their safe-keeping sim- 

 ply to impress with his signet gem the clay seals 

 that made sure the coffers containing the tablets 



while the clay was still moist, but the impression 

 of the intaglio itself and the back of the seal were 

 in several cases signed and countersigned with in- 

 cised characters in the same Mycenaean script." 

 These inscriptions were written in a linear and 

 highly developed script, with only occasional re- 

 sort to more pictorial forms, while the previous 

 studies of the seal stones had made it clear that 

 there had existed in the island, from a very remote 

 period, another form of writing, of a pictographic 

 kind, and in its general aspect recalling Egyptian 

 hieroglyphics, but in which " the methodical re- 

 currence of groups of signs in the same collection 

 sufficiently showed that one had here to do with 

 a kind of writing and not with a mere aimless 

 parody of Egyptian or Hittite forms." On further 

 excavation a deposit of clay tablets was found of 

 different forms from those exhibiting the linear 

 script, and inscribed with a hieroglyphic type of 

 writing identical with that of the" prism* seals. 

 These tablets were of a variety of shapes. To- 

 gether with the pictographic, they contained a 

 proportion of signs as purely linear as any of the 

 other category; and it was remarked that the 

 written forms assumed in many cases a much more 

 alphabetic character than their glyptic equivalents 

 as seen on the seal stones, showing " a distinct step 

 in the evolution of writing out of mere pictorial 

 signs." Two examples of this sort are illustrated 

 in the accompanying figures, the first of which is 

 taken from a four-sided bar and the second from 

 a three-sided crescent " label." For reasons which 

 he sets forth, Mr. Evans believes that these picto- 

 graph characters and those upon the seal stones 

 were the work of the Eteocretan stock, or the race 

 which preceded the Mycenaean. 



PICTOOBAPHIO AND LINEAR SIGNS ON A FOUR-SIDED BAR, 

 CNOSSUS, CRETE. 



The pictorial illustrations, Mr. Evans adds, 

 which not infrequently accompanied the linear in- 

 scriptions enabled him in many ruses to learn the 

 purport of the clay documents. They thus were 

 seen to refer to the royal stores and arsenals, and 

 showed a decimal system of numbers akin to the 



