10 



DISCOVERY 



a single icK-a. They next developed into " hiero- 

 glyphs," that is, pictures which h.id acquired by associa- 

 tion a certain use among the people who employed 

 them, but whose original meaning has been lost, and 

 can now only be inferred. In the parallel case of 

 Egyptian hieroglyphics, guessing at such meanings 

 has been shown to be dangerous work, for in many 

 cases the established interpretation is far other than 

 what one might have supposed. 



The first pictographs were evolved in the Early 

 Minoan period (c. 2800-2600 B.C.), and are found on 

 seal stones. It may fairly be assumed, therefore, that 

 in Crete the first method of writing down ideas was by 

 seal impressions. By the Middle Minoan period the seal 

 stones are elongated, and contain a succession of 

 designs, by which a connected chain of ideas could be 

 reproduced. The lines of pictures are sometimes 

 read from left to right, sometimes from right to left, 

 a feature in which, as in others, they resemble the 

 Hittite system of writing. In all cases the document 

 is read in the direction in which the figures it contains 

 are facing. Scripta Minoa (p. 203) gives a typical 

 example of this species : namely, a picture of a ship 

 with two crescent moons, of which the probable 

 meaning was a voyage of two months' duration. 



The next step in the evolution of writing came, no 

 doubt, when phonetic values were assigned to the 

 pictures ; that is, when the sound made in pronounc- 

 ing the name of a given thing or person or action became 

 associated with the conventional ideograph w'hich 

 represented that thing or person or action. When 

 that happened, the same ideograph began to be used 

 in WTiting out other, more complex, words in which 

 the same sound occurred, although in meaning there 

 was no connection with the original pictograph. To 

 take a hypothetical example. Suppose we were in 

 that stage of evolution to-day. We may hav'e formed 

 the habit of denoting an axe by a simple picture of 

 that instrument ; thereafter the sign of an axe would 

 have become a symbol for spelling the same sound 

 whenever it appeared in anj' other word. In spelling 

 the word " accident," for instance, we should start with 

 the picture of an axe. This sort of thing seems to us 

 mere " punning," but it would cause no more difficulty 

 or hesitation to the primitive writer whose attitude 

 we are reconstructing than it would have, say, to Mr. 

 Weller senior, to whom the relation of the written to 

 the spoken word and of words to things was still 

 mysterious. Once begun, the method would be eagerly 

 applied to fresh words. 



The first attempt at " s\-llabics," or the writing out 

 of a word by separate symbols for its separate syllables, 

 was made more intelligible by the use of " determina- 

 tives." By " determinative " is meant a pictographic 

 representation of the idea denoted by the whole 



word. These we find appended to the spelling of a 

 word in order to give the reader at least some inkling 

 as to whether the word denoted mineral, animal, 

 or vegetable. A man's name, for instance, would be || 

 followed by a picture of a man. I' 



The physical strain involved in drawing pictures 

 every time one wanted to write down a word or two 

 would obviously soon become intolerable. It is not 

 therefore to be wondered at that, by the time of the 

 Middle Minoan III period, the hieroglyphics have been 

 simplified into conventional signs which are easier to 

 make. Herein is the germ of what we call " linear " 

 script, that is, of a system of writing based on a set 

 of regular forms, such as our own alphabet. By the 

 Late Minoan I period there w-as a full linear script in 

 use throughout Crete, and it was extended to Melos 

 and Thera. Sir Arthur Evans has entitled this script 

 " Class A " to distinguish it from a parallel form of 

 it which was introduced in the next period (L.M. II)_ 

 and which he calls " Class B." The latter is not a 

 different script, but merely a variation introduced, it 

 is supposed, by a new d3'nasty at Knossos. Most of 

 the Knossian tablets that have come down to us belong 

 to the " Palace period," and are written in the Class B 

 style. 



It was the usual practice to wTite the inscriptions 

 with a stilus, that is a pointed rod of metal, on a clay 

 tablet, and this is the form of most of the inscriptions 

 that have been preserved. It is possible that wooden 

 tablets co\-ered with a layer of wax were also used ; 

 but even if they were, none of them, of course, could 

 have survived the burning of the palaces. More 

 interesting still is the fact that pen and ink must have 

 been used even in those remote times. This fact is 

 established by the discovery of two cups (M.M. Ill) 

 which are inscribed in ink. There can be little doubt, 

 therefore, that long documents and any literature there 

 happened to be were written in ink on papyrus. It 

 is probable that we shall have to make up our minds 

 to the complete loss of all such literature, for Cretan 

 soil lacks the dryness of the Egyptian. If our worst 

 fears prove true, we may experience the final anti- 

 climax of the discovery that the clay tablets, when 

 read, will contain nothing after all but lists and bills 

 and the like. 



It is indeed obvious that many of the tablets con- 

 sist of bills or inventories. Although we cannot yet 

 understand the language of the script, it has been 

 found possible, by studying the clay tablets, to recon- 

 struct the sj-stem of numbers that was used. We 

 have, for instance, what is evidently an inventory of 

 arrows, a record surmounted by a picture of an 

 arrow. From this and other records it is apparent 

 that thousands were expressed by " diamonds. " 

 hundreds bj' slanting lines, tens by circles, units by 



