898 bEPoRt— 1900. 



(2) Clay Documents inscribed with Linear Scrijit from the Palace of Knossoi, 



The, great bulk of the clay records discovered in the Palace of Knossos exhibited 

 a linear style of writing fundamentally different from that of the hieroglyphic class, 

 and far ahead of it in development. The tablets are for the most part elongated slips 

 of hand-moulded clay, from two to about seven inches in length, and from half an 

 inch to three inches broad ; others, however, are of a squarer form. They present 

 some distant analogy to the Babylonian tablets, and the inscription is divided by 

 horizontal lines. The letters themselves, however, are of a free, upright European 

 character. Some seventy characters seem to have been in common use, and of them 

 about ten show resemblances to the later Greek and the same number to the 

 Cypriote syllabary. About the same number of forms are also common to the 

 hieroglyphic Cretan aeries. The letters seem to have been for the most part 

 syllabic ; lines of division appear between the words, and the writing runs consist- 

 ently from left to right. The pictorial origin of these letters may be traced in 

 some cases. Thus, we have the human head and neck, the hand, the crossed arms, 

 a bird flying, three or four barred gates, a fence, a high-backed throne, a tree, 

 and a leaf. A certain number are unquestionably ideographic or determinative. 

 Others represent measures and quantities, and are always associated with numerals. 

 A good many of these documents evidently refer to Palace accounts, and a clue 

 to the general purport of the tablet is often supplied by the introduction of a 

 pictorial figure. We thus find chariots and horses, human figures, perhaps slaves, 

 axes, ingots, vases of precious metals, others of clay for various liquids, houses or 

 barns, swine, ears of corn, various kinds of trees and a crocus-like flower, perhaps 

 used for a dye or perfume. 



A decimal system of numeration was employed, somewhat resembling the 

 Egyptian. The value theoretically arrived at by the author for the numerals was 

 proved by an addition sum presented by one tablet, the total of which worked out 

 correctly. 



The ingots depicted on the tablets resembled a Mycenfean copper ingot from 

 Cyprus and others from Sardinia. They were followed by a balance (the Greek 

 talantori) and numerals apparently indicating their value in Mycenaean gold talents. 

 It has thus been possible to make an approximate calculation of their weight. 

 Objects in precious metals represented were identical with some typical tributary 

 ofi"ering8 of the Keft chieftains on the Theban monuments of Thothmes III.'s time, 

 and tended to show that some of these clay documents went back to the first half of 

 the fifteenth century B.C. 



Other tablets, without ciphers or pictorial figures, perhaps refer to contracts or 

 correspondence, such as the contemporary records of Syria and Babylonia. The 

 tablets had been originally contained in coffers of wood, clay, and gypsum, and 

 these in turn secured by clay seals bearing impressions of Mycenaean engraved gems 

 of the finest style. These impressions had in many cases been countermarked 

 with a graffito sign by the controlling official while the clay was still wet, and the 

 back of the clay seal was at the same time endorsed and countersigned with short 

 inscriptions in the same script as that of the tablets. Such legal precautions were 

 quite worthy of the 'Palace of Minos.' 



These discoveries not only carry back the existence of written documents on 

 Greek soil some seven centuries before the first known monuments of Greek writing, 

 and five before the earliest Phoenician, but they afford a wholly new standpoint 

 for investigating the origin of the alphabet. 



The letter-forms borrowed by the Greeks from the Phoenicians seem to have 

 been influenced by these pre-existing yEgean scripts. The common elements existing 

 in the Phoenician alphabet itself are very noteworthy. Out of twenty-two original 

 letters, some twelve present obvious points of comparison with characters belonging 

 to one or other of the two Cretan scripts, and to these at least four may be 

 added as showing possible affinities. In view of such parallelism, which extends 

 to the meaning as well as the form of the signs, De Rough's theory of the 

 derivation of the Phoenician letters from remote hieratic Egyptian prototypes must 

 be definitely abandoned. The Phoenician, and with it the Greek, alphabet must 



