442 BEPORT— 1901. 



B.C., while a more recently discovered alabaster lid bears the cartouche of 

 the Hyksos King, Khyau. A fine cylinder of lapis lazuli, mounted with 

 gold and engraved with mythological subjects, bears witness to the early 

 connections with Babylonia. 



But of all the discoveries made within the palace of Knossos the most 

 interesting is the accumulated evidence here for the first time afforded that 

 there existed on the soil of prehistoric Hellas a highly developed system 

 of writing some eight centuries earlier than the first written Greek monu- 

 ments, and going back six or seven centuries, even before the first dated 

 record of the Phoenician script. A whole series of deposits of clay tablets 

 has come to light, many of the most important of them during last season's 

 excavations, engraved with a linear script, often accompanied by a decimal 

 system of numeration. 



That these documents largely relate to the royal stores and arsenals is 

 seen by the pictorial illustrations with which the inscriptions are often 

 accompanied. Others, in which signs representing men and women fre- 

 quently recur, probably contain lists of slaves or officials. Others again 

 of a different class may, perhaps, ultimately reveal to us fragments of con- 

 temporary records or the actual formulas of Minoan laws. 



Besides these linear tablets there was discovered a separate deposit of 

 clay bars and labels containing inscriptions of a more hieroglyphic class. 

 Although contemporary with the linear tablets, the script on these is 

 apparently of quite distinct evolution, and in all probability in a different 

 language. The characters answer in fact to the sign-groups already 

 observed in certain seal-stones mostly found in the east of Crete. The 

 hieroglyphs themselves present many parallels to the presumed pictorial 

 prototypes of Phoenician letters. 



Beneath the palace itself and the adjoining houses, and underlying 

 the whole top of the hill, was also a very extensive Neolithic settlement. 

 A detailed account of the exploration of this Neolithic settlement, the 

 first of the kind uncovered in Greece, will be communicated by Mr. Evans 

 to Section H. The relics found, such as the small human figures of clay 

 and marble, supply the antecedent stages, hitherto wanting, to the Early 

 Metal Age Culture of the ^gean Islands. 



In addition to the assistance given toMr. Evans in his work at Knossos, 

 the Cretan Exploration Fund has contributed towards various works of 

 exploration in the island undertaken under the auspices of the British 

 School at Athens. In 1899 the late Director of the School, Mr. D. G. 

 Hogarth, excavated a series of prehistoric houses in the lower town of 

 Knossos. He found in these many remarkable painted vases, showing that 

 a highly developed ceramic art flourished here already before the days of 

 the civilisation known as Mycena?an. A large number of similar houses 

 await exploration. ; in fact, the whole plan of the early town could prob- 

 ably be recovered. Mr. Hogarth further successfully explored the great 

 cave of Zeus on Mount Dicta, discovering remains of a jjrehistoric sanc- 

 tuary and large deposits of votive bronze figures and other objects, among 

 which the double axe, the symbol of the Cretan and Carian Zeus, was 

 specially conspicuous. 



During the present year Mr. R. C. Bosanquet, the new Director of the 

 British School, has carried out an exploitation of the site of Praesos, in 

 the easternmost region of Crete, in historic times the chief civic centre of 

 the original Eteocretan element of the island. The remains on the actual 

 site of Praesos proved to belong to the geometrical and later periods. A 



