THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
which, according to the ancient fashion, 
stood in the place of locks for the cof- 
fers containing the tablets were ren- 
dered inviolable by the attachment of 
clay seals, impressed with the finely en- 
graved signets, the types of which rep- 
resented a great variety of subjects, such 
as ships, chariots, religious scenes, lions, 
bulls, and other animals. But — as if 
this precaution was not in itself consid- 
ered sufficient — while the clay was still 
wet the face of the seal was counter- 
marked by a controlling official and the 
back countersigned and endorsed by an 
inscription in the same Mycenaean script 
as that inscribed on the tablets them- 
selves." — Dr. A. J. Evans. 
the; table;ts wm^ PRESERViiD BY the; 
GRKAT Fire; 
- The tablets had been stored in coffers 
of wood, clay, or gypsum. The wooden 
coffers had perished in the great con- 
flagration which destroyed the palace, 
and only their charred fragments re- 
mained ; but the destroying fire had prob- 
ably contributed to the preservation of 
the precious writings within by baking 
more thoroughly the clay of which they 
were composed. 
As. yet, in spite of all efforts, it has 
not proved possible to decipher the in- 
scriptions, for there has so far been no 
such good fortune as the discovery of 
a bilingual inscription to do for Minoan 
what the Rosetta Stone did for Egyptian 
hieroglyphics. But it is not beyond the 
bounds of probability that there may yet 
come to light some treaty between Crete 
and Egypt which may put the key into 
the eager searcher's hands, and enable 
us to read the original records of this 
long- forgotten kingdom. 
Even as it is, the discovery of these 
tablets has altered the whole conception 
of the relative ages of the various early 
beginnings of writing in the Eastern 
Mediterranean area. The Hellenic script 
is seen to have been in all likelihood no 
late-born child of the Phoenician, but to 
have had an ancestor of its own race. 
"Thus," said Dr. Evans, "that great 
early civilization was not dumb, and the 
written records of the Hellenic world 
were carried back some seven centuries 
beyond the date of the first-known his- 
toric writings. 
"But what, perhaps, is even more re- 
markable than this, is that, when we ex- 
amine in detail the linear script of these 
Mycenaean documents, it is impossible 
not to recognize that we have here a 
system of writing, syllabic and perhaps 
partly alphabetic, which stands on a dis- 
tinctly higher level of development than 
the hieroglyphics of Egypt or the cunei- 
form script of contemporary Syria and 
Babylonia. It is not till some five cen- 
turies later that we find the first dated 
examples of Phoenician writing." 
The old Cretan tradition that the Phoe- 
nicians did not invent the letters of the 
alphabet, but only changed those already 
existing, is thus amply justified, for this 
seems to have been precisely what they 
did. The Phoenician mind, if not origi- 
nal, was at all events practical. The 
great stumbling-block in the way of the 
ancient scripts was their complexity — a 
fault which the Minoan users of the 
Linear script Lad evidently already be- 
gun to recognize and endeavor to amend. 
What the Phoenicians did was to carry 
the process of simplification farther still, 
and to appropriate for their own use out 
of the elements already existing around 
them a conveniently short and simple 
system of signs. The position which 
they came to occupy, after the Minoan 
Empire of the sea had passed away, 
as the great carriers and middlemen of 
the Mediterranean, gave their system a 
spread and a utility possible to no other 
S3'stem of writing ; and so the Phoenician 
alphabet [gradually came to take its place 
as the basis of all subsequent scripts. 
Unquestionably it was a great and im- 
portant service which was thus rendered 
by them ; but, all the same, the begin- 
nings of European writing must be traced 
not to them, but to their predecessors, 
the Minoans, and the cla}^ tablets of 
Knossos, Phsestos, and Hagia Triada are 
the lineal ancestors of all the written 
literature of Europe. 
the; king's GA MING-BOARD 
The king's gaming-board was a splen- 
did and convincing proof of the magnifi- 
cence of the appointments of the house 
of Minos in its palmy days. This was a 
