DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.805#0011
2 FROM CRETE AND THE PELOPONNESE. [271]
still find them among savage races, were, in the hands of priestly and official
castes, developed into a more complicated and exact system of writing, by
which however we are enabled in many cases to trace back the original
forms of the object selected. The same development from the simple
pictographic to the hieroglyphic or quasi-alphabetic stage might naturally
have been expected to have taken place in more than one European area
had it not been cut short by the invasion of the fully equipped Phoenician
system of writing.
Even as it is however, it must be allowed that there are strong a priori
reasons for believing that in the Greek lands where civilization put forth its
earliest blossoms on European soil, some such parallel evolution in the art of
writing must have been in the course of working itself out.
For we now know that in the South-Eastern part of our Continent
there existed long before the days of direct Phoenician contact an inde-
pendent form of culture which already as early as the first half of the second
millennium before our era might be regarded as in many respects the
equal contemporary of those of Egypt and Babylonia. In view of the
extraordinary degree of artistic and mechanical development reached by
the representatives of what is now conveniently known as the Mycenaean
civilization—at least as early, approximately speaking, as the seventeenth
century, B.C.—and the wide ramifications of their commerce, is it con-
ceivable, it may be asked, that in the essential matter of writing they
were so far behind their rivals on the Southern and Eastern shores of the
Mediterranean ?
There is moreover a further consideration which tends to make the
absence of any system of writing among the Mycenaean peoples still more
improbable. At the dawn of history Asia Minor, whether we regard the
predominant elements of its population from the point of view of race or of
culture, may be said to belong to Europe. Its area from the earliest times
of which we have any record was largely in the occupation of the great
Thraco-Phrygian race and its offshoots. Its prehistoric remains, as far as we
know them from Cyprus to the Troad, fit on to those of a large archaeological
area, the continuation of which may be traced over the island stepping-
stones of the Aegean to the mainland of Greece, while in the other direction
kindred forms extend along the Danubian system to reappear amongst the
pile-dwellings of Switzerland and Carniola, the terre-mare of the Po valley
and even in Ligurian caves. But it is on the Eastern borders of this wide
field of primitive culture that recent researches have brought to light the
principal seats of the higher form of early civilization conveniently known as
Hittite. Living in the Syrian and Cappadocian regions in the immediate
proximity of upper Mesopotamia, and almost in the highways as it were of old
Chaldean culture, its representatives yet show independent characteristics and
traditions, the sources of which seem to be drawn from the North or West.
And of these one of the most noteworthy is the possession of an original
system of hieroglyphic writing, the relics of which are scattered from the
banks of the Orontes to the Western shores of Anatolia. At a later date
B 2
still find them among savage races, were, in the hands of priestly and official
castes, developed into a more complicated and exact system of writing, by
which however we are enabled in many cases to trace back the original
forms of the object selected. The same development from the simple
pictographic to the hieroglyphic or quasi-alphabetic stage might naturally
have been expected to have taken place in more than one European area
had it not been cut short by the invasion of the fully equipped Phoenician
system of writing.
Even as it is however, it must be allowed that there are strong a priori
reasons for believing that in the Greek lands where civilization put forth its
earliest blossoms on European soil, some such parallel evolution in the art of
writing must have been in the course of working itself out.
For we now know that in the South-Eastern part of our Continent
there existed long before the days of direct Phoenician contact an inde-
pendent form of culture which already as early as the first half of the second
millennium before our era might be regarded as in many respects the
equal contemporary of those of Egypt and Babylonia. In view of the
extraordinary degree of artistic and mechanical development reached by
the representatives of what is now conveniently known as the Mycenaean
civilization—at least as early, approximately speaking, as the seventeenth
century, B.C.—and the wide ramifications of their commerce, is it con-
ceivable, it may be asked, that in the essential matter of writing they
were so far behind their rivals on the Southern and Eastern shores of the
Mediterranean ?
There is moreover a further consideration which tends to make the
absence of any system of writing among the Mycenaean peoples still more
improbable. At the dawn of history Asia Minor, whether we regard the
predominant elements of its population from the point of view of race or of
culture, may be said to belong to Europe. Its area from the earliest times
of which we have any record was largely in the occupation of the great
Thraco-Phrygian race and its offshoots. Its prehistoric remains, as far as we
know them from Cyprus to the Troad, fit on to those of a large archaeological
area, the continuation of which may be traced over the island stepping-
stones of the Aegean to the mainland of Greece, while in the other direction
kindred forms extend along the Danubian system to reappear amongst the
pile-dwellings of Switzerland and Carniola, the terre-mare of the Po valley
and even in Ligurian caves. But it is on the Eastern borders of this wide
field of primitive culture that recent researches have brought to light the
principal seats of the higher form of early civilization conveniently known as
Hittite. Living in the Syrian and Cappadocian regions in the immediate
proximity of upper Mesopotamia, and almost in the highways as it were of old
Chaldean culture, its representatives yet show independent characteristics and
traditions, the sources of which seem to be drawn from the North or West.
And of these one of the most noteworthy is the possession of an original
system of hieroglyphic writing, the relics of which are scattered from the
banks of the Orontes to the Western shores of Anatolia. At a later date
B 2