DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.805#0103
94 FROM CRETE AND THE PELOPONNESE. [363]
that a similar mixed usage of pictographs and alphabetic forms occurs on
early Sabaean inscriptions. Thus on two Sabaean gravestones a pair of eyes
appear above the inscription.69 In another case a bull's bead, a pictographic
rendering of the personal name Taur, appears at the beginning of the
inscription.60 In Greek archaeology this combined usage of letters and
symbol is curiously illustrated by the signatures of magistrates and officials,
which are often reduplicated in the same way.61
This mixed usage is a clear proof of the overlapping of the two classes
of script with which we are now dealing. Abundant evidence indeed has
been already accumulated that at any rate in the Eastern part of Crete the
pictographic signs continued to be used by a people in other respects under
the full influence of Mycenaean culture.
Again several of the signs that take their place in the pictographic
series are themselves practically linear. Among these may be mentioned
the concentric circles (No. 2d, e), the loop (No. 80), the S and X-shaped forms,
the gate or shutter and some forms of the ' broad arrow.'
This tendency to linearization perceptible in the hieroglyphic series might
by itself suggest the possibility that we had here the prototypes of quasi-
alphabetic forms. I had even, as already observed, set to work to simplify
and reduce to linear shape the pictographic symbols that occurred on the
first seal-stones that came under my notice before I was yet acquainted with
the linear class. More limited as was then my material the results thus
experimentally arrived at led me to the conclusion that the Cretan hieroglyphs
might eventually prove to supply the origin of a system of script closely
approaching the syllabaries used in Cyprus and parts of Anatolia at a later
date.
It was therefore the more satisfactory to find this a priori supposition
confirmed by the subsequent discovery in Crete itself of an independent linear
system of writing containing in several cases forms corresponding to the
simplified versions of the hieroglyphs that I had already worked out.
Of course it is not to be expected that all or even a large proportion of
types represented in any given pictographic or hieroglyphic system should
recur in a series of alphabetic or syllabic characters derived from it. The
pictographic method of writing necessarily involves the use of a very large
number of signs, while on the other hand an alphabet or syllabary can only
be arrived at by a rigorous system of limitation and selection. Out of the
seventy odd ' hieroglyphic ' signs from the Cretan stones—a number which
will no doubt be largely increased by future discoveries—it would not be
reasonable to expect more than a limited set of correspondences with the
linear forms, especially when it is borne in mind that of this linear system
too we have as yet probably little more than a fragment before us.
The correspondences that do occur between the two systems are never-
theless of so striking a kind as to warrant us in believing that there is a real
50 Glaser, Mittlieilungen uber einige cms 60 Op. cit. p. 325.
mcincr Sammhmg stammevde Sdbaische In- 61 See above, p. 273.
sohriftem, &c, pp. 304 and 326.
that a similar mixed usage of pictographs and alphabetic forms occurs on
early Sabaean inscriptions. Thus on two Sabaean gravestones a pair of eyes
appear above the inscription.69 In another case a bull's bead, a pictographic
rendering of the personal name Taur, appears at the beginning of the
inscription.60 In Greek archaeology this combined usage of letters and
symbol is curiously illustrated by the signatures of magistrates and officials,
which are often reduplicated in the same way.61
This mixed usage is a clear proof of the overlapping of the two classes
of script with which we are now dealing. Abundant evidence indeed has
been already accumulated that at any rate in the Eastern part of Crete the
pictographic signs continued to be used by a people in other respects under
the full influence of Mycenaean culture.
Again several of the signs that take their place in the pictographic
series are themselves practically linear. Among these may be mentioned
the concentric circles (No. 2d, e), the loop (No. 80), the S and X-shaped forms,
the gate or shutter and some forms of the ' broad arrow.'
This tendency to linearization perceptible in the hieroglyphic series might
by itself suggest the possibility that we had here the prototypes of quasi-
alphabetic forms. I had even, as already observed, set to work to simplify
and reduce to linear shape the pictographic symbols that occurred on the
first seal-stones that came under my notice before I was yet acquainted with
the linear class. More limited as was then my material the results thus
experimentally arrived at led me to the conclusion that the Cretan hieroglyphs
might eventually prove to supply the origin of a system of script closely
approaching the syllabaries used in Cyprus and parts of Anatolia at a later
date.
It was therefore the more satisfactory to find this a priori supposition
confirmed by the subsequent discovery in Crete itself of an independent linear
system of writing containing in several cases forms corresponding to the
simplified versions of the hieroglyphs that I had already worked out.
Of course it is not to be expected that all or even a large proportion of
types represented in any given pictographic or hieroglyphic system should
recur in a series of alphabetic or syllabic characters derived from it. The
pictographic method of writing necessarily involves the use of a very large
number of signs, while on the other hand an alphabet or syllabary can only
be arrived at by a rigorous system of limitation and selection. Out of the
seventy odd ' hieroglyphic ' signs from the Cretan stones—a number which
will no doubt be largely increased by future discoveries—it would not be
reasonable to expect more than a limited set of correspondences with the
linear forms, especially when it is borne in mind that of this linear system
too we have as yet probably little more than a fragment before us.
The correspondences that do occur between the two systems are never-
theless of so striking a kind as to warrant us in believing that there is a real
50 Glaser, Mittlieilungen uber einige cms 60 Op. cit. p. 325.
mcincr Sammhmg stammevde Sdbaische In- 61 See above, p. 273.
sohriftem, &c, pp. 304 and 326.