DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.805#0112
[372] PEIMITIVE PICTOGRAPHS AND SCBIPT. 103
received account of the invention of letters by the Phoenicians was only
partially true. The Phoenicians had not invented written characters but
had simply 'changed their shapes.'87 In other words they had not done
more than improve on an existing system,—which is precisely what the
evidence now before us seems to suggest. We may further infer from the
Cretan contention recorded by Diodoros that the Cretans themselves claimed
to have been in possession of a system of writing before the introduction of
the Phoenician alphabet. The present discovery on Cretan soil of both a
pictographic and a linear script dating from times anterior to any known
Phoenician contact thus affords an interesting corroboration of this little
regarded record of an ancient writer.
But the evidence of the Cretan seal-stones to which these remarkable
results are mainly due does not end here. In many other ways they
throw a new and welcome light on the early culture of the Hellenic world.
The implements and instruments of Crete in Mycenaean times are here
before us. The elements are present for the reconstruction in one case at
least of a great decorative design. The pursuits of the possessors of the
seals are clearly indicated, the ships that they sailed in, the primitive lyres
to which they sang, the domestic animals that they tended, the game that
they hunted, the duodecimal numeration that they employed. On the
earlier seals we are able to trace the beginnings of this Aegean culture to an
age much more remote than the great days of Mycenae. We see before us
the prototypes of more than one of the characteristic forms of Mycenaean
times. Here are its familiar vases in an earlier stage of development, its
decorative beads approaching more and more the primitive clay button, its
butterflies and polyps and even its mysterious lion-headed beings. Above all
we find abundant proofs of a close contact with the Egypt of the Twelfth
Dynasty, and of the taking over of the spiral system that characterizes
the scarab decoration of that period. We can thus, as already pointed out, trace
to its transported germ the origin of that spiral system which was afterwards
to play such an important part not in Mycenaean art alone but in that of
a vast European zone. On the other side we find at this same early period,
which may be roughly characterized as the middle of the third millennium
before our era, accumulated proof of a close connexion with the Easternmost
Mediterranean shores. The camel, perhaps the ostrich, was already familiar
to the Cretan merchants and the ivory seals of Canaan were hung from their
wrists. Already at that remote period Crete was performing her allotted
part as the stepping-stone of Continents.
87 Diod. Lib. v. e. 74. <paa\ (se. oi KpTJ-res) helleniques en Crete est venue bien heurense-
tovs ioivMas ovk <=| apxns evpelv dAXa tovs meut confirmer ees donnees des aneiens, qui,
riirovs t&v jpanfiaToiv p.*Ta6<uva.i p.6vov. M. J. on le voit, en savaient bien plus sur les temps
P. Sis kindly reminded me of this passage. prehelleniques qu'on ne lecroit communement.'
He adds ' la decouyerte des hieroglyphes pre-
received account of the invention of letters by the Phoenicians was only
partially true. The Phoenicians had not invented written characters but
had simply 'changed their shapes.'87 In other words they had not done
more than improve on an existing system,—which is precisely what the
evidence now before us seems to suggest. We may further infer from the
Cretan contention recorded by Diodoros that the Cretans themselves claimed
to have been in possession of a system of writing before the introduction of
the Phoenician alphabet. The present discovery on Cretan soil of both a
pictographic and a linear script dating from times anterior to any known
Phoenician contact thus affords an interesting corroboration of this little
regarded record of an ancient writer.
But the evidence of the Cretan seal-stones to which these remarkable
results are mainly due does not end here. In many other ways they
throw a new and welcome light on the early culture of the Hellenic world.
The implements and instruments of Crete in Mycenaean times are here
before us. The elements are present for the reconstruction in one case at
least of a great decorative design. The pursuits of the possessors of the
seals are clearly indicated, the ships that they sailed in, the primitive lyres
to which they sang, the domestic animals that they tended, the game that
they hunted, the duodecimal numeration that they employed. On the
earlier seals we are able to trace the beginnings of this Aegean culture to an
age much more remote than the great days of Mycenae. We see before us
the prototypes of more than one of the characteristic forms of Mycenaean
times. Here are its familiar vases in an earlier stage of development, its
decorative beads approaching more and more the primitive clay button, its
butterflies and polyps and even its mysterious lion-headed beings. Above all
we find abundant proofs of a close contact with the Egypt of the Twelfth
Dynasty, and of the taking over of the spiral system that characterizes
the scarab decoration of that period. We can thus, as already pointed out, trace
to its transported germ the origin of that spiral system which was afterwards
to play such an important part not in Mycenaean art alone but in that of
a vast European zone. On the other side we find at this same early period,
which may be roughly characterized as the middle of the third millennium
before our era, accumulated proof of a close connexion with the Easternmost
Mediterranean shores. The camel, perhaps the ostrich, was already familiar
to the Cretan merchants and the ivory seals of Canaan were hung from their
wrists. Already at that remote period Crete was performing her allotted
part as the stepping-stone of Continents.
87 Diod. Lib. v. e. 74. <paa\ (se. oi KpTJ-res) helleniques en Crete est venue bien heurense-
tovs ioivMas ovk <=| apxns evpelv dAXa tovs meut confirmer ees donnees des aneiens, qui,
riirovs t&v jpanfiaToiv p.*Ta6<uva.i p.6vov. M. J. on le voit, en savaient bien plus sur les temps
P. Sis kindly reminded me of this passage. prehelleniques qu'on ne lecroit communement.'
He adds ' la decouyerte des hieroglyphes pre-