Evans, Arthur J.: Scripta minoa: the written documents of minoan Crete with special reference to the archives of Knossos (Band 1): The hieroglyphic and primitive linear classes (Oxford, 1909)

Inscribed

whorl from
. deposit of
H agios
Onuphrios.

Primitive
picto-
graphic
bead-seals,

glyphic
' signets .
Early
graffiti on
vases in
advanced

Script.

12 SCRIPTA M1NOA

already existed at a time when the 'conventionalized pictographic' or hieroglyphic
Cretan system had not yet been developed.

The most remarkable of these that came under my notice at the time of these
preliminary explorations was a steatite whorl found, together with a clay cylinder
presenting linear figures, in a very early deposit at Hagios Onuphrios1 near the site of
Pbaestos, a detailed description of which, together with other examples, will be
given below.2 Recent discoveries have left little doubt that the deposit of Hagios
Onuphrios that contained these objects represented the debris of a primitive bee-
hive tomb or ossuary of a class of which examples have now been found by
Dr. Halbherr at Hagia Triada and by Dr. Xanthudides at Kumasanear Gortyna,
in the same Cretan region. Here it may be
sufficient to say that these early ossuaries contain
ivory bead-seals and other objects attesting the in-
fluence of Sixth-Dynasty Egypt, and that, in Cretan
terms, they go back in the main to the Second or
Third divisions of the Early Minoan Age. Accord-
ing to the lowest chronological scheme advanced
by any Egyptologist this would take back the
date of the primitive linear seals found in these
deposits to the middle of the third millennium before
our era.

These early ossuaries have also been found' to
contain examples of a class of three-sided bead-seals of
steatite engraved with figures of a primitive picto-
graphic kind (see Fig. 5, a, b, c3}, which supply the
immediate antecedent stage to a similar class of
seals, generally executed in hard stone, exhibiting the

developed hieroglyphic script. A series of these pictographic prism-seals will be found
collected in my earlier works.

Further investigations greatly added to the number of seals of the true 'hiero-
glyphic' class, including a type curiously resembling a modern signet. Moreover,
certain groups of graffito signs found on early vases already give indications of the
existence of a more advanced class of linear script in which the characters seemed
to have partially advanced beyond the purely ideographic stage and to have attained
at least a syllabic value. The example from Prodromos Botsano * shown in Fig. 6 is
of special interest, since similar vessels, one with remains of graffito characters, have
been lately found by Dr. Xanthudides on a house floor at Chamaezi in Eastern Crete,'

1 See my Supplement to Cretan Pklographs, pp. 105 Crete); b from p. 75 [344], Fig. 69 (Crete, Berlin

seqq. (Quaritch, 1895). Museum : Cat. No. 62, pale green steatite); c, p. 75,

* See Part II, § 1, Primitive Linear Signs and Figures, Fig. 70 (green steatite, Central Crete; A. J. E.).

P- "7- * Op. tit, p. 10 [279], Fig. 5.

3 These examples are taken from Cretan Ptcts., &c. ° 'E<j>. 'Apx-1906, pp. 118 scqq., and cf. PI. IX. 4.
Fig. 511 is from p. 72 [341], Fig. 64 (Yellow Steatite,