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)

Evidences
of suc-
cessive
types of
script in
Knossian
archives.

Antiquity
and dura-
tion of Art
of Writing
at Knossos.

t8 scripta minoa

it, which I at once recognized as presenting the same form oflinear script as that of
the fragmentary clay slip seen in 1895. The work of the succeeding days produced
a series of these from what proved afterwards to be the second West Magazine, and on
April 5 there was found in a small chamber near the South Propylaeum a bath-shaped
vessel of terracotta containing a whole hoard of inscribed tablets, several in a perfect
condition, which referred to various cereals. The tablets were arranged in rows, and
from the charred wood in which they were embedded, it seems probable that their
immediate receptacle had been a wooden box. From this time onwards similar finds
continued at intervals throughout the whole course of the excavations. The written
documents from the Palace of Knossos and its immediate dependencies now amount
to nearly two thousand.

The overwhelming majority of these clay documents, including the first discovered,
presented an advanced type of linear script—referred to in the present work as
Class B—which was in vogue throughout the whole of the concluding period of the
Palace history. But the course of the excavations brought out the fact that the use of
this highly developed form of writing had been in turn preceded in the ' House
of Minos* by two earlier types—one also presenting linear characters, described below
as Class A, the other, still earlier, of conventionalized pictorial aspect, recalling
Egyptian hieroglyphics. The archaeological stratification of the site reveals two dis-
tinct Palace eras, and, on the eastern slope, remains of a still earlier building. Beneath
the most ancient remains of the Age of Palaces there came to light, moreover, layer
after layer illustrating the stages of a still more primitive culture, from the earliest
Neolithic times onwards. We are thus enabled to trace the whole evolution of the
Art of Writing in a manner for which perhaps it is impossible to find an adequate
parallel on any other ancient site. The consecutive phases of Minoan culture covered
by the several stages in the history of the building are seen in each case to have
been the gradual outgrowths of long generations of civilized life. We watch the rise,
the bloom, and decadence of successive schools of art, and the fuller the volume of
our detailed knowledge grows, the greater is the tale of years demanded to explain the
phenomena before us. We shall not err on the side of exaggeration in estimating
the period covered by the successive types of developed script on the Palace site at
Knossos at over a thousand years. It must at the same time be observed that
the latest of the Minoan documents discovered on this site, those namely dating from
the period of decline, when the Palace as a Palace had ceased to exist, are older
by several centuries than the earliest known records of Phoenician writing. The
twelfth century before our era may be regarded as their latest limit.