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)

20 SCRIPTA MINOA

Hierogly- Immediately behind the landing of the stone steps at the north end of the Long

posit be- Gallery was an elongated chamber which seems to have been intended for a magazine,

longs to Dut which had been shortly afterwards filled in and used as a platform. This earth

c- ' filling has preserved a series of clay documents belonging to the first period of this

stances of part of the building, and presenting inscriptions in the same 'hieroglyphic' or con-

diseovery. ventionalized pictographic script as that of the more advanced specimens of seal-stones
observed from 1893 onwards.' The clay documents were in the form of rectangular

W0EMsm

^'i

Clay ' labels' and bars with hieroglyphic inscriptions

Types of tablets, short bars with three or four sides, scallop-shaped labels perforated for
ments°CU" suspension (Fig. 10), and three-sided sealings with a hole running along their major
found. axis for the string by which chests containing the clay archives themselves or other
possessions had been originally secured. These sealings, in addition to the graffito
inscription usually impressed on their larger faces, exhibited one or more impressions
of contemporary signets with hieroglyphic characters. It was particularly interesting
thus to find the formal, glyptic type of the script side by side with the more careless
and linearized versions of the same signs when hand-written.

1 ' Knossos,' Report, 1900, pp. 59-63. In my original ac-
countof the discovery 1 failed to place these' hieroglyphic'
archives in their true chronological position. I recognized,
indeed, the fact that the conventionalized pictographic or
hieroglyphic script here represented was ' typologically
earlier' than the linear script. But 1 was inclined to regard
the graffiti and sealings as due to the Eteocretan element
in the East of the Island having preserved a more primitive
type of writing to a time when the lords of Knossos used

the more advanced system. The stratigraphic evidence
that came out later showed that there was no warrant for
this view. I had been misled by certain details in the
decorative elements of the early prism-seals which had
induced me to bring them into direct relation with later
' Mycenaean' art. I had also been led to suppose that
these ' hieroglyphic' seal.stones were more exclusively
confined to the easternmost district of Crete than was
really the case.