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)

The 'Kad-
meia * of
Thebes
and the
Palace of
Orcho-

The

Boeotian
traditions
of Kadmos
as inventor
of the
Alphabet.

SCRIPTA MINOA

of a lioness's head found by the French explorers at Delphi' is of identical fabric
with more than one specimen belonging to the latest Palace Period at Knossos.2
Rooms belonging to an important building, apparently a Palace, including traces of
brilliant wall-paintings, have quite lately been struck on the Kadmeia of Thebes.5
What seem to be the remains of another Palace have been brought to light by
the German explorers at Orchomenos, and the fragments of wall-paintings found
there, both in their decorative motives and their indications of pillar shrines and
the sports of the bull-ring, are identical down to the minutest details with similar
works from Knossos.4 These discoveries show that in the great closing age of
the Cretan Palaces the same craftsmen, or at least those who had worked in the
same school, were indifferently employed in the island centre of the Minoan
civilization and at Delphi and Orchomenos. They are speaking evidences of the
existence, at least during the Second Late Minoan Period, of a Minoan predomin-
ance, not to use a stronger expression, extending North of the Gulf of Corinth.
The correspondence of ' Minos' with the Boeotian ' Minyas'—long since suggested
on philological grounds—receives a striking corroboration from these archaeological
discoveries.

In the Boeotian Palaces we find the same artistic designs and technical pro-
cesses as in the great foundations of Minoan Crete. Is it reasonable, then, to suppose
that this Mainland culture, so identical in other respects, was ignorant of the Art of
Writing ?

In this connexion the old tradition that Kadmos invented letters gains a new
significance. Kadmos, as we now know, is simply the Eponymos of the hill citadel
of Thebes, the Kadmeia, and represents a local name common to the aboriginal
element on both sides of the Aegean." The epithet 4>o»-if, itself, as Fick has shown,
has nothing to do with the Phoenicians. The prehistoric past of Boeotia now
proves not to be Phoenician but Minoan, and no single trace has come to light of
Semitic colonization nor of even a single object of Phoenician import.

It has been already noted above that during the Third Late Minoan Age, which
immediately succeeds that to which the lioness's head of Delphi and the painted stucco
of Orchomenos belong, the centre of gravity of the Minoan world tends to shift to the
Mainland side. The Continental branch at this time begins to react on the culture
of Crete as well as on that of the Aegean islands formerly under Cretan domination.

1 Professor Paul Perdrizet kindly called my attention to
this head.

1 ' Knossos,' Report (1900), B.S.A., vi. p. 31. An illus-
tration is given by Perrot, L'Art dans FAnliquile, viii.
p. ifii, Fig. 87.

s These excavations were due to M. Keramopoulos, who
regards the building as the 'House of Kadmos'. See
Am.Journ. of Arcliaeology, xi, 1907, p. 97.

' H. Bulle, Orcliotnenos (1907): ' I. Die alteren Ansied-
lungsschichten/ pp. 71 seqq., 127,128, and Pis. XXVIII,
XXIX. And cf. Die IVocAe, 1904, Heft 5, pp. 215, 216.
Dr. Bulle, who rightly regards the resemblance with the

Knossian paintings as extraordinarily close, is led to the
belief that the work was executed by Cretan artists. He
does not consider the building at Knossos to represent a
shrine, but his arguments against the religious element in
this and other works of Minoan art have by no means been
borne out by the most recent Cretan discoveries. The
basement of a small shrine like that of the Miniature
Frescoes at Knossos has now been brought to light in
juxtaposition to the earlier shrine of the Goddess with
the Snakes.
• Fick, Vorgrieckische Ortsnameu, pp. 81,84, 12& Kad-