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)

Its signs
fit on to

systems.

Sign-group

from My-
cenae :
evidences
of Main-
land type
of script.

58 SCRIPTA MINOA

It also appears that the numeral signs ,*. I which follow the inscription, answer to those
of the hieroglyphic system' and to the earlier documents of the Linear Class A.
According to these they would signify 31—a sum which, in the later inscriptions of the
Linear Class A and throughout Class B, is indicated by El. This ' Minyan ' type
of linear script, of which a fragment has been here preserved for us, seems then
to have had a considerable independent history. The supposition that the stirrup-
vase itself is a late importation from Minoan Crete is, indeed, contrary to all proba-
bility. Rather we may see in it a remarkable indication that the tradition of the
early diffusion of the Art of Writing in Boeotia by ' Kadmos' possesses a real kernel
of truth.

The fact that the Minyan signs and numerals on the Orchomenos Vase fit on
rather to the earlier systems of the Cretan script than to the Linear Class B which was
in vogue at Knossos during the latest Minoan Age is not the only phenomenon of the
kind on the Mainland side. In a chamber tomb of the Lower Town of Mycenae,
belonging to the borders of the Second or Third Late Minoan Period, Dr. Tsuntas dis-
covered two plain clay amphoras of Egyptianizing form, the
handle of one of which was engraved with a group of three
linear signs- (Fig. 33). Of these the first is common to both
the advanced linear scripts of Crete, but the second is a
characteristic sign of Class A, and the third only slightly
differentiated from another sign exclusively confined to that
system. On the handle of another similar amphora from the Tholos tomb of
Menidi3 (Acharnae), belonging to the same late Period, was engraved the sign +,
identical with the Cypriote pa, which also belongs to the same Cretan system.

We have here, therefore, the evidence, scanty as yet, it is true, but highly sig-
nificant, of the existence at Mycenae itself and perhaps in Attica during the latest
Minoan and Mycenaean period of a system of script which fits on to a Cretan
signary of distinctly earlier date. These inscriptions, therefore, seem to have been
engraved in Greece proper and not to have been imported from any contemporary
Cretan centre.

The remarkable inscription cut on the handle of a stone vessel found by Tsuntas
in the ruins of a house on the Acropolis of Mycenae4 leads to less certain results
(Fig. 34). The first sign p, however, is again characteristic of the Minoan Class A.
The second sign is obviously pictographic in character, representing an instrument.
To these may be added two incised characters (Fig. 35} on a bronze axe hammer
obtained by me from Delphi."' The upper of these signs somewhat resembles a picto-

M

Fig. 33-

1 See below, Part II. ' Tsuntas, MvkJhu, p. 214, Figs. 3, 4; better, Tsuntas

1 Tsuntas, Muxijrai, p. 213, and p. 214, Figs. 1, 2; Cretan and Manatt, Mycenaean Age, p. 269, Figs. 238, 239, from

Pkls., tec., p. 4 [273], Fig. 2 (reproduced in Fig. 33). which Fig. 34 is taken. The stone vessel itself resembles

3 Tsuntas, foe. cit. On another amphora handle from Cretan examples.

the same tomb was incised a character resembling the * Cretan Picts., Sec, p. 11 [280], Fig. 7.

Greek n, which does not occur in the Cretan signaries.