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
balls from
late Cypro-
Minoan
cemetery
of Enkomi.

SCRIPTA MINOA

Reasons, largely based on the Egyptian evidence, have been given by me
elsewhere1 for concluding that the contents of the graves excavated at Enkomi
or Old Salamis, in which this local Cypro-Minoan Art is already seen in a fully
developed stage, belong in the main to the fourteenth and the first half of the
thirteenth century b.c., in other words, to the end of the Palace Period at Knossos,
and to the ensuing 'Third Late Minoan ' Age.

To this period belong some remarkable relics which show that the settlers
had brought with them not only the artistic traditions of their Aegean homes, but
a form of Minoan script. In connexion with one of the Enkomi tombs were found
three balls of clay incised with linear signs {Fig. 37), which do not as a whole belong
to the ordinary syllabary in use among the later Greek-speaking population of the
island, though, as may be gathered from Table III below, they show a partial con-
formity with it. When the discovery of these characters first came to my knowledge
it was already possible to point out some close resemblances to the Cretan linear

<^^^S^w3^^\

Fig. 37. Inscriptio:

n clay balls from Enkomi.

Inscribed
ring from
Larnaka.

pared with
Cretan.

script.2 But the materials that have since then accumulated, and in particular the
revelation of the existence of the two parallel linear signaries A and B, have supplied
new fixed points of comparison. Besides the clay balls there was discovered in a typical
Cypro-Mycenaean tomb at Larnaka a gold ring, the besil of which is engraved with
characters common alike to the Minoan and the later Cypriote script (Fig. 38).3

The number of Cypro-Minoan characters thus ascertained is fifteen. From
Table III, where they are put together (Fig. 39), it will be seen that ten of these present
an almost absolute conformity with Minoan types of the Linear Classes A and B. In
addition to this No. 5 may easily represent a slightly simplified version of the common
'cup' sign, while No. 9 shows considerable analogy with the equally frequent ' hand'
with three fingers and thumb, especially the variety seen in Class A—except that the
thumb is here rendered upright. The prototypes, moreover, of the remaining three
characters may easily be found in the hieroglyphic Cretan series: No. 6 goes back

1 ' Mycenaean Cyprus as illustrated in the British
Museum Excavations' (Journ. oftheAnlhr. Inst, vol. xxx.
pp. 199 seqq.). Among the early elements of special
chronological value may be mentioned a faience scarab of
Queen Tyi, a silver vase of the Vapheio type, and a gold
inlaid pectoral of about Akhenaten's time. A scarab of
Rameses II's time (c. 1300-1234), found in a tomb at Curium
with vases similar to those of the period of partial occu-
pation at Knossos, suggests the lower limit. (Cf. Petrie,

Trans. R. S. Lit, vol. xix. p. 73.)

1 Excavations in Cyprus, &c, p. 37, Figs. 58, 59, 60; and
cf. my Myc. Cyprus, &c, p. 217.

3 Myc. Cyprus, p. 216 and Fig. 13. The tomb was dis-
covered on the Tekke site in 1898 by Mr. H. B. Walters,
The crux ansaia or ankh sign may be simply a religious
symbol, in which sense it is of such frequent o
on Cypriote coins.