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)

CRETAN PHILISTINES AND THE PHOENICIAN ALPHABET 91

which in its angularized simplification closely approaches the shape of the nun, goes
back by a regular transition to a conventionalized pictorial rendering of a snake.

Even De Rough's ingenuity failed to discover a hieratic prototype for 'ain— 'Eye'
the Greek o—which is the common Semitic name for 'eye'. There are two main sisn~■"»•
types of this letter, the Tyrian, which forms a vesica piscis, and the Sidonian, which
is circular. The one represents the outline of the whole eye, the other the pupil;
and it is obvious that they are derived from a prototype giving both the outline
and the pupil. Such an original form is, in fact, reproduced in a common Cretan
pictograph in its purest shape, representing the whole eye with both its pupil and
lashes. In the linear Classes A and B the outline of the whole is preserved, with
only traces of the details, the form thus approaching the simple vesica piscis of the
Tyrian class. Some interesting transitional forms will be found to be supplied from
a Lycian source.1 On the other hand, there is a very early Minoan linearization
of the eye as a circle with or without a central dot.

It seems probable that the older and more perfect form of the Phoenician 'Mouth'
'mouth' sign pe should probably be recognized in the South Semitic type of the Slgn—* ■
letter. This character, resembling a vesica piscis, though set on end, evidently
starts, as its name implies, from a pictorial delineation of the human mouth.2 This'
also occurs among the Cretan hieroglyphs.

The ' head ' sign risk or rdsk—the Greek ro—finds a close analogy in a common
character of the linear Class B; and iau, which signifies a ' mark', is found both in
the linear and the pictographic series. In the latter case it is also used as a simple
mark indicative of the beginning of a sign-group.

It looks as if the complementary letters <p, X, and T of the Greek alphabet The com-
had been directly taken over from some South Semitic source. Though added to Greek" ary
the letters directly derived from the Phoenician series, their adoption by the Ionian letters and
Greeks goes back, perhaps, to an equal antiquity with that of the borrowed Phoenician Semitic"
forms. It may be regarded as certain that they were in use at Chalcis and Miletos '•
before the end of the eighth century b.c.,3 and as the respective East and West

' See above, Table II, p. 66, Nos. 8, 9. Milesian Mother City.

* It is, of course, possible that the North Semitic form The Safa inscriptions are themselves perhaps too late,

may, as has been suggested, be intended to represent the and their locality too inaccessible, for them to be regarded

mouth in profile. as the source of these complementary Greek letters. The

5 See Kirchhoff, Einleitung, &c, p. 172. They appear analogies with the fl), V, and *f* are to be found in the

already in the Chalcidian colonies founded before that earlier Sabaeo-Minoan alphabet, and it seems probable

date. They must have been known quite as early at that if the Ionians adopted the South Semitic letter-forms

Miletos (Larfeld, Hondbitch der gritehisehtn Epigraphik, they took them from some maritime centre, such as Gaza,

1907, i. p. 376), and in the Milesian numeral alphabet, in intimate commercial relations with Arabia. Deecke's

dating at ieast as early as 700 b.c, they already appear in attempt to derive $, x< and >jr from the Cypriote forms for

fixed order before the Omega, the introduction of which /in, khu, and sefsee his article 'Alphabet' in Baumeister,

they probably precede. It is also to be observed that all Dmkmaler d. klass. Alterthums, i.p. 51) cannot be regarded

the complementary signs, including the Omega, are found as successful, dmega, however, has an independent

in the early inscriptions of Naukratis dating from about history, and Prof. E. Gardner's comparison with forms

the middle of the seventh century (E. Gardner, ' The of the Cypriote ko or go—an aspirated o—is certainly

Early Ionic Alphabet,' /. H. S., vii. pp. 220 seqq.). This suggestive {/. H. S., vii. p. 233).
is a further proof of their still earlier existence in the