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)

ioo SCRrPTA MINOA

derivative form which answers to the Phoenician koph these have been lost. It is,
therefore, specially interesting to find this Minoan 'head' sign in its derivative form
appearing in the Iberic alphabets as an alternative for resh (or rosk), which is
universally acknowledged to mean 'head' and which seems to represent a profile
view of the human head.1

i 12. SURVIVAL OF MINOAN ELEMENTS IN CRETE AND THE
TRADITION OF THE NATIVE SYSTEM OF WRITING

Depopu-
lation of
Crete on
break up

Legendary
expedition
of Minos
to Sicily.

Gradual
transfor-
mation.

Partial
break of
continuity
at Knossos.

Crete, as already observed, was never more densely populated than in the Third
Late Minoan Age. But the break up of the Minoan sea-power and the consequent
loss of the oversea commerce on which large numbers of the inhabitants, must have
depended for their livelihood, would naturally be productive of a great movement of
emigration. Desperate ventures appear to have been undertaken in various directions,
and the Viking descents on the Nile-mouths, in which elements of the Cretan popula-
tion seem to have taken part in company with Akaiuasha and others, may have been
mainly the result of bitter need at home.

It is likely enough, therefore, that there was a large element of truth in the
Praesian tradition preserved by Herodotos—flattering no doubt to Eteocretan vanity—
which accounted for the Dorian settlement by a great depopulation of the island.
The cause actually assigned to this by the native tradition - was, in the first place,
an abortive expedition of Minos to Sicily, which led, after his death on Sicilian soil, to
a settlement of his followers in Iapygia. It was also partly ascribed to the exhaustive
effects of the Trojan War, and to a famine and plague that succeeded it.

The process by which the greater part of Crete passed into Greek hands is as
yet very imperfectly ascertained. The phenomena with which we have to deal point,
however, to a comparatively slow progressive transformation rather than to any
sudden wholesale displacement of an old form of culture by a new. There was
doubtless a good deal of local dislocation. Thus at Knossos the ' House of Minos'
was now entirely deserted, even by the later squatters within its walls, never again,
so far as it is possible to judge from its overlying strata, to become the scene of human
habitation. Its immediate dependencies, and the adjoining part of the town, were
also for a time left desolate/ and only reoccupied at a time when iron had com-
pletely superseded bronze for cutting purposes, and the Cretan ' Geometrical' style
was already in existence. That there was here a real break is further shown by

1 See above, p. 92, note 3, under R. Knossos, pp. 133 seqq.). At some distance to the West

- Herod, vii. 171. of this a new ' Geometrical' cemetery has now been

3 So, too, the neighbouring cemetery of Zafer Papoura discovered,
ceased to be used at this time {Prehistoric Tombs of