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)

242

SCRIPTA MINOA

glyphs

directly
related ?

Minoan
hierogly-
phic re-
cords
anterior b
Hittite.

Difference
in general
arrange-

forms of
Hittite

characters.

signs given above. Such, for instance, are the hand holding a curved instrument
(No. 16), the ' crook' (No. 32), the circle containing dots (No. 52), recalling the
Egyptian granary sign, and No. 122 suggesting the ideograph for ' kidneys'.

The deep, underlying community that unquestionably existed between a very early
stratum of the Cretan population and that of Southern Anatolia would naturally lead
us to look on that side for the closest comparisons with Minoan hieroglyphs.

In the catalogue of the Cretan signs given above certain comparisons have been
made with Hittite forms. Many resemblances are of a general kind, and the mere
recurrence of such signs as a human hand, a goat's or ox's or ass's head, the ' moun-
tains' sign, an arrow or a conventional flower, need have nothing more than a general
anthropological significance.

It must also be borne in mind that the chronological discrepancy seems to be
considerable. The Hittite inscriptions, so far as they are known, belong to a distinctly
later date than the Cretan hieroglyphic system. The full development of the latter
took place during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Egyptian Dynasties, and the usage of
this quasi-pictorial form of script in Crete seems hardly to have survived the Middle
Empire. We have seen that in the stratum which at Knossos marks the catastrophe of
the Middle Minoan Palace, and which has been roughly dated, above, about 1600 B.C.,1
the hieroglyphic script had already been succeeded by the advanced linear of Class A
But the first manifestations of the Hittite power on the Syrian borders, in the reign of
Thothmes III, lie well within the limits of the New Empire in Egypt and of the Late
Minoan Period in Crete, where by that time the linear script of Class B was already
well established. The Egyptian records tend to show that the high tide of the Hittite
dominion belongs rather to the Nineteenth Dynasty and to the age of Rameses II
(c. 1300 b. a), when Qadesh on the Orontes had become one of their principal strong-
holds. It is unquestionable, moreover, that many of the Hittite inscriptions come down
to a considerably later date than this.

Regarded as a whole the .Hittite characters are of more complicated form than the
Minoan hieroglyphs, and their arrangement is less simple. It is also to be observed
that the later and more linearized class, such as is illustrated, for example, by the seals
from Kuyunjik2 or the stone bowl from Babylon,3 present very few obvious resem-
blances to the linearized types of the Cretan hieroglyphic script.

Among the more striking parallels that have been noted above between the
Cretan and Hittite series are the wolf's head with protruding tongue (No. 73), the
ass's head (No. 68), the 'fleur-de-lis' (No. 90), the plant sign in the form of a Y, and
the possibly floral sign, No. 127.

A certain parallelism is also to be noted between some of the metal seals of the
Hittite class and the Cretan seals of the ' signet' class. It is true that the distinctive
Hittite form, like that from Bor,4 has the lower plate or matrix of the seal attached

1 See p. 31.

1 Wright, Empire oj the Hiilites, PI. XVIII. 1-8-

s Op. tit., PI. XXV {Proc. Sac. Bibl. Arch., May,)