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)

NON-MINOAN CHARACTER OF HIEROGLYPHIC SYSTEM 287

ments of the later invaders of the Delta from the Southern Coasts of Asia Minor and
to the later Philistine region of Canaan. We have seen that the woman's figure with
its heavy broad proportions presents the most absolute antithesis to that of the wasp-
waisted Minoan ladies. In the pagoda-like building there is a resemblance, that can be
hardly accidental, to the traditional Lycian architecture with its projecting beams and
hull-shaped roof. It may be here added that the Asiatic horn bow, so well delineated in
No. 11, though known in Late Minoan times, was by no means the typical early form
in Crete, which was that of the simple European and African class. The recognition in
No. 9 of a kind of tiara affords another suggestive link with the Anatolian side.

In the Phaestos Disk, then, and the hieroglyphic script that it presents, we may Disk pro-
recognize the product of a parallel and closely allied culture existing somewhere on ^^
the South-West coastlands of Asia Minor and not improbably in the Lycian area, allied
The people to whom it belonged may well have spoken a language closely akin to that probably
of Minoan Crete, and the strong religious element that we seem to detect in it points existing in
to the cult of a Mother-Goddess, in her fundamental aspect and salient attributes a sister to]ia- na"
form of the Mother-Goddess of prehistoric Crete.

III. § 5. EVIDENCES OF METRICAL ARRANGEMENT
IN THE INSCRIPTIONS ON THE DISK

It is time to consider certain remarkable phenomena presented by the arrangement The two

of the inscriptions on the Disk. How is it, it may well be asked, that the inscriptions ™SCUP-

tions care-
On both faces of the Disk are so evenly balanced ? That they are not continuous is fully

clearly shown by the dotted line, evidently a mark of termination, that occurs at the a^j""11

end of each. But how was it possible so nicely to calculate the size of the Disk itself justed.

that each face exactly contains the required number of sign-groups, leaving not a

vestige of margin ?

It may be reasonably concluded that the inscriptions as stamped on the Disk were Copied

copied from a prototype showing the exact size of the round of clay required for the t£°™ prot0'

purpose. On the other hand the fact that the inscription on both faces fits into the

same space is accounted for by the circumstance that the number of sign-groups was

approximately the same on either side—thirty-one on Face A and thirty on Face B.

In this very close agreement of the number of the groups on the two sides of the Two equal

Disk we have an indication of an artificial composition of which, as will be shown |"scr,p'-th

below, the distinguishing strokes beneath certain signs afford a further proof. It is concluding

probable, moreover, that the balance in the number of groups on either side is still more word"

even. In conformity with Dr. Pernier the letters A and B have been here attached to

certain faces of the Disk, but there is no proof whatever that this was the real order in

which they stood. On the other hand, too, it is to be noted that the last sign on

Face A—the odd No. 31—is divided from the rest of the inscription on that side by

the dash under its initial sign. It is not improbable, therefore, that this sign-group

represents a terminal word supplementary to the whole of the inscription as contained

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