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)

INSCRIPTION POSSIBLY A RELIGIOUS CHAUNT 293

close agreement with the general usage of incising the signs on the clay tablets and
does not of itself afford any presumption of the Disk having served as a stamp.

One conclusion we may at any rate draw from the elaborate character of the Such
engraved punches here used. They could hardly have been made for the two sides S[^rat5i
of the Disk alone. Such beautiful ' type' may well have been executed for the for more
imprinting of a much more extensive literary composition. The Disk at present stands ^omposi^
alone, the inscription on its two faces forming apparently two successive staves of equal tions.
length followed by a concluding word such as ' hallelujah'. There remains, however,
the possibility that the Disk itself was only one of a continuous series containing
further verses of a longer metrical composition, imprinted with stamps from the same
beautiful fount. The Disk would, in this view, represent but a single leaf from the
lost Psalms, perhaps, of an old Anatolian religion. But in that case we should have
expected some visible signs of numeration whereby its place in such a series might
be determined.