DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1118#0320
tone
writing
bronze
tablet of
Alkmc-
672 FINDS OF MINOAN SCRIPT IN CLASSICAL TIMES
Was the Discovery of the Minoan Script anticipated by Classical
Antiquity ?
There is solid evidence leading to the conclusion that the first discovery
of the clay archives of Knossos presenting an unknown script goes back to
the days of the Emperor Nero.1
Classical Such a discovery, moreover, does not stand alone. The proofs of the
offadUut currency of the Minoan system of writing at Thebes in Boeotia supplied by
of prehis- the inscribed vases illustrated below -—supplementing the specimen already
known from Orchomenos—throw a new light on a find that Plutarch3
ascribed to Agesilaos of Sparta in the tomb of Alkmene at Haliartos in the
same region. This was a tablet of bronze ' containing many letters which
excited wonder from their appearance of great antiquity. For nothing could
be understood from these, though, on washing the bronze, they came out
clearly—the type of the letters being outlandish and most like the Egyptian'.
At the request of the King of Egypt, to whom a copy was sent by the
priest Khonouphis (who, if they had been Egyptian hieroglyphics, might
well have read them), after much study and hunting out of the various kinds
of characters in 'old books', reported that it belonged to the time of King
Proteus—in other words, to the Age of the Trojan War—and contained a
general exhortation to the Greeks to found a contest in honour of the Muses,
and, setting arms aside, to devote themselves to the peaceful rivalry of letters
and philosophy. With reference to the material and object it will be recalled
that a small bronze tablet, inscribed with two letters of the Linear Class A—
apparently giving the name of the votary whose figure appears beside it—
was brought to light in the Diktaean Cave,1 from the same offertory stratum
as that containing the inscribed Libation Table.
Knossos itself was the scene of a parallel find of the same nature, with
which we are immediately concerned.5 There was a fictitious compilation
attributed to Diktys the Cretan, well known from what purported to be a
Latin translation by a certain L. Septimius of a Greek original and written
Earth- towards the end of the fourth century after our era. This work, the
quake 'Auncient Historie and trewe and syncere Chronicle of the Warres between
reveals ,, . •
tablets at the Grecians and the Trojans', to quote the title of its earliest English
Knossos
1 A fuller account of this and analogous s Dc Genio Socraiis, capp. v, VII: Cf. S.
discoveries going back to Classical times will Reinach, Anthropologic, rgoo, p. 499 seqq.
be found in my Scripta Minoa, vol. i, p. 106 * JJ. ofM., i, pp. 632-4, and Figs. 470, 471.
seqq (§ 13). '• See on this, A. E., Scripta Minoa, i,
• See below, p. 739 seqq. pp. 10S-10.
writing
bronze
tablet of
Alkmc-
672 FINDS OF MINOAN SCRIPT IN CLASSICAL TIMES
Was the Discovery of the Minoan Script anticipated by Classical
Antiquity ?
There is solid evidence leading to the conclusion that the first discovery
of the clay archives of Knossos presenting an unknown script goes back to
the days of the Emperor Nero.1
Classical Such a discovery, moreover, does not stand alone. The proofs of the
offadUut currency of the Minoan system of writing at Thebes in Boeotia supplied by
of prehis- the inscribed vases illustrated below -—supplementing the specimen already
known from Orchomenos—throw a new light on a find that Plutarch3
ascribed to Agesilaos of Sparta in the tomb of Alkmene at Haliartos in the
same region. This was a tablet of bronze ' containing many letters which
excited wonder from their appearance of great antiquity. For nothing could
be understood from these, though, on washing the bronze, they came out
clearly—the type of the letters being outlandish and most like the Egyptian'.
At the request of the King of Egypt, to whom a copy was sent by the
priest Khonouphis (who, if they had been Egyptian hieroglyphics, might
well have read them), after much study and hunting out of the various kinds
of characters in 'old books', reported that it belonged to the time of King
Proteus—in other words, to the Age of the Trojan War—and contained a
general exhortation to the Greeks to found a contest in honour of the Muses,
and, setting arms aside, to devote themselves to the peaceful rivalry of letters
and philosophy. With reference to the material and object it will be recalled
that a small bronze tablet, inscribed with two letters of the Linear Class A—
apparently giving the name of the votary whose figure appears beside it—
was brought to light in the Diktaean Cave,1 from the same offertory stratum
as that containing the inscribed Libation Table.
Knossos itself was the scene of a parallel find of the same nature, with
which we are immediately concerned.5 There was a fictitious compilation
attributed to Diktys the Cretan, well known from what purported to be a
Latin translation by a certain L. Septimius of a Greek original and written
Earth- towards the end of the fourth century after our era. This work, the
quake 'Auncient Historie and trewe and syncere Chronicle of the Warres between
reveals ,, . •
tablets at the Grecians and the Trojans', to quote the title of its earliest English
Knossos
1 A fuller account of this and analogous s Dc Genio Socraiis, capp. v, VII: Cf. S.
discoveries going back to Classical times will Reinach, Anthropologic, rgoo, p. 499 seqq.
be found in my Scripta Minoa, vol. i, p. 106 * JJ. ofM., i, pp. 632-4, and Figs. 470, 471.
seqq (§ 13). '• See on this, A. E., Scripta Minoa, i,
• See below, p. 739 seqq. pp. 10S-10.