DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1118#0431
MINOAN TRADITIONS IN NORTH SYRIA 78]
flutino- as Fig. 7.60, c, and termed, above, a 'blossom bowl', occurred at
Knossos in the M.M..lll-i stratum near the South-East angle of the
Palace, from which it seems to have intruded itself.1
Persistent Traditions of Minoan Settlement in North Syria: its
Cultural Importance.
A remarkable tradition, moreover, which in spite of its late date is too
full of local lore and too consonant with archaeological records to be lightly
passed over, brings Cretan colonists to the neighbouring height of Kasios,
the ' ancient rock' overlooking the mouth of the Orontes, to which the long
horn of Cyprus directly points. The Byzantine chronographer, John
Malalas of Antioch,2 makes the eponymic representative of the spot, King
Kasos, identify these with Cypriote settlers, while Kasos himself, as son of
Inachos, extends these relations to Mycenaean Greece.
Cuneiform Alphabet of Local Evolution.
The actual settlement of men of Minoan stock on the coastal strip
immediately South of Mount Kasios brought them face to face with a race
of much more ancient literary tradition, whose scribes were already achieving
the first great step in alphabetic progress, the full reaction of which had
to wait however for a somewhat later date.
The Library found on the Tell here contains cuneiform documents, not
only of the usual Babylonian character, but of another class in a Semitic
dialect that may be taken to represent the local Phoenician, a fact of still
more capital importance on the Oriental side. For these latter, besides
including the first literary compositions of that language hitherto known—
among them the poem on the ' Birth of the gracious and beautiful Gods'3 —
has supplied specimens of writing showing the cuneiform script reduced to
Birth-
place of
Alphabet
in cunei-
form
guise.
' SeeT3. ofM., ii, Pt. I, p. 3ro, and Fig. 181.
- Malalas, viii (p. 20 r, ed. Dindorf), aptly
cited in this connexion by Professor Dussaud
(Syria, x (ro,2o), pp. 3or~3). Malalas says
that Seleukos Nikator in founding Antioch
had imitated Kasos by planting Cretan colon-
ists there. Machos was the father of Kasos
according to Slephanus of Byzantium. The
baetylic, sky-fallen shape of Zeus Kasios—of
the Double Axe—would have appealed to
Cretan religious notions.
n Translated by Monsieur Ch. Virolleaud,
Syria, xiv (1933), p. 128 seqq. Another song
is the Poem of Alei'n-Baal which was pub-
lished by M. Virolleaud, op. at., xiii, p.
r 13 seqq.
flutino- as Fig. 7.60, c, and termed, above, a 'blossom bowl', occurred at
Knossos in the M.M..lll-i stratum near the South-East angle of the
Palace, from which it seems to have intruded itself.1
Persistent Traditions of Minoan Settlement in North Syria: its
Cultural Importance.
A remarkable tradition, moreover, which in spite of its late date is too
full of local lore and too consonant with archaeological records to be lightly
passed over, brings Cretan colonists to the neighbouring height of Kasios,
the ' ancient rock' overlooking the mouth of the Orontes, to which the long
horn of Cyprus directly points. The Byzantine chronographer, John
Malalas of Antioch,2 makes the eponymic representative of the spot, King
Kasos, identify these with Cypriote settlers, while Kasos himself, as son of
Inachos, extends these relations to Mycenaean Greece.
Cuneiform Alphabet of Local Evolution.
The actual settlement of men of Minoan stock on the coastal strip
immediately South of Mount Kasios brought them face to face with a race
of much more ancient literary tradition, whose scribes were already achieving
the first great step in alphabetic progress, the full reaction of which had
to wait however for a somewhat later date.
The Library found on the Tell here contains cuneiform documents, not
only of the usual Babylonian character, but of another class in a Semitic
dialect that may be taken to represent the local Phoenician, a fact of still
more capital importance on the Oriental side. For these latter, besides
including the first literary compositions of that language hitherto known—
among them the poem on the ' Birth of the gracious and beautiful Gods'3 —
has supplied specimens of writing showing the cuneiform script reduced to
Birth-
place of
Alphabet
in cunei-
form
guise.
' SeeT3. ofM., ii, Pt. I, p. 3ro, and Fig. 181.
- Malalas, viii (p. 20 r, ed. Dindorf), aptly
cited in this connexion by Professor Dussaud
(Syria, x (ro,2o), pp. 3or~3). Malalas says
that Seleukos Nikator in founding Antioch
had imitated Kasos by planting Cretan colon-
ists there. Machos was the father of Kasos
according to Slephanus of Byzantium. The
baetylic, sky-fallen shape of Zeus Kasios—of
the Double Axe—would have appealed to
Cretan religious notions.
n Translated by Monsieur Ch. Virolleaud,
Syria, xiv (1933), p. 128 seqq. Another song
is the Poem of Alei'n-Baal which was pub-
lished by M. Virolleaud, op. at., xiii, p.
r 13 seqq.