Fig. 56.—Incised Characters on Cup (Crete)
Fig. 57.—Characters on Vase (Crete)
Fig. 58.—Signs on
Bronze Axe (Delphi)
During a visit to Greece in 1893, Mr. Evans came across some small stones bearing engraved symbols which appeared to be hieroglyphic in character, approximating in form to Hittite, but having features of their own. They were traced to a Cretan source, and inquiry in Berlin elicited the fact that the Imperial Museum there possessed stones of corresponding character, which also came from Crete. With this and other corroborative evidence in hand, Mr. Evans decided to follow up his inquiries on Cretan soil, and began his investigations there in the spring of 1894. He chose the eastern part of the island as the more likely district for discovery of prehistoric remains, because, up to the dawn of history, it had been occupied by the "Eteocretes," or primitive non-Hellenic folk. At Praesos he obtained some stones inscribed with hieroglyphic or pictorial, and also with linear, or quasi-alphabetic, characters, the preservation of those objects through the vast lapse of time since they were engraved being largely due to their use as charms by the Cretan women, who wear these "milk-stones," as they call them, during the period of child-bearing. Where, owing to this superstition, Mr. Evans was unable to secure the stones themselves, he obtained impressions of the characters on them. In exploring Goulás, the ruins of which are larger than those of any other prehistoric site, whether in Greece or Italy, Mr. Evans acquired important additions to his collection in the shape (1) of a cornelian gem bearing the image of a rayed sun and a sprig of foliage; (2) of an ox in terra-cotta; and (3) a clay cup on which were three graffito (i.e. rudely scribbled) characters, two of them being identical with the Cypriote pa and lo. A neighbouring hamlet, Prodromos Botzano, yielded a plain terra-cotta vase of primitive aspect with incised hatching round its neck, and three more graffito symbols of the same kind, one of which seemed to represent the double axe-head occurring among the hieroglyphic forms reduced to a linear outline; while the last, as in the clay cup from Goulás, was identical with lo. At another village near Goulás, Mr. Evans procured a double-headed bronze axe with an engraved symbol, with which he compares signs on a bronze axe from Delphi, the first of these looking like a rude outline of a duck or some other aquatic bird. Some of the walls at Knôsos bear certain marks which were at first passed by as mere scratchings by masons, but which Mr. Evans is satisfied are taken from a regular script, and fit on, in fact, to the same system as the characters on the pottery and seals, the various positions in which the signs, as e.g. the double axe, appear, warranting the inference that they were engraved on the blocks before these were placed in situ. Neither these nor the signs graven on the steatite and other small stones are the outcome of mere fancy, or of that cacoêthes scribendi, or "scribbling itch," which wantonly defaces the monuments of past and present times. "Limited as is the number of stones that we have to draw from, it will be found that certain symbols are continually recurring, as certain letters or syllables or words would recur in any form of writing. Thus the human eye appears four times and on as many different stones, the 'broad arrow' seven times, and another uncertain instrument eleven times. The choice of symbols is evidently restricted by some practical consideration, and while some objects are of frequent occurrence, others equally obvious are conspicuous by their absence. But an engraver filling the space on the seals for merely decorative purposes would not thus have been trammelled in his selection." (Jo. Hellenic Studies, p. 300.) Some of the symbols are abbreviated, e.g. the head indicating the whole animal, or a flower the whole plant, thus showing an approach to the ideographic stage of writing. In further example of this there is the expression of ideas and emotions in graphic form, as in the various positions of the arms and hands, and so forth. The symbols also frequently occur in groups of from two to seven, indicating that a syllabic value was given to them, and certain fixed principles of arrangement appear to govern the place of certain signs. Altogether, the conclusion seems warranted that the symbols are not haphazard, but purposive, although, until the materials for judgment have largely increased, the purposes are not easy to particularise. Generally, like all other writing, their object was to tell something, perchance, as already shown ([p. 51]), information about the avocations of their owners, thus ranking as primitive "merchants' marks."
Fig. 59.—Signs on Blocks of Mycenæan Buildings (Knôsos)