shows a sun above the symbol of the ground with a plant growing out of it. But on specimens of Mycenæan gems observed by me in Eastern Crete are seen symbolic or conventional representations of the plant growing out of the ground." (Jo. Hell. Stud., p. 313.)
The Linear signs, although treated separately for purposes of convenience, are regarded by Mr. Evans (see Table I) as fundamentally connected with the hieroglyphic, the one, as in other scripts, overlapping the other. As to this connection, however, some doubt exists. The thirty-two characters which Mr. Evans has detected are increased to thirty-eight by Dr. Tsountas (Mycenæan Age, p. 279), while the materials yielding these results received an important addition through Mr. Evans's discovery, in the spring of 1896, of an inscribed steatite slab, associated with numerous votive objects, in the great cave of Mount Dikta, the fabled birthplace of Zeus. "It consists of a fragment of what may be described as a 'Table of Offerings,' bearing part of what appears to be a dedication of nine letters of probably syllabic values, answering to the same early Cretan script that is seen on the seals, and with two punctuations." (Address of Arthur J. Evans to Section H, Anthropology, of the British Association, 1896; Nature, 1st Oct. 1896, p. 531.)
TABLE I
These linear forms are inscribed on three-sided seal stones, in every respect resembling those bearing the pictographic signs; on steatite pendants and whorls; and, as already shown, in graffiti on pottery, or inscribed blocks, and so forth, from all which sources Mr. Evans has put together the thirty-two characters shown in Table II, adding corresponding characters from Cypriote and Egyptian scripts. Table III gives examples of the characters—doubtless syllabic—occurring in groups of two or more.
TABLE II
The hieroglyphic-bearing signet stones have been found solely in the region east of Knôsos, and the use of these characters appears not to have passed beyond the island; in fact it may have been limited to the less advanced portions. This tells against the direct descent of the Cretan linear from the Cretan pictographic, and, moreover, it is contended by Dr. Tsountas that the pictographic system exercised slight, if any, influence on the Hellenic portion of Greece. But, in the absence of materials which excavations now being prosecuted may bring to light, any definite conclusions are premature, and only the broadest general views permissible. (The archæological exploration of Crete promises to yield materials of the first importance for knowledge of the history of civilisation in the Eastern Mediterranean area, and the appeal for funds which Mr. Evans and Mr. Hogarth are making should have generous response. Some details of this appeal are printed at the end of this book.) Of the eighty-two pictographic symbols sixteen approach to Egyptian and sixteen to Hittite forms, but all have, none the less, an independent character stamping them as indigenous. Although the coincidences are at times of such a character as to suggest a real affinity, it must be remembered that the similarity in many of the objects to be depicted explains the correspondences between the picture-writing of different peoples. "Some Cretan types present a surprising analogy with the Asianic; on the other hand, many of the most recent of the Hittite symbols are conspicuous by their absence. The parallelism can best be explained by supposing that both systems had grown up in a more or less conterminous area out of still more primitive pictographic elements. In the early picture-writing of a region geographically continuous there may well have been originally many common elements, such as we find among the American Indians at the present day; and when, later, on the banks of the Orontes and the highlands of Cappadocia on the one side, or on the Ægean shores on the other, a more formalised "hieroglyphic" script began independently to develop itself out of these simpler elements, what more natural than that certain features common to both should survive in each? Later inter-communication may have also contributed to preserve this common element. But the symbolic script with which we have here to deal is essentially in situ. The Cretan system of picture-writing is inseparable from the area dominated by the Mycenæan form of culture. Geographically speaking it belongs to Greece." (Jo. Hellen. Stud., p.317.)
TABLE III