The Sea-Kings of Crete

by James Baikie

LATE MINOAN VASE FROM MYCENÆ (p. [206])

Reproduced from The Journal of Hellenic Studies, by permission of the Council of the Hellenic Society

When, at the beginning of the Late Minoan period, the Palace of Knossos was remodelled, another great change accompanied the architectural one. This was the entire supersession of the linear script, Class A, by another similar but independent form, which has been named Class B. Somewhat remarkably, although the specimens of the script discovered at the Palace of Knossos and its immediate dependencies are far more numerous than those of Class A, the use of Class B seems, so far as the evidence yet collected goes, to have been entirely confined to Knossos. The beginning of the use of this system may have been in the early part of the fifteenth century B.C., and it was in full service at the great catastrophe of Knossos, at the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century B.C. Its use still continued after the fall of the Minoan power, tablets inscribed with this form of writing being found in the Late Minoan III. House of the Fetish Shrine at Knossos. According to Dr. Evans, whose 'Scripta Minoa' sums up all that is at present known of these enigmatic Cretan writings, Class B is not a mere outgrowth of Class A. The scripts are certainly allied, and there are indications that B is the more highly developed of the two, having a smaller selection of characters and a less complicated system of compound signs; but at the same time several of the signs found in B do not occur in A at all, and some of those which belong to both scripts are found in a more primitive form in B. The language expressed in both scripts must, however, have been essentially the same. It is suggested, therefore, that in the supersession of Class A by Class B we have another indication of the dynastic revolution which is supposed to have caused that ruin of the palace which closed the Middle Minoan period.

The records of Class B give evidence of a very considerable advance in the art of writing. 'The characters themselves have a European aspect. They are of upright habit, and of a simple and definite outline, which throws into sharp relief the cumbrous and obscure cuneiform system of Babylonia. Although not so cursive in form as the Hieratic or Demotic types of Egyptian writing, there is here a much more limited selection of types. It would seem that the characters stood for syllables or even letters, though they could in most cases also be used as words.... The spaces and lines between the words, the espacement into distinct paragraphs, and the variation in the size of the characters on the same tablet, according to the relative importance of the text, show a striving after clearness and method such as can by no means be said to be a characteristic of Classical Greek inscriptions.'[*] A decimal system of numbers was in use, the highest single amount referred to being 19,000, and percentages were evidently well understood, as a whole series of tablets is devoted to them.

[Footnote *: 'Scripta Minoa,' pp. 39, 40.]

The tablets themselves were originally of unburnt, but sun-dried, clay, and their preservation, as we have seen, is probably due to the excessive heat to which they were exposed during the great fire which destroyed the palace. 'Fire itself, so fatal to other libraries, has thus insured the preservation of the archives of Minoan Knossos.' Great care was plainly bestowed upon the storage of the tablets. They were stored in chests and coffers of various materials, and were evidently carefully separated according to the different departments to which their contents referred. In one deposit near the northern entrance, which was the 'Sea-Gate' of the palace, the largest of the seatings which had secured the cases in which the tablets were stored bore a representation of a ship, possibly an indication of the fact that these tablets belonged to the Minoan Board of Admiralty. One set of tablets had been stored in a room which presents all the appearance of having been an office, and the frequent occurrence in this deposit of the figures of a horse's head, a chariot, and a cuirass, suggests that the store belonged to the Minoan War Office, and refers to the equipment of the Chariot Brigade of the Knossian army.

Further evidence of the business-like methods of the Minoan officials was given by the fact that many of the seals belonging to the various stores were countermarked on the face, and had their backs countersigned and endorsed, evidently by examining officials, while they appear to have been regularly filed and docketed for reference. Indeed, the Minoan methods have already borne the test of having been accepted as evidence in a modern court of law. 'In 1901,' says Dr. Evans, 'I discovered that certain tablets had been abstracted from the excavations, and had shortly afterwards been purchased by the museum at Athens. It further appeared that one of our workmen—a certain Aristides—had left the excavation about the same time for Greece, and had been seen in Athens offering "antikas" for sale under suspicious circumstances. On examining the inscriptions on the stolen tablets I observed a formula that showed that some or all of the pieces belonged to a deposit found in Magazine XV. A reference to our daybooks brought out the fact that the same Aristides had taken part in the excavation of this particular magazine a little before the date of his hasty departure. On his return to Crete, some months later, he was accordingly arrested, and the evidence supplied by the Minoan formula was accepted by the Candia Tribunal as a crowning proof of his guilt. Aristides—"the Unjust"—was thus condemned to three months' imprisonment.' Few criminals attain to the dignity of being convicted on evidence 3,500 years old.

Certain of the tablets contain lists of persons of both sexes, apparently denoted by their personal names, the signs which appear to stand for the name being followed in each case by an ideograph which is the determinative of 'man,' or 'woman,' as the case may be. It is, of course, impossible to say as yet to what rank or class the people thus catalogued may have belonged; but the conjecture may be hazarded that these lists may be the major-domo's records of the male and female slaves of the household, or perhaps of the artisans who appear to have dwelt within the precincts of the palace. Another type of record is given by tablets such as that represented in [Plate XIV]. The tablet contains eight lines of well-written inscription, and consists apparently of twenty words, divided into three paragraphs. In this case there are no determinatives and no numerals; and it is possible that the document may be a contract, or perhaps an official proclamation.