THE CRETAN AND ALLIED SCRIPTS
When treating of the sources whence civilisation flowed westward
centuries before Greece and Rome appear, the historian turns to the
valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates. For Egypt and Chaldea have
meant so much to us all in our search after the chief influences on
man's intellectual and spiritual history, and this with increasing
warrant, because the more widely investigation is pushed, the more
venerable is the past of both countries found to have been. In the
case of Babylon we have seen that the art of writing--that index of
culture--had passed the pictographic stage long before eight thousand
years ago, while the Egyptian hieroglyphs, which probably came in with
the dynasties, and therefore date from the reign of Menes, the first
historical king, are some thirteen hundred years later, so far as
their use in the Nile Valley is concerned. Hence the Babylonian script
carries the palm in point of age. Fortunately the records of both
these ancient civilisations are fairly continuous, of Babylonia to the
downfall of the empire, and of Egypt to the present time. Assessing the
contributions of each to human progress, the verdict appears to be in
favour of Babylonia, and "we now know that, high as was the development
of Egyptian civilisation in certain directions, it was by no means the
fertile mother of other civilisations. All modern writers are agreed
that religious cults and national customs are exactly what the Greeks
did not borrow from Egypt, any more than the Hebrews borrowed thence
their religion, or the Phœnicians their commerce." (Mr. Percy Gardner's
_New Chapters in Greek History_, p. 193.) But if Egypt was no "house
of bondage" to Israel, it has been the enslaver of Christendom. It
fettered a faith, which had flourished in the freedom of the spirit,
with Trinitarianism, Mariolatry, and Monasticism. Out of one or
another of its triads emerged the dogma of the Christian Trinity, and
in the child Horus, seated in the lap of Isis, we see the profound
significance of the words, "Out of Egypt have I called my Son." The
obelisk that fronts St. Peter's at Rome symbolises the historical fact
that approach to the Christian Church is through the pronaos of the
Egyptian temple.
Explorations in Greece and the surrounding archipelago within the last
few years have brought to light a third venerable centre of culture.
About thirty years ago Dr. Schliemann, digging in prehistoric soil,
believed that he had found the palace of Odysseus and the towers of
Ilios. "The bones of Agamemnon are a show." The world laughed at him,
but, if it takes a more sober view of his discoveries than Schliemann
did, it has come to recognise their value and to prosecute his work.
The remarkable result of these discoveries is, in the words of Mr.
D. G. Hogarth, to show that "man in Hellas was more highly civilised
before history than when history begins to record his state; and there
existed human society in the Hellenic area, organised and productive,
to a period so remote that its origins were more distant from the age
of Pericles than that age is from our own. We have probably to deal
with a total period of civilisation in the Ægean not much shorter than
in the Nile Valley." (_Authority and Archæology_, p. 230.) The general
subject cannot be pursued here, and we have to keep to the narrower
track opened up within the past five years in the island of Crete by
Mr. Arthur J. Evans. His discoveries there establish (1) the fact of
an indigenous culture, and (2) of an active intercourse between Crete
and Greece, Egypt, Syria, and other countries centuries before the
Phœnicians launched their craft upon the midland sea and trafficked
with Cypriote and Cretan, or sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
Full accounts of Mr. Evans's important work have for the most part
been contributed by him from time to time to the memoirs of learned
societies, but no statement in popular form has yet appeared. What now
follows will therefore be in large degree an abstract of his paper on
"Primitive Pictographs and a Præ-Phœnician Script from Crete and the
Peloponnese," published in the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol.
xiv., Part II., 1894, pp. 270-372, and reprinted under the title
_Cretan Pictographs_, 1895.
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."
[Illustration: Fig. 55.--Vase with incised Characters (Crete)]
[Illustration: Fig. 56.--Incised Characters on Cup (Crete)]
[Illustration: Fig. 57.--Characters on Vase (Crete)]
[Illustration: Fig. 58.--Signs on Bronze Axe (Delphi)]
[Illustration: Fig. 59.--Signs on Blocks of Mycenæan Buildings (Knôsos)]
[Illustration: Fig. 60.--Symbols on Three-sided Cornelian (Crete)]
[Illustration: Fig. 61.--Symbols on Four-sided Stone (Crete)]
[Illustration: Fig. 62.--Symbols on Four-sided Stones, with larger
faces (Central Crete)]
[Illustration: Fig. 63.--Symbol on Single-faced Cornelian (Eastern
Crete)]
[Illustration: Fig. 64.--Symbol on Stone of ordinary Mycenæan type
(Athens)]
The stones thus bearing symbols of a system of writing in use within
the limits of the Mycenæan world in pre-Phœnician times are arranged in
five groups by Mr. Evans: (1) three-sided or prism-shaped (fig. 60);
(2) four-sided equilateral (fig. 61); (3) four-sided with larger faces
(fig. 62); (4) with one engraved side, the upper part being ornamented
with a convoluted relief (fig. 63); (5) stones of ordinary Mycenæan
type (fig. 64).
The HIEROGLYPHIC symbols engraved on the twenty-one stones
described and depicted by Mr. Evans number eighty-two, and comprise
pictorial and ideographic forms, summarised by him as follows:--
1. The human body and its parts 6
2. Arms, implements, and instruments 17
3. Parts of houses and household utensils 8
4. Marine subjects 3
5. Animals and birds 17
6. Vegetable forms 8
7. Heavenly bodies and derivatives 6
8. Geographical or topographical signs 1
9. Geometrical figures 4
10. Uncertain symbols 12
--
Total: 82
From the foregoing, all of which are represented in Mr. Evans's
monograph, these may be selected as examples:--
1. _a._ Ideògraph of a man with arms held downwards, perhaps to
denote ownership. Human figures in like position, are frequent on
Cypriote cylinders.
_b._ Ideograph of gesture which may indicate ten or any multiple of
ten.
2. _a._ This type of double axe is non-Egyptian. As a Hittite
hieroglyph it has been found on an inscription; it is seen repeated
in pairs on a Cypriote cylinder, and it also forms the principal type
of some Mycenæan gems found at Crete, in the caves of which island
bronze axes of this shape are common in the votive deposits.
[Illustration: 1_a_]
[Illustration: 1_b_]
[Illustration: 2_a_]
[Illustration: 2_b_]
_b._ The "arrow" with a short shaft is frequent, one variety showing
the feather shaft. Similar figures are occasionally seen in the field
of Mycenæan gems found in the island, where they represent arrows of
the chase about to strike wild goats or other animals. The Hittite
hieroglyphic series presents some close parallels.
[Illustration: 3]
[Illustration: 4_a_]
[Illustration: 4_a_]
[Illustration: 4_b_]
3. Gate, door, or part of a fence.
4. _a._ The first of these vessels is accompanied with two crescents,
one on either side of the mask, perhaps a sign of time as applied
to the duration of the voyage (see p. 51). One ship has seven
oars visible, the other six. In form these vessels show a great
resemblance to those which appear as the principal type on a class of
Mycenæan lentoid gems.
_b._ Apparently a tunny-fish. Fish as hieroglyphic symbols are common
to Egypt and Chaldæa.
5. _a._ Head of he-goat. This symbol presents a remarkable similarity
to the Hittite hieroglyph of the same object [Symbol] The Egyptian
goat's-head sign is of a different character, the neck being given as
well as the head, which is beardless. [Symbol]
[Illustration: 5_a_]
[Illustration: 5_b_]
[Illustration: 5_c_]
_b._ Bull or ox. The seal on which it occurs is of primitive type.
_c._ Bird standing. Birds in a somewhat similar position occur among
the Hittite symbols at Jerabis and Bulgar Maden, and are frequent in
Egyptian hieroglyphics.
[Illustration: 6_a_]
[Illustration: 6_a_]
[Illustration: 6_a_]
[Illustration: 6_b_]
6. _a._ Vegetable forms, similar to those found on Hittite monuments.
_b._ Floral symbol. The dot above both examples probably represents
the head of a stamen or pistil, as of the lily.
7. _a._ Day-star, or sun, with eight revolving rays.
_b._ Rays. Star-like symbols occur on Syrian and Asianic seal-stones.
[Illustration: 7_a_]
[Illustration: 7_b_]
[Illustration: 7_c_]
_c._ This symbol, with its swastika-like offshoots, may be of solar
import. The concentric circles may be compared with the Egyptian
[Symbol], Sun with twelve rays, _Sep_=times, and with the Chinese
hieroglyph for sun with its central dot.
[Illustration: 8a]
[Illustration: 8b]
8. Apparently hieroglyphics of mountains and valleys, hence "country"
or "land." The Egyptian [Symbol] _men_=mountain, is applied in the
same way as a determinative for "districts" and "countries." As
[Symbol] _snut_=granary, it reappears, with one or two heaps of
corn in the middle, in the simple sense of a "plot of ground." The
Akkadian symbol, which also means a plot of ground, exhibits a form
[Symbol] similar to the above.
"In this connection," says Mr. Evans, "a truly remarkable coincidence
is observable between the pictographic symbolism of old Chaldæa and
that of the Cretans of the Mycenæan period. The linear form of the
Akkadian _Ut-tu_ [Symbol] 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.)
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.)
[Illustration: TABLE III]
While, as remarked above, the hieroglyph-bearing stones are found only
in Crete, examples of the linear character have been found at Mycenæ,
Nauplia, and other prehistoric sites in Greece and Egypt. Moreover, as
already noted, some of the signs have marked affinities with Cypriote,
Hittite, and Semitic.
Among the antiquities which make the Fayum so renowned a district
are the remains of two cities; Kahun, which dates from the twelfth
dynasty, _i.e._ 2500 B.C., and Gurob, which is some twelve
centuries later, both sites yielding evidence of Asian and Ægean
settlers. When digging there ten years ago Professor Flinders Petrie
discovered fragments of Mycenæan, or, as he calls it, Ægean, pottery
inscribed with characters resembling, and in some cases identical with,
those found in Greece. Both the Professor and Mr. Evans agree that the
relics unearthed at Kahun are as old as that city; while, speaking of
the signs known to be in use 1200 B.C., in a place occupied
by people of the Ægean and Asia Minor, Turseni, Akhaians, Hittites,
and others, Professor Flinders Petrie remarks that "it will require
a very certain proof of the supposed Arabian source of the Phœnician
alphabet before we can venture to deny that we have here the origin
of the Mediterranean alphabets." (_Ten Years' Digging in Egypt_, p.
134.) Conversely, scarabs of the twelfth dynasty have been found in
Crete, notable among these being one in steatite with a spiral ornament
peculiar to that period.
Passing to excavations in the huge mound of Tell-el-Hesy, in Palestine,
made up of the ruins of eleven different cities heaped up one above
another, we have the discovery, amongst remains of the fourth city,
dating about 1450 B.C., of potsherds inscribed with signs
similar to the Ægean.
While about twenty per cent. of the Cretan hieroglyphs approach those
of the Egyptian in character, twenty out of the thirty-two linear signs
there are practically identical with those found in Egypt. Mr. Evans
adds that "the parallelism with Cypriote forms is also remarkable, some
fifteen agreeing with letters of the Cypriote syllabary."
[Illustration: Fig. 65 EGYPTIAN SCARABS, XIITH DYNASTY AND EARLY CRETAN
SEAL-STONES]
[Illustration: Fig. 66.--Signs on Potsherds at Tell-el-Hesy compared
with Ægean Forms]
This syllabary, as its name implies, is found in the island of Cyprus,
which, lying only sixty miles from Asia Minor, might be expected to
yield many traces of active intercourse therewith from prehistoric
times. The affinity of its ancient script with those of Western Asia,
which may be looked upon as settled, had, therefore, much to commend it
at the outset of the inquiry. It stands in nearest relation, possibly
as its direct descendant, to the syllabary of the Hittites. References
to these people come apace nowadays, and their history has been padded
out in portly volumes, but, in truth, we know no more about them than
we do about the Phœnicians and Phrygians, which means that we know very
little indeed. Through the mists of the past, with the help of such
light as is thrown by tablets from Tell-el-Amarna, sculptures from
Karnak, and by Hebrew and other records, we have glimpses of a great
and powerful empire which stretched from the Euphrates to the Euxine,
pushing its borders to the confines of Egypt, against which, on the one
hand, and Assyria on the other, it waged war for a thousand years. In
1270 B.C. Rameses III. had to face the onrush of the Hittites
and other confederated peoples, whom he defeated at Migdol. They "had
overrun Syria. The islands and shores of the Mediterranean gave forth
their piratical hordes; the sea was covered with their light galleys,
and swept by their strong oars." (Rawlinson's _History of Ancient
Egypt_, vol. ii. p. 271.) According to Dr. Wright, the Hittites appear
in history for the first time "in the inscription of Sargon I., King
of Agané, about 1900 B.C., and disappear from history in the
inscriptions of Sargon 717 B.C." (_Empire of the Hittites_,
p. 122.) Until some thirty years ago no monumental remains had come to
light concerning an empire whose high place among ancient nations is
attested by the discovery of a treaty (the oldest known example of its
kind) with Egypt, in which each recognised the other as a power equal
in rank to itself, and agreed to help it in case of need. The first
Hittite relic, a block of basalt engraved with strange hieroglyphic
signs, was found by the traveller Burckhardt in 1812 at Hamah, on the
Orontes, but he could not decipher the characters, and the matter was
forgotten till 1870, when the stone was rediscovered, and similar
relics brought to light. But to this day the key of interpretation is
lacking, and scholars await the unearthing of some bilingual monument
which shall do for the Hittite hieroglyphs what the Rosetta Stone
did for the Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Behistun rock for cuneiform
writing. Till this, and more, is effected, we remain in the realm
of conjecture about the mighty nation whose beardless soldiers are
depicted with daggers in their belts and double-headed axes in their
hands on the sculptures of the Nile Valley. Minimising, however, our
knowledge of the Hittites to the uttermost, their widely distributed
relics evidence their proficiency in certain departments of the arts.
They smelted silver and wrought in bronze, they were skilful lapidaries
and carvers in ivory, and "the independent system of picture-writing
which they possessed offers an obvious source from which the Asianic
syllabary might have been obtained." In the Hamah inscriptions the
characters are raised, and run in parallel transverse lines.
[Illustration: Fig. 67.--Hittite Inscription at Hamah]
"The lines of inscriptions and their boundaries are clearly defined by
raised bars about four inches apart. The interstices between the bars
and characters have been cut away." The inscriptions are read from
right to left and _vice versâ_ in "boustrophedon" style (_bous_, "an
ox," and _strephō_, "to turn," therefore, as an ox ploughs), as in
ancient Greek modes of writing.
Returning to Crete, we have to consider its relation to the Mycenæan
type of civilisation, under which term is included civilisation in
pre-Homeric Greece and the Ægean Sea, crossing thence to Hissarlik,
the ancient Troy. The spade has made havoc with some of our standard
"authorities." Grote refers to the city of Mycenæ only once in his
well-known work, and then incidentally speaks of it as the seat of
a legendary dynasty. Sir George Cox, in his _Mythology of the Aryan
Nations_, endorses Professor Max Müller's theory (to which, in part,
the veteran philologist still adheres), that the siege of Troy "is a
reflection of the daily siege of the East by the solar powers that
every evening are robbed of their brightest treasures in the West,"
and adds that this theory is "supported by a mass of evidence which
probably hereafter will be thought ludicrously excessive in amount."
The laugh is on the other side now. Schliemann and his successors
have broken into the areas within Cyclopean walls whose massive
blocks aroused wonder long ages back, giving birth to tales of giant
hands that reared them. They have disinterred relics proving an
historic element in old traditions, and a nucleus of fact beneath the
encrustation of fable over famous names. Like the Empress Helena, who,
in searching for the True Cross, of course found that for which she
looked, Schliemann too readily assumed that he had discovered the bones
of Agamemnon, and the cup from which Nestor drank. But he brought to
light the relics of a culture, knowledge of which involves neither
more nor less than the re-writing of the history of man in the Eastern
Mediterranean, and, by consequence, in Western Europe.
[Illustration: Fig. 68.--Signs on Vase-handle (Mycenæ)]
[Illustration: Fig. 69.--Signs on Amphora-handle (Mycenæ)]
Dealing, as the limits of the subject compel, only with the traces
of inscriptions on remains from Mycenæ itself, the earliest to be
noted is a stone pestle with one incised character which resembles a
Cypriote sign. But one sign does not make an alphabet, and hence the
satisfaction at the recent discovery of the handle of a stone vase,
apparently of a local material, which has four or five signs engraved
upon it, and of the handle of a clay amphora from a chambered tomb
in the lower town of Mycenæ with three characters, while a tomb at
Prousia, near Nauplia, yielded a genuine Mycenæan vessel with three
ears, on each of which is graven a sign resembling the Greek H. These
may not suffice to demonstrate the existence of a pre-Phœnician system
of writing in Greece, but, taken in conjunction with the numerous
discoveries of inscribed signs in Crete, they go far in support of it.
What, then, are the facts as thus far, ascertained?
There have been discovered in Crete a number of objects bearing two
sorts of writing, one hieroglyphic or pictographic; the other linear
and approaching the alphabetic. The pictographic is the older of the
two, dating from the earlier part of the third millennium before
Christ. It was probably derived from a primitive picture-writing by the
non-Hellenic inhabitants of the island, who were called Eteocretans,
or "true Cretans," by the Dorians, whose invasion dates, according to
the traditional Greek chronology, from about the middle of the twelfth
century B.C. These "true Cretans" may not, however, be the
aboriginal inhabitants, although as to this, and as to their language,
we are in ignorance. The recent discovery of an inscription in an
unknown language, written in archaic Greek characters, among the ruins
of Præsos, the chief Eteocretan settlement, warrants the inference
that the old script of the language had been abandoned for the Greek
alphabet. That script, the use of which never passed outside the
island, obviously had no influence on Mycenæan civilisation.
The linear system is syllabic; perhaps, in some degree, alphabetic.
Its possible derivation from the hieroglyphic has been indicated, but
although it is a conventionalised form of pictograph, Dr. Tsountas is
positive in denying its connection with the Eteocretan. He suggests
that its simplification took place in the East, and among a people or
peoples not Greek. Thence it was carried into Greek lands, spreading
more in the islands, at least in Crete, than in the Peloponnesus or
other portions of the mainland, where, as shown above, the number of
inscribed objects is exceedingly small. The question is far from ripe
for solution, but Professor Flinders Petrie, with whom lies a large
share of honour in contributing towards a settlement, courteously
permits me to quote the following from a letter on the subject,
dated 2nd September 1899: "A great signary (not hieroglyphic, but
geometric in appearance, if not in origin) was in use all over the
Mediterranean 5000 B.C. It is actually found in Egypt at
that period, and was split in two, Western and Eastern, by the cross
flux of hieroglyphic systems in Egypt and among the Hittites. This
linear signary was developed variously, but retained much in common
in different countries. It was first systematised by the numerical
values assigned to it by Phœnician traders, who carried it into
Greece, whereby the Greek signary was delimited into an alphabet.
But the fuller form of the signary survived in Karia with thirty-six
signs, and seven more in Iberia, thus giving values to forty-three.
This connection of the Iberian with the Karian is striking; so is
that of the Egyptian with the West rather than with the East. Signs
found in Egypt have thirteen in common with the early Arabian,
fifteen in common with Phœnician, and thirty-three in common with
Karian and Kelt-Iberian. This stamps the Egyptian signary of the
twelfth and eighteenth dynasties as closely linked with the other
Mediterranean systems." In an important paper read at the meeting of
the British Association, 1899, Professor Flinders Petrie remarks: "We
stand therefore now in an entirely new position as to the sources
of the alphabet, and we see them to be about thrice as old as had
been supposed. That the signs were used for written communications
of spelled-out words in the early stages, or as an alphabet, is far
from probable. It was a body of signs, with more or less generally
understood meanings; and the change of attributing a single letter
value to each, and only using signs for sounds to be built into words,
is apparently a relatively late outcome of the systematising due to
Phœnician commerce." (_Jo. Anthrop. Inst._, Aug.-Nov., 1899, p. 205.)
Connecting the results of explorations in Asia Minor, Egypt, Crete,
Cyprus, Rhodes, Thera, Melos, and other islands of the Eastern
Mediterranean with those in the Peloponnesus, the existence of a
pre-Phœnician civilisation, of which Mycenæ may be conveniently
regarded as the centre, appears to be demonstrated.
That civilisation, so far as its connection with the prehistoric stages
of man's development goes, falls in, like aught else in this wide and
ancient world, with the doctrine of continuity, but for purposes of
time-reckoning dates at latest far back in the third millennium before
our era. Mycenæan vases have been found in Egypt, and Egyptian scarabs
in Mycenæan deposits. They prove an intimate intercourse between the
two countries two thousand five hundred years before Christ. And there
was intercourse farther afield. The imitations of Babylonian cylinders,
the sculptured palms and lions, the figures of Astarte and her doves,
show that fifteen hundred years before the date ascribed to the Homeric
poems Assyria and Greece had come into contact. But the examples of
Oriental art which had found their way to the soil of Argolis remained
more or less exotic, the independent features of Mycenæan art being
retained unaltered. Now the cumulative effect of this evidence, which
is only baldly summarised here, is to shatter to pieces current
theories as to the Phœnician origin of European civilisation, and,
consequently, what mainly concerns us here, of the Phœnician origin of
the European alphabets through the Egyptian hieratic. For that evidence
shows that the Mycenæan civilisation is (1) earlier in time, and (2)
indigenous in character.
(1) The evidence as to priority can be summarily stated. Civilisation
in the Ægean and on the Greek mainland dates from beyond 3000, B.C.,
and reached its meridian between the sixteenth and the twelfth
centuries of that era. Almost all that we know about the Phœnicians
is at second-hand, since, if they ever had a literature or native
chronicles, these have not survived. Piecing together classical
tradition and references in Egyptian and Hebrew records, we gather
that for some three centuries onwards from 1600 B.C. Phœnicia was a
dependency of the Pharaohs. There was a Tyrian quarter at Memphis 1250
B.C. Hiram appears to have refounded Tyre 1028 B.C., from which time
its commercial importance dates; while the refounding of its future
great rival Carthage is assigned to the early years of the eighth
century B.C. The decay of the Mycenæan civilisation, which followed as
one of the many results of the Dorian invasion in the twelfth century
B.C., gave the Phœnicians their chance. They overran the Ægean, and
remained the dominant power in the Mediterranean until the Greeks,
reviving their ancient traditions, expelled the Phœnicians from their
waters, and broke their supremacy when Tyre was sacked by Alexander
the Great, 332 B.C. Between their rise and fall, their commercial
pre-eminence enabled them to impose upon the Greeks the alphabet which
was the vehicle of preservation of the intellectual wealth of the
Hellenes, and of all literature that followed theirs. What were the
probable sources of that alphabet will be considered presently.
(2) After allowing full play for Asian and Egyptian influences, the
fact abides that there was a well-developed native Mycenæan art.
The decoration of the pottery is non-Oriental and non-Egyptian; the
seaweeds and marine creatures depicted are home-products of the
island world of Greece; and where sacred trees and pillars appear,
we have no Semitic element, but the outcome, as Mr. Evans puts it,
of a "religious stage widely represented on primitive European soil,
and nowhere more persistent than in the West." But if there were
stepping-stones between Argolis and Syria in the islands that lay
between, there was continuous passage on the western side, making
Mycenæ a link between East and West. The breaks formerly assumed
between the Old and the New Stone Ages of prehistoric Europe have
been filled up by the accumulation of evidence as to man's continuous
tenure of that continent since his primitive ancestors crossed thither
by now vanished land-routes from Northern Africa. In like manner
the _Mirage Orientale_, as M. Salomon Reinach happily terms it, of
a metal-introducing people from the East, who, in successive racial
waves, swept the older settlers before them into the remotest corners
of the north-west, has vanished. When once peopled, Europe, like Asia
and America, ran on independent lines of development, which, however,
were not isolated from connecting lines approaching from the East.
The striking facts of the use of common trade-signs along both shores
of the Mediterranean, and of the existence of remains of Mycenæan
monuments in Sardinia, are in keeping with other facts, showing how
close was the contact between one part of Europe and another centuries
before the Phœnicians had left the shores of the Persian Gulf for the
Syrian seaboard. They prepare us for acceptance of the new theory of
"an Ægean culture rising in the midst of a vast province extending
from Switzerland and Northern Italy through the Danubian basin and the
Balkan peninsula, and continued through a large part of Anatolia, till
it finally reaches Cyprus." (Evans, Address Brit. Assoc.; _Nature_, 1st
Oct. 1896, p. 529.) They prepare us for the fact that in the Bronze
Age, if Scandinavia and its borderlands were the source of amber, the
supply of gold for Northern and Central Europe was drawn not from the
Ural, but from Ireland.
The centre whence this "Ægean" culture is held to have been diffused
is denoted by its name. That name, however, covers the Eastern
Mediterranean region, and the question arises whether or not some
precise place in that area can be indicated as the cradleland.
"Hellas," says Herodotus, "was formerly called Pelasgix" (ii. 56), and
this pre-Hellenic Greece was inhabited by Barbarians or Pelasgians, as
they are, with equal vagueness, called. There were "Pelasgians" on the
mainland and the islands; "the whole of Peloponnesus took the name of
Pelasgia; the kings of Tiryns were Pelasgians, and Æschylus calls Argos
a Pelasgian city; Pausanias (viii. 4, 6) says that the Arcadians spoke
of Pelasgus as the first man who lived in that country, wherefore, in
his reign, it was called Pelasgia; an old wall at Athens was attributed
to the Pelasgians, and the people of Attica had from all time been so
called. Lesbos also was called Pelasgia, and Homer knew of Pelasgians
in the Troad. Their settlements are further traced to Egypt, to Rhodes,
Cyprus, Epirus--where Dodona was their ancient shrine--and, lastly,
to various parts of Italy." (Keane's _Man Past and Present_, p. 505.)
Herodotus has little to say in favour of the Barbarians (which he uses
as a descriptive and not a contemptuous term, the name being given by
Greeks to all foreigners whose language was not Greek); he speaks of
them as rude, of uncouth speech, and worshippers of repellent deities.
Wachsmuth, in his _Historical Antiquities of the Greeks_, published
over sixty years ago, says that "numerous traditionary accounts, of
undoubted authenticity, describe them as a brave, moral, and honourable
people, which was less a distinct stock and tribe than a race united by
a resemblance in manners and the forms of life." Professor Keane fitly
calls these "remarkable words," in view of the recent discoveries in
prehistoric Greece, which warrant us in ascribing to the Pelasgians the
development of culture in the Ægean Sea. But in what island, or on what
part of the mainland? The important character of the finds at Mycenæ
directs quest thither at the start. The débris of that city, and of her
elder-sister city, Tiryns, have yielded varied relics of an ancient
culture, from gold-masked skeletons in vaulted tombs to gorgeously
decorated palaces and Cyclopean ruins of walls and fortresses. But
there are traditions that these Argolic cities are of later date than
Homer's "great city of Knossos" in Crete, wherein "Minos, when he was
nine years old, began to rule, he who held converse with the great
Zeus, and was the father of my father, even of Deucalion, high of
heart," traditions pointing to the existence of an important Cretan
kingdom which flourished before Agamemnon ruled in Mycenæ.
Water is the birthplace of civilisation, as of life itself, and the
original home of the Ægean or Mycenæan civilisation is probably
to be found in the island of Crete. It is crammed with remains of
pre-Hellenic culture. It is a big stepping-stone from Greece to Asia
Minor, Karpathos and Rhodes lying between. It is in the line of
communication with Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt on the East, and with
Sicily and the coastlines of the Western Mediterranean. The earliest
Greek tradition looks back to Crete "as the home of divinely inspired
legislation and the first centre of maritime dominion." And, what is
of the highest moment to remember, so far as the origin of the art of
navigation in Ægean waters goes, there can be no question between the
old claims on behalf of the Phœnicians and the present claims on behalf
of Crete. The Syrian seaboard is harbourless and unsheltered; the men
who first braved the "unvintaged wine dark" waters (how fine are all
the Homeric sea-words) were island-dwellers, shooting forth from snug
creek and harbour on quick and sudden enterprise, and growing bolder
and bolder as they sailed by the rising and setting of the stars and
the recurring moon. "The early sea-trade of the inhabitants of the
island world of the Ægean gave them a start over their neighbours,
and produced a higher form of culture, which was destined to react
on that of a vast European zone, nay, even upon that of the older
civilisations of Egypt and Asia." (Evans, Address, B. Assoc., p. 530.)
For the diffusion of culture throughout the Ægean was followed by
expeditions to the East. While Cyprus yielded the metal to which it has
given its name, the gold of Asia Minor was poured into the lap of the
pre-Hellenes, and moulded into forms of beauty through which their own
artistic skill challenged comparison with that of the Oriental. In his
comment on the source of the Mycenæan civilisation Mr. Frazer aptly
remarks that "the existence at this early date of a great maritime
power in Crete, which by its central position between Greece and the
empires of the East was well fitted to receive and amalgamate the
characteristics of both, is just what is needed to explain the rise and
wide diffusion of a type of civilisation like the Mycenæan, in which
Oriental influences seem to be assimilated and transmuted by a vigorous
and independent nationality endowed with a keen sense of its own for
art. The spade will probably one day decide the question of priority
between Argolis and Crete, but in the meantime the probability appears
to be that the Mycenæan civilisation rose in Crete and spread from it
as a centre, and that it was not until the Cretan power was on the
wane that the palmy days of Tiryns and Mycenæ began." (_Commentary_ on
Pausanias, vol. iii. p. 151.) The Mycenæan civilisation perished in a
great catastrophe. Somewhere near the middle of the twelfth century
B.C. the Dorian invaders in their southward march reached the
walls of Tiryns and Mycenæ, and sacked and gave those cities to the
flames. Then began for Greece "the long dark ages, the mediæval epoch,
out of which she emerges only in the Homeric Renaissance." The flower
of the survivors of that dread time sought a new home east of the Ægean
on the isles and shores of Ionia. There these exiles from Argolis laid
the foundation of a culture whose influence will abide while the world
stands, because Ionia remains the fatherland of all who hold dear what
man has reached in art and literature, in science and philosophy.
The fall of Mycenæ gave Phœnicia her opportunity, and she was quick
to seize it in establishing depôts throughout the Ægean, and in
securing the overlordship of the Mediterranean. But through her lack
of political unity, and her dependence on mercenary aid when troubles
came, finally she succumbed to the strong arm of the reinvigorated
Greek. Between their rise and decline the Phœnicians had put the
alphabet into, practically, its present form, and secured its adoption
by the Greeks. But if they did not derive it from the Egyptian
hieratic, whence came it?
No definite answer is forthcoming, and perhaps never will be. Canon
Rawlinson is not alone in thinking that it will probably never be
settled whether the Phœnician characters are modifications of the
Egyptian or the Hittite or of Cypriote, or mere abbreviated forms of a
picture-writing peculiar to the Phœnicians. That opinion was expressed
before the discovery of the Cretan pictographs and linear signs, and
these have not settled the question. The Phœnicians came under various
influences, and their adaptive character readily took the impress of
their surroundings. Probably they had a long history before they appear
in Syria. As Semites, they were presumably familiar with cuneiform.
The Tyrian quarter at Memphis was one of many settlements where the
Egyptian characters would be in use, or, at least, familiar. And
when the Phœnicians came into the Ægean they found an ancient script
whereby intercourse was facilitated along the Mediterranean, a script
of which so pliant a people, eager for trade, would avail themselves.
In view of all these probabilities, Mr. Evans remarks that it is at
least worth while weighing "the possibility that the rudiments of the
Phœnician writing may after all have come in part at least from the
Ægean side. The more the relics of Mycenæan culture are revealed to
us, the more we see how far ahead of their neighbours on the Canaanite
coasts was the Ægean population in arts and civilisation." The spread
of their commerce led them to seek plantations in the Nile Valley
and the Mediterranean outlets of the Arabian and Red Sea trade. The
position was the reverse of that which meets our eye at a later date.
It was not Sidon that was then planting mercantile settlements on the
coasts and islands of Greece." (_Jo. Hellen. Stud._, p. 368.) Whether,
_per contra_, a Semitic element had been introduced into the Ægean
is uncertain, but could this be proved, the presence of similarities
between the respective scripts would have easy explanation. Putting
together, however, what is no longer conjectural, it would seem that
the Phœnician alphabet was a compound from various sources, the
selection and modification of the several characters being ruled by
convenience, and that, primarily and essentially, commercial. Like
all business people immersed in many transactions, their method was
brevity, and so they aimed as near "shorthand" as they could. They got
rid of surplus signs, of the lumber of determinatives and the like,
and invented an alphabet which if it was not perfect (as no alphabet
can be, because the letters are not revised from time to time to
represent changes in sound), was of such signal value as to have been
accepted by the civilised world of the past, and to have secured, with
but slight modifications, a permanence assured to no other invention
of the human race. Therefore, the debt that we owe these old traders
is in nowise lessened because the current theory of derivation of
our alphabet is doubted. This theory as to the nature of the service
rendered by the Phœnicians has corroboration in an ancient Cretan
tradition recorded by Diodôros, a contemporary of Julius Cæsar and
Augustus, to which Mr. Evans makes reference in the reprint of his
essay. According to that tradition, the Phœnicians had not invented
written characters, but had simply "changed their shapes." In other
words, they had not done more than improve on an existing system, which
is precisely what recent evidence goes to show. "We may infer from the
Cretan contention recorded by Diodôros that the Cretans claimed to
have been in possession of a system of writing before the introduction
of the Phœnician alphabet. The present discovery on Cretan soil both
of a pictographic and a linear script dating from times anterior to
any known Phœnician contact thus affords an interesting corroboration
of this little regarded record of an ancient writer." (_Cretan
Pictographs_, p. 372.)