Cretan hieroglyphs

Cretan hieroglyphs are hieroglyphs found on artifacts of Bronze Age Minoan Crete (early-to-mid-2nd millennium BC, MM I to MM III, overlapping with Linear A from MM IIA at the earliest). Symbol inventories have been compiled by Evans (1909), Meijer (1982), Olivier/Godart (1996). The known corpus has been edited in 1996 as CHIC (Olivier/Godard 1996), listing a total of 314 items, mainly excavated at four locations:

• "Quartier Mu" at Malia (MM II)
• the hieroglyphic deposit at Malia palace (MM III)
• the hieroglyphic deposit at Knossos (MM II or III)
• the Petras deposit (MM IIB).

The corpus consists of:

• clay documents with incised inscriptions (CHIC H: 1-122)
• sealstone impressions (CHIC I: 123-179)
• sealstones (CHIC S: 180-314)
• the Malia altar stone
• the Phaistos Disk
• the Arkalochori Axe
• seal fragment HM 992, showing a single symbol, identical to Phaistos Disk glyph 21.

The relation of the last three items with the script of the main corpus is uncertain.

The glyph inventory as presented by CHIC consists of 96 syllabograms, ten of which double as logograms, an additional 23 logograms, 13 fractions (including 4 in ligature), four levels of numerals (units, tens, hundreds, thousands) and two types of punctuation. Many symbols have apparent Linear A counterparts, so that it is tempting to insert Linear B sound values.

Besides the supposed evolution of the hieroglyphs into the linear scripts, possible relations to Anatolian hieroglyphs were suggested, as well as to the Cypriot syllabary.

Timeline of Cretan scripts

The sequence and the geographical spread of Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A and Linear B, the three overlapping, but distinct writing systems on Bronze Age Crete and the Greek mainland can be summarized as follows:^[1]

Writing system	Geographical area	Time span[A 1]
Cretan Hieroglyphic	Crete	ca. 1625s−1500 BC
Linear A	Aegean islands (Kea, Kythera, Melos, Thera), and Greek mainland (Laconia)	ca. 18th century BC−1450 BC
Linear B	Crete (Knossos), and mainland (Pylos, Mycenae, Thebes, Tiryns)	ca. 1375s−1200 BC

Notes

Footnotes

References

• Olivier, J.-P. (1986), "Cretan Writing in the Second Millennium B.C.", World Archaeology 17 (3): 377–389 

Further reading

• W. C. Brice, Notes on the Cretan Hieroglyphic Script: I. The Corpus. II. The Clay Bar from Malia, H20, Kadmos 29 (1990) 1-10.
• W. C. Brice, Cretan Hieroglyphs & Linear A, Kadmos 29 (1990) 171-2.
• W. C. Brice, Notes on the Cretan Hieroglyphic Script: III. The Inscriptions from Mallia Quarteir Mu. IV. The Clay Bar from Knossos, P116, Kadmos 30 (1991) 93-104.
• W. C. Brice, Notes on the Cretan Hieroglyphic Script, Kadmos 31 (1992), 21-24.
• J.-P. Olivier, L. Godard, in collaboration with J.-C. Poursat, Corpus Hieroglyphicarum Inscriptionum Cretae (CHIC), Études Crétoises 31, De Boccard, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-86958-082-7.
• G. A. Owens, The Common Origin of Cretan Hieroglyphs and Linear A, Kadmos 35:2 (1996), 105-110.
• G. A. Owens, An Introduction to «Cretan Hieroglyphs»: A Study of «Cretan Hieroglyphic» Inscriptions in English Museums (excluding the Ashmolean Museum Oxford), Cretan Studies VIII (2002), 179-184.
• I. Schoep, A New Cretan Hieroglyphic Inscription from Malia (MA/V Yb 03), Kadmos 34 (1995), 78-80.
• J. G. Younger, The Cretan Hieroglyphic Script: A Review Article, Minos 31-32 (1996–1997) 379-400.

External links

• The Cretan Hieroglyphic Texts