Cretan hieroglyphs

Cretan hieroglyphs are a hieroglyphic writing system used in early Bronze Age Crete, during the Minoan era. They predate Linear A by about a century, but the two writing systems continued to be used in parallel for most of their history.[1] As of 2021, they are undeciphered.

Cretan hieroglyphs
A green jasper Minoan seal with Cretan hieroglyphs. 1800 BC
Type
Undeciphered (presumed ideographic, possibly with a syllabic component)
LanguagesUnknown; possibly "Minoan"
Time period
MM I to MM III 2100–1700 BC
StatusExtinct
Parent systems
Proto-writing
  • Cretan hieroglyphs
Sister systems
Linear A

Corpus

As of 1989, the corpus of Cretan hieroglyphic inscriptions included two parts:

  • Seals and sealings, 150 documents with 307 sign-groups, using 832 signs in all.
  • Other documents on clay, 120 documents with 274 sign-groups, using 723 signs.[2]

More documents, such as those from the Petras deposit, have been published since then.

These inscriptions were mainly excavated at four locations:

The corpus was published in 1996 as the Corpus Hieroglyphicarum Inscriptionum Cretae (CHIC).[4] It 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 Disc
  • 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.

Some Cretan Hieroglyphic (as well as Linear A) inscriptions were also found on the island of Samothrace in the northeastern Aegean.[5]

It has been suggested that there was an evolution of the hieroglyphs into the linear scripts. Also, some relations to Anatolian hieroglyphs have been suggested:

The overlaps between the Cretan script and other scripts, such as the hieroglyphic scripts of Cyprus and the Hittite lands of Anatolia, may suggest ... that they all evolved from a common ancestor, a now-lost script perhaps originating in Syria.[6]

Signs
The Archanes Script. MM IA / MMIB, 2100–1800 BC. Archanes type of Cretan hieroglyphs. Arhcanes Phourni. Archaeological Museum of Heraklion
Cretan hieroglyphs (1900–1600 BC) on a clay bar from Malia or Knossos, Crete. As exhibited at Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete, Greece. Dots represent numerals

Symbol inventories have been compiled by Evans (1909), Meijer (1982), and Olivier/Godart (1996).

The glyph inventory in CHIC includes 96 syllabograms representing sounds, ten of which double as logograms, representing words or portions of words.

There are also 23 logograms representing four levels of numerals (units, tens, hundreds, thousands), numerical fractions, and two types of punctuation.

Many symbols have apparent Linear A counterparts, so that it is tempting to insert Linear B sound values. Moreover, there are multiple parallels (words and phrases) from hieroglyphic inscriptions that occur also in Linear A and/or B in similar contexts (words for "total", toponyms, personal names etc.)[7]

Chronology
Main article: Minoan chronology
See also: Chronology of Linear A and Chronology of Linear B

The sequence and the geographical spread of Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A, and Linear B, the five overlapping, but distinct, writing systems on Bronze Age Crete and the Greek mainland can be summarized as follows:[8]

Writing system Geographical area Time span[lower-alpha 1]
Cretan Hieroglyphic Crete (eastward from the Knossos-Phaistos axis) c. 2100–1700 BC[6][9]
Linear A Crete (except extreme southwest), Aegean islands (Kea, Kythera, Melos, Thera), and Greek mainland (Laconia) c. 1800–1450 BC[10][11][12][13]
Linear B Crete (Knossos), and mainland (Pylos, Mycenae, Thebes, Tiryns) c. 1450–1200 BC
Cypro-Minoan Cyprus c. 1550–1050 BC
Cypriot Cyprus c. 11th–4th centuries BC

Fonts

Fonts Aegean and Cretan support Cretan hieroglyphs.

Notes
    1. Beginning date refers to first attestations, the assumed origins of all scripts lie further back in the past.

    Footnotes
    1. Yule 1981, 170-1
    2. Jean-Pierre Olivier, The Relationship between Inscriptions on Hieroglyphic Seals and those Written on Archival Documents (PDF file). Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine in Palaima, Thomas G, ed., Aegean seals, sealings and administration. Université de Liège, Histoire de l'art et archéologie de la Grèce antique, 1990
    3. Metaxia Tsipopoulou & Erik Hallager, The Hieroglyphic Archive at Petras, Siteia (with contributions by Cesare D’Annibale & Dimitra Mylona). Download PDF file 60 MB Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens 9, Athens, 2010 ISBN 978-87-7934-293-4
    4. Olivier and Godard, 1996
    5. Margalit Finkelberg, Bronze Age Writing: Contacts between East and West. Archived 2015-03-19 at the Wayback Machine In E. H. Cline and D. Harris-Cline (eds.). The Aegean and the Orient in the Second Millennium. Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Symposium, Cincinnati, 18–20 April 1997. Liège 1998. Aegeum 18 (1998) 265-272.
    6. Rodney Castleden, Minoans. Routledge, 2002 ISBN 1134880642 p.100
    7. A. Karnava. The Cretan hieroglyphic script of the second millennium BC: description, analysis, function and decipherment perspectives. Unpublished dissertation, Bruxelles, 1999, vol. 1-2.
    8. Olivier, J.-P. (1986). "Cretan Writing in the Second Millennium B.C.". World Archaeology. 17 (3): 377–389 (377f.). doi:10.1080/00438243.1986.9979977.
    9. Andrew Robinson (27 August 2009). Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction. OUP Oxford. pp. 55–. ISBN 978-0-19-157916-5.
    10. "The Danube Script and Other Ancient Writing Systems:A Typology of Distinctive Features". Harald Haarmann. 2008.
    11. Literacy and History: The Greeks. R.I.C. Publications. 2007. pp. 2–. ISBN 978-1-74126-506-4.
    12. Khosrow Jahandarie (1999). Spoken and Written Discourse: A Multi-disciplinary Perspective. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 200–. ISBN 978-1-56750-427-9.
    13. Paul Wheatley. The Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City, Volume 2: The Chinese City in Comparative Perspective. Transaction Publishers. pp. 381–. ISBN 978-0-202-36769-9.

    References

    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.
    • M. Civitillo, LA SCRITTURA GEROGLIFICA MINOICA SUI SIGILLI. Il messaggio della glittica protopalaziale, Biblioteca di Pasiphae XII, Pisa-Roma 2016.
    • G. M. Facchetti La questione della scrittura «geroglifica cretese» dopo la recente edizione del corpus dei testi. Pasiphae: Rivista di filologia e antichita egee. 2007.
    • A. Karnava. The Cretan hieroglyphic script of the second millennium BC: description, analysis, function and decipherment perspectives. Unpublished dissertation, Bruxelles, 1999, vol. 1-2.
    • 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.
    • Revesz, Peter Z. "A computer-aided translation of the Cretan Hieroglyph script" (PDF). International Journal of Signal Processing (Vol. 1, (2016)): 127–133.
    • 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.
    • P. Yule, Early Cretan Seals: A Study of Chronology. Marburger Studien zur Vor und Frühgeschichte 4 (Mainz 1981), ISBN 3-8053-0490-0
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