Cretan hieroglyphs are hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphs

Hieroglyph or hieroglyphics may refer to:*Anatolian hieroglyphs*Chinese character*Cretan hieroglyphs*Cursive hieroglyphs*Dongba script*Egyptian hieroglyphs*Hieroglyphic Luwian*Mayan hieroglyphs...

 found on artifacts of Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

 Minoan

Minoan civilization

The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately the 27th century BC to the 15th century BC. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans...

 Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...

 (early-to-mid-2nd millennium BC

2nd millennium BC

The 2nd millennium BC marks the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age.Its first half is dominated by the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and Babylonia. The alphabet develops. Indo-Iranian migration onto the Iranian plateau and onto the Indian subcontinent propagates the use of the chariot...

, MM I to MM III

Minoan chronology

Sir Arthur Evans developed a relative dating scheme of Minoan chronology based on the excavations initiated and managed by him at the site of the ancient city of Knossos. He called the civilization that he discovered there Minoan...

, overlapping with Linear A

Linear A

Linear A is one of two scripts used in ancient Crete before Mycenaean Greek Linear B; Cretan hieroglyphs is the second script. In Minoan times, before the Mycenaean Greek dominion, Linear A was the official script for the palaces and religious activities, and hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals....

 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
  Malia (city)
  Malia is a coastal town and a former municipality in the Heraklion peripheral unit, Crete, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Hersonissos, of which it is a municipal unit. It lies 34 km east of Heraklion, the Cretan capital city. The town was the...
  
   (MM II)
• the hieroglyphic deposit at Malia palace (MM III)
• the hieroglyphic deposit at Knossos
  Knossos
  Knossos , also known as Labyrinth, or Knossos Palace, is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and probably the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture. The palace appears as a maze of workrooms, living spaces, and store rooms close to a central square...
  
   (MM II or III)
• the Petras
  Petras
  Petras is the archaeological site of an ancient Minoan town on northeastern Crete.-Geography:Petras is just east of the modern Cretan town, Siteia...
  
   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
  Malia altar stone
  The Malia altar stone is a stone slab bearing an inscription in Cretan hieroglyphs, excavated in Malia, Crete. The stone has a cuplike cavity and is thought to be a Minoan altar stone. Of the 16 glyphs of the inscription, three occur twice each. The inscription is the only known instance of Cretan...
  
  
• the Phaistos Disk
• the Arkalochori Axe
  Arkalochori Axe
  The bronze Arkalochori Axe is a second millennium BC Minoan votive double axe excavated by Spyridon Marinatos in 1934 in the Arkalochori cave on Crete which is believed to be part of a religious ritual. It is inscribed with fifteen symbols...
  
  
• 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

Linear A

Linear A is one of two scripts used in ancient Crete before Mycenaean Greek Linear B; Cretan hieroglyphs is the second script. In Minoan times, before the Mycenaean Greek dominion, Linear A was the official script for the palaces and religious activities, and hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals....

 counterparts, so that it is tempting to insert Linear B

Linear B

Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...

 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

Cypriot syllabary

The Cypriot syllabary is a syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from ca. the 11th to the 4th centuries BCE, when it was replaced by the Greek alphabet. A pioneer of that change was king Evagoras of Salamis...

.

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:

Writing system	Geographical area	Time spanBeginning date refers to first attestations, the assumed origins of all scripts lie further back in the past.
Cretan Hieroglyphic	Crete Crete Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...	ca. 1625−1500 BC
Linear A Linear A Linear A is one of two scripts used in ancient Crete before Mycenaean Greek Linear B; Cretan hieroglyphs is the second script. In Minoan times, before the Mycenaean Greek dominion, Linear A was the official script for the palaces and religious activities, and hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals....	Aegean islands Aegean Islands The Aegean Islands are the group of islands in the Aegean Sea, with mainland Greece to the west and north and Turkey to the east; the island of Crete delimits the sea to the south, those of Rhodes, Karpathos and Kasos to the southeast...  (Kea Kea (island) Kea , also known as Gia or Tzia , Zea, and, in Antiquity, Keos , is an island of the Cyclades archipelago, in the Aegean Sea, in Greece. Kea is part of the Kea-Kythnos peripheral unit. Its capital, Ioulis, is inland at a high altitude and is considered quite picturesque... , Kythera, Melos, Thera Santorini Santorini , officially Thira , is an island located in the southern Aegean Sea, about southeast from Greece's mainland. It is the largest island of a small, circular archipelago which bears the same name and is the remnant of a volcanic caldera... ), and Greek mainland (Laconia Laconia Laconia , also known as Lacedaemonia, is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. Its administrative capital is Sparti... )	ca. 18th century BC−1450 BC
Linear B Linear B Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...	Crete (Knossos Knossos Knossos , also known as Labyrinth, or Knossos Palace, is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and probably the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture. The palace appears as a maze of workrooms, living spaces, and store rooms close to a central square... ), and mainland (Pylos Pylos Pylos , historically known under its Italian name Navarino, is a town and a former municipality in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Pylos-Nestoras, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit. It was the capital of the former... , Mycenae Mycenae Mycenae is an archaeological site in Greece, located about 90 km south-west of Athens, in the north-eastern Peloponnese. Argos is 11 km to the south; Corinth, 48 km to the north... , Thebes Ancient Thebes (Boeotia) See Thebes, Greece for the modern city built on the ancient ruins.Ancient Thebes was a Boeotian city-state , situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain... , Tiryns Tiryns Tiryns is a Mycenaean archaeological site in the prefecture of Argolis in the Peloponnese, some kilometres north of Nauplion.-General information:... )	ca. 1375−1200 BC

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
  Gareth Alun Owens
  Gareth Alun Owens is a British-Greek academic, currently serving as Associate Director and «Erasmus/Socrates» Manager/Tutor of the International Relations Office, TEI of Crete and Associate Professor of Hellenic Culture - History, Language and Civilization...
  
  , 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