Abstract
FURTHER evidence of the influence of Minoan Crete on the mainland of Greece after the fall of the Palace of Knossos was brought forward by Sir Arthur Evans in his lecture before the Hellenic Society on November 22. It has been derived from a number of inscriptions painted on vases discovered in a cellar by Prof. A. D. Keramopoulos, while excavating the Cadmeia of Thebes. These Sir Arthur has been allowed to examine and copy, and their publication has been reserved for him, by the Greek Archaeological Society. The script, Sir Arthur said, answers in an overwhelming degree to that current in the latest phase of the Palace of Knossos as represented in more than 1,400 inscribed tablets. Out of about sixty signs gathered from the Minoan documents, no less than forty occur in the twenty-eight inscriptions from Thebes. In two instances the Theban inscriptions show the same signs as occur in the list of personal names in the inscription found at Knossos in 1902. Further, a comparison with the fragmentary inscriptions found on vases at Tiryns by the German excavators, and a few from Mycenae, establish the identity of their script with that of Thebes. They also include a Knossian personal name. It may therefore be regarded as proved, Sir Arthur concluded, that in Mycenaaan Greece of the fourteenth century B.C., the urban population spoke a language implanted from Crete, a language which in that island can be traced back to the third millennium B.C., and, if personal names count for anything, can be linked to the Carian races on the Anatolian side.
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Crete and Mainland Greece. Nature 130, 839 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130839c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130839c0