From icon to sign

Abstract

This article offers a reconstruction of early language recording on Crete in the second millennium BCE, charting the development of the earliest attestations of script on the island and examining their relationship to elements of iconology, orderly codification, figurative representations and symbolic expression. From an interdisciplinary perspective, it is possible to reconstruct an autonomous path into script formation starting from an analysis of the designs on Prepalatial, but especially, Protopalatial Cretan seals (from the third millennium BCE to the beginning of the second). Cretan hieroglyphic is still an undeciphered script. Yet, despite this hurdle, it is possible to recognise the stage in which phonetic recording takes place, through an in-depth analysis of the archaeological record and the inscribed objects, and through an in-depth examination of the structural/semantic categories represented on the inscriptions. On this basis, it is possible to conclude that the earliest Cretan language, whatever it may be, harnesses existing iconography on seals to be part of the inventory of its signs.