Abstract
SummaryThis paper investigates a series of glyptic inscriptions attested on Crete at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennium BC, collectively referred to as the ‘Archanes Script’. These minute engravings are considered to represent the earliest appearance of writing west of Egypt, and the first ‘true’ writing in the Aegean. Though mentioned in passing in almost every study of Bronze Age Aegean writing, few scholars have ever offered a definition of what exactly they consider the ‘Archanes Script’ to be. No work or scholarly consensus exists delineating which signs constitute its signary, or even which documents comprise its corpus. Study of the seals as objects in their own right, examining script signs alongside associated iconography, material qualities and form, has been rare. This paper offers the first complete overview and redefinition of the Archanes Script since its discovery in the 1960s and initial definition by Paul Yule in 1980.
Highlights
The Cretan ‘Archanes Script’,1 generally dated to somewhere between the end of the third and the beginning of the second millennium BC, is without a doubt the most elusive of categories in the study of Bronze Age Aegean writing systems. Though it is mentioned by virtually every scholar in the field, discussion is almost always limited to a few sentences, and most often serves as an introduction to the Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A writing systems
A closer examination of the script’s sign-forms and behaviour may both illuminate the peculiarities of later scripts, and – by virtue of presenting a ‘bridge’ between these and the Prepalatial iconographic structures I have argued elsewhere to provide the conceptual background for writing – shed further light on the origins of complex lexigraphic and sematographic representation on Crete
This paper offers a fundamental redefinition of the Archanes Script, which will be held separate from the Archanes Formula
Summary
The Cretan ‘Archanes Script’,1 generally dated to somewhere between the end of the third and the beginning of the second millennium BC, is without a doubt the most elusive of categories in the study of Bronze Age Aegean writing systems. The few works that to some extent delineate the limits and content of what they consider the term to represent offer strongly diverging opinions on its nature and, as a result, its scope: while for some it represents the first stage of Cretan Hieroglyphic
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