The Minoan Scripts: Fact and Theory

Abstract

HE basic distinction between fact and theory is clear enough: a fact is a reality, an actuality, something that exists; a theory states that something might be, or could be, or should be. Like most simple statements, the foregoing has implications that are far from simple. In dealing with the past we are concerned, not with something that exists, but with something that has existed. Our are limited to those things for the past which still exist; everything else is theory, which may range all the way from practical certainty to utter impossibility, depending on its relationship to known facts. Before judging a theory, we must therefore know what the are. In the case of an unknown script, our basic facts are obviously the inscribed documents themselves. It is notorious that the inscriptions have never been accessible to scholars as a whole. This means that our basic information is at best second-hand, and liable to all the distortions that may occur in mechanical or manual reproduction. Our knowledge of a inscription may be based on any of the following kinds of reproduction, singly or in combination: a cast; a photograph of the original, of a cast, or of another photograph; a faithful transcription, made from the original, a cast, or some kind of a photograph; a normalized transcription, made from the original, or from any of the aforementioned types of reproduction.' The term Minoan requires definition. As it is used in this article, it includes six different systems of writing, all similar to one another but with certain specific variations which serve to distinguish them: the Pictographic class; the class represented by the Phaistos Disk; Linear Class A; Linear Class B; the Mainland scripts; the Cypro-Minoan scripts. In addition, signs have been found on artifacts of provenience: on wallblocks, pottery, ingots, inlays, etc. The signs on these usually occur alone, rarely in pairs, sometimes as composites of two or more signs, and seem to be craftsmen's or ownership marks. They do not, in themselves, constitute a script system, but have apparently been borrowed from other systems. A brief summary of each of the scripts follows, showing what information is available, where it requires supplementation or correction, and what theories and conjectures arise from it.2