Cretan hieroglyphs

Corpus

As of 1989, the corpus of Cretan hieroglyphic inscriptions included two parts:

• Seals and sealings, 150 documents with 307 sign-groups, using 832 signs in all.
• Other documents on clay, 120 documents with 274 sign-groups, using 723 signs.

More documents, such as those from the Petras deposit, have been published since then. A four sided prism was found in 2011 at Vrysinas in western Crete.

These inscriptions were mainly excavated at four locations:

• "Quartier Mu" at Malia (Middle Minoan II period = MM II)
• Malia palace (MM III)
• Knossos (MM II or III)
• the Petras deposit (MM IIB), 12 clay documents, 5 seal impressions, and 6 seals, excavated starting in 1995 and published in 2010.

The first corpus of signs was published by Evans in 1909. The current corpus (which excludes some of Evans' signs) was published in 1996 as the Corpus Hieroglyphicarum Inscriptionum Cretae (CHIC). It 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
• the Arkalochori Axe
• seal fragment HM 992, showing a single symbol, identical to Phaistos Disk glyph 21.

The relation of the last two items with the script of the main corpus is uncertain; the Malia altar is listed as part of the Hieroglyphic corpus by most researchers.

Since the publication of the CHIC in 1996 refinements and changes have been proposed. The main issue is that a number of symbols found on sealstones, tending to be more image-based, were deemed as purely decorative and not included in the sign list (or are transcribed when read). The concern is that this process may have resulted in actual signs being deprecated.

Some Cretan Hieroglyphic (as well as Linear A) inscriptions were also found on the island of Samothrace in the northeastern Aegean.

Some scholars have suggested relations to Anatolian hieroglyphs:

The overlaps between the Cretan script and other scripts, such as the hieroglyphic scripts of Cyprus and the Hittite lands of Anatolia, may suggest ... that they all evolved from a common ancestor, a now-lost script perhaps originating in Syria.

New exemplars continue to be found. During recent excavation at the Neopalatial area of the Cult Centre of the City of Knossos a seal stone was found in a foundation deposit. The steatite seal had four inscribed faces and the deposit dated to Final Palatial Period into LM III B. The room where the deposit was found had a "religious sceptre" inscribed all over with Linear A.

At Zakros three sealings inscribed with Cretan hieroglyphs were found in the same deposit with a Linear A tablet and a Linear A inscribed roundel. The deposit was in a destruction layer dated between layers LM IA and LM IB.