Deciphering Cretan Scripts - The BAS Library
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Home > Magazines > Archaeology Odyssey > March/April 2004
The Minoans of Crete: Europe’s Oldest Civilization

Deciphering Cretan Scripts

By Barry B. Powell

As children we learn that A is for Apple, B is for Boy and C is for Cat, and that CAB is the machine we use to travel downtown. We also sing the alphabet song, whose words are the alphabetic signs sung in a sing-song rhythm that helps us to remember them all. We cannot imagine easily that pre-Greek systems of writing do not work that way at all. They do not tell us what words sound like. We do not know, for example, how Hebrew sounded in the days of Jesus, because the ancient Semitic system of writing […]

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Footnotes

1.

See the exchange “Who Invented the Alphabet?” in Archaeology Odyssey, Premiere Issue, 1998: Barry B. Powell, “The Greeks”; P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., “The Semites.”

2.

See Denise Schmandt-Besserat, “Signs of Life,” Origins, Archaeology Odyssey, January/February 2002.

3.

See Pamela Gaber and William G. Dever, “The Birth of Adonis? Cyprus Excavation Suggests a Connection Between the Greek God and the Hebrew Adon,” Archaeology Odyssey, Spring 1998.