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MINOAN CRETE

The Minoan civilisation is surely the greatest achievement of Crete, and the most important of the bronze age cultures within the Greek world as a whole.

Theocharis E. Detorakis, History of Crete, Heraklion, 1994

Minos 'was the most royal of the mortal kings and ruled over most of mankind who dwelt about, holding the sceptre of Zeus; with it he was king of multitudes'

Pseudo-Platonic Minos

It is in cult and religion indeed that the persistent Minoan heritage most deeply impressed the classical Hellenes ; and cult, so far as their attitude to the Zeus-descended dynasty in the island was concerned, was inseparable from tradition, which reminded them of the essentially non-Hellenic character of Cretan divinities.

George Huxley, Minoans in Greek sources, Belfast, Queen's University, 1968

Taking into account that Linear A and Cretan Hieroglyphic share a considerable number of signs, both syllabic and logographic, its seems unlikely that they were created entirely independently. However, the rendering of numerals is quite distinct in both scripts.

Ilse Schoep, 'The administration of Neopalatial Crete : a critical assessment of the Linear A tablets and their role in the administrative process', Minos suppl. 17, Salamanca, 2002

In 1950 Emmett L. Bennett succeeded in demonstrating that Linear A and Linear B tablets employed different number systems, which also seemed to suggest that they were written in different languages.

H.G. Wunderlich, The secret of Crete, Efstathiadis, Athens, 2000

 

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Bienvenue | Qu'est-ce que le LE LINEAIRE A BIENVENUE LINEAR A