[Footnote *: _Annual of the British School at Athens_, vol. vi.,
p. 52.]
But the discovery which will doubtless prove in the end to be of
greater importance than any other, though as yet the main part of
its value is latent, was that of large numbers of clay tablets
incised with inscriptions in the unknown script of the Minoans. By
the end of March the finding of one tablet near the South Portico
gave earnest of future discoveries, and before the season ended
over a thousand had been collected from various deposits in the
palace. Of these deposits, one contained tablets written in
hieroglyphic; but the rest were in the linear script, 'a highly
developed form, with regular divisions between the words, and for
elegance scarcely surpassed by any later form of writing.' The
tablets vary in shape and size, some being flat, elongated bars
from two to seven and a half inches in length, while others are
squarer, ranging up to small octavo. Some of them, along with the
linear writing, supply illustrations of the objects to which the
inscriptions refer. There are human figures, chariots and horses,
cuirasses and axes, houses and barns, and ingots followed by a
balance, and accompanied by numerals which probably indicate their
value in Minoan talents. It looks as though these were documents
referring to the royal arsenals and treasuries.
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