CHAPTER XI
LETTERS AND RELIGION
Of all the discoveries yet made on Cretan soil, that which, in
the end, will doubtless prove to be of the greatest importance is
the discovery of the various systems of writing which the Minoans
successively devised and used. As yet knowledge with regard to these
systems has not advanced beyond the description of the materials
and their comparison with those furnished by other scripts, a task
which has so far been accomplished by Dr. Evans in the first volume
of his 'Scripta Minoa.' An immense amount of material has been
accumulated, and has been separated into various classes, which
have been shown to be characteristic of different periods of Minoan
history. It is possible to arrive at a general understanding of
the matters to which certain items of the material refer, but the
actual reading of the inscribed tablets has as yet proved to be
impossible. To all appearance, moreover, a considerable proportion
of the material appears to be not literary, in any true sense,
but to consist of inventories and accounts, perhaps also of legal
documents and other such records of purely business and practical
interest. Even so it would be a matter of no small importance could
it be found possible to decipher the records, let us say, of the
War Office or Admiralty of Knossos, or to survey the details of
royal house-keeping in those far-off days; and it may still be
hoped that, when the ardently desired bilingual inscription at
last turns up and makes decipherment possible, we may find that
documents of more genuinely literary interest are not altogether
lacking.
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