The beginning of the use
of this system may have been in the early part of the fifteenth
century B.C., and it was in full service at the great catastrophe of
Knossos, at the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the fourteenth
century B.C. Its use still continued after the fall of the Minoan
power, tablets inscribed with this form of writing being found
in the Late Minoan III. House of the Fetish Shrine at Knossos.
According to Dr. Evans, whose 'Scripta Minoa' sums up all that is
at present known of these enigmatic Cretan writings, Class B is
not a mere outgrowth of Class A. The scripts are certainly allied,
and there are indications that B is the more highly developed of the
two, having a smaller selection of characters and a less complicated
system of compound signs; but at the same time several of the signs
found in B do not occur in A at all, and some of those which belong
to both scripts are found in a more primitive form in B. The language
expressed in both scripts must, however, have been essentially
the same. It is suggested, therefore, that in the supersession
of Class A by Class B we have another indication of the dynastic
revolution which is supposed to have caused that ruin of the palace
which closed the Middle Minoan period.
The records of Class B give evidence of a very considerable advance
in the art of writing.
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