The inscription on the disc is carefully balanced
and arranged, and each side contains exactly the same number of
sign-groups, with one additional group on face A, which is separated
from the preceding part of the inscription by a dash. Certain sets
of sign-groups recur in the same order, as though they constituted
some kind of refrain. From these indications it has been suggested
that the whole inscription is a metrical composition, a short poem
or hymn--perhaps one leaf of an Anatolian Book of Psalms whose other
pages have perished. It is agreed that the language and religion of
the western coast of Asia Minor were closely allied to those of
Crete, and it is possible that when the Minoans developed their
own language on somewhat different lines from the mainlanders,
they maintained in parts of their religious service the old form
of the speech common to themselves and their Anatolian relatives,
as a kind of sacred language.[*]
[Footnote *: See Appendix, p. 264.]
Thus, it is abundantly evident that the civilization of Minoan
Crete, far from being dumb, had varied and perfectly adequate means
of expressing itself. The old Cretan tradition that the Phoenicians
did not invent the letters of the alphabet, but only changed those
already existing, is amply justified; for this seems to have been
precisely what they did.
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