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. 'The characters themselves have a European
aspect. They are of upright habit, and of a simple and definite
outline, which throws into sharp relief the cumbrous and obscure
cuneiform system of Babylonia. Although not so cursive in form
as the Hieratic or Demotic types of Egyptian writing, there is
here a much more limited selection of types. It would seem that
the characters stood for syllables or even letters, though they
could in most cases also be used as words.... The spaces and lines
between the words, the _espacement_ into distinct paragraphs, and
the variation in the size of the characters on the same tablet,
according to the relative importance of the text, show a striving
after clearness and method such as can by no means be said to be
a characteristic of Classical Greek inscriptions.'[*] A decimal
system of numbers was in use, the highest single amount referred
to being 19,000, and percentages were evidently well understood,
as a whole series of tablets is devoted to them.

[Footnote *: 'Scripta Minoa,' pp. 39, 40.]

The tablets themselves were originally of unburnt, but sun-dried,
clay, and their preservation, as we have seen, is probably due to
the excessive