Linear B was not the first script of the Aegean. It had two older relatives on Crete. The oldest is called Cretan hieroglyphs, used from about 2100 or 1900 BC to about 1700 BC, in the age of the first palaces you met in Knossos and the Cretan Palaces.
🔑 Key idea
Cretan hieroglyphs are Crete's earliest script, found mostly on seals and on some clay documents, from about 2100 or 1900 BC to about 1700 BC. For most of its life it was used alongside Linear A. It is still unread.
What survives
Most of the inscriptions are short, carved on seal stones that were pressed into clay to mark ownership or approval. There are also clay bars, labels and sealings, many from Malia and Knossos. The signs are more picture-like than those of Linear A: heads, hands, animals, tools. Like Linear B, the script seems to mix syllable signs with word signs and has its own numerals. Only a few hundred inscriptions survive, nearly all very short.
Places on Crete where Cretan hieroglyphs have been found.Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A and Linear B. The hieroglyphs begin earlier and overlap with Linear A for most of their history.
💡 Why it works
Why did Crete use two scripts at once? No one knows for sure. Cretan hieroglyphs appear in the north and east of the island, Linear A first in the south, around Phaistos. They may have been used by different palaces or offices, or for different jobs. Many signs and even some words appear in both, which suggests they belong to the same tradition of Cretan writing.
⚠️ Common mistake
Confusing Cretan hieroglyphs with Egyptian hieroglyphs. They share only the nickname "hieroglyphs", given because both look picture-like. They are separate scripts with different signs, and the Cretan script writes an unknown language, while Egyptian has been read since the 1820s. Check: if a text is on a Cretan seal, it is not Egyptian.
The famous Phaistos Disc, a clay disc stamped with signs in a spiral, is often lumped in with Cretan hieroglyphs. It is a single object, its signs are not those of the usual script, and its relation to the other Cretan scripts is uncertain. This course leaves it aside.
✏️ Worked example: Older or younger?
Which began first: Cretan hieroglyphs or Linear B?
Cretan hieroglyphs began around 2100 or 1900 BC.
Linear B appears around 1450 BC.
Answer: Cretan hieroglyphs, by several centuries.
✏️ Worked example: Read or unread?
Can scholars read Cretan hieroglyphs today?
The language behind them is unknown, the texts are few and short, and there is no bilingual text.
Like Linear A, the script remains undeciphered.
Answer: No; it is still unread.
In A Family of Aegean Scripts you will see how these Cretan scripts connect to Linear B and to the scripts of Cyprus.
Practice
Pass with 3 right answers, the last 2 in a row. Each right answer earns 2 XP.