Anthropology and the classics : six lectures delivered before the University of Oxford . pot with a definitephonetic value, and proceeding to read them off bythe aid of the Cypriote syllabary of the Greeklanguage as it existed some two thousand years later,can only be described as a far cry. Linearized signsof altogether alphabeticappearance belong, as al-ready shown, to the verybeginnings of humanculture. In the case ofthe whorls, moreover,many of the linearfigures are really repeti-tions of similar marksdue to the decay of aborder pattern—a phe-nomenon already paralleled1 by some of the engr
Anthropology and the classics : six lectures delivered before the University of Oxford . pot with a definitephonetic value, and proceeding to read them off bythe aid of the Cypriote syllabary of the Greeklanguage as it existed some two thousand years later,can only be described as a far cry. Linearized signsof altogether alphabeticappearance belong, as al-ready shown, to the verybeginnings of humanculture. In the case ofthe whorls, moreover,many of the linearfigures are really repeti-tions of similar marksdue to the decay of aborder pattern—a phe-nomenon already paralleled1 by some of the engravedgroups of the Reindeer Period. A recurring decorativefragment of this kind somewhat resembles, accord-ing to the progressive stages of its decadence, theCypriote go, ti, or re—a circumstance productive ofreadings by eminent scholars * containing vain repe-titions of go go, ti ti, and re re. If we turn to Crete, the source of the developed 1 Professor Sayce, however, Ilios, p. 696, takes note of thepossibility that such inscriptions as go-go-ti-re may be intendedfor ornament \. Fig. 21. 42 THE EUROPEAN DIFFUSION OF lect. pre-Phoenician scripts of Greece and the Aegeanworld, we find evidence of the same primitivestratum of linearized pictography. But the truehieroglyphic script, in which the phonetic elementis apparently already present, in addition to theideographic, displays other features which lie beyondthe scope of our present theme. In the advancedlinear scripts which grow out of this, and whichcertainly have a largely phonetic basis, we marka regularity of arrangement and a definite settingforth of word-groups altogether different from thephenomena presented by the elemental figures ofprimitive pictography. The Phoenician and laterGreek alphabet carries us a step further. But the conventionalized pictography of Crete, ifit does not give us the actual source of the laterPhoenician letters, at least supplies the best illustra-tion of the elements out of which it was
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Keywords: ., anatolia, bookcentury1900, bookdecad, hisarl?, hisarlik, pictogram
