Editing Linear B (section)

=== Arthur Evans's classification of scripts ===
The [[United Kingdom|British]] archaeologist [[Arthur Evans]], keeper of the [[Ashmolean Museum]], was presented by Greville Chester in 1886 with a sealstone from Crete engraved with a writing he took to be Mycenaean.<ref>{{harvnb|Ventris|Chadwick|1973|p=8}}.</ref> [[Heinrich Schliemann]] had encountered signs similar to these, but had never identified the signs clearly as writing, relating in his major work on Mycenae that "of combinations of signs resembling inscriptions I have hitherto only found three or four ...."<ref>{{cite book|page=[https://archive.org/details/mycenaenarrative1880schl/page/114 114]|title=Mycenæ|url=https://archive.org/details/mycenaenarrative1880schl|first1=Heinrich|last1=Schliemann|first2=William Ewart|last2=Gladstone|location=New York|publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons|year=1880|isbn=978-0-405-09851-2}}</ref> In 1893 Evans purchased more sealstones in Athens, verifying from the antiquarian dealers that the stones came from Crete. During the next year he noticed the script on other artefacts in the Ashmolean. In 1894 he embarked for [[Crete]] in search of the script. Soon after arrival, at [[Knossos]] he saw the sign of the double axe on an excavated wall, considering this the source of the script. Subsequently, he found more stones from the various ruins being worn by Cretan women as [[amulet]]s called {{lang|grc|γαλόπετρες}} "milk-stones", thought to encourage the production of breast milk.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Crawford|first=James|title=Fallen glory: the lives and deaths of history's greatest buildings|date=2019|publisher=Picador|isbn=978-1-250-11831-8|location=New York|pages=45|oclc=1076499808}}</ref>

Starting in 1894, Evans published his theories that the signs evidenced various phases in the development of a writing system in ''[[The Journal of Hellenic Studies]]'', the first article being "Primitive Pictographs and a Prae-Phoenician Script from Crete".<ref>{{cite journal|first=A.J.|last=Evans|title=Primitive Pictographs and a Prae-Phoenician Script, from Crete and the Peloponnese|journal=Journal of Hellenic Studies|volume=14|year=1894|pages=270–372, 394|url=https://archive.org/details/journalofhelleni14soci|doi=10.2307/623973|jstor=623973|s2cid=163720432 }}</ref> In these articles Evans distinguished between "pictographic writing" and "a linear system of writing". He did not explicitly define these terms, causing some confusion among subsequent writers concerning what he meant, but in 1898 he wrote<ref>{{cite journal|first=Arthur J.|last=Evans|journal=Journal of Hellenic Studies|volume=XVII|pages=327–395|title=Further Discoveries of Cretan and Aegean Script|year=1898|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PxgTAAAAYAAJ&q=Arthur+Evans+Crete|doi=10.2307/623835|jstor=623835|hdl=2027/hvd.32044005544283|s2cid=163638328 |hdl-access=free}}</ref> "These linear forms indeed consist of simple geometrical figures which unlike the more complicated pictorial class were little susceptible to modification," and "That the linear or quasi-alphabetic signs ... were in the main ultimately derived from the rudely scratched line pictures belonging to the infancy of art can hardly be doubted."

Meanwhile, Evans began to negotiate for the land purchase of the Knossos site. He established the Cretan Exploration Fund, with only his own money at first, and by 1896 the fund had purchased one-fourth of Kephala Hill, on which the ruins were located, with first option to buy the rest. However, he could not obtain a [[firman]] excavation permit from the Ottoman government. He returned to Britain. In January 1897, the Christian population of Crete staged its final insurrection against the Ottoman Empire. The last Ottoman troops were ferried off the island by the British fleet on 5 December 1898.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Royal Navy|first1=William Laird|last1=Clowes|first2=Clements Robert|last2=Markham|first3=Alfred Thayer|last3=Mahan|first4=Herbert Wrigley|last4=Wilson|first5=Theodore|last5=Roosevelt|first6=Leonard George Carr|last6=Laughton|year=1903|publisher=Sampson, Low, Marston and Company|location=London|volume=VII|pages=444–448|isbn=978-1-86176-017-3|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1n1nAAAAMAAJ&q=Turkey+Crete&pg=PA444}}</ref> In that year also, Evans and his friends returned to complete purchase of the site. By this time, the Fund had other contributors as well.<ref>{{cite book|title=Arthur Evans and the Palace of Minos|first=Cynthia Ann|last=Brown|edition=Ashmolean Museum: illustrated|publisher=Ashmolean Museum|year=1983|location=Oxford|isbn=9780900090929|pages=[https://archive.org/details/arthurevanspala00annb/page/15 15–30]|url=https://archive.org/details/arthurevanspala00annb/page/15}}</ref> In 1899, the Constitution of a new [[Cretan State|Cretan Republic]] went into effect. Once Evans had received permission to excavate from the local authorities, excavation on the hill began on 23 March 1900.

According to Evans's report to the [[British School at Athens]] for that year,<ref name=repo>{{cite journal|journal=The Annual of the British School at Athens|issue=VI: Session 1899–1900|year=1901|first=Arthur J.|last=Evans|title=Knossos: Summary Report of the Excavations in 1900: I The Palace|pages=3–70 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=000pAAAAYAAJ&q=tablets+April+Knosos+OR+Knossos&pg=PA18}}</ref> on 5 April, the excavators discovered the first large cache ever of Linear B tablets among the remains of a wooden box in a disused [[terracotta]] bathtub. Subsequently, caches turned up at multiple locations, including the Room of the Chariot Tablets, where over 350 pieces from four boxes were found. The tablets were {{convert|4.5|cm|in|abbr=on}} to {{convert|19.5|cm|in|abbr=on}} long by {{convert|1.2|cm|in|abbr=on}} to {{convert|7.2|cm|in|abbr=on}} wide and were scored with horizontal lines over which text was written in about 70 characters. Even in this earliest excavation report, Evans could tell that "a certain number of quasi-pictorial characters also occur which seem to have an ideographic or determinative meaning."<ref name=repo/>

The excavation was over for that year by 2 June. Evans reported: "only a comparatively small proportion of the tablets were preserved in their entirety,"<ref name=repo/> the causes of destruction being rainfall through the roof of the storage room, crumbling of small pieces, and being thrown away by workmen who failed to identify them. A report on 6 September to the [[Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland]]<ref>{{cite journal|journal=Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland|volume=XXX (New Series, III)|year=1900|first=Arthur J.|last=Evans|title=Crete: Systems of Writing|issue=90|pages=91–93 |doi=10.2307/2842725|jstor=2842725| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q8QEAAAAYAAJ&q=Arthur+Evans+1894&pg=RA3-PA91|url-access=subscription}}</ref> began to use some of the concepts characteristic of Evans's later thought: "palace of Knossos" and "palace of [[Minos]]". ''[[Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography]]'', 1900,<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Appletons' Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1900|title=Archaeology: Crete|volume=Third Series, V; Whole Series, XI|pages=25–28|year=1901 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DEwoAAAAMAAJ&q=Arthur+Evans+1894&pg=PA25}}</ref> notes that Evans took up Stillman's theme that the palace was the [[labyrinth]] of mythology in which the half-bovine son of King [[Minos]] lurked. In the report, the tablets are now called a "linear script" as opposed to the "hieroglyphic or conventionalized pictographic script". The linear script has characters that are "of a free, upright, European character" and "seem to have been for the most part syllabic". Evans reasserts the ideographic idea: "a certain number are unquestionably ideographic or determinative."

The years after 1900 were consumed by excavations at Knossos and the discovery and study by Evans of tablets, with a projected comprehensive work on Cretan scripts to be called ''Scripta Minoa''. A year before the publication of volume I, he began to drop hints that he now believed the linear script was two scripts, to be presented in the forthcoming book.

In ''Scripta Minoa I'',<ref>{{cite book|title=Scripta Minoa: The Written Documents of Minoan Crete: With Special Reference to the Archives of Knossos|first=Arthur J.|last=Evans|author-link=Arthur Evans|volume=I: The Hieroglyphic and Primitive Linear Classes with an Account of the Discovery of the Pre-Phoenician Scripts, their Place in Minoan Story and their Mediterranean Relations: with Plates, Tables and Figures in the Text|location=Oxford|year=1909|publisher=The Clarendon Press|url=https://archive.org/details/scriptaminoawrit01evanuoft}}</ref> which appeared in 1909, he explained that the discovery of the [[Phaistos Disc]] in July 1908 had caused him to pull the book from the presses so that he could include the disk by permission, as it had not yet been published. On the next page<ref>''Scripta Minoa I'', page ix.</ref> he mentioned that he was also including by permission of [[Federico Halbherr]] of the [[Italian School of Archaeology at Athens|Italian Mission in Crete]] unpublished tablets from [[Hagia Triada]] written in a linear script of "Class A". To what degree if any Halbherr was responsible for Evans's division of the "linear script" into "Class A" and "Class B" is not stated. The Knossos tablets were of Class B, so that Evans could have perceived Class A only in tablets from elsewhere, and so recently that he needed permission to include the examples.

Evans summarized the differences between the two scripts as "type" or "form of script;' that is, varieties in the formation and arrangement of the characters. For example, he says "the clay documents belonging to Class A show a certain approximation in their forms to those presenting the hieroglyphic inscriptions ... the system of numerals is also in some respects intermediate between that of the hieroglyphic documents and that of the linear Class B."<ref>''Scripta Minoa I'', page 36.</ref>
{{check quotation}}
The first volume covered "the Hieroglyphic and Primitive Linear Classes" in three parts: the "pre-Phoenician Scripts of Crete", the "Pictorial Script" and "the Phaistos Disk". One or two more volumes publishing the Linear A and Linear B tablets were planned, but Evans ran out of time; the project required more than one man could bring to it. For a good many of the years left to him, he was deeply enmeshed in war and politics in the Balkans. When he did return to Knossos, completion and publication of the palace excavations took priority. His greatest work, ''Palace of Minos'', came out in 1935. It did include scattered descriptions of tablets. He died in 1941, soon after Nazi forces [[Battle of Crete|invaded Crete]].

The Knossos tablets had remained in the museum at Irakleion, Crete, where many of them now were missing. The unpublished second volume consisted of notes by Evans and plates and fonts created by Clarendon Press. In 1939, [[Carl Blegen]] had uncovered the Pylos Tablets; pressure was mounting to finish ''Scripta Minoa II.'' After Evans's death, [[Alice Kober]], assistant to [[John Myres]] and a major transcriber of the Knossos tablets, prompted Myres to come back from retirement and finish the work. [[Emmett L. Bennett, Jr.]] added more transcriptions. The second volume came out in 1952 with Evans cited as author and Myres as editor,<ref>{{cite book|title=Scripta Minoa: The Written Documents of Minoan Crete: With Special Reference to the Archives of Knossos|first=Arthur J.|last=Evans|author-link=Arthur Evans|volume=II: The Archives of Knossos: Clay Tablets Inscribed in Linear Script B Edited from Notes, and Supplemented by John L. Myres|location=Oxford|year=1952|publisher=The Clarendon Press|url=http://diglit.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/evans1952/0003/ocr?sid=c8644f1a9472ba6a583ab51c77803b6a}}</ref> just before the discovery that Linear B writes an early form of Greek. An impatient Ventris and Chadwick declared: "Two generations of scholars had been cheated of the opportunity to work constructively on the problem."<ref>''Documents in Mycenaean Greek'', page 11.</ref>