The above picture shows a Minoan seal with what is known as Cretan hieroglyphs. It's rather beautiful in its way. You hear the word "hieroglyph" and right away you think of Egypt. But Crete, off the coast of Greece, had a different set. There were also hieroglyphs in Anatolia, which to us is part of Turkey but which hosted a number of civilizations before that. You could probably call some South American scripts hieroglyphs as well.
Cretan hieroglyphs later developed into Linear A and Linear B, the latter of which was the script for Ancient Greek before they adapted the Phoenician-based Greek Alphabet. I don't know if the other Old World hieroglyphs could have been influenced by the Egyptians'. Obviously a lot was already being said.
2 comments:
That it was made of green jasper makes it all the more attractive. From further reading I learned a number of seals were made from semi-precious stones and gold. The Minoans were especially skilled artisans. The subject of how writing developed is a fascinating study.
On a related note I don't remember if I ever told you about Irving Finkel, the cuneiform expert at the British Museum, but he puts on some very entertaining presentations. If you haven't already watched one you might be entertained by a little of this example.
You're right that green jasper is very pretty. Not that red jasper isn't. And Bruneau jasper at that, but it would probably be harder to make out symbols etched on that, while green is much clearer. Minoan craftsmanship is quite stunning. If it hadn't been for some bad breaks their civilization could have gone on even longer.
Finkel is a great speaker and educator. He's right that cuneiforms were the very opposite of codes in the time that they were written, which is something I hadn't really thought of before. They're also more meaningful once you know where they came from.
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