"But, brilliant as are the illustrations thus recovered of the high early civilization of the City of Minos and of the substantial truth of early tradition, they are almost thrown into the shade by a discovery which carries back the existence of written documents in the Hellenic lands some seven centuries beyond the first known monuments of the historic Greek writing. In the chambers and magazines of the Palace there came to light a series of deposits of clay tablets, in form somewhat analogous to the Babylonian, but inscribed with characters in two distinct types of indigenous prehistoric script—one hieroglyphic or quasi-pictorial, the other linear. The existence of a hieroglyphic script in the island had been already the theme of some earlier researches by the explorer of the Palace, based on the more limited material supplied by groups of signs on a class of Cretan seal-stones, and the ample corroboration of the conclusions arrived at was, therefore, the more satisfactory. These Cretan hieroglyphs will be found to have a special importance in their bearing on the origin of the Phoenician alphabet. {24} "But the great bulk of the tablets belonged to the linear class, exhibiting an elegant and much more highly-developed form of script, with letters of an upright and singularly European aspect. The inscriptions, over 1,000 of which were collected, were originally contained in coffers of clay, wood, and gypsum, which had been in turn secured by clay seals impressed with finely-engraved signets and counter-marked and counter-signed by controlling officials in the same script while the clay was still wet. The clay documents themselves are, beyond doubt, the Palace archives. Many relate to accounts concerning the Royal Arsenal, stores, and treasures. Others, perhaps, like the contemporary cuneiform tablets, refer to contracts or correspondence. The problems attaching to the decipherment of these clay records are of enthralling interest, and we have here locked up for us materials which may some day enlarge the bounds of history."