[Explorations recently made in Crete, in which Dr. A. J. Evans has borne a conspicuous part, have revealed a high state of civilization existing there, long anterior to that of Egypt or Assyria, and disclosed "The existence of a highly advanced civilization, going back far behind the historic period." Among other interesting "finds," more than a thousand clay tablets were unearthed in the ancient palace of Cnossos. The great conflagration which long, long ago destroyed the palace served, by baking these tablets, to make them more permanent. These tablets vary in size and shape and the character of their writing, being inscribed "both in pictographic and linear forms of the Minoan script." As based on the results of these explorations, a claim is made for the ante-Phœnician origin of the alphabetic writing there discovered. In accordance with this hypothesis it is held that the Phœnicians only appropriated and developed what had come to them from Crete--what had existed in Crete for centuries previously. But it was no less an important service which the Phœnicians contributed though it be hereafter shown conclusively that they merely appropriated what had descended to them from the earlier Cretan civilization. These Cretan tablets are, as yet, undecipherable. They are written in an unknown tongue and await the discovery of some bi-lingual text or inscription which shall prove, as in the case of the Rosetta Stone, the line of cleavage to the interpretation of what is, possibly, the earliest of all written languages. The characters of these tablets are varied, consisting of linear writing and of hieroglyphics. Dr. Evans thus sums up the present evidence of the earlier Minoan or pre-Cretan origin of this alphabetic writing: "When we examine in detail the linear script of these Mycenæan documents, it is impossible not to recognize that we have here a system of writing, syllabic and perhaps purely alphabetic, which stands on a distinctly higher level of development than the hieroglyphs of Egypt or the cuneiform script of contemporary Syria and Babylon."[51]]