_c._ Bird standing. Birds in a somewhat similar position occur among the Hittite symbols at Jerabis and Bulgar Maden, and are frequent in Egyptian hieroglyphics. [Illustration: 6_a_] [Illustration: 6_a_] [Illustration: 6_a_] [Illustration: 6_b_] 6. _a._ Vegetable forms, similar to those found on Hittite monuments. _b._ Floral symbol. The dot above both examples probably represents the head of a stamen or pistil, as of the lily. 7. _a._ Day-star, or sun, with eight revolving rays. _b._ Rays. Star-like symbols occur on Syrian and Asianic seal-stones. [Illustration: 7_a_] [Illustration: 7_b_] [Illustration: 7_c_] _c._ This symbol, with its swastika-like offshoots, may be of solar import. The concentric circles may be compared with the Egyptian [Symbol], Sun with twelve rays, _Sep_=times, and with the Chinese hieroglyph for sun with its central dot. [Illustration: 8a] [Illustration: 8b] 8. Apparently hieroglyphics of mountains and valleys, hence "country" or "land." The Egyptian [Symbol] _men_=mountain, is applied in the same way as a determinative for "districts" and "countries." As [Symbol] _snut_=granary, it reappears, with one or two heaps of corn in the middle, in the simple sense of a "plot of ground." The Akkadian symbol, which also means a plot of ground, exhibits a form [Symbol] similar to the above. "In this connection," says Mr. Evans, "a truly remarkable coincidence is observable between the pictographic symbolism of old Chaldæa and that of the Cretans of the Mycenæan period. The linear form of the Akkadian _Ut-tu_ [Symbol] shows a sun above the symbol of the ground with a plant growing out of it. But on specimens of Mycenæan gems observed by me in Eastern Crete are seen symbolic or conventional representations of the plant growing out of the ground." (_Jo. Hell. Stud._, p. 313.) The LINEAR signs, although treated separately for purposes of convenience, are regarded by Mr. Evans (see Table I) as fundamentally connected with the hieroglyphic, the one, as in other scripts, overlapping the other. As to this connection, however, some doubt exists. The thirty-two characters which Mr. Evans has detected are increased to thirty-eight by Dr. Tsountas (_Mycenæan Age_, p. 279), while the materials yielding these results received an important addition through Mr. Evans's discovery, in the spring of 1896, of an inscribed steatite slab, associated with numerous votive objects, in the great cave of Mount Dikta, the fabled birthplace of Zeus. "It consists of a fragment of what may be described as a 'Table of Offerings,' bearing part of what appears to be a dedication of nine letters of probably syllabic values, answering to the same early Cretan script that is seen on the seals, and with two punctuations." (Address of Arthur J. Evans to Section H, Anthropology, of the British Association, 1896; _Nature_, 1st Oct. 1896, p. 531.) [Illustration: TABLE I]