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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
The trouble with epigraphy is that it does not admit of tidy classification. The linguist seizes upon inscriptions as samples of language; the historian, when the linguist has interpreted them, as factual evidence. But their discovery is due to the archaeologist; and in a prehistoric period, where the historian has no loctis stanai, the archaeologist is liable to claim epigraphy as part of his province. This is what seems to have happened in the case of a recent book, Prehistoric Crete, which contains in Chapter 3 a long account of the Minoan scripts and the controversy which surrounded the decipherment of Linear B. It is regrettable that Mr. Hutchinson's expert knowledge of Minoan archaeology is not matched by a similar grasp of Minoan and Mycenaean epigraphy, and I feel driven to write a criticism of this chapter, in the hope that it will be thoroughly revised and brought up to date in a second edition.
page 3 note 1 By R. W. Hutchinson (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1962).
page 4 note 1 See Grumach, E., ‘Die Korrekturen des Diskus von Phaistos’, Kadmos, i (1962), 16–26.Google Scholar
page 4 note 2 For ‘tomb I opened’ read ‘tomb I opened’.
page 4 note 3 Annual of the British School at Athens, li (1956), 78.Google Scholar
page 5 note 1 Lang, M., American Journal of Archaeology, lxii (1958), 189.Google Scholar
page 6 note 1 Bennett, E. L., Chadwick, J., and Ventris, M., The Knossos Tablets (2nd ed., London, 1959).Google Scholar
page 6 note 2 Hutchinson follows Greek practice in spelling the name with one s: ‘Knossos’ is more familiar in English, though apparently an inferior spelling.
page 7 note 1 Athenaeum, xlvi (1958), 309.Google Scholar
page 9 note 1 By Préaux, C., Chronique d'Égypte, xxxiv (1959), 79–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 9 note 2 See Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London, ii (1955), 1–3.Google Scholar
page 9 note 3 Both the footnotes referring to N. Platon's articles in Kretika Chronika stand in need of correction. On p. 80 read ‘1954, p. 143’; on p. 84 read ‘1956, pp. 317–320’, and correct his initial to N.