njust"--was thus condemned to
three months' imprisonment.' Few criminals attain to the dignity
of being convicted on evidence 3,500 years old.

Certain of the tablets contain lists of persons of both sexes,
apparently denoted by their personal names, the signs which appear
to stand for the name being followed in each case by an ideograph
which is the determinative of 'man,' or 'woman,' as the case may
be. It is, of course, impossible to say as yet to what rank or class
the people thus catalogued may have belonged; but the conjecture
may be hazarded that these lists may be the major-domo's records
of the male and female slaves of the household, or perhaps of the
artisans who appear to have dwelt within the precincts of the palace.
Another type of record is given by tablets such as that represented
in Plate XIV. The tablet contains eight lines of well-written
inscription, and consists apparently of twenty words, divided into
three paragraphs. In this case there are no determinatives and no
numerals; and it is possible that the document may be a contract,
or perhaps an official proclamation.

[Illustration XXXI: KAMARES VASES FROM PHAESTOS AND HAGIA TRIADA
(_pp_. 120 & 197)

_G. Maraghiannis_]

That such tablets were not the only form in which the Minoans executed
the writing of their various documents is evident from the fact
already noticed, that inscriptions have been found executed with a
reed-pen, and, though those extant are written on clay vessels, it
is obvious that the reed-pen was not a very suitable instrument for
writing on such materials, and that its existence presupposes some
substance more adapted to the cursive writing of a pen--parchment,
possibly, or papyrus, which could be readily obtained from Egypt.
Unfortunately, such materials, on which, in all probability, the
real literary documents of the Minoans, if there were any such
documents, would be written, can scarcely have survived the fire
which destroyed the palace, or, if by any chance they escaped that,
the subsequent action of the climate; so that whatever genuinely
literary fragments may yet come to light must be looked for on the
larger tablets, and at the best can scarcely be more than brief
extracts. We cannot expect from Crete a wealth of papyri such as
Egypt has preserved for the archaeologist.

Into quite a different category from any of the ordinary Minoan
tablets comes the disc found at Phaestos in 1908. Its general character
has b