Figure 6 Plan of the Minoan palace at Cnossus, ca. 1600–1500 BC. Reprinted with the permission of
Cambridge University Press from O. Dickinson, The Aegean Bronze Age (Cambridge 1994), fig. 5.26.
The level of administration required to maintain an economy of this nature and to monitor inventory on
hand may have provided the incentive behind the development of a system of writing, which is found in
Europe for the first time during the Minoan Period. While the idea of using graphic symbols to represent
spoken language seems to have been taken over by the people of Minoan Crete from elsewhere, the
specific form of the script that developed on Crete, apparently in the eighteenth century BC, has no known
connection with other ancient systems of writing. The Minoan script, which archaeologists refer to as
“Linear A,” came to be widely used in Crete, particularly in the eastern half of the island, and in some
Aegean islands. It is found engraved on gemstones, which were used as seals, and written on tablets of
moist clay, which were used as records of inventory. Both engraved seal stones and inscribed clay tablets
are also found in earlier and contemporary civilizations of western Asia, and it is presumably from them
that the Minoans adopted this practice.
The appearance of Minoan writing elsewhere in the Aegean is one of several indications of the expansion
of Minoan civilization beyond the island of Crete. On the Cycladic island of Thera, for example,
archaeologists are discovering extensive evidence of Minoan cultural influence, both in the form of goods
imported from Crete and goods created locally that imitate, sometimes quite closely, Minoan artistic style.
As it happens, we are unusually well informed regarding the material culture of Minoan Thera. Today
known as Santorini, the island of Thera is in fact the top of a volcano, which erupted with such violence