HE basic distinction between fact and theory is clear enough: a fact is a reality, an actuality, something that exists; a theory states that something might be, or could be, or should be. Like most simple statements, the foregoing has implications that are far from simple. In dealing with the past we are concerned, not with something that exists, but with something that has existed. Our facts are limited to those things for the past which still exist; everything else is theory, which may range all the way from practical certainty to utter impossibility, depending on its relationship to known facts. Before judging a theory, we must therefore know what the facts are. In the case of an unknown script, our basic "facts" are obviously the inscribed documents themselves. It is notorious that the Minoan inscriptions have never been accessible to scholars as a whole. This means that our basic information is at best secondhand , and liable to all the distortions that may occur in mechanical or manual reproduction. Our knowledge of a Minoan inscription may be based on any of the following kinds of reproduction, singly or in combination: a cast; a photograph of the original, of a cast, or of another photograph; a "faithful" transcription, made from the original, a cast, or some kind of a photograph; a "normalized" transcription, made from the original, or from any of the aforementioned types of reproduction.1 The term "Minoan scripts" requires definition. As it is used in this article, it includes six different systems of writing, all similar to one another but with certain specific variations which serve to distinguish them: the Pictographic class; the class represented by the Phaistos Disk; Linear Class A; Linear Class B; the Mainland scripts; the Cypro-Minoan scripts. In addition, signs have been found on artifacts of Minoan provenience: on wallblocks, pottery, ingots, inlays, etc. The signs on these usually occur alone, rarely in pairs, sometimes as composites of two or more signs, and seem to be craftsmen's or ownership marks. They do not, in themselves, constitute a script system, but have apparently been borrowed from other systems. A brief summary of each of the Minoan scripts follows, showing what information is available, where it requires supplementation or correction, and what theories and conjectures arise from it.2 1 The number of casts is so small as to be negligible; Altkr J. Sundwall, "Altkretische Urkundenabout 25 are known to the author, almost all of pub-studien," in AAA, x: 2, 1936. lished inscriptions. The number of photographs has Ant Cr6t G. Maraghiannis, Antiquites cretoises, recently been much increased by the publication of the S3m Serie, 1915. Hagia Triada inscriptions, but the published reproduc-B Linear Class B. tions of the most important class, Linear B, are still CM J. F. Daniel, "Prolegomena to the for the most part in the form of transcriptions. Cypro-Minoan Script," in AJA, 1941, 2 The bibliography of the field is tremendous, and it pp. 249-282. can serve no useful purpose to attempt to l...
