In 1901, archaeologist Arthur Evans uncovered clay tablets at Knossos and revealed how Bronze Age Crete kept records and organized power
Arthur Evans, a British archaeologist, started cleaning a storage room that was buried under layers of soil in Knossos, on the island of Crete, in Spring 1900. Along with his excavation team, he searched for artifacts of a forgotten Aegean civilization. What he expected to find were grand statues an
By Toi Science Desk
Arthur Evans, a British archaeologist, started cleaning a storage room that was buried under layers of soil in Knossos, on the island of Crete, in Spring 1900.
Along with his excavation team, he searched for artifacts of a forgotten Aegean civilization.
What he expected to find were grand statues and a royal golden crown; instead, he found small pieces of plain baked clay.
Those plain objects survived due to the accidental fire in the palace and would revolutionize our knowledge of ancient civilizations.The discovery of these tablets in Knossos was a breakthrough because it was the first written evidence about the Bronze Age Aegean.
Before that event, scholars tried to understand the past through ruins, bare walls, broken pots, and Greek mythology.The Surprise in the SoilThe tablets’ importance became clear after their discovery because of where they were found.
The tablets were not removed by antiquities dealers; they were found safely in the palace.This discovery is discussed in a paper written at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Classics.
Because the tablets were found in a controlled setting, experts could separate the discovery from the later work of translating the texts.
Due to the precise knowledge of archaeologists about what particular chambers and storerooms contained the tablets, it became easy for scientists to link them to the functioning of the palace.For Evans and his colleagues, those inscriptions were a fascinating puzzle.
It was clear that they consisted of uniform rows of signs, symbols, and numbers, yet nobody could read them; deciphering the script would take scholars more than 50 years of work.
Keeping the palace runningThe reason why this particular collection of tablets is so interesting for modern researchers is that it was never meant to be any sort of historical monument.
It was just an everyday document of the palace officials.However, according to an academic study conducted at the University of Texas, these clay tablets provide the earliest form of written documentation for the Greek language, recorded only in economic terms.
In fact, palace authorities used the clay tablets to record transactions such as moving sheep, allocating grain, storing olive oil, and assigning workers.Clay tablets were a cheap and easily available material for recording messages in the ancient world.
The process involved inscribing information into wet clay tablets and waiting for them to dry.
They were considered temporary documents that were discarded or recycled at the end of the administrative year.
The fire at Knossos unintentionally baked the clay tablets, allowing them to survive buried in the ground for millennia.Deciphering the ancient codeIt took much patience and perseverance to decode the tablets after they were unearthed.
Because the script, known as Linear B, bore little resemblance to classical Greek, academics spent many years trying to establish patterns and decipher it.As the Cambridge account explains, the long effort was worthwhile.
The large number of well-documented tablets from Knossos gave researchers enough data to test their theories.
Finally, the code was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris, an English architect, who established that the language used on those tablets was Greek.In essence, the tiny tablets in the mud at Knossos show how ordinary administrative records can reshape historical understanding.
By recording regular shipments of oil and wool, the palace scribes created an administrative archive that links the modern world to the early history of written Greek.