The study of Aegean scripts is situated at the crossroads of archaeology, philology and epigraphy, with the still undeciphered Cretan Hieroglyphic (CH) script posing persistent challenges to scholars across these disciplines. Civitillo, Ferrara and Meissner offer a most welcome contribution to this niche yet pivotal field, with a collaborative volume that brings a fresh perspective to the corpus. The authors engage with the material record (sealstones, clay documents and other inscribed objects) and with broader questions of visual language, semiotics and script development. The aim is to guide readers through the complexities of the script and the ongoing debates surrounding unresolved questions.
Chapter 1, by Ferrara, addresses one of the thorniest issues in the study of CH: the nature and status of its sign inventory. The highly figurative nature of CH, especially on seals, has long blurred the line between meaningful writing and decorative motif. In a discussion that moves from Scripta Minoa through the Corpus Hieroglyphicarum Inscriptionum Cretae to more recent contributions, Ferrara shows how the field is shifting towards more context-sensitive and materially grounded definitions of what a sign is and how it behaves. However, the main issue that still limits any attempt to produce a definitive sign list is the thinness of the known corpus.
Chapter 2, by. M. Valério, offers a comprehensive reassessment of the origins of CH, situating it within broader typological and comparative frameworks. Valério argues for a local invention of the script, emphasising the role played by the local iconography on seals in shaping it, with only one sign, the logogram for wine, borrowed from Egypt. Several issues, however, are connected with this topic. First, chronology: when was CH created? Valério summarises strong arguments supporting the view that the earliest attestations of writing on Crete, commonly known as ‘Archanes formula’ seals, belong to CH. However, the date of production of the earliest seals of this group remains unclear, as they were found in secondary burial deposits dated to the late Prepalatial period, between EM III (2200–2000 bce) and MM IA (2000–1900 bce) (Y. Sakellarakis and E. Sapouna-Sakellaraki, Archanes. Minoan Crete in a New Light [1997], p. 327). Of course, the seals must have been produced before their deposition in the ossuary. A recent discovery from an Early Cycladic II context, which seems to imitate writing, supports an early date for the inception of writing in the Aegean (K. Sbonias et al., ABSA [2025]).
A second question relates to chronology: did writing evolve from or alongside local iconographic traditions? The earliest secure evidence for the use of seals and sealings on Crete dates to EM II and shows simple and mostly geometric motifs. Egyptianising amulets and stamp seals first appear on Crete in the EM III period and are carved with Egyptian figurative imagery, suggesting that the transformation of the local seal repertoire towards iconicity occurred roughly contemporaneously with the development of writing, rather than preceding it (A. Karnava, World Archaeology 47 [2015]). Indeed, Valério presents compelling comparisons between motifs on Egyptian seals dated between 2200 and 2100 bce and CH signs suggesting the latter may have been inspired by them.
Finally, was CH basically syllabic with a few logograms for commodities, or was it logo-syllabic, with words spelled with combinations of logograms and syllabograms? Valério leans towards the latter hypothesis because original picture-based writing systems generally exhibit this feature. He also suggests that this feature would have been abandoned in Linear A (LA) and Linear B (LB). Nevertheless, current evidence for logo-syllabic compositions is more robust in LA than in CH (B. Montecchi, Kadmos 61 [2023]).
These topics are also central to Chapter 3, by G. Flouda, which explores the development and nature of CH writing through the lens of visual encoding, cognition and material culture. Flouda introduces cognitive science concepts to explain why early writing systems often employ signs that resemble real-world objects. She argues that writing emerged on Crete through a gradual process in which form and function were tightly entangled. The inception of CH can be seen as a cumulative, gradual and multi-modal outcome, shaped by various influences and sources of inspiration, although the act of fixing a sign list marks a crucial stage in the creation of a writing system stricto sensu (language-dependent graphic code).
Chapter 4, by A.M. Jasink and J. Weingarten, situates CH seals within their historical and cultural contexts, arguing that they were more than administrative tools: they functioned as potent symbols of identity, authority and ritual affiliation. Section 4.9 explores the functional differences between CH and LA, suggesting that the former originated in the religious sphere as part of seal use and only later extended to administrative purposes, whereas LA was better suited to precise economic recording (also suggested in the preface by L. Godart, p. xx), possibly explaining its eventual dominance. However, as stressed in Chapter 6, such a suggestion under-represents the considerable numbers of clay documents inscribed with CH.
Chapter 5, by Civitillo, offers a meticulous analysis of the physical and typological variation of CH inscriptions. By correlating document format, material composition and the distribution of sign sequences, the study argues convincingly that these elements were deeply intertwined with the function and administrative hierarchy of Middle Minoan Crete. The discussion of ‘formulae’ versus non-formulaic sign groups is particularly valuable, shedding light on the semantic and social significance of repeated inscriptions. The indexes at the end of the book, drawn up by Civitillo, deserve to be mentioned as valuable tools to verify and implement this kind of research.
Chapter 6, by P. M. Steele, explores the development, usage and linguistic implications of CH, stressing that, at the current stage of our knowledge, it appears that CH developed from Prepalatial seal traditions and that clay was only employed for writing at a later stage. Although not explicitly stated in the chapter, it is worth noting that, thus far, the earliest inscriptions on clay appear on a few vessel sherds dated to MM IB–IIA, whereas no clay administrative documents have been securely dated to before MM II, which is also the date for most inscriptions on seals and seal impressions. Steele correctly observes that, on certain seal shapes, CH signs are often arranged in a non-linear fashion, whereas non-linear arrangement is rare on clay, but it remains difficult to trace the shift from variable orientation and arrangement of signs to linear writing. LA is described as a distinct tradition of writing on clay, without clarifying whether it represents a different linguistic or cultural group, nor whether its eventual predominance reflects the predominance of this group. To evaluate such a hypothesis, it would be necessary to determine whether the two scripts encode the same language, which is the focus of Chapter 8. Nevertheless, Steele’s contribution is also valuable in this regard, as it discusses the potential for linguistic analysis aimed at identifying morphological markers (e.g. prefixes, suffixes) through sign repetition and variation. She emphasises that any attempts to identify suffixes in CH (e.g. sign -031) remain inconclusive, due to inconsistent sign placement and orientation, particularly on seals. While some signs exhibit frequency patterns suggestive of vowels or prefixes, no definitive morphological system has yet been established.
Chapter 7, by Meissner and E. Salgarella, examines the relationship between CH and other Bronze Age Cretan scripts. Since only a few signs on the Phaistos Disc can be formally compared with CH, the relationship between the two scripts is left an open question (for broader comparison between the Phaistos Disc and other contemporaneous scripts, see Montecchi et al., Pasiphae 18 [2024]). However, the core of the chapter is the relationship between CH and LA. It argues that LA was essentially developed on the basis of CH, as LA parallels have been proposed for the great majority of CH signs (Ferrara et al., Pasiphae 16 [2022]). In particular, the chapter proposes a plausible acrophonic explanation for two well-established parallels (CH 042 = AB 08/a and CH 019 = AB 31/sa) and two additional comparisons. Sign CH 062, a simple geometric shape, consisting of a vertical stroke with a dot above it, is compared with AB 70/ko. AB 70/ko, however, is graphically more complex than CH 062; the hypothesis thus requires a transformation whereby a dot becomes a circle and a stroke transforms into an oval. Yet, such a transformation appears inconsistent with the tendencies reconstructed from other sign correspondences between CH and Linear A, which generally show a simplification of form: contours tend to be reduced to strokes, and peripheral dots are often omitted or transformed into straight lines. Finally, sign CH 051 is compared with AB 03/pa. CH 051 was previously compared to AB 03/pa, as both signs appear to depict a dagger, but this new proposal could potentially help explain the phonetic value /pa/ associated with this shape, as a connection is hypothesised with the Linear B term for ‘dagger’, pa-ka-na /phasgana/.
Chapter 8 presents B. Davis’s application of a syllabotactic method to assess whether CH and LA encode the same language. By comparing the frequency and structure of sign pairings shared between these scripts and LB, Davis argues for a statistically significant similarity between CH and LA, in contrast to CH and LB, thereby supporting a linguistic connection between the former two. While this method offers a promising approach, its reliability hinges on several critical factors, as for example the small number of usable word-internal sign pairs. Another key limitation lies in its reliance on the accurate identification of homomorphs. The set of 21 syllabograms used in the analysis include pairs such as CH 094 and AB 38, and CH 095 and AB 60. However, other scholars have contested these equivalences, arguing that CH 094 is not visually similar to AB 38 and that CH 095 is more plausibly homomorphic with AB 10 rather than AB 60 (Ferrara et al., ABSA 116 [2021]). This raises a critical methodological concern: whether the outcome of the syllabotactic comparison would differ significantly if alternative homomorphs were selected, such as using AB 10 in place of AB 60 or substituting CH 094 and AB 38 with another pair from Chapter 7 (e.g. CH 13 and AB 61 or CH 020 and AB 13). As the validity of the statistical comparison depends on these initial pairings, such discrepancies in sign identification could potentially alter the degree of observed similarity and thus the conclusions drawn from the analysis.
Chapter 9, by J. Bennet and V. Petrakis, reflects on the historical development, current state and future directions of research into Cretan Hieroglyphic writing, situating it within both Aegean studies and the broader field of grammatology (the study of writing systems). They call for greater methodological rigour and alignment with broader theories of writing, such as the distinction between glottographic (language-representing) and semasiographic (concept-representing) systems.
Although the fragmentary nature of the CH corpus prevents the book from reaching definitive conclusions and new discoveries could reshape current understandings, its systematic treatment makes the book an indispensable reference tool for both seasoned specialists and newcomers to Aegean epigraphy. Drawing from a vast range of archaeological, semiotic and palaeographical evidence, the volume presents a compelling portrait of CH writing as a practice deeply intertwined with identity and elite expression. This underscores a broader argument: that writing is never simply about transcribing language, but also about how and where that writing takes place.
