We stumbled upon an interesting little tidbit earlier this
week. At first we didn’t even believe it and thought it must be one of those
alternative facts that are so easy to find on the internet. But a little
digging brought us to some reputable sources, so we are ready to tell you that
the so-called Cretan Hieroglyphic writing system (not related to the more
famous Egyptian hieroglyphs) included pictures of cats. This system, from the Mediterranean island
of Crete, arose around 2000 BC. It has not been deciphered, so no one is 100%
sure what the cat pictures mean—but there is a guess at the end of this post!
Just where is Crete? Follow the red arrow. The island is roughly southeast of mainland Greece. Image via Adobe Stock. |
The cat pictures
Seal of green jasper with Cretan Hieroglyphic writing including a stylized cat's head. Photo by Ingo Pini [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons. |
By the way, all three writing systems were named by archaeologist
Sir Arthur Evans.
What did the cat figures mean?
Broadly, hieroglyphic writing is any system where the
characters are pictures of recognizable things. The individual pictures can
represent the thing they depict (a crow symbol could mean “crow”), or they
could represent a sound (a crow symbol could mean “caw”—and obviously we are
sort of making this up as a general example).
While we don’t know for sure what the cat in Cretan
Hieroglyphic writing meant, Pippa Steele of the CREWS Project says we can sort
of guess by working backward from Linear B, which has been deciphered. All of
these systems are syllabic, so the symbols represent sounds—and the sound that
the Linear B cat’s head represents is “ma.” Steele says that the symbol and its
sound likely came from Linear A. It’s possible that the Cretan Hieroglyphic cat
also stood for “ma” or something very similar.
Detail from a table of Cretan Hieroglyphic signs. The cat is number 75. From The Palace of Minos, Sir Arthur Evans. Digitized by Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons. |
Wouldn’t it just make sense that someone would draw a cat to
represent something like the sound a cat makes? And let’s not forget that the ancient Egyptian word for “cat” was “miu,” so who knows—maybe the people of Crete
called cats “mau” or “maur” or something.
Versions of the Linear A and B cat signs. Adapted from illustrations in Steele 2017. |
Sources
Steele, Pippa. 2017. “Cats in the Aegean Scripts.” CREWS Project
website, August 7. https://crewsproject.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/cats-in-the-aegean-scripts/.
“Linear A and Linear B.” Encyclopedia
Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Linear-A#ref106905
Take that You Tube, cats don't need you.
ReplyDeleteEver neat! If you ask me, the hieroglyphics of cats are the very best kind. PURRS
ReplyDeleteI remember studying Sir Arthur Evans in school, in my archaeology classes. Am pretty sure no one mentioned cats in the hieroglyphics back then!
ReplyDeletede green seel lookz ta uz like....honk de horn eye seez a cat !!!! :) ♥♥☺☺
ReplyDeleteAmazing info ! Thanks for sharing !
ReplyDeleteThat is SO cool! I love how much cats have been a part of history.
ReplyDeleteHow cool!
ReplyDeleteI LOVE it! purrhaps the Creteans though we were gods too!
ReplyDeletePurrs
Marv
Very interesting post. The Cat Scouts did a huge project on hieroglyphs, one of your cats could get a badge for this research- Webster, you should join :) XO
ReplyDelete