Cretan symbols. Coloured illustration from a diagram by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans (1851-1941). This diagram was based on artefacts dating from the 6th to 5th centuries BC, discovered during excavations by Evans in eastern Crete, started in 1894. On the left are symbols on three-sided Cornelian stones. On the right are symbols on four-sided stone. According to Evans the symbols are from an early system of writing used in the Mycenaean world in pre-Phoenician times. Artwork from The Story of the Alphabet (Edward Clodd, 1900).