The Malia altar stone is a stone slab bearing an inscription in

Cretan hieroglyphs Cretan hieroglyphs are a hieroglyphic writing system used in early Bronze Age Crete, during the Minoan era. They predate Linear A by about a century, but the two writing systems continued to be used in parallel for most of their history. , ...

. It was found by a farmer near Malia,

Crete Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cypru ...

. Chapouthier describes the find from an archeologist point of view. Olivier and Godard (1996) present several photographs of the Malia altar stone, which they list as item 328 in their inventory of Cretan hieroglyphs inscriptions. The stone has a cuplike cavity and is thought to be a

Minoan The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from 3500BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000BC, and then declining from 1450BC ...

altar stone An altar stone is a piece of natural stone containing relics in a cavity and intended to serve as the essential part of an altar for the celebration of Mass in the Catholic Church. Consecration by a bishop of the same rite was required. In the By ...

. The side of the Malia altar stone contains an inscription with sixteen glyphs. The inscription is the only known instance of Cretan hieroglyphs on stone and is significant as one of the longest Cretan hieroglyphic inscriptions. Of the sixteen glyphs of the inscription, three occur twice each. Some of the glyphs show similarities with those of the

Arkalochori Axe The Arkalochori Axe is a 2nd millennium BC Minoan bronze votive double axe ''Labrys'' ( gr, , lábrus) is, according to Plutarch (''Quaestiones Graecae'' 2.302a), the Lydian word for the double-bitted axe. In Greek it was called (''péle ...

and the

Phaistos Disc The Phaistos Disc (also spelled Phaistos Disk, Phaestos Disc) is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan civilization, Minoan palace of Phaistos on the island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium BC). ...

. Revesz gives a translation of the text and discusses earlier translation attempts.

Literature

* J.-P. Olivier, L. Godard, in collaboration with J.-C. Poursat,
Corpus Hieroglyphicarum Inscriptionum Cretae
' (''CHIC''), Études Crétoises 31, De Boccard, Paris 1996, .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Malia Altar Stone Cretan hieroglyphs Stones Minoan archaeological artifacts Archaeological discoveries in Greece