Minoan language itself unclassified. Minoan is mainly known from the inscriptions in Linear A, which are fairly legible by comparison with Linear B. The Cretan hieroglyphs are dated from the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. The Linear A texts, mostly written in clay tablets, are spread all over Crete with more than 40 localities on the island. From the 18th dynasty of Egypt there are four texts containing names and sayings in the Keftiu language (). They are, as usual in non-Egyptian texts, written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, which allow a more precise pronunciation. On the basis of these texts, the
Minoan pottery not so clear as to make correlation with discovered artifacts easy. Using a drawing of the "Contents of the Tomb of the Tripod Hearth" at Zafer Papoura from Evans' "Palace of Minos", which depicts LM II bronze vessels, many in the forms of ceramic ones, Ventris and Chadwick were able to make a few new correlations. Minoan pottery Minoan pottery has been used as a tool for dating the mute Minoan civilization. Its restless sequence of quickly maturing artistic styles reveals something of Minoan patrons' pleasure in novelty while they assist archaeologists in assigning relative dates to the strata of