Minoan religion other than the center court, where youths of both sexes would practice the bull-leaping ritual. There are no Minoan frescoes that depict any deities. One of the cultic figures of ancient Crete and later of the Mycenaeans is known as the Minoan Genius. This was a fantastic creature with similarities both to the lion and the hippopotamus, which implies a connection with ancient Egypt. This deity played a role as a protector of children, and also in various fertility rituals. A major festive celebration was exemplified in the famous athletic Minoan bull dance, represented at large in the frescoes of
Cypro-Minoan syllabary originated or about the underlying language. However, its use continued into the early Iron Age, forming a link to the Cypriot syllabary, which has been deciphered as Greek. Arthur Evans considered the Cypro-Minoan syllabary to be a result of uninterrupted evolution of the Minoan Linear A script. He believed that the script was brought to Cyprus by Minoan colonizers or immigrants. Evans' theory was uncritically supported until recently, when it was shown that the earliest Cypro-Minoan inscriptions were separated from the earliest texts in Linear A by less than a century, yet the Cypro-Minoan script at its earliest stage was