A Functionalist Decipherment of Cretan Hieroglyphics: Glyptic Materiality, Sign-Repertoire Decoupling, and Palatial Inventory Accounting

Previous scholarship on Cretan Hieroglyphic inscriptions (Minoan Crete, c. 1900–1650 BCE) has been restricted by a historiographical dichotomy that categorized clay bar inscriptions as administrative text while demoting sealstone engravings to decorative art. Applying the IMRaD framework and the Wikaira Decipherment Framework, this study demonstrates that both Cretan Hieroglyphic sealstones (Petschafte and multi-sided prisms) and archival clay documents (bars, noduli, roundels) functioned as an integrated, non-linguistic administrative database. Analyzing sign distributions across CHIC and CMS concordances, this paper establishes four core empirical findings: (1) Portable loop signet Petschaft seals (1.5–2.5 cm) and multi-sided prisms served as ergonomic handheld stamping tools and departmental tags; (2) The sign repertoire of under 100 characters is an economy of icons mathematically optimized for commodity tracking rather than spoken prose; (3) Supposed non-phonetic "formulas"—such as trowel-eye (CH 044–005) and trowel-arrow (CH 044–049)—represent logographically decoupled administrative parameters, where the trowel sign (CH 044) represents the Petschaft seal itself by synecdoche for stamping; and (4) Specialized iconographic signs, including the feline/cat-mask (CH 070 / Linear A AB 80 /ma/), function as explicit commodity logograms for palatial wool and livestock management. Scribes maintained live balances via pinched clay additions and tally mark cancellations to account for zero-sum supply adjustments and personnel casualties.