The earliest Minoan, and indeed European, script occurs on the Phaistos disc, an enigmatic find dating to the second quarter of the second millenium BC. The inscription stamped on the disc has not been deciphered because of the peculiarity of the text, but it seems to relate to the Minoan world.

During the second millenium BC three different writing systems were employed in Crete. Arthur Evans was the first to distinguish the hieroglyphic, the Linear A and the Linear B forms. The hieroglyphic texts occur on a small group of seal stones and seals, presumably with a religious content. Conversely, Linear A and Linear B texts, which are syllabic scripts, are of an economic nature. Here writing served as a kind of accounting system which was indispensable for the control of the movement of people, and for trade in Mycenaean palaces. This was also developed in Mesopotamia, where a similar system of written archive organization was in use from the beginning of the third millenium. The differences between the two scripts are indicated in the disposition of the text, the number of pictographs and the different signs for weights and measures. Of these, only Linear B has been deciphered.

Linear A was developed around the end of the Middle Minoan period, that is in the 18th century BC and its use continued until the final destruction of the Minoan palaces, about 1425 BC. This script occurs mainly on inscribed tablets and clay roundels but also on various other utility articles. This first linear script has not been deciphered yet. However, there are so many common ideograms with Linear B that in many cases educated guesses can be made as to the meaning of the texts.

Linear B resulted from Linear A and was the official script at the Knossos palaces during Mycenaean rule. Its texts were preserved in great quantities in the Mycenaean palace archives -in fact in their original position- as they solidified in the fires which destroyed the palaces. The interpretation of Linear B by M. Ventris and J. Chadwick in 1952 proved that the language of Mycenaean Greece was the Greek language, thus pushing the beginnings of Greek history back seven centuries prior to the earliest Greek inscriptions.

The information available on the use of script beyond the bounds of administrative management is minimal. The only evidence we have -and this is what makes it significant- on the extensive use of writing in the Bronze Age comes from three wooden tablets from the Ulu Burun shipwreck, which are taken to be writing tablets, and were accompanied by ivory pens. The surface of these objects was covered with wax and the text was subsequently inscribed, exactly the same method as that employed in the later centuries of antiquity.