This paper deals with a problem that has been haunting the study of Cretan ‘Hieroglyphic’ for over a century, ever since the first publication of Cretan ‘picture-writing’ by Evans (1894a, 1894b, 1895). It is an issue that was purportedly solved by the publication, two decades ago, of the script’s corpus (Olivier 1989), but which in reality remains highly relevant and illdefined today. The problem is that of defining ‘script’ in relation to ‘decoration’ (‘writing’ in relation to ‘art’), and the definitions we supply directly determine what we consider to constitute the ‘Cretan Hieroglyphic’ script.