[2] Odysseus, after returning home and pretending to be a grandson of Minos, tells his wife Penelope about his alleged homeland of Crete:

[3] In the first century AD the geographer Strabo noted the following about the settlement of the different 'tribes' of Crete: τούτων φησὶ Στάφυλος τὸ μὲν πρὸς ἔω Δοριεῖς κατέχειν, τὸ δὲ δυσμικόν Κύδωνας, τὸ δὲ νότιον Ἐτεόκρητας ὧν εἶναι πολίχνιον Πρᾶσον, ὅπου τὸ τοῦ Δικταίου Διὸς ἱερόν· τοὺς μὲν οὖν Ἐτεόκρητας καὶ Κύδωνας αὐτόχθονας ὑπάρξαι εἰκός, τοὺς δὲ λοιποὺς ἐπήλυδας, […] Of them [the peoples in the above passage] Staphylos says that the Dorians occupy the region towards the east, the Kydones the western part, the Eteocretans the southern, whose town is Prasos, where the temple of Diktaian Zeus is; and that the Eteocretans and Kydones are probably indigenous, but the others incomers, […][4] Indeed, more than half the known Eteocretan texts are from Praisos (Strabo's Πρᾶσος);[5] the others were found at Dreros (modern Driros).

[7] The texts are all written in the archaic Cretan alphabet and date from the late seventh or early sixth century BC.

They record official religious and political decisions and probably came from the east wall of the Delphinion; they were published by Henri Van Effenterre in 1937 and 1946 and were kept in the museum at Neapolis.

Almost certainly with modern technology the Greek part would yield more but the inscription was lost during the occupation of the island in World War II.

The other three certain Eteocretan inscriptions were published by Margherita Guarducci in the third volume of Inscriptiones Creticae, Tituli Cretae Orientalis, in 1942.

The earliest of these inscriptions is, like the Dreros one, written in the archaic Cretan alphabet and likewise dates from the late 7th or early 6th century BC.

[10] The third inscription, dating probably from the 3rd century BC, is written in the standard Ionic alphabet with the addition of digamma or wau.

[14] They base their assessment on the fact that the inscription has five words, which bear no obvious resemblance to the language of the Dreros and Praisos inscriptions, apparently written in the Ionic alphabet of the third century BC, with the addition of three symbols which resemble the Linear A script of more than a millennium earlier.

It has, however, been noted that in the second line of the fourth century inscription is phraisoi inai (φραισοι ιναι), and it has been suggested that it means "it pleased the Praisians" (ἔϝαδε Πραισίοις).

Brown, after listing a number of words of pre-Greek origin from Crete suggests a relation between Eteocretan, Lemnian (Pelasgian), Minoan, and Tyrrhenian, coining the name "Aegeo-Asianic" for the proposed language family.