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The bronzes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2013

Nancy Sandars
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Extract

The Knives. Three complete one-edged knives, and one fragmentary, were found in the tombs. The bronze knive (I. 5) belongs to a small group in which the whole of the handle including a T-shaped pommel extension was cast in one piece with the blade, while inset panels of perishable material were secured by rivets and deep flanges in the metal. Apart from this pommel-flange it is similar to a large contemporary group of bronze knives to be found throughout the Aegean.

One-edged knives with flanged handles are at least as old as the Shaft-grave period at Mycenae. In Crete a riveted handle without flanges was preferred from Middle Minoan times, but the flanged handle appears at the end of Late Minoan II or the beginning of IIIA. The pommel-flange is rare, though found occasionally on both riveted and unriveted knives. The earliest dated example is probably that from the Palace of Mycenae found with other objects of Late Helladic II or early III date; one comes from Dendra, Chamber Tomb 7, and one unriveted from Chamber Tomb 2, dated L.H. IIIB. The Mycenae knife has not the true T-projection but only a broadening at the end of the handle which is in shape very like handles of Levantine daggers and two-edged knives found in the so-called ‘Hyksos tombs’ of Ras Shamra and at Tell el Ajjul, Tell Fara, and elsewhere in Palestine.

Type
A Minoan cemetery on Upper Gypsades (Knossos Survey 156)
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 53 , November 1959 , pp. 232 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1959

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References

1 FT 23, fig. 113, from Zafer Papoura, T. 3 is particularly close to this form (dated L.M. IIIA) ; for a general description of Aegean knives see PPS xxi(1955) 147.

2 TDA 58, fig. 54, 2d, from Isopata T. 2.

3 BSA xxv (1921–3) 220, fig. 40; RTs 103, pl. xxxii; New Tombs at Dendra 35, fig. 35, 2, from shaft V.

4 Ugaritica i. 67, 69, fig. 63, U; see also Maxwell-Hyslop, Iraq viii (1946), pl. iv, types 31–33.

5 New Tombs at Dendra fig. 35, 1; all the bronzes were in a small pit, shaft V, probably collected from earlier burials in the tomb and not dated by the pottery.

6 e.g. in the Warrior-grave at Ayios Ioannis, BSA 51 (1956) 90. fig. 3, nos. 5 and 6.

7 Mr. R. W. Hutchinson, to whom I am much obliged for help, suggests in correspondence that while the other tomb furniture from beneath the collapsed roof is probably L.M. IIIA and nearer to 1300 than 1400, the sword may well be the earliest object and not much later than 1400. See further BSA Suppl. i (1923) pl. xxv, 1, p. 113.

8 Annuario vi–vii (1923–4) 98–100, fig. 15, no. 18; ADelt iii (1917) 80–98, fig. 69: the length is 0·305.

9 Ugaritica i. 65 ff., from ‘caveau LVI and LVII’; the ‘Hyksos graves’ are dated by Schaeffer (p. 65) to the eighteenth to seventeenth centuries, though LXV is ‘également des XVII–XVI siècles’ (p. 69); caveau LVII, said to be contemporary with LVI, contained derivative M.M. pottery.

10 PM i. 718, fig. 540; see also Hutchinson, Iraq i. (1934) 163–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Furumark, Op Arch vi (1950) 179; Annuario vi–vii (1923–4) 98, fig. 15, nos. 18, 19.

12 PT fig. 113, particularly 75d; see also Mavrospelio, , BSA xxviii (1926–1927) 243–76Google Scholar, fig. 6, no. 4 from T. III.

13 TDA fig. 54, 2d.

14 Hall, , Vrokastro 151, pl. xxi AGoogle Scholar; Desborough, , Protogeometric Pottery 262–3.Google Scholar

15 Brock, , Fortetsa pl. 172Google Scholar, 159 from Rho, found on the floor of the tomb under a later Orientalizing pithos. A list of iron knives of Protogeometric date is given by Desborough, , Protogeometric Pottery 311.Google Scholar Perati is a recent find and the knife was with a dagger of a well-known Mycenaean type (To Ergon (1955) 25–30). I am indebted to Miss D. Gray for knowledge of this grave and to Mr. Jakovides.

16 Hood, , BSA 51 (1956) 96–97.Google Scholar

17 Petrie, , Tools and Weapons pl. lvi, 21, 22.Google Scholar

18 BSA 51 (1956) 96–97 with references; see also BSA Suppl. i (1923) pl. xxiv, 1–0.

19 e.g. Schachtgräber pl. lxxii, 224, from II with straight top and three rivets, and pl. xcix, 482, from IV with tang and 3–4 rivets. Cf. Prosymna fig. 214 from T. xxvi, L.H. I, like the shaft-graves, and figs. 299 and 503 from T. XXXVII and T. XIII, L.H. IIIA; the last is most like Gypsades (I. 5).

20 Prosymna fig. 487, T. XLIII.

21 BSA xlvii (1952) 271, iii. 15, and BSA 51 (1956) fig. 4, 15 with two rivets.

22 e.g. PT fig. 78 from tomb 64, and (p. 117) by implication some of the others also. The tangless razor from the later deposit in the Temple Tomb has a very marked neck, PM iv. 1003, fig. 954, C.

23 Brunton, , Lahun i. 25–26, 37, pl. xGoogle Scholar; Petrie, , Tools and Weapons pl. lxi, 21, 22.Google Scholar

24 PT 87, fig. 98 (triangular), while fig. 63 from tomb 42 is the slender type.

25 Prosymna fig. 309 from T XXXVIII, L.H. IIIA/B; R.Ts. Ch. T. 2, pl. xxxiii, 6, L.H. IIIB.

26 Prosymna 347, ‘cleavers’; Ann. vi–vii (1923–4) fig. 15, 21.

27 Presumably like Petrie, Tools and Weapons pl. lx, 25–26Google Scholar; see PT 117.

28 Jacobsthal, in his Greek Pins 1Google Scholar, n. 1, is rather too sweeping when he deduces a pinless 400 years. Some apparently very simple rod-like pins may have been embellished with heads of faience or semi-precious stone as in Cyprus and the Levant.

29 Already in Shaft-grave V, Schachtgräber pl. lxxi, 898, and Prosymna tomb XVII, fig. 107, 4, 5, LH. I–II.

30 Heurtley, Prehistoric Macedonia fig. 104, z: Xanthoudides, , AE 1904, fig. 7, p. 31.Google Scholar Cf. Jacobsthal, , Greek Pins 1–3, 16.Google Scholar

31 Hall, Vrokastro fig. 85; Greek Pins 2, n. 3, 16.

32 Hall, Vrokastro fig. 58 A.

33 Desborough, , Protogeometric Pottery 269–70Google Scholar (I am indebted to Mr. Desborough for helpful suggestions connected with pins); see also Catling, , PPS xxii (1956) 113–14.Google Scholar The illustration of the Mouliana pin in AE 1904 is not very clear, but I have been able to examine it in the museum at Herakleion and confirm the shape of the swelling. It was not possible, however, to be certain whether the pin was broken at the top.

34 Greek Pins fig. 421, b; Ta Mnemata, tombs 1 and 9, BSA xxxviii (1937–8) pl. xxviii, 1 and 3, pp. 101, 106, 115; the longest pin from M. 9, no. 378, is 0254, and the next 0·186.

35 I am deeply indebted to M. Deshayes for generously letting me see and refer to the pins, and for information as to date and circumstances of finding.

36 Greek Pins, figs. 55a, 57, 58, &c, referred to as ‘a Cretan type’; see also Ann. x–xii (1927–29) from Arkades, pl. vii. The pin found above tomb R is 0·186; it is unmoulded, but otherwise not unlike the Gypsades pins, though still closer to those from Karphi, (Greek Pins, 203).Google Scholar

37 There are some with moulding and some with globe; I know of none that combine both.

38 Dunand, Fouilles de Byblos, Atlas II, pl. clxxx, 17026; Mallowan, , Iraq ix (1947) 188Google Scholar, no. 6, E 28, pl. xli, 6, from the late phase of level I.

39 de Morgan, J., Préhistoire orientale iii. 213, fig. 212, from Veri, date ‘Bronze III’Google Scholar; Speiser, , Tepe Gawra pl. L, 11.Google Scholar

40 BSA xxxviii (1937–8) pl. xxviii, i from M. 8, no 166, and p. 104.