No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Notes on Scarabs and Aegean Chronology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
Abstract
Seals from Minoan contexts in the form of scarabs or scaraboids are, it is argued, Minoan rather than Egyptian in origin. They are related to the well-defined categories of Minoan seals of EM or MM date. Several belong to the Border/Leaf context, a large group of Minoan seals defined by I. Pini. Other Minoan techniques and motifs found on scarabs and scaraboids are discussed.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1983
References
The content of this paper has been updated since delivered as a talk at the 5th International Colloquium on Aegean Prehistory at Sheffield in April 1980. For the sake of simplicity I omit a discussion of the problem of Egyptian design scarabs with their spiral motifs (which, incidentally, in most cases have turned up on oriental soil) and concentrate on the scarabs found on Crete. The figures are of impressions and not seals and are not drawn to scale. Special abbreviations:
AGD Antiken Gemmen in deutschen Sammlungen (Munich 1968–75).
CM Xénaki-Sakellariou, A., ‘Les cachets minoens de la collection Giamalakis’, Etudes crétoises 10 (1958).Google Scholar
CMS Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel.
CS Kenna, V., Cretan Seals (Oxford 1960).Google Scholar
HM Heraklion Museum inventory number.
Knossos Gill, M., ‘The Knossos Sealings: Provenance and Identification’, BSA 60 (1965) 58–98Google Scholar (Gill's catalogue numbers).
SM Id., Scripta Minoa (Oxford 1909).
Yule, ECS Yule, P., Early Cretan Seals: A Study of Chronology, Marburger Studien zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte 4 (Mainz 1980).Google Scholar
1 Furumark, A., The Mycenaean Pottery (Stockholm 1939)Google Scholar; Walberg, G., Kamares, a Study of the Character of Palatial Middle Minoan Pottery (Uppsala 1976).Google Scholar Cf. Matz, F., Die frühkretischen Siegel (Berlin 1928)Google Scholar; Haviland, D., The Early Group of Cretan Seals (University Microfilms 66, 12, 804).Google Scholar
2 Cf. Pendlebury, J., Aegyptiaca (Cambridge 1930)Google Scholar; Warren, P., ‘Problems of Chronology in Crete and the Aegean in the Third and Second Millennium BC’, AJA 84 (1980) 487–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ward, W., ‘The Scarabs from Tholos B Platanos’, AJA 85 (1981) 70–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ward, , Egypt and the East Mediterranean World (Beirut 1971) 93 fig. 13.Google Scholar The sketches in fig. 13 are particularly arbitrary.
3 The quality of workmanship is an essential criterion for a typology of early Cretan seals. The word ‘quality’ refers neither to my perception of the artistic value of the seal nor to its state of preservation, but rather to the precision, regularity and polish of the fashion of the body and motif. For the description of the workmanship a uniform vocabulary is used. The words ‘fair’, ‘good’, ‘very good’, ‘excellent’, and ‘superb’ are applied as objectively as possible. Fair: CS 28; good: CS 36; very good: CS 149; excellent: CS 141; superb: CS 131.
4 The term ‘style’ reflects many different levels of thinking. Beazeley uses it to refer to the work of a single artist (ARV 3). In terms of seal carving, Boardman has defined several Aegean ‘styles’: ‘Plain Palatial, Fine Palatial, Cut’, etc. (Greek Gems and Finger Rings (London 1970) 47–52). Also commonly accepted are Severe Style, Black Figure Style, Classical or Renaissance Style. In short, ‘style’ may be defined according to the nature of the material studied and reflects a subjective, total impression (Matz, F., Geschichte der griechischen Kunst (Frankfurt am Main 1950) 13Google Scholar).
5 ‘Ein Beitrag zur Chronologie der frühkretischen Siegel’, Pepragmena tou 4. diethnons kretologikou synedriou (Athens 1981) 421 35. I define this complex more liberally than Pini does and place more weight on the role of the leaf as a defining leitmotif. Thus, my grouping is stylistically somewhat less homogeneous than is his and it contains more examples.
6 This script shows a different repertory of signs and a different carving style from the next-earliest early Cretan script, the so-called Hieroglyphic A script (Yule, , ECS 169–70).Google Scholar The Archanes script, named eponymously after the site where examples have come to light (cf. especially CMS II. 1 389–94), was given preliminary discussion by Grumach, E. and Sakellarakis, I. in Kadmos 5 (1966) 109–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Unfortunately, few clear examples of the Archanes script are extant: AGD I.1 14; CMS II.1 126, 389–94; II.2 311; XII 63, 86; CS 56, 95, 96.
7 Many early Cretan seals (51 per cent) are in soft stone, which in catalogues is usually called ‘steatite’. According to Boardman, , however, (Island Gems (London 1963) 15–16)Google Scholar, and others, this material actually is serpentine and not steatite or is a mixture of both. On the other hand, physical investigations undertaken by K. Schürmann of the Deparment of Geosciences in Marburg show that Minoan artefacts sometimes consist of pure steatite. By using the conventional designation ‘serpentine’ (in quotation marks) one makes a smaller percentage of error than with the usual term.
8 This uncommittal term is borrowed from Haviland, D., The Early Group of Cretan Seals (1964) 13 n. 13.Google Scholar In the absence of laboratory tests this designation is only provisional and seals such as CMS IV 106 and 108 may actually be made of ‘glazed steatite’, bone, or ivory, to mention the most likely alternatives.
9 Yule, ECS 10b discs, 11e discoids, 14 gables, 27b reels.
10 Unfortunately, the pottery from the first two sites is unpublished. See, however, I. Sakellarakis and also S. Alexiou, respectively in CMS II. 1 pp. 442 and 193. For Gournes, , Zoes, A., Problēmata chronologias tēs minoikēs kerameikēs Gournes-Tylisos-Malia (Athens 1969) 3–4, 23 pls. 1–16.Google Scholar Cf. also Walberg, , ‘Mittelminoische Keramik. Methoden und Probleme’, AA (1981) 9Google Scholar for a later dating for this pottery. For Quartier Mu, see Poursat, , Etudes créoises 26 (1980) 157–234.Google Scholar Since Pini and I studied this style complex the presence of two recently discovered examples, here Figs. 5 and 8, from MM II Malia, awaken suspicions that the Border/Leaf could perhaps continue later than the date which I originally assigned it, ‘EM III-MM IA(-?)’.
11 See works cited in n. 10.
12 The following scarabs and scaraboids belong to the Border/Leaf Complex: CMS II.1 1, 117, 332, 402; IV 99, 106, 111. The Complex itself is composed of the following seals: AGD I.1 14; IV 1; CM 1, 4, 18, 44; CMS II.I 1, 4, 44, 58, 64, 70, 74, 83, 96, 97, 99, 101, 115, 126, 135, 138, 142, 153, 158, 194, 205, 228, 237, 241, 242, 255, 260, 268, 278, 288, 282, 286, 287, 292, 293, 302, 308, 324, 332, 333, 355, 356, 362, 368, 373, 374. 377–80. 382, 383, 388–94, 398, 400–3, 435, 447, 449–51, 460, 485; II.2 30, 70, 83, 109, 204, 207, 215, 258, 260, 293, 310, 311, 319; II.5 207; IV 28, 38, 39, 44, 45, 97, 99–113, 115–17, 120–2, 7D, 9D, 18D–20D, 23D–25D; X 6, 17, 32, 37–40; XII 63, 74, 86; CS 56, 62, 85–9, 91, 92, 95, 96; HM 2456. Near: CM 222; CMS II. 1 85, 98, 114, 276, 304, 327, 353, 357; IV 30; CS 144; HM 2374.
13 Examples of tubular drill ornament from stratified contexts which many specialists for the Aegean would accept as relatively secure include the following: CMS II. I 304, 334, 397; II.2 35, 38, 44, 49, 51, 53, 55, 64, 66; II.5 26–8, 30–2, 34, 36–40, 47–55, 102, 103, 106, etc.; V 483, 488. For the dating of these contexts, Yule, ECS 6–20.
14 Cf. CMS II.2 19, 285; II.5 25, 45; IV 30D; CS 110.
15 This motif from stratified find-spots: MM II context: HM 396, 2337. MM II–III context: CMS II.2 18. MM IIB context: CMS II.5 242–4. MM III context: CMS II.2 29, 45, 58; Knossos Vc. MM IIIB context: Knossos L10, L11.
16 The Egyptian origin of this shape was proposed by Sir Arthur Evans (SM 223 n. 27).
17 Cf. CM 115, 159, 178; CMS II.2 79, 150, 168, 230; VII 36; IX 32; XII 92–4; CS 126, 127, 149; Cabinet des Médailles, Coll. de Chandon de Briailles no. 60 (unpublished); Metaxas collection no. 192 (unpublished). It is interesting to note that seal-carving in the Middle Minoan Period, in which traces of the tools used (such as the drill and tubular drill) are not plastically modelled out but remain geometric, is not the result, as one might expect, of the primitive kind of tools used at this early date, for rotary seal-cutting tools in principle have not changed in the last 4,000 years although different styles have come and gone. Rather, the Middle Minoan aesthetic in general, for example in Kamares decoration, favours geometrically regular forms.
18 CM 184; CMS II.I I, 117, 332, 402; IV 99, III.
19 CMS II.I 118; II.2 56; CS 126.
20 CMS II.2 84; VIII 27; XII 75.
21 I have tallied some 130 published examples of this motif, of which dozens are known from stratified contexts. Its dating seems to run the gamut of the Early and Middle Minoan phases.
22 Minoan: CM 172, 184; CMS II. 1 1, 117, 118, 154, 332, 402; II.2 56, 84; IV 99, 106, 111, 133; V 424; VIII 27; XII 75; CS 126, 157, 224. Egyptian: CMS II. 1 95, 119, 120, 180, 201, 204, 238, 267, 283, 395, 405, 434, 498, 499; II.2 31, 34; IV 98, 154; V 237, 619, 637. Egyptian or Minoan: CM 154; CMS II.1 121; II.2 28, 281; IV 95. Dubious or false: none. Cf. Warren, , AJA 84 (1980) 494–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 The datings given by Warren, in AJA 84 (1980) 495CrossRefGoogle Scholar differ from those of the excavator, S. Alexiou, which are cited here: CMS II. 1 180 (= EM II-MM IA), 201 (= EM I), 204 ( = MM IA). Although CMS II.1 201 fits chronologically with the superimposed MM IA layer, Alexiou actually excavated it with EM I material. Likewise, the dating of CMS II. 1 180 is less clear than Warren indicates (cf. Alexiou, in CMS II. 1 p. 193Google Scholar).