DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.8755#0031
20
A. J. Evans
Fig. 8.—Inner Design of Cup
(reduced).
chrome designs of flowering plants and foliage on a lustrous black ground,
representing a stage antecedent to the more naturalistic vegetable designs
of the succeeding period. A class
of ware with a brilliant metallic
lustre may compare with the cera-
mic imitations of silver plate, so
characteristic of the age immedi-
ately succeeding the Dionysian
Empire in Magna Graecia and
Sicily. A fragmentary cup, com-
pleted in PI. II. Fig. i, from the
same deposit, illustrates the repro-
duction in colour of what was
obviously the repousse decoration
of an original in precious metal.
It may well in turn serve a modern
goldsmith as an artistic model.
The inner design (Fig. 8) seems
to represent a graffito pattern in the metallic original.
In the same deposit there also occurred clay sealings in some cases
impressed with characters belonging to the pictographic script. This, with
other evidence such as that supplied by the occur-
rence of similar inscriptions in the early basement
rooms described in Section 4, has now made it
clear that the pictographic form of Cretan writing
is not only typologically but chronologically earlier
than the linear system of the Later Palace. The
evidence supplied by the original finds of such
clay sealings in the walled space behind the stair-
case of the Long Gallery1 was in itself misleading.
The sealings, discovered there and in the immediate
neighbourhood in a scattered state, may pos-
sibly have found their way into the walled
space in question owing to its having been filled in from a deposit
belonging to the latest period of the Earlier Palace. Or, if—as it still
seems preferable to believe—they really belong to the Later Palace, they
1 Report, &c, 1900, pp. 25 ami 59 setjq.
Fig. 9.—Middle Minoan
Seal Impression : Wild
Goat and Plant
A. J. Evans
Fig. 8.—Inner Design of Cup
(reduced).
chrome designs of flowering plants and foliage on a lustrous black ground,
representing a stage antecedent to the more naturalistic vegetable designs
of the succeeding period. A class
of ware with a brilliant metallic
lustre may compare with the cera-
mic imitations of silver plate, so
characteristic of the age immedi-
ately succeeding the Dionysian
Empire in Magna Graecia and
Sicily. A fragmentary cup, com-
pleted in PI. II. Fig. i, from the
same deposit, illustrates the repro-
duction in colour of what was
obviously the repousse decoration
of an original in precious metal.
It may well in turn serve a modern
goldsmith as an artistic model.
The inner design (Fig. 8) seems
to represent a graffito pattern in the metallic original.
In the same deposit there also occurred clay sealings in some cases
impressed with characters belonging to the pictographic script. This, with
other evidence such as that supplied by the occur-
rence of similar inscriptions in the early basement
rooms described in Section 4, has now made it
clear that the pictographic form of Cretan writing
is not only typologically but chronologically earlier
than the linear system of the Later Palace. The
evidence supplied by the original finds of such
clay sealings in the walled space behind the stair-
case of the Long Gallery1 was in itself misleading.
The sealings, discovered there and in the immediate
neighbourhood in a scattered state, may pos-
sibly have found their way into the walled
space in question owing to its having been filled in from a deposit
belonging to the latest period of the Earlier Palace. Or, if—as it still
seems preferable to believe—they really belong to the Later Palace, they
1 Report, &c, 1900, pp. 25 ami 59 setjq.
Fig. 9.—Middle Minoan
Seal Impression : Wild
Goat and Plant