Evans, Arthur J.: Scripta minoa: the written documents of minoan Crete with special reference to the archives of Knossos (Band 1): The hieroglyphic and primitive linear classes (Oxford, 1909)

PROTODYNASTIC EGYPTIAN AND EGYPTO-LIBYAN INFLUENCES 129

of the Egyptian design. These secondary stages had, moreover, been reached on the
Egyptian side during the period immediately preceeding the Eleventh Dynasty, and
it is approximately to the same Age—in round numbers about 2300-2200 b. c.—
that the earlier Cretan copies must be referred. It follows from this that the more
remote offshoots of these ' double sickle' designs, such as the S-shaped version on F
and G, belong to a somewhat later date. It is therefore important to observe that the
elongated prism-seal on which this occurs (PI. 1, P. 2) bears on one of its faces two
characters belonging to the early hieroglyphic class of Crete.1

Another type belonging to the same Lower Egyptian element as that which
produced the button-seals, and contemporary with them, is a four-sided bead-seal

of elongated form, which has a special
interest, inasmuch as it anticipates the
form of a class of Cretan bead-seals which
run parallel with the prisms. An interest-
ing example of this type, found by Mr.
Garstang at Mahasna2 in a tomb of the
Sixth Dynasty, or of the period imme-
diately succeeding it, is given in Fig. 66.3
The signs on this seal are by no means
clear. That at the top of face b seems
to represent the seated human figure with
a typical key pattern below, and face d shows apparently a lizard, also common to
the button-seals.

Another characteristic type of seal belonging to the Egypto-Libyan class with
which we are dealing, and covering the same period as the button-seals, is the hemi-
cylinder.4 This form also finds its parallel in Crete. I am able to cite an ivory
example from the central part of the island, the intaglio designs on which must be
grouped with the most advanced class of simple pictographic representations on the
Cretan prism-seals. On the convex side are figures of a man and his bride with four
ewers below, apparently of a metal type—the repetition probably indicating abundance
of wealth—and paralleled by the triplet of similar vases which occurs on some of the most
primitive of the 'hieroglyphic' prisms.5 On the flat side of the half-cylinder the
owner appears as an archer beside a tree shooting at a wild goat, and accompanied by
a dog. A very important feature about this hemi-cylinder is that the figure of the
man with a short dagger at his waist, seen on the convex side, answers to that of clay
figures from the Cretan votive deposits, like that of Petsofa belonging to the First
Middle Minoan Age, and associated with the early phase of ceramic polychromy.

1 Cf. P. 5, below. ! J.Garstang, Mahasnaand Bet KhitUdf (1903),pp.33,34.

* See too my Report ofthe AsktnoUan Museum/or tkeyear 1901, p. 6, Fig. 1.

' See Newberry, op. cic, p. 56. ' See PI. I, P. 4c, P. 5 b.

Four-sided
bead-seal
from Egypt,
Sixth
Dynasty.

Fig. 66. Four-sided Seal of

Egypto-
Libyan

cylinders.

Minoan

example.