Evans, Arthur J.: The Palace of Minos: a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustred by the discoveries at Knossos (Band 1): The Neolithic and Early and Middle Minoan Ages (London, 1921)

ii4

THE PALACE OF MINOS, ETC.

North
Aegean
Origin
of Spiral
System.

Thraco-
Pontic
Neolithic
Province.

of the round pebbles of their prototypes in conglomerate. But there is
no evidence of the employment by the early Egyptians of any fully
developed system of spiraliform ornament. The scarabs with running spiral
borders, formerly, on account of the names that some of them present,
assigned to the Fourth and succeeding Dynasties, are now shown not to
go back earlier than the beginning of the Middle Kingdom.1 The sources of
the Aegean spiral decoration must therefore be sought elsewhere than
in Egypt,2 and may be said to have shifted North. In that direction
we are confronted with the developed spiral system seen on the pottery
of the Neolithic station of Butmir in Bosnia and by that of a vast

Fig. 82. Clay Pyxis (b) and Lid of another (a). Sepulchral
Cave, Pyrgos, Nirou Khanl N.E. of Knossos (|).

Neolithic province extending from Thessaly and Thrace to Roumania and
Southern Russia. The evidence tends to show that it was already rooted
on the North Aegean shores and the Cyclades before it reached Minoan
Crete.

Among the Arkalokhori remains also occurred clay boxes or pyxides,
a class of vessels that now appears in Crete and is very characteristic of
contemporary Cycladic deposits. A specimen of one of these and the lid of
another of unquestionably E. M. Ill fabric are given in Fig. 82, from the
Sepulchral Cave of Pyrgos, N.E. of Knossos. Like others of this
class, these show the persistence of the old Sub-Neolithic technique, with
their well-baked reddish internal texture and dark brown burnished surface.

1 The earliest given by Petrie in his Scarabs then prevalent as to the date of certain scarab
and Cylinders with Names (1917), PI. XI, are types. The influence of Middle Empire scarab
of the Xlth Dynasty. types with spiraliform decoration on M. M. I

2 In Cretan Pictographs, &c, p. 59, I had and II seals is, however, clear. See below,
looked to Egypt for the source of the spiral p. 200 seqq.

motive in Crete, owing to the erroneous ideas