DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7519#0303
268 THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF CRETE
leather remind us of the leggings shown on the Agia Triadha
vases, on one of which the frieze cape (gaa(di) is also shown.1
It has often been said that the scanty Minoan costume is an
indication of the eventual origin of the race in a warmer climate.
Admittedly the codpiece has Libyan affinities, but it would be
unsafe to argue from that that the Minoan stock as a whole was
of Libyan origin. How far it was the artistic convention to
omit everything but the simplest garb one cannot say. But
their fondness for the human figure may well have caused the
artists to show as much of it as they could, and it must be
remembered that in Egypt men were portrayed wearing the
old kilt for centuries after long robes of gauffered linen were
in fashion.
One item of costume remains to be mentioned, the seal.
This was probably worn in the case of a cylinder or signet,
suspended round the neck, in the case of a bead-seal, lentoid
or amygdaloid, round the wrist as in the Cupbearer Fresco.
Finger-rings are rare and those which have survived are all of
precious metals. No case is known of a stone seal set as a
bezel. Such signets are particularly necessary where writing
is the accomplishment of few.2
La'n°uasc How much of the language survived one cannot say. A
number of Cretan words—some of them current in ordinary
Hellenic speech—-have been preserved by such writers as
Hesychius.3 As one would expect, many of them are words
for plants, flowers, or animals for which the intrusive Greek
language had no equivalent. Some have to do with navigation,
the terminology of which is always liable to be a hotch-potch
of languages. The -nth- and the -ss- terminations are par-
ticularly common, rege^ivdog (terebinth), o/tivdog (fnouse),
xvn&QUsaog (cypress), and ddkaaaa (sea). These terminations
frequently appear in place-names of a pre-Hellenic character,
Knossos, Tylissos, Tiryns, Corinth, and, in Asia, Labranda.4
1See, however, Gerola, Monianenti Veneti, II, 327, where a different
type of breeches is shown in the 14th.—16th. cent. Note also that
most of the names are foreign. TaoafioXovai, for instance, is ' the stuff
of Tripolis '.
- Any one who has been in charge of a piece of Government work
in a country like Egypt, where the labourers, mostly illiterate, are
expected to sign a receipt for their wages, knows the dialogue on pay-
day :—' Can you sign ? '—' No ! '—' Have you your signet ? '—' I
forgot it !'—' Give me your thumb print.'
3 Lexikon. See useful list of words, Glotz, The Aegean Civilization,
386; also a list of Cretan Months, Reinach, Epigraphie Grecque, 487.
4 Cf. Haley and Blegen, A.J.A., XXXII, 141 ff.
leather remind us of the leggings shown on the Agia Triadha
vases, on one of which the frieze cape (gaa(di) is also shown.1
It has often been said that the scanty Minoan costume is an
indication of the eventual origin of the race in a warmer climate.
Admittedly the codpiece has Libyan affinities, but it would be
unsafe to argue from that that the Minoan stock as a whole was
of Libyan origin. How far it was the artistic convention to
omit everything but the simplest garb one cannot say. But
their fondness for the human figure may well have caused the
artists to show as much of it as they could, and it must be
remembered that in Egypt men were portrayed wearing the
old kilt for centuries after long robes of gauffered linen were
in fashion.
One item of costume remains to be mentioned, the seal.
This was probably worn in the case of a cylinder or signet,
suspended round the neck, in the case of a bead-seal, lentoid
or amygdaloid, round the wrist as in the Cupbearer Fresco.
Finger-rings are rare and those which have survived are all of
precious metals. No case is known of a stone seal set as a
bezel. Such signets are particularly necessary where writing
is the accomplishment of few.2
La'n°uasc How much of the language survived one cannot say. A
number of Cretan words—some of them current in ordinary
Hellenic speech—-have been preserved by such writers as
Hesychius.3 As one would expect, many of them are words
for plants, flowers, or animals for which the intrusive Greek
language had no equivalent. Some have to do with navigation,
the terminology of which is always liable to be a hotch-potch
of languages. The -nth- and the -ss- terminations are par-
ticularly common, rege^ivdog (terebinth), o/tivdog (fnouse),
xvn&QUsaog (cypress), and ddkaaaa (sea). These terminations
frequently appear in place-names of a pre-Hellenic character,
Knossos, Tylissos, Tiryns, Corinth, and, in Asia, Labranda.4
1See, however, Gerola, Monianenti Veneti, II, 327, where a different
type of breeches is shown in the 14th.—16th. cent. Note also that
most of the names are foreign. TaoafioXovai, for instance, is ' the stuff
of Tripolis '.
- Any one who has been in charge of a piece of Government work
in a country like Egypt, where the labourers, mostly illiterate, are
expected to sign a receipt for their wages, knows the dialogue on pay-
day :—' Can you sign ? '—' No ! '—' Have you your signet ? '—' I
forgot it !'—' Give me your thumb print.'
3 Lexikon. See useful list of words, Glotz, The Aegean Civilization,
386; also a list of Cretan Months, Reinach, Epigraphie Grecque, 487.
4 Cf. Haley and Blegen, A.J.A., XXXII, 141 ff.