. The palace of Minos : a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustrated by the discoveries at Knossos . .^ A very interesting ex-ample of this type of seal,which in its subject andthe free style of its engrav-ing recalls the greaterworksof art to which the Dolphin Fresco belongs, is reproduced inFig. 495, a, b. It is of black steatite, but this material, in itself unattractiveand easily worn, had been coated with a thin gold plating carefullyimpressed into the intaglio itself, which shows two dolphins swimmingtowards a rocky marge. As will
. The palace of Minos : a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustrated by the discoveries at Knossos . .^ A very interesting ex-ample of this type of seal,which in its subject andthe free style of its engrav-ing recalls the greaterworksof art to which the Dolphin Fresco belongs, is reproduced inFig. 495, a, b. It is of black steatite, but this material, in itself unattractiveand easily worn, had been coated with a thin gold plating carefullyimpressed into the intaglio itself, which shows two dolphins swimmingtowards a rocky marge. As will be seen from the Figure, most of the goldplating has been preserved, and there are traces in the groove behindand beneath the edges of the gold of some adhesive material of a^ pinkishtexture. The intaglio had evidently formed the bezel of a ring, the 1 A banded agate from East Crete. This use of seals of this type is also supplied byandFig. 493,^, are in my own collection. more or less contemporary impressions on 2 See above, p. 377. Fig. 274. sealings from the hoards of Zakro and Evidence of the Triada referred to below, pp. 678-9. X X 2. a b Fig. 495. a, Steatite Bead-Seal of FlattenedCylinder Type coated with Gold Plate; b, seenFROM above (f). Steatiteexampleplatedwith gold. See p. 505, Fig. 363, < 676 THE PALACE OF MINOS, ETC. Relief ofsteatiterhytonalso gold-plated. metal hoop of which has worn a deep groove in the inner side of itsaxial perforation. The. coating of the black steatite intaglio with preciousmetal had at the time when I obtained it, in 1894, suggested the ideathat the black steatite vessels with reliefs had been originally embellishedin a like manner, and that this practice in. fact supplied the antecedentstage to the later technique illustrated by the Vapheio Cups.^ A discoverymade on the same site during the excavations of the British School hasafforded a remarkable confirmation of this view. A fragment of a black steatite rhyton was smce ——
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1921
