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The Knossos Sealings: Provenance and Identification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2013

M. A. V. Gill
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Extract

Basic to a study of the Knossos sealings are questions of provenance and identification. Seal-impressed nodules were excavated from various parts of the Main Palace and its dependencies, both as isolated finds and as hoards. What sealings were found in which places? And how many can be identified with actual examples in Herakleion and Oxford? Those are the two questions to be considered in this article.

The documents available for this research vary in reliability. Among published accounts, reports in BSA have the virtue of being written in the same year as the excavation, though even they are subject to occasional errors arising out of misread notes. SM i compiled a few years later contains a more mature assessment of the material but is mainly limited to the Hieroglyphic Deposit. More detailed information is to be found in PM i–iv; but because of the time that elapsed between the important excavation seasons at the beginning of the century and the publication of this work, the advantage of Evans's greater experience of Minoan archaeology is outweighed by a greater tendency for mistakes to enter unnoticed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 60 , November 1965 , pp. 58 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1965

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References

1 Abbreviations:

Single capitals followed by numerals refer to sealings mentioned in the tables at the end of each section (cf. below p. 62).

AE/NB Sir Arthur Evans's Excavation Notebooks, year and page references.

Bossert Bossert, H. T., Altkreta (Berlin, 3rd ed., 1937).Google Scholar

DM/DB Day Book of the Knossos Excavations by Duncan Mackenzie, year, date, and occasionally page references.

Her. Herakleion Archaelogical Museum, Crete.

Her. = Catalogue numbers of seals.

Her. s. = Catalogue numbers of sealings.

Her. n. No. = Uncatalogued sealings.

Kenna Catalogue of Ashmolean seals/sealings in Kenna, V. E. G., Cretan Seals (Oxford, 1960).Google Scholar

Ox. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Ox. = Catalogue numbers of seals/sealings.

Ox. n. No. = Uncatalogued sealings.

Acknowledgements:

I am most grateful to Dr. S. Alexiou, Director of the Herakleion Archaeological Museum, to Dr. N. Platon, the Museum's ex-Director, and to Dr. H. W. Catling, Curator of the Classical Antiquities section, Ashmolean Museum, who have made the sealings accessible for my study; also to the Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum for permission to reproduce Plates 5–9, drawings made originally for Evans but never published by him, and Plates 10–19, photographs of sketches in AE/NB. The latter are not to scale. I should like especially to thank Mr. J. Boardman for his advice while I was writing this article and his helpful criticism of it in its final stages.

2 Cf. Plan of Palace, BSA vii (1900–1)Google Scholar, for these grid-references.

3 [ ] Evans's deletion.

4 [ ] Evans's deletion.