The possibility of relations between Greece, especially Crete, and Libya, in the Bronze Age has been explored by many scholars. The Minoans and Mycenaeans seem to have been no less intrepid seafarers than their successors in the period of Greek colonization, to whom the shores of Cyrenaica soon became familiar. Professor Stucchi has reviewed these matters in (Quaderni di archeologia della Libia v (1967) 19 ff., but he goes further since he believes that he can add the evidence of actual Late Minoan imports to Cyrene, and it is this evidence which I wish to discuss in this article. Through his kindness I was able personally to examine the relevant material.

In Roman fill at Cyrene was found a cup fragment which Stucchi has restored as part of a kylix with argonaut decoration and dated to L.M. IIIA 2, by Furumark's classification. My Fig. 1 copies his photograph of the sherd (loc. cit., fig. 1) and Fig. 2 his reconstruction (Ibid., fig. 2). There seem to me some difficulties in this explanation of the fragment. The way the interior is painted over is not normally met in L.H./L.M. IIIA and it is very rare later. The addition of horizontal white stripes (Stucchi notes two on the interior) is, so far as I know, completely irregular. For the exterior, the spiral might be restored as some part of a marine device, but the three dashes above do not really suggest the filling pattern which is restored, nor are they truly comparable with the Minoan foliate pattern.