Minoan seals

Some seals are carved on more than one face, as many as eight in one case. Some have Minoan hieroglyphs.[10] Most early seals carry geometric patterns or plant-like designs. Birds and animals, both land and marine, generally appear rather earlier than human figures. Mythological and fantastic creatures such as the griffin, sphinx and Minoan Genius also appear.[11] Figurative designs gradually become more complicated, to include dance and goddesses. One common iconographic motif in Minoan art, especially frescoes, is bull-leaping; the example illustrated shows leapers and a bull. Other themes are varied, including for example: 'pottery and a plant'-(with 5 moon/planet crescents), 'confronted-goats', and a 'single bird'.[12]

Impression of seal from Early Minoan III; designs like this are thought to represent buildings, probably rustic shrines.[13]

In a large group of sealings from the palace at Phaistos that seem to be early MM II, or around 1800 BC, over two thirds of the nearly 300 designs abstract patterns, some very simple, but others complicated and sophisticated.[14] The sharp curving of bodies, typical of human bull-leaper figures, is often seen in animals in round images, though others are seen in a natural profile. Some seals seem to show their dependence on images from frescos by having a "dado" of lines or ornament beneath the main image, typical of Minoan painting.[15]

In MM III, from c. 1700 on a class of "talismanic seals" appear, that are thought to have had a magical function. Often they are too deeply cut to be very effective in sealing, and may have been just carried as amulets. They are less often found outside Crete than other types. Their designs are typically bold and deeply cut, "executed in a brisk and time-saving technique".[16]

What may be a regional style on large sealings from Zakros in LM I has exotic hybrid monsters such as "Eagle Ladies", a pair of breasts with wings and either a bird's head or a helmet with no head. Another has male human legs, bird's wings and a horned goat's head, and a third large breasts, the wings of a butterfly, a human head with crown and animal legs. Though "no doubt the designs had some magical import", there seems also to be a strong element of whimsical fantasy.[17]

When metal, mostly as gold rings, was used, complex designs with many figures were possible.[18]

A much-discussed gold signet ring from Knossos, perhaps showing a goddess and worshippers

At Mycenae, the shaft grave circles A and B are groups of elite burials with rich grave goods that include many seals that are thought to be Minoan, certainly in terms of their tradition, and probably in terms of their place of manufacture. For Sinclair Hood, these objects (specifically those from Circle A) "raise in an acute form the related questions of how to distinguish mainland from Cretan work, and the significance of any distinction that may exist".[19] The eight seals (three stone, five gold) found in Shaft Grave Circle A are of the large multi-figure type. Although scenes of combat and hunting predominate, all were found in the graves of women.[20] It does not seem that seals were actually used for making impressions on the Greek mainland at this point, so these objects, usually though to be of Minoan workmanship, were apparently treated as jewellery for women.[21]

The tholos or beehive tomb at Vaphio (or Vapheio) near Sparta is another famous find that has generated much discussion as to the origin of many pieces; the two gold cups are now usually thought to be Cretan in the case of one, and the other Mycenaen, made to match. The 43 seals in the tomb include a variety of fine stones, and gold, and several have parallels in Cretan finds. The princely figure buried there seems to have worn them on his wrists, like a modern charm bracelet. Sinclair Hood believed that at this date "it was broadly speaking possible to classify the finer seals as being of Cretan, the more crudely engraved of mainland manufacture", but that "this criterion no longer applies after the mainland conquest of Crete c. 1450".[22]

In 2015, an international team of archaeologists led by University of Cincinnati researchers discovered the Griffin Warrior Tomb, an undisturbed Bronze Age warrior’s tomb at Pylos in southwestern Greece.[23] The grave contained more than 50 gold or hardstone seal-stones, with intricate carvings in Minoan style showing goddesses, altars, reeds, lions and bulls, some with bull-jumpers soaring over the bull’s horns – all in Minoan style and probably made in Crete.[24] The Pylos Combat Agate is the most remarkable of these.

• 
  Early ivory "knob seal" with impression, the knob formed as a monkey.[25]
• 
  Boar-hunting gem
• 
  Drawing of last seal
• 
  Fish and animal seals and impressions
• 
  one of the carved faces of a prism seal in jasper
• 
  End view of the same "prism" seal in jasper
• 
  Lentoid Late Minoan seal in agate: seal and impression
• 
  Side view of same seal
• 
  museum examples—impressions
  (stamp seals also shown)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Minoan seals.

• Ceram, C.W. The March of Archaeology, C.W.Ceram, translated from the German, Richard and Clara Winston, (Alfred A. Knopf, New York), c 1958.
• Hood, Sinclair, The Arts in Prehistoric Greece, 1978, Penguin (Penguin/Yale History of Art), ISBN 0140561420