EARLY MINOAN III

I 2 I

porary illustration of ships will be seen on the three-sided steatite bead seal
from East Central Crete reproduced in Fig. 89, b. They have the same high
prows with triple forked terminations and similar rigging and upright stern.
The three crouched human figures of c answer to a type which survives into
Late Minoan times and may perhaps be taken to represent rowers.

Among the characteristic lorms of seals at this time are massive Typical;

E Ivl I

signet rings with a large round bezel like that with quadruple spiral ornament seals',
shown in Fig. 81, b, low flat cylinders of the type described,1 and 'pear'
or ' bottle-shaped ' signets,2 generally of dark steatite, which seem to be the
outgrowths of the type illustrated by the ivory example, Fig. 51 above. No
imitations of the Egyptian scarab form are as yet found.

a b
Fig. 90. Ivory Seals showing Meander, from Ossuary Tholos of
Hagia Triada (Halbherk). (!''•)

The perforated conoid type is often associated with meander motives3 Mean-
(Fig. 90, a, b, c), which have a special interest in a Cretan connexion as tern and
supplying the ultimate source of the labyrinth in art—such as we see it ^aby-
developed in a fresco of the Knossian Palace belonging to the last Middle
Minoan Period.

At times, as in Fig. 90, c, these patterns are of a more or less curvilinear
character, and it seems possible that the more elaborate forms may have
originated from the squaring of spiraliform designs—a process which has often
taken place in decorative art under textile influences. So, too, we see the key-
pattern of early Greek art standing in a derivative relation to the Mycenaean

1 Cf. Scripta Minoa, i, p. 120, Fig. 53. that some of these conoids belong to the pre-

2 lb., p. 121, Fig. 54. ceding E. M. II Period, and, with them, some

3 Halbherr, op. tit., PI. X. It is possible of the meander types.