244

SHIPS ON CLAY SEALINGS FROM KNOSSOS

From

Syrian
side.

a horse—a true thoroughbred—superposed on the intaglio of the vessel.1
If, as seems to be a fair inference, we may regard this as indicating the
character of the cargo, we may here trace a reference to the maritime agency
by which thoroughbred chariot-horses were brought to the Island. An
upper term for the date of the seal-impression itself is supplied by the
peculiar tufted dressing of the horse's mane, since this corresponds with the
coming in of a later fashion in the- chariot itself, which has a curved posterior





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Fig. 141. Clay Sealings showing Sailing Vessels, from Knossos;
a, with Figure of Horse superposed.

section added to it. This fashion, as I have shown elsewhere, comes in,
both in Crete and in the Mycenaean regions of Mainland Greece, about
1450 b.c. At Knossos it marks the last Palace Period (L. M. II) and the
' Chariot Tablets' with the Linear Class B consistently reproduce both this
dual construction of the car and the tasselling of the horses' manes. But it
can be shown that this tufted arrangement of the manes was itself taken
over from Oriental models, and we may further conclude that the vessels
used for the transport of horses, the heads of which were thus bedecked,
plied with Syrian ports.

A confirmation of the view that this design may refer to such importa-
tion is given by the associations of the seal-impression, Fig. 141, b, in a con-
temporary style, which occurred in a large deposit of tablets of the Linear
Class B, found on the West border of the Northern Entrance Passage of the
1 See A. E., Knossos, Report, 1905, pp. 12-14 and Fig. 7 (here re-drawn).