'SIGNET' TYPES

at this
indeed

Disuse of
hierogly-
phic types
in
M.M.I1I.

' Signet Type of Seal, due to Hittite Influences.

'Signet' A new type of 'signet-seal' also used for hieroglyphs seems

therewith time" to have owed its temporary vogue to Hittite influences. Thi:
fore-prts js connrmed by the discovery of a specimen in silver
from East Crete,1 a metal common on the Anatolian class
of seals, but otherwise unexampled in the Minoan series.
Some variety of form was also maintained by the
occurrence of seals with their upper surface imitating the
whorls of shells or elegantly convoluted, and one example
at least exists of a Xllth Dynasty Egyptian scarab of
amethyst engraved with Minoan signs.

About the close of the M. M. II<5 phase a funda-
mental change takes place in sphragistic usage. The
fields of the seals are now no longer filled with hiero-
glyphic signs, and at the same time the current form of
prism seal, with its flat elongated facets, so appropriate
for such inscriptions, is itself given up. On the later
specimens of these prisms themselves we begin to see
animal designs, for which their narrow fields were not
well adapted. The 'signet' type, though small for such
pictorial subjects, seems on the other hand to have sup-
plied the remarkable head of a Minoan prince, with a
strong Armendid profile2: the first attempt at anything like rea
portraiture preserved to us. So, too, a cornelian ' signet' found in i-M
Crete depicts a pair of wild goats on a rocky peak (Fig- HJ)' Among
the seal impressions from the ' Hieroglyphic Deposit' at Knossos,howeve ,
there now occur, beside late examples of the 'signet' class, singu a ,
naturalistic representations of rocky landscapes in a round slightly bos
field of large compass, indicating the advent of the new, lentoid type.

Flat-sided Disks—transitional links with Lentoid Type.

Flat-sided It is, indeed, difficult from impressions alone to distinguish such e

ciSretf beads.from a parallel class with broad flat edges that now comes into vog^'
lentoid An intaglio of this kind, showing- a very natural figure of a hornec s

tvoe. . <> J r, \ 4 The UpP

standing on a stepped base, is here reproduced (Fig. 418;r)."

1 Obtained by me by exchange from the
late R. B, Seager.

Appear-
ance of
portrai-
ture, na-
turalistic
animals,
and rock
scenery.

Fig. 417 a, 6.

White Cornelian

'Signet'; near

Kritsa.

ealistic

type

' We see on the handle an elo"^d Syria,i
sion of the rope pattern of Hittite an
' See above, p. 474, Fig. 399, and cf. P. of association. „ 1

M.,\, p. 272, Fig. 201,a. ........"' Fiff'5W' '

1 Cf. P. of it., i, p. 684, Fig