MISCELLANEOUS MOTIVES

6'5

3, 602. Large Sealing from
Armoury Deposit. (§)

Miscellaneous Motives: Cattle Pieces and Typical ' Lentoid' Schemes.

Among the everyday types of seal impressions, that reproduced in Fig.
597 is. e, and a closely parallel specimen from the Armoury Deposit, Fig. 602,1
here reproduced for the sake of com-
parison, are interesting, not only as
illustrations of exceptionally large Ien-
toids.but from the obvious dependence
of the representations of water-fowl
on the ' Nile pieces' in vogue among
the Late Minoan artists. These two
seal-types seem to represent the work
of the same engraver, only slightly
modifying an identical design. The
double zones in which the birds appear
are, in fact, a reminiscence of the suc-
cessive registers in which contempor-
ary wall-paintings were arranged.

The surviving vogue of bull-grappling scenes is attested by k and n
but at this time types of a simply bucolic nature became more promiment.
Late Palatial seal impressions presenting such motives have already received
illustration, such as the scene of the 'Cattle show'2 and the boy milking a cow.3
In Fig. 597 b we see a series of groups of oxen and horned sheep {c,f, m).
The two bovine animals on a seal impression already illustrated,4 standing
on an architectonic base with a columnar support, are taken, seemingly, from
some existing relief and must be regarded as having a dedicatory character.
In Fig. 597, B,d the familiar cow and calf motive reappears. The symmetrically
arranged and closely packed designs, like other seal impressions from
these deposits already figured, afford good examples of the ' lentoid' class.

Three important types in which horses appear are reproduced in a suc-
ceeding Section.5 Another, insufficiently baked, with a chariot scene was,
as already recorded, reduced to pulp by a sudden storm of heavy rain.

1 -P. of M., iii, p. 11; and Fig. 67. See, ' lb., Fig. 534.

too, A. E., Knossos, Report, 1904, pp. 56, 57, '' See above, p. 56S, Figs. 542 a,b.

F'g- 19- ' See below, pp. 827, 828, Figs., 805, 808,'

" P. 564, Fig. 532 above. 809.

Predomi-
nance oi
lentoid
bead-
seals ;
large
examples.

Fre-
quency of
bucolic
motives.

Typical
lentoid
designs.

Chariots

and

Horses.