A gold signet ring and its impression. Ashmolean Museum
Minoan seals are impression seals in the form of carved gemstones and similar pieces in metal, ivory and other materials produced in the Minoan civilization. They are an important part of Minoan art, and have been found in quantity at specific sites, for example in Knossos, Mallia and Phaistos. They were evidently used as a means of identifying documents and objects.
Minoan seals are of a small size, 'pocket-size', in the manner of a personal amulet. Many of the images are a similar size to a human fingernail, with a high proportion that of the nail of a little finger. They might be thought of as equivalent to the pocket-sized, 1 inch (3 cm) scaraboid seals of Ancient Egypt, which were sometimes imitated in Crete.[1] However Minoan seals can be larger, with largest examples of many inches.
Minoan seals are the most common surviving type of Minoan art after pottery, with several thousand known, from EM II onwards, in addition to over a thousand impressions, few of which match surviving seals.[2] Cylinder seals are common in early periods, much less so later. Seals with different shapes and multiple faces are especially common, unusually so by comparison with later and neighbouring cultures: "lentoid" ones have two faces, usually curving towards a thin circular edge, and there are many "prism" ones with three flat faces.[3] A seal-carving workshop from MM I excavated at Malia mostly made this type; here, as throughout the surviving seals, there are wide variations in the quality of the carving.[4] Often seals are pierced, so they can be worn around the neck or wrist on a string. Probably many early examples were in wood, and have not survived. Ivory and soft stone were the main surviving materials for early seals, the body of which were quite often formed as animals or birds.[5] From the Middle Minoan period fast rotary drills were used, enabling harder stones to be utilized.[6]
Green jasper, with Cretan hieroglyphs, 1800 BC
Later, some are extremely fine engraved gems; other seals are in gold, usually on signet rings.[7] The subjects shown cover the full range of Minoan art. The so-called Theseus Ring was found in Athens; it is gold, with a bull-leaping scene in intaglio on the flat bezel.[8] The Pylos Combat Agate is an exceptionally fine engraved gem, probably made in the Late Minoan, but found in a Mycenaean context.[9] This is a common issue: Minoan art was exported around the Aegean sea and beyond, and many finds in Mycenaean and other contexts are thought to be either made in Crete or by Cretan or Cretan-trained artists working outside Crete.
^Hood, 216
^Hood, 209
^Hood, 210-212
^Hood, 215-216
^Hood, 209-212
^Hood, 209-215
^Hood, 218-219
^"The Ring of Theseus", Unseen Museum, 12 January 2015 – 15 March 2015, National Archaeological Museum
^"Unearthing a masterpiece". University of Cincinnati Magazine. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
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archaeological evidence of such as Minoan paintings, statuettes, vessels for rituals and seals and rings. Minoan religion is considered to have been...
lion, or of a hippopotamus, or of other animals. It is mostly seen on Minoanseals, often in pairs as supporters of deities. It is also sometimes called...
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Minoan pottery has been used as a tool for dating the mute Minoan civilization. Its restless sequence of quirky maturing artistic styles reveals something...
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honey (mead) preceded wine as an entheogen in the Aegean world; on some Minoanseals, goddesses were represented with bee faces (compare Merope and Melissa)...
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relief mouldings fixed in architectural settings”. Seals are accessories worn by the person and these seals had images on them that could give information...
Different from the Minoan stamp-seals, the Indus stamp-seals probably have a different function from the stamp seals of the Minoan civilization, as they...
Though they collected them, the Mycenaean elite did not apparently use Minoanseals for authenticating anything, but treated them as ornaments, at least...
such strong affinities in style and subject matter with contemporary Minoanseals that archaeologists find it impossible to determine whether they were...
have decomposed, so most surviving examples of Minoan art are pottery, intricately-carved Minoanseals, .palace frescos which include landscapes), small...
artworks of the time; a similar design was depicted on fifteenth-century BC Minoanseals and a gem found at Mycenae. On a pithos from Knossos, the same imagery...
vision of the god, an event which appears to be depicted on some gold Minoanseal rings, where the stones are large oval boulders. A small serpentinite...
Carter Leonard Woolley Matriarchal religion Minoan chronology Minoan pottery Minoan religion MinoansealsMinoan snake goddess figurines Myres, J. L. (1941)...
The Pylos Combat Agate is a Minoan sealstone of the Mycenaean era, likely manufactured in Late Minoan Crete. It depicts two warriors engaged in hand-to-hand...
recorded history: the Minoan eruption (sometimes called the Thera eruption), which occurred about 3,600 years ago at the height of the Minoan civilization. The...
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signet rings, seals, paintings, and pottery vessels. Objects such as the Hagia Triada Sarcophagus depict Minoan burial rituals. Minoanseals depict a variety...
April 7, 2023. Kyriakidis, E. (2005). "Unidentified Floating Objects on MinoanSeals". American Journal of Archaeology. 109 (2). Archaeological Institute...
related development in Minoanseals, which are often very fine. The Greek tradition emerged in Ancient Greek art under Minoan influence on mainland Helladic...
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