MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT EVANS. 635 



iiess, their directness of observation, their air of freshness and spon- 

 taneity are all deceptive.'' Many of them are misplaced and "were 

 originally written to describe some quite different occasion." 



Much has still to be written on the survival of Minoan elements in 

 almost every department of the civilized life of later Greece. Apart, 

 moreover, from oral tradition we have always to reckon with the 

 possibility of the persistence of literary records. For we now know 

 that an advanced sj^stem of linear script was in vogue not only in 

 Crete but on the mainland side in the latest Mycenaean period.' 



Besides direct tradition, however, there are traces of a process of 

 another kind for which the early renaissance in Italy affords a strik- 

 ing analogy. In later classical days some of the more enduring 

 examples of ^linoan art, such as engraved gems and signets, were 

 actually the subjects of a revival. I venture to think that it can 

 hardly be doubted that a series of early Greek coin types are taken 

 from the designs of Minoan intaglios. Such very naturalistic designs 

 as the cow scratching its head with its hind leg or licking its flank 

 or the calf that it suckles, seen on the coins of Gortyna, Karystos, and 

 Eretria seem to be directly borrowed from Minoan lentoid gems. 

 The two overlapping swans on coins of Eion in Macedonia recall a 

 well-established intaglio design of the same early class. The native 

 goats which act as supporters on either side of a fig tree on some types 

 of the newly discovered archaic coins of Skyros suggest the same 

 comparisons. On the other hand a version of the lions' gate scheme — 

 two lions with their forepaws on the capital of a column, seen on 

 an Ionian stater of about 700 B. C — has some claims, in view of the 

 Phrygian parallels, to be regarded as an instance of direct survival. 



A good deal more might be said as to this numismatic indebted- 

 ness, nor is it surprising that the civic badge on coins should have 

 been taken at times from those on ancient gems and signets brought 

 to light by the accidental opening of a tomb, together with bronze 

 arms and mortal remains attributed, it may be, to some local hero. 

 Of the almost literal reproduction of the designs on Minoan signet 

 rings by a later Greek engraver I am able to set before you a really 

 astonishing example. Three rings (figs. 5, 6, 7) were recently ob- 

 tained by me in Athens, consisting of solid silver hoops themselves 

 penannular with rounded terminations in which swivel fashion are 

 set oval ivory bezels, with intaglios on either side, surrounded in 

 each case by a high rim, itself taken over from the prominent gold 

 rim of Egyptian scarab mountings. These bezels are perforated, the 

 silver wire that went through them being wound around the feet of 

 the hoops. From particularities in the technique, the state of the 

 metal and of the ivory, and other points of internal evidence, it is 



^ Among recent discoveries are a whole series of late Minoan vases from Tiryns with 

 inscriptions representing a mainland type of the developed linear script of Minoan Crete. 



