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Engraved Gems in the Collection of the British School1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

John H. Betts
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Extract

The origin of the sealstones in the British School of Archaeology at Athens is rather obscure. Although they have sometimes been referred to as the Finlay collection, this is apparently incorrect. That collection is now in the museum of the University of Manchester. Numbers 1–18 below (M30–M47 in the School's museum inventory) consist of three Minoan gems of the ‘talismanic’ type and fifteen ‘Melian’ Island gems. The combination of Island with a small admixture of Minoan gems, especially ‘talismanics’, seems to have been characteristic of material derived from Geometric tombs in the cemeteries of Trypiti, Trion Vasallon, and elsewhere on Melos during the latter part of the nineteenth and the first years of this century, in particular during the period in which the British School was excavating on the island at Phylakopi.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 66 , November 1971 , pp. 49 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1971

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References

2 e.g. Brice 23, no. V5, pl. xxix; Kenna, V. E. G., Kadmos i (1962) 10 f.Google Scholar

3 For the Bronze Age seals of the Finlay collection, CMS vii, nos. 246–52, and for the Archaic and Island pieces, IGems 169.

4 For the appearance of Minoan gems in Geometric tombs on Melos, IGems 97 ff.

5 Ross, L., Reisen aus den griechischen Inseln iii (1845) 20 f.Google Scholar; Leningrad, Hermitage Museum, Inv. nos. 518 (IGems, no. 248), 519 (IGems, no. 38), 522 (IGems, no. 81), and 507 (Minoan, IGems 98, no. 10).

6 AM xi (1886) 170 fr., pl. 6; cf. Zazoff, P., AA (1965) 1 ff.Google Scholar and Antike Gemmen, Katalog der staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Kassel Nr. 2 (1969).

7 AM xxi (1896) 217 ff., pl. 5; cf. AA (1898) 64 ff.

8 BMCG, nos. 69 (CMS vii, no. 110), 164, 209, and 216.

9 CMS viii, nos. 1–99; IGems 171.

10 CMS vii, nos. 253–62; Reich, J. J., JHS lxxxvi (1966) 159 ff., pl. 10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 BSA ii (1895–6) 72; JHS xvi (1896) 353.

12 BMCG, no. 69; CMS vii, no. 110.

13 PM iv. 445 n. 3.

14 IGems 98 n. 1.

15 BMCG 9, no. 69.

16 All four examples given by Brice are discussed by Kenna (loc. cit., n. 2 above). The Mavrospelio gold ring with its circular bezel is unusual in shape, its only parallel being the ring with two copulating goats in the British Museum (CMS vii, no. 68); most Minoan ring bezels are oval.

17 PM i. 670, fig. 490 produced a drawing of the original. PC 1 596, no. 12 attempted to read the inscription from that drawing but with little success. Brice, working from the impression, read it successfully but mistakenly called the stone a lentoid.

18 BSA xxviii (1926–7) 269, no. IX, E.1 and 284 f., fig. 37, pls. 18 and 19; PM ii. 557, fig. 352; PM iv. 510; PC 1 596, no. Cn13, fig. 240; Brice 24, no. V14, pl. 30.

19 Sign numbers and variants here are taken from PC 2 80 ff.