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The Lapidary's Workshop at Knossos
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
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Evans dates the Lapidary's Workshop, located in the south-west basements of the Palace at Knossos, to his Re-occupation Period (LM IIIB), thus making it and its contents one of three stone jewellery workshops known for the period LM/LH III B, and implying that after LM IIIA 1(/2) part of the Palace at least remained an artistic and administrative centre (if the making of sealstones here implies their concomitant use as impressing agents for sealing sets of documents, tombs, etc.). Other scholars, however, such as Boardman, date the Workshop prior to LM IIIA 1(/2), on the basis of the styles of the motifs carried on the clay nodules and of the unfinished sealstones found in the Workshop.
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- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1979
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I wish to express my gratitude to Michael Vickers for allowing me to examine and publish both material from the Workshop and other sealstones now in the Ashmolean Museum, to Hector Catling for his permission to examine objects in the Stratigraphical Museum in Knossos, to John Boardman for permitting me to reproduce Evans's drawings of the Chessmen, and to John Betts and Lawrence Richardson, Jr. for their advice. The somewhat unexpected conclusions reached in this paper are, however, the responsibility entirely of the author.
1 PM iv. 594–5. A preliminary publication appears in BSA vii (1900–1) 20–1. Quotes from the Daybook and Evans's Notebook appear in Palmer-Boardman's On the Knossos Tablets (hereafter OKT).
2 The date is supported by Palmer, OKT passim and especially pp. 151–2.
3 Two others are known, that in Mycenae possibly to be located in or near the House of the Columns (i.e. the East Palace Wing; AE 1897 121 n. 1), and that in Thebes (Kadmeia I chapter V); both date probably to LH IIIB. Apart from these two identifiable workshops in stone jewellery there are many moulds for finger-rings and many unfinished sealstones and beads, all of which evoke more vividly the craft as a process than do the finished products; a full discussion of these is out of place here, but see Sakellarakis, , AE 1972 pp. 234–44Google Scholar, and Younger, , Kadmos xiii (1974) 1–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 The present writer accepts Popham, 's date, ‘The Destruction of the Palace at Knossos,’ SIMA xii (1970)Google Scholar, but for the purposes of this paper he will not base his conclusions on this date in order to avoid a circular argument.
5 OKT 12–13, 19–20, and 71, fig. 3 and pl. viib.
6 PM iv. 595 n. 1.
7 ‘Last Days of the Palace of Knossos’, SIMA v.
8 OKT p. 154 quoting AE/NB 1901 p. 34. Gill numbers refer here and hereafter to those in the article, ‘Knossos Sealings: Provenance and Identification’, BSA lx (1965) 58–98, by M. A. V. Gill.
9 AA lxxix (1964) 785–804 and lxxxii (1967) 330–44. Evans's description of the Palanquin fresco (PM ii. 770: the ‘fragments seem to have been derived from the adjoining chamber West which was also connected with the hoard of seal-impressions.’) implies that in his judgement the fresco was still to be seen on its wall when the Palace was burnt.
10 Hogarth/Levi no. 3 (JHS xxii. 76–93 fig. 2). Betts, , Kadmos vi. 15–28Google Scholar, equates the Zakro sealing with the inferred Knossos gold ring.
11 Kadmos vi (1967) 21–2. Betts suggests that the ‘Zakro sealing may well have been impressed with a replica of the Knossos ring’ to account for this sealing's smaller size. This shrinking of the clay sealing may instead be due to the violent fire that destroyed the palace there. Similar distortions are known; cf. CMS i. 307 from Pylos, probably produced by the Danicourt Ring (Sakellariou in Festschrift Matz pp. 19–22), and Wr 1416 in AJA lxv (1961) pl. 58 impressed by AGdS ii. Berlin 21 from Elis.
12 Kadmos vi (1967) 21–2.
13 For the sealing Q19 (PM iv. 387 fig. 32 and p. 594) Evans says that there exist ‘some reasons for referring (it) to LM IB’, though he does not explain whether these are stratigraphic or stylistic. This broken sealing made by a lentoid preserves a robed man on the left facing an ape seated on a campstool on the right, while below these is a couchant animal to right and in the field are several fronds. The cluttered composition and fairly naturalistic rendering may indicate an early style, but the general scene is imitated on a sealing (CMS i. 377) from the Pylos Palace destroyed during the transition LH IIIB to C. While here too the style seems early (there are many sealtypes from Pylos which also seem much earlier than IIIB, notably CMS i. 305, 307, 312, 325/6, 358, 364, 367, 370, 373), this sole recurrence of this unusual motif at Pylos suggests a tie between the two palaces, not necessarily that of contemporaneity, but that sealstones in use at Knossos just before its destruction survived it to provide the bases for later examples.
14 For Q1 cf. CS k. 315 (LM II context: PM iv. 588) for the pose and the style, HM 175 probably from Kalyvia T. 8 (LM IIIA 2 context; MA xiv [1904] 551–666 fig. 96, and Furumark, Chronology 105 for the date). For Q2/3 see Levi no. 66 (Ann 8–9 [1925–6] 71–156 fig. 87) from Ayia Triada (LM IB context), and CMS i. 272 from Rutsi Tholos 2 cist 2 (LH IIA context; Antiquity xxxi (1957) 97–100 correcting CMS i. 304). For Q4. see CMS i. 253 and the frond on CMS i. 242 both from the Vapheio Tholos cist (LH IIA context). Q5 is not identified among extant sealings. Q6 may be HMs. Nu-Delta and, if so, may be likened to the style of Q1 above. For Q7 see HM. 177 also from Kalyvia Tomb 8 (op. cit. fig. 89).
15 OKT 14 fig. 3.
16 An idea proposed by M. S. F. Hood and published in Boardman's Greek Gems and Finger Rings, p. 63.
17 Published in AE 1972 pl. 90 a-gamma, omitting a view of the begun stringhole.
18 See the full discussion on the stringhole in my forthcoming publication of the rock crystal lentoid from the Phylakopi Sanctuary.
19 MA xiv (1904) 501–666, especially those sealstones from Tombs 1 and 8.
20 A recent discussion of this seal occurs in Kadmos xiii (1974) 3n. 11.
21 A discussion of this group appears in the present writer's unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Towards the Chronology of Aegean Glyptic in the Late Bronze Age’ (University of Cincinnati, 1973) pp. 439–41. Sealstones in this group came almost exclusively from the mainland, and when from excavated contexts they date to LH III (A 2)–B.
22 Dolphins appear as the main motif on Gill R 105 from Knossos's East Quarters, and as a filler on CMS v. 600 from Thera (LM IA context).
23 The CMS drawing for No. 12 from Pylos (LH IIIB late-C context) is inaccurate. The horns are in the usual position, but a crack in the sealing has been interpreted as the horn on the right.
24 Another mould has been occasionally discussed as a trial piece, CMS xii 262, said to be from Poros near Herakleion; it has three recessed tondi with animals in relief. It is thus for casting impressions in intaglio in some soft or fluid material as clay, glass or molten metal like gold. Kenna first thought (CS p. 77) that glass was used, but later (CMS xii p. 353) suggested both glass and gold with which Sakellarakis, (AE 1972 p. 238)Google Scholar agrees. The present writer thinks glass only is appropriate (JHS xcvi [1976] 254).
25 Personal inspection of the gold rings (CMS i. 15 and 16 [Mycenae Shaft Grave IV; LH I], 128 and 129 [Mycenae T. 91; LH II–III]; BSA lxix [1976] 195–257, J8 [Sellopoulo T. 4; LM IIIA 1]; MA xiv [1904] 501–666 figs. 51 and 50 [Kalyvia Ts. 2 and 11; LM IIIA]); and of the following gold seals (CMS i. 9 and 11 [Mycenae Shaft Grave IV: LH I], 274 [Rutsi Tholos 2; LH IIA], 293 from Pylos T. Delta, and CMS v. 200) has convinced the present writer that it is unlikely that any gold ring is of solid gold. All the above are hollow, with the Shaft Grave rings, the Sellopoulo ring, and the Rutsi seal showing visible evidence of a bronze core.
26 BSA lxix (1976) 195–257, J7.
27 MA xiv (1904) 501–666 figs. 11 and 12.
28 PTK pp. 25–7 fig. 21.
29 Praktika 1967 pl. 137a.
30 BSA xxviii (1926–7) 264–9 fig. 37 Pls. 18 and 19.
31 The ‘core’ as a matrix could also have produced articles like the gold sequins of the Mycenae Shaft Graves. The motif of cow suckling her calf, however, is almost exclusively used for sealstones and rings.
32 A similar hoop has been hypothesized for the seal that impressed the sealing from Dawkins's excavation of the Menelaion, (BSA xvi (1909–1910) 4–11 fig. 5 and pl. iiia).Google Scholar A closer inspection of the sealing, however, reveals the impression of a string, not of a hoop, that secured the seal probably to the wrist of its owner.
33 Compare the tools from the Artisan's Grave (LH IIIA late-B), Athenian Agora xiii. 231–2.
34 Contrary to Boardman's statement (GGFR p. 63) that ‘there is no need to suspect that the seal engraver was also a jeweller, although the gold rings at least may always have been jeweller's works, including their intaglios. Their style seldom quite matches that of the stone seals.’
There is, instead, probably a closer relationship than Boardman credits here. Surely the lion on the gold cushion seals (CMS i. 9 and 10) from Mycenae Shaft Grave III is the same to be seen on the agate lentoids CMS i. 243 from Vapheio and v. 435 from Nichoria, among many others (see my article, ‘The Mycenae-Vapheio Lion Group’ AJA lxxxii, 1978, 285–99). The griffin on CMS i. 389 is probably by the Danicourt Master who was first identified by Boardman, (RA 1970, 3–8)Google Scholar to have created the Danicourt Ring and CMS i. 17 and 18, and probably CMS i. 307 from Pylos (Sakellariou, Festschrift Matz 19–22), though Boardman seems to disagree since he places this sealing in his Mycenaean Group C as opposed to the others which are in his Group A (GGFR p. 395). And our steatite mould and CMS i. 125 the ring from Mycenae probably are by the same hand, while the Eleusis stone mould for gold ring bezels demonstrates that such a hand belonged to a stone engraver as well as a jeweller.
In addition, CMS i. 91 a gold and, probably, silver ring carries a motif, two bulls couchant, the far one's head averted, found otherwise only on stone seals.
35 The sealstone figured in Munich Jahrbuch iv (1909) 99 pl. 2.2 is omitted since the present writer has not been able to consult it.
36 Schliemann, Mycenae 112 no. 175, 131–2, states that the ring was found ‘at a depth of 20 feet below the surface’, which, according to his plans B and BB, Vertical section on AB, would place the ring near the basement floor of the House of the Warrior Vase; this house, like the others south of Grave Circle A was built when the citadel was enlarged and refortified in LH IIIB. The Warrior Vase is LH IIIC 1 and dates to the first destruction c. 1120 B.C. Other finds from this house support a LH IIIB—C I date.