¹ Unfortunately, the nodule was not registered on its arrival in the Ashmolean Museum. The Accessions Register notes that it was found unregistered in 1957–8 and that it had been ‘given by Arthur Evans at the beginning of the century; from his early excavations at Knossos or his journeys in Crete’.

² KR published four uninscribed roundels from Knossos (Kn Wc 25, 41, 44, 46; a fragmentary fifth, Wc 45, has no preserved inscription).

³ I am following the descriptive plan of KR.

⁴ Six more Knossos roundels (Kn Wc 23, 25, 26, 29, 44, 45) are stamped repeatedly by the same seal; this is the general Minoan habit. Four roundels, however (Kn Wc 3, 30, 41, 46), are exceptional, stamped by two or more different seals a practice unknown elsewhere on Crete. See KR 63–4.

⁵ Its shape (and probable profile) most resembles amygdaloid class V in CMS ix p. 259.

⁶ By no means all Minoan administrators shared our aesthetic sense, choosing to use only the finest rings and gems; on the contrary, a surprising number used (to our eyes) mediocre and, occasionally, even badly-engraved gems. See Weingarten forthcoming (‘Seal Use at Late Minoan IB Ayia Triada: A Minoan Elite in Action, IF, Kadmos).

⁷ A talismanic seal on a roundel at Khania (KH ²⁴) and possibly at Ayia Triada (AT ³¹, stamped on 12 roundels). Levi, D., ‘Le Cretule di Haghia Triada’, ASAtene 8–9 (1925–6) 94Google Scholar, interpreted AT 31 as a fly or similar insect; my recent restudy of the impressions–all incomplete and very poorly preserved–suggests rather a talismanic seal.

⁸ Betts, J. H., BiOr 31 (1974) 314.Google Scholar

⁹ D. Levi (above, n. 7) 87; this talismanic seal seems to have defied even the meticulous compilation of CMS Beiheft 2.

¹⁰ KR 55 (Wc 3, 23, 25, 29, 30, 41), citing Gill, M. A. V., ‘The Knossos Sealings: Provenance and Identification’, BSA 60 (1965) 70–1.Google Scholar

¹¹ An exception is Wc 44. KR 56–7 quotes Gill (above, n. 10), 73 locating the ring impression stamped on Wc 44 at the Stepped Portico (south of the Throne Room) though not in a securely-dated context. Hallager himself dates this taurokathapsia ring stylistically to the Neo-Palatial period (‘not the very latest phase’), but ignores the excellent parallel (probably also a ring impression) from the Temple Repository, PM I 694 fig. 514. See Younger, J. G., ‘Bronze Age Representations of Aegean Bull-Leaping’, AJA 80 (1976) 126–7, 129CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on the possibility that poses on both rings (‘Evans’s Schema' and ‘The Schema of the Diving Leaper’) may originate no later than MM III.

¹² Above, n. 7.

¹³ KR 56, with remarks on the traditional dating to MM III.

¹⁴ Wc 23 is slightly odd in that GORILA 2: lvi does not accept its inscription (‘S’ and ‘mirrored S') as writing (whether Linear A or Hieroglyphics). KR 66, demonstrates, however, that this oddity fits well into an administrative series. That the inscription is most closely related to KE Wc 2 (MM III: J. L. Caskey, ‘Inscriptions and Potters’ Marks from Ayia Irini in Keos', Kadmos ix (1970) 110) perhaps underlines the early date of both roundels.

¹⁵ I have elsewhere suggested (‘The Sealing Structure of Minoan Crete: Part I’, OJA 5 (1986) 295 n. 2) that the Minoan roundel probably evolved through the Hieroglyphic ‘labels’ or ‘médaillons’ (Knossos = SM I, P 50–P 87; Mallia Palace Archives = Chapouthier, F., Les écritures minoennes au palais de Mallia (Paris 1930) H 7–11Google Scholar. Note that a true early roundel also appears in the latter deposit, H 5 = MA Wc 7). The Mallia deposit may be, in fact, contemporary with the Temple Repository: Pelon, O. (‘L'épée à l'acrobate et la chronologie maliote, II’, BCH cvii (1983) 703)Google Scholar, advances the date, from Chapouthier 1930, 7 (MM III and contemporary with the Hieroglyphic Deposit of Knossos) to the first phase of the New Palace Period, nearer the end than the beginning of MM III. Pelon (701 n. 50) questions, too, its designation as a hieroglyphic deposit since it contains many more Linear A documents than previously thought.