Neopalatial Crete - the 'Golden Age' of the Minoan Civilization - possessed palaces, exquisite artefacts, and iconography with pre-eminent females. While lacking in fortifications, ritual symbolism cloaked the island, an elaborate bureaucracy logged transactions, and massive storage areas enabled the redistribution of goods. We cannot read the Linear A script, but the libation formulae suggest an island-wide koine. Within this cultural identity, there is considerable variation in how the Minoan elites organized themselves and others on an intra-site and regional basis. This book explores and celebrates this rich, diverse and dynamic culture through analyses of important sites, as well as Minoan administration, writing, economy and ritual. Key themes include the role of Knossos in wider Minoan culture and politics, the variable modes of centralization and power relations detectable across the island, and the role of ritual and cult in defining and articulating elite control.

Image and Architecture: Reflections of Mural Iconography in Seal Images and Other Art Forms of Minoan Crete

Cultural Identity in Minoan Crete: Social Dynamics in the Neopalatial Period

This paper offers a new interpretation of the motifs preserved on the fragmentary Late Minoan (LM) I seal impression from Knossos CMS II8, 321, proposing a reconstruction of the original scene as two couchant overlapping griffins without wings among papyrus plants. If correct, the combination of all these elements is quite exceptional, since this scene would provide a unique reflection in glyptic art of the famous Throne Room decoration of Knossos, with its imposing wingless griffins immersed in a lush landscape of papyrus-reeds. Although a well-known ivory plaque from Mycenae displays a similar composition with a single, ‘classical’, winged griffin, no seal image seems to show also the wingless beast and the overlapping pose of two couchant griffins. The present investigation explores several parallels not only for this rare, yet well-attested, compositional scheme in Aegean art, but also for the figure of the wingless griffin. Both will be found in the Pylian palace decorative programme, which offers further griffins without wings – even in glyptic art – a meaningful parallel, since the interconnections between the Palace of Nestor and the Palace of Minos provide some of the most intriguing material in the study of Aegean imagery.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/DD0A4C9BF82262643DBEF0354643B9A2/S0068245420000088a.pdf/div-class-title-wingless-griffins-among-papyrus-plants-from-neopalatial-knossos-a-reconstruction-proposal-of-the-seal-impression-cms-ii8-321-div.pdf

Image and Architecture: Reflections of Mural Iconography in Seal Images and Other Art Forms of Minoan Crete

Citations

Cultural Identity in Minoan Crete: Social Dynamics in the Neopalatial Period

Wingless griffins among papyrus plants from neopalatial knossos? a reconstruction proposal of the seal impression cms ii8, 321