Abstract Seal Motifs From Phaistos
I know I keep coming back to the Online Corpus of Mycenaean and Minoan Seals, and posting images of these tiny Aegean treasures, but they're so fascinating. The first thing I notice when browsing the archive is that the motifs differ according to location. Mazes are most prevalent at Knossos (though by no means the only motif used in Knossian seals). Depictions of animals such as deer, griffins, and lions dominate at Mycenae. Phaistos seals feature more patterns than depictions of animals or human figures, though I should note that the motifs from Phaistos also feature on seals found in other locations.
Abstract flower motifs.
A motif I like to call Waffle Cone, because they resemble the pattern on ice cream cones. I'm sure there's a technical term.
A lovely variation on the spiral motif. There are several of these that were excavated from Phaistos. They've been found at Knossos and Agia Triadha, also, and on the mainland.
A question I have about Aegean seal stones is how people acquired them. Seals from the Mesopotamian and Anatolian world differ in that they were often inscribed with the owner's name; you don't see that among the Minoans and Mycenaeans. I imagine the very elite must have commissioned the elaborate seals with the goddesses and griffins and scenes of worship; there was no separation of church and state in the Bronze Age, so the seals could have belonged to members of the royal family as easily as they might have belonged to full-time priests or priestesses.
Yet did lower-ranking officials commission seals, or did they go to the agora to choose something from the trays of ready-made seals? It seems like there must have been lapidaries mass-producing these items, otherwise there wouldn't be so many identical waffle-cone patterns and tic-tac-toe motifs in the Minoan world and lions, deer, and bulls in the Mycenaean.
I will be posting in the near future some motifs from seals found at Mycenae.