Knossos Portrait Seals
Among the most fascinating of Minoan seals are the portrait seals from Knossos.
Look at these faces. In particular, the old, bearded man looks as if he might turn his head on that scrawny neck at any moment and say something in Minoan. The hair-bowl haircut, the pointed nose, the thin, puckering lips. Little details from which I could really flesh out a character. A bit absent-minded, a bit slowed-down, but once a major player in Knossian politics, perhaps? The portrait--and I have no doubt it's a portrait of an actual person--suggests so many nuances, so many possibilities.
The curious thing about these portraits, as pointed out by Barbara Olsen in her book Women in Mycenaean Greece, is that they're all of men. For a culture where women are thought to have exercised authority, no portrait seals of women have ever been found. I have no theory to explain this, other than to suggest that perhaps women were not as dominant in Minoan society as we've been led to believe.