Towards 2000 B.C. a highly developed linear form began to supersede the pictorial signs. It is abundant on the tablets, but the gems thus inscribed are comparatively rare. The linear form in turn died out some six hundred years later.
The signs of the pictorial script incised on the gems are representations of objects, expressed with precision, but giving little scope for the higher side of the gem-engraver’s art. Simultaneously, however, with the use of the script, a high degree of skill was acquired by the engravers in rendering animal and human forms. Scenes occur of ritual observance, hunting, animal life, and strange compounded forms of demons. The excavations did not yield a large number of original gems of this class, but a great number of clay sealings from such signets were discovered. That they were synchronous with the use of the forms of script described above is proved by the fact that in the palace at Cnossus deposits were found, both in the linear and the hieroglyphic script, sealed with these signets, the seal impressions being again endorsed in the script (Brit. School Annual, xi. pp. 56, 62). For a remarkable group of sealings found at Zakro see Journ. of Hell. Studies, xxii. pll. 6-10. The finest naturalistic engravings are placed towards the close of the “Mid-Minoan” and beginning of the “Late-Minoan” periods (about 2200-1800 B.C.). During the progress of the “Late-Minoan” period the subjects tended to assume a more formal and heraldic character. The forms of stones in favour were the disk convex on each side (lenticular or lentoid stones), and during the “Mid-Minoan” period, elaborate signets in the form of modern fob-seals. Apart from the use of intaglios for sealing, the excavations have shown that the Cretan lapidaries were largely employed in the working of gems for purposes of decoration. Fragments of lapis lazuli and crystal for inlaying (the crystals having coloured designs on their lower surfaces) were found in the throne room at Cnossus; the royal gaming-board, also from the palace at Cnossus, had inlaid crystal disks and plaques. The workshop of a lapidary, with unfinished works in marble, steatite, jasper and beryl, was also found within the precincts of the palace (Brit. School Annual, vii. pp. 20, 77). Examples were also found of work in relief, substantially anticipating the art of cameo-cutting.
| Fig. 2.—Lenticular Rock-Crystal from Ialysus. (Brit. Mus.) |
| Fig. 3.—Lenticular Sard from Ialysus. (Brit. Mus.) |
The area over which the Cretan influence extended was wide. Its manifestations in Greek lands proper, first revealed by Schliemann’s excavation of the royal tombs of Mycenae, ran parallel with and outlasted the later periods of the Cretan culture to which it stood in close relation (see [Aegean Civilization]). Its gems and intaglio works in gold are known to us from the finds at Mycenae, and at analogous sites, such as Menidi, Vaphio and Ialysus. They have much in common with the finer class of Cretan stones already described. The engraved gems fall principally into two groups in respect of form, namely, the lenticular (or lentoid) stones already mentioned, and (more rarely) glandular stones, so called from their resemblance to a glans or sling bolt. A Cretan fresco shows a figure wearing an agate lenticular stone suspended from the left wrist. The finer specimens of the Aegean gems are engraved with the wheel and the point in hard stones, such as chalcedony, amethyst, sard, rock-crystal and haematite. A lapidary’s workshop similar to that at Cnossus has been found at Mycenae, with a store of unused gems, and an unfinished lenticular stone (Ephemeris Archaiologikè, 1897, p. 121). The characteristic of the Aegean engraver is the free expression of living forms. His subjects are figures of animals, men and demons in combat, and heraldic compositions recalling the Gate of Lions at Mycenae. It was almost inevitable that the scarab should be found in the Cretan and Aegean deposits, but in such cases we have the Egyptian scarab directly imported, and not, as at a later period, non-Egyptian adaptations of the form. The cylinder also (except in Cyprus, the borderland between east and west) only occurs as an importation, and not as a currently manufactured shape.
The “Island Gems.”—The Aegean culture was swept away probably by that dimly seen upheaval which separated Mycenaean from historical Greece, and which is commonly known as the Dorian invasion. One of the few facts which indicate a certain continuity of tradition in later Greece is this, that we again find the same characteristic forms, the glandular and lenticular stones, in the cemeteries, of Melos and elsewhere. It is only recently that archaeologists have learnt to distinguish between the later lenticular and glandular stones “of the Greek Islands,” as they are commonly called, and those of the Aegean age. Engravings of the later class are worked in soft materials only, such as steatite. They have not the power of expressing action peculiar to the Aegean artist. In general, the continuity of tradition between the gems of the Mycenaean and the historical periods is in respect of shape rather than of art. The subjects are for the most part decorative forms (the Gryphon, the winged Sphinx, the winged horse, &c.) in course of development into characters of Greek myth.
The Phoenicians and the Greeks.—About the end of the 8th and beginning of the 7th century B.C. the Phoenicians began to exercise a powerful influence as intermediaries between Egypt and Assyria and the Mediterranean. Porcelain and other imitations of Egyptian ornaments, and especially of Egyptian scarabs, are found in great numbers on such sites as Amathus in Cyprus, Camirus in Rhodes, in Etruria, and at Tharros in Sardinia. The Egyptian hieroglyphics are imitated with mistakes, the figures introduced are stiff and formal, the animals as a rule heraldic. The scarab form, which in Egypt had had its sacred significance, was now become nothing more than a convenient shape for an object of jewelry or for the reverse side of a stone. It was adopted from the Phoenicians both by Greeks and Etruscans. By the Greeks, with whom we are at present concerned, its use was occasional, and about 500 B.C. it was superseded by the scarabaeoid. Under this name two forms, somewhat similar but independent in origin, are usually grouped without sufficient discrimination. The scarabaeoid proper is a simplification of the scarab, effected by the omission of all details of the beetle. But many of the stones known as scarabaeoids, with a flat and oval base and a convex back, are in respect of their form probably of North Syrian origin (so Furtwängler). The earliest examples of archaic Greek gem-engraving (other than the later “Island gems” already described) are works of Ionian art. They show a desire, only limited by imperfect power of expression, to represent the human figure, though the particular theme may be a god or other mythical personages. By the beginning of the 5th century the engravers had reached the point of full development, and the scarabaeoids of the time embody its results. As an example of fine scarabaeoids the Woodhouse intaglio of a seated citharist (fig. 5; Cat. of Gems in Brit. Mus. No. 555) may be quoted as perhaps the very finest example of Greek gem-engraving that has come down to us. It would stand early in the 5th century B.C., a date which would also suit the head of Eos from Ithome in Messenia (fig. 6). The number, however, of fine scarabaeoids known to us has been considerably increased in recent years. They are marked by a broad and simple treatment, which attains a large effect without excessive minuteness or laboured detail. In these respects the style has something in common with the reliefs of the 5th century.
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| Fig. 4.—Victory. Early Greek Scarab. (Brit. Mus.) | Fig. 5.—Citharist. Early Greek Scarabaeoid. (Brit. Mus.) | Fig. 6.—Head of Eos. (Brit. Mus.) |
Literary History.—The literary references to the early gem-engravers are no longer of the same importance as before in view of the fuller knowledge we possess as to the quality of early gem-engraving, but it is necessary that they should be taken into account.
The records of gem-engravers in Greece begin in the island of Samos, where Mnesarchus, the father of the philosopher Pythagoras, earned by his art more of praise than of wealth. “Not to carry the image of a god on your seal,” was a saying of Pythagoras; and, whatever his reason for it may have been, it is interesting to observe him founding a maxim on his father’s profession of gem-engraving (Diogenes Laërt. viii. 1, 17). From Samos also came Theodorus, who made for Polycrates the seal of emerald (Herodotus iii. 41), which, according to the curious story, was cast in vain into the deep sea on purpose to be lost. That the design on it was a lyre, as is stated in one authority, is unlikely, at least if we accept Benndorf’s ingenious interpretation of Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 83). He has suggested that the portrait statue of Theodorus made by himself was in all probability a figure holding in one hand a graving tool, and in the other, not, as previously supposed, a quadriga so diminutive that a fly could cover it with its wings, but a scarab with the engraving of a quadriga on its face (Zeitschrift für die österreich. Gymnasien, 1873, pp. 401-411), whence it is not unreasonable to conclude that this scarab in fact represented the famous seal of Polycrates. Shortly after 600 B.C. there was a law of Solon’s forbidding engravers to retain impressions of the seals they made, and this date would fall in roundly with that of Theodorus and Mnesarchus, as if there had in fact been at that time a special activity and unusual skill. That the use of seals had been general long before, in Cretan and Mycenaean times, we have seen above, and it is singular to find, as Pliny points out (xxxiii. 4), no direct mention of seals in Homer, not even in the passage (Iliad, vi. 168) where Bellerophon himself carries the tablets on which were written the orders against his life. From the time of Theodorus to that of Pyrgoteles in the 4th century B.C. is a long blank as to names, but not altogether as to gems, the production of which may be judged to have been carried on assiduously from the constant necessity of seals for every variety of purpose. The references to them in Aristophanes, for example, and the lists of them in the ancient inventories of treasures in the Parthenon and the Asclepieion at Athens confirm this frequent usage during the period in question. The mention of a public seal for authenticating state documents also becomes frequent in the inscriptions. In the reign of Alexander the Great we meet the name of Pyrgoteles, of whom Pliny records that he was no doubt the most famous engraver of his time, and that Alexander decreed that Pyrgoteles alone should engrave his portrait. Nothing else is known of Pyrgoteles. A portrait of Alexander in the British Museum (No. 2307), purporting to be signed by him, is palpably modern.
From literary sources we also learn the names of the engravers Apollonides, Chronius and Dioscorides, but the date of the last-mentioned only is certain. He is said to have made an excellent portrait of Augustus, which was used as a seal by that emperor in the latter part of his reign and also by his successors. Inscriptions on extant gems make it probable that Dioscorides was a native of Aegeae in Cilicia, and that three sons, Hyllos, Herophilus and Eutyches, followed their father’s occupation. We have also a few scattered notices of amateurs and collectors of gems, but it will be seen that for the whole period of classical antiquity the literary notices give little aid, and we must return to the gems.