Fig. 61.—Black incised pottery, with white filling.
Fig. 62.—Buttons of ivory, carnelian, glazed steatite, etc. VIIth Dyn.
The upper row with misapplied Egyptian designs.
The lower row with entirely un-Egyptian designs. 2:3.
VIth to IIIrd Dynasties.
On going back another stage to the Old Kingdom, of the IVth to VIth Dynasties, we still find links between Egypt and the West. In the VIth dynasty is found a class of non-Egyptian buttons ([Fig. 62]) with devices, which in some cases may have been used as seals; more than a hundred of these are now known, and in no case are they of Egyptian fabric, as when an Egyptian subject was copied it was always in a mistaken manner. Now a close parallel to many of the designs is found on Cretan engraved stones, and it is therefore to that civilisation that we must look for the source of a considerable foreign importation, which probably accompanied a movement of population at the overthrow of the civilisation of the Old Kingdom. The actual incomers may have passed by sea from the islands, or by land along Africa.
On turning to Crete we see in the noble lamp with lotus capital found at Knossos, a type which cannot have been derived from anything that we know of the XIIth Dynasty in Egypt. The free buds around the band had long since become lost at that time; and even in the Vth Dynasty on the Abusir capital they are less distinct. A form belonging to the Vth Dynasty is the only one that is at all likely to have been the origin of this fine Cretan capital. Again a vase with two handles from Knossos is certainly an exact copy in local stone, of the regular Egyptian type of the Old Kingdom, which was quite unknown later. And two pieces of the brims of bowls, one of Egyptian diorite, the other of liparite, are of exactly the type made in the close of the IIIrd Dynasty at Medum, and in the early IVth Dynasty at Gizeh; this might perhaps last until the Vth Dynasty, but we could not suppose it to come later, as it would have been quite out of the run of later forms. The copying of motives and forms which passed entirely out of use, is a strong form of evidence; a single object might survive to later times, but for a form to be copied it must be the familiar and usual form at the time when the copy is made. Hence we cannot place the familiarity with these Egyptian types in Crete later than the Vth or perhaps IVth Dynasty.
Still earlier, the Western influence on Egypt is seen by the black incised bowls, of which one piece was found inside a mastaba of the time of Sneferu (end of IIIrd Dynasty), and another piece between two mastabas of about the same age at Dendereh, where it must have been buried in sand at the period of the building. Another piece of such black incised pottery was found in the tomb of King Zer of the Ist Dynasty; see [Fig. 61].
Ist Dynasty, Aegean.