senryu – Minoan seal = cachet minoen

senryu – Minoan seal = cachet minoen

Minoan Seal  –
Achilles slays Hector,
thrust cut to the neck



cachet minoen –
Achille tue Hector
d’un seul coup au cou

Richard Vallance

This exquisite Minoan seal, dated ca. 1500 BCE, was uncovered in an olive grove near the Mycenaean city of Pylos in 2015. Nothing so exquisite as this seal stone was ever to surface in ancient Greek art until the Classical Period in Athens, ca. 450-400 BCE. The workmanship is simply astonishing!  

Ce cachet minoen exquis, daté d’à peu près 1500 av J.-C., a été découvert dans une oliveraie près de la ville mycenéene de Pylos en 2015. C’est indubitablement le chef-d’oeuvre le plus magnifique à paraître dans le monde de la Grèce antique avant la période classique à Athènes, à peu près 450-400 av J.-C. La qualité du travail est carrément étonnante !

Team discovers a rare Minoan sealstone in the treasure-laden tomb of a Bronze Age Greek warrior (Click here to read):

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Cretan pictograms, Medallion E, Knossos, after Sir Arthur Evans

Cretan pictograms, Medallion E, Knossos, after Sir Arthur Evans:

A few of the Cretan pictograms on Medallion E, Knossos, lend themselves to possible/probable/definite decipherment. These are:

definite: 5. & 8. (adze, labrys)

probable: 3. & 7. (spice container, saffron)

possible: 9. 11. 12. (olive oil lamp, some kind of floral crop, dagger)

Everything else is indecipherable.

Military Ideograms in Linear B for spear, arrow, axe, (long) sword, short sword or dagger, horn, bow & arrow: Click to ENLARGE

Military Ideograms in Linear B for spear, arrow, axe, (long) sword, short sword or dagger, horn, bow & arrow: Click to ENLARGE



With the exception of the last one on the bottom right, these military ideograms speak for themselves. Mrs. Rita Roberts of Crete and I are of the opinion that her decipherment of B259 comes down to “bow and arrow”, in light of a Linear B seal inscribed with an archer wielding a bow and arrow she recently found on the internet and we posted here, which looks uncannily like the syllabogram itself. The very last ideogram (bottom right), with the arrow pointing at it, is as yet undeciphered.  Mrs. Roberts, Spyros Bakas, in the graduate program for Mycenaean Studies at the University of Warsaw, the Association of Historical Studies (Koryvantes), Athens and I myself are all working together to find a solution for a tenable decipherment of this last ideogram. Should any one of you reading this post have any further suggestions for its decipherment, please feel free to leave a comment on this post.

Richard