Like a Lion, as a Man: Seals and Poetry in Minoan Crete

Summary

This paper investigates how parallels were drawn between lions and human in Bronze Age Crete, and how this parallelism potentially developed concurrently through material culture worn on the human body and oral narrative. I argue that the unique qualities of seal stones, namely their close association with human identity and their physical location on the human body, positioned them to be potent venues for asserting parallels between man and beast. I begin in the late Early Bronze Age, with a small group of seals engraved with a novel composition type that set humans in a direct visual and conceptual parallel with lions. I then trace the re-invention of this parallel in the glyptic of the subsequent palatial periods. Here the seal’s position as a worn object was capitalized on, with the body of the beast engraved on the seal being juxtaposed with the body of the human wearer. I investigate how this parallelism was established and emphasized through the objects and compare it to the distinctive narrative device of the animal simile in Homeric epic, which was likely taking root in oral traditions at the same time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22674