Cretan Hieroglyphic at Myrtos-Pyrgos

Two Cretan Hieroglyphic seals and three Hieroglyphic seal impressions have been found at the Minoan settlement of Myrtos-Pyrgos on the south coast of Crete west of Ierapetra. The excavation has also produced a vase inscription that is more likely to be Hieroglyphic than Linear A. The seals are four-sided prisms; the impressions, which include one from a four-sided prism, are on the handles of oval-mouthed amphorae. The vessel with the inscription may be classed simply as a jar. The seals are significant as inscribed objects owned, and potentially to be used, by the higher echelons of the administrative pyramid, especially because one was not only of highly refined manufacture, but was also inscribed with sequences that are often repeated in the Hieroglyphic corpus; while the inscription emphasises the close connection of Cretan Hieroglyphic to Linear A. The seals and impressions add to the considerable evidence for cultural, and probably political, links between Myrtos-Pyrgos and Malia in MM IIB at the end of the Protopalatial.