ΜΝΕΜΕ, Past and Μemory in the Aegean Bronze Age, Aegaeum 43, Leuven-Liège, 579-589, Pl. CCI-CCIII. (original) (raw)

The keeping of archives is one of the most systematic ways of preserving information through the collection of records. The keeping of records is in itself evidence of an intention to take down more than human memory can ever preserve. The Minoan world has produced a number of archival deposits, markers of ‘official’ information processing and preserving efforts, that date from the end of the MMII period and are last attested in the LM IB destruction layers all over Crete. Besides the mnemonic device par excellence, writing, which was put to the service of record-keeping, sealings that were meant to testify and authenticate administrative practices were also collected and kept, even after they had probably served their primal function. This paper focuses on a small number of sealings found among the sealings retrieved at Akrotiri in Thera that date to LM IA, as well as sealings found in Cretan archival deposits that date to LM IB. The common element of the sealings in question is that they were stamped by the same metal ring bearing the motif of a horse race, and it is remarkable that some 80-120 years separates their manufacture. This (now lost) ring remains, to this day, unique in terms of its motif; unlike bull leaping scenes, that were repeatedly pictured in multiple seals and seal rings, the chariot race ring that stamped these sealings was not ‘replicated’ or imitated in any other administrative ring. The peculiarities of this unique ring and what was their potential significance are here discussed.