552 V. Ε. G. KENNA
THE SEAL USE OF CYPRUS IN THE BRONZE AGE, II
II. The cylinder seals
If the early stamp seal use of Cyprus, in a fitfull dependence upon the seal uses of neighbouring countries, showed variations great enough to provide difficulties in an assessment of its chronology and development, the cylinder seal use, in part contemporary with it, provides its own special difficulties.
Three earlier accounts (1) of the cylinder seals of Cyprus provide a starting point for any new consideration. The air of scholarly hesitation which appears to hang over these accounts may be due in part to a lack of chronological reference: also perhaps to an awareness of a void, which an acquaintance with the earlier stamp seals of Cyprus would have filled. For it seems increasingly clear that the formation of what is now recognized as a Cypriote style on the later cylinders, depends as much upon certain tendencies which stem from the earlier Cypriote stamps, as upon glyptic elements from the Aegean and from Near Eastern cylinders used in the earlier part of the late Cypriote Bronze Age.
A small proportion of the seemingly rude but indigenous cylinders are also related to these three sources, viz., the earlier stamps, the Aegean seal tradition, the adopted Near Eastern cylinders: and since these indi-
(1) See the Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Boston 1885-1903), that in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus, by Sir John Myres (New York 1914), then the more detailed treatment by Professor E. Porada in AJA 1948. The account of the cylinders in the Handbook benefits from Sir John Myres' great knowledge of the Aegean and of the Archaeology of Cyprus ; Miss Porada's assessment, affected in some degree by this earlier treatment, but based upon her close acquaintance with the seals of the ancient Near East, is of great value. To these pioneer works, should be added that of Prof. O. Masson in BCH 1957, pp. 6-37, which, while dealing primarily with the script, is almost indispensable to any study of Cypriote glyptic.
