Annotation on Echoes of a Minoan-Mycenaean scribal legacy in a story told by Herodotus

Annotation on §4a.

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A sealed leather document from Bactria, early 4th century BCE, its sealing visually identical to Minoan flat-based clay sealings; found closed under its sealing (right) and opened for photography: addressed to a superior officer, it announces the dispatch of 40 sheep (after Karnava 2018, Fig. 122, p. 234 & n. 1050; photograph courtesy CMS Archive). Sealed leather/parchment documents did not long survive the Mycenaean conquest of Crete, the last examples appearing in Knossos in the Room of the Chariot Tablets (Late Minoan II).

Karnava 2018 = Artemis Karnava. 2018. Seals, sealings and seal impressions from Akrotiri in Thera. Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel, Beiheft 10. Heidelberg.