The specimens of these two classes were used as stamps, and they are generally found either attached to a finger by a flaxen thread, or threaded to a string of beads, in which case they were worn around the neck as pendants.[100] Occasionally they have been found without any attachment, but simply held by the owner in his or her left hand.
These two classes of seal were in use in Egypt for a limited period only. They appear for the first time in graves belonging to the end of the Sixth Dynasty,[101] and during the period intervening between that time and the beginning of the Middle Kingdom they were the commonest form of seal in use.[102] Before the end of the Eleventh Dynasty they seem to have entirely disappeared.
[Sidenote: The subjects engraved on (1) button-shaped seals.]
The patterns[103] that we find engraved upon button-shaped seals are distinctive, and they are certainly not Upper Egyptian in their origin. Hieroglyphs very rarely occur (_cf._ fig. 41), and when they do, they are clearly imitations of Egyptian characters made apparently by foreigners. The motives for some of the designs are clear; thus a common type is that which has already been noticed as occurring on a class of early cylinder-seal—the linked forequarters of gazelles and other animals symmetrically arranged (_cf._ figs. 39, 40); sometimes also we find a curious running figure of a man (fig. 42, and _cf._ fig. 35), and occasionally a tortoise, a lizard (_cf._ fig. 43), or a spider (_cf._ fig. 44). Conventional and geometrical patterns are also found, the meander[104] and the radiated disc being perhaps the most frequent. See also figs. 45-6.
The patterns occurring on the hemi-cylinder seals are nearly all geometrical, as shown in figs. 47-57, but the human figure is sometimes represented, as in fig. 34.
[Sidenote: Historical importance of button-shaped seals.]
The button-shaped seals are of considerable interest to the student of comparative archaeology, and they are certainly not Upper Egyptian in their origin. The earlier forms have, moreover, no affinity to the Mycenaean series of designs, and, as Mr. Petrie[105] has remarked, the spirals, butterfly, cuttlefish and other characteristic types are absent. On the other hand, they have several links which connect them to the Greek Island and Cretan class of seals, and also to some found in Italy, from which we may perhaps infer that they are of common origin.[106] An almost exact reproduction of some of these steatite buttons in clay actually occurs in the Italian _terramare_, and in the Ligurian cave deposits of neolithic and æneolithic periods. Mr. A. Evans writes, “The clay stamp from the _terramare_ of Montale in the Modenese, represented in fig. 52, the top of which is now broken, was probably once perforated, is not only analogous in form but bears a simple geometrical design almost identical with that on an early steatite button-seal from Knossos.”[107]