Fratelli perduti e ritrovati. La collezione egea del Museo Archeologico 'Paolo Orsi' di Siracusa

This paper reconstructs an unpublished collection of archaeological material found on Crete and later moved, on various occasions, to the Archaeological Museum at Syracuse, Sicily. The collection comprises two different pottery assemblages: the first one arrived in 1909, as a gift to Paolo Orsi, director of the local museum, from Luigi Pernier, director of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Crete. Of more interest is the second group, which includes complete vessels and ca. 540 sherds. The sherd material is exceptional since it covers every Minoan pottery phase, starting from the Neolithic period and continuing until LM IIIC, some of the phases being represented by quite a number of sherds. According to the catalogue numbers and to labels in each box, the material comes from the Italian excavations in the Palace of Phaistos. In one case, some vases can be identified as coming from Haghia Triada. The main group of pottery dated to the Late Neolithic and Early Minoan phases has been identified as the collection related to the excavations carried out by Angelo Mosso in 1906 in the Room 28 at Phaistos. A large part of this collection was published by the same Italian scholar, who believed that a group of sherds had disappeared after WW I. These can now be identified among the Minoan material stored in the Archaeological Museum at Syracuse