Sir Arthur Evans was most famous for his excavations at Knossos and for his position as Keeper at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. As a younger man, he travelled to the eastern Adriatic, including Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, reporting for the Manchester Guardian. During these years he actively acquired ancient gems, especially in the former Roman province of Dalmatia, at ancient cities such as Salona, Epidaurum, and Risinium. Years later, some of his collection was exhibited at Oxford in 1938, and later that same year, at the Worcester Art Museum, by which time the collection had past to the dealer Dr. Jacob Hirsch (Evans sold most of his gem collection to finance the publication of his Cretan excavations). Impressions of many of the gems presented here are preserved at Oxford (see pp. 4-8 in Middleton, Engraved Gems from Dalmatia).