Among the most magnificent pieces of precious jewellery in this case are the gold necklaces of 27 beads decorated with relief papyrus flowers. The beads are made of two pieces of gold sheet joined at the edges. Three different decorative patterns were delicately hammered into the back of the gold sheets using the repoussé technique. The papyrus flower, a pictorial theme of Egyptian origin, was a favourite subject with religious symbolism in various forms of Minoan art, such as fresco painting, pottery, metalwork and jewellery. In the Postpalatial period, the papyrus theme found on ornaments like these necklaces, which were burial offerings, may have been shorthand for the distant land of the dead across the sea. The same concept may also be symbolised by the stylised papyri in Nilotic landscapes that decorate clay sarcophagi of the same period.