THE MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELE-

MENT IN HELLENIC LIFE

ARTHUR J. EVANS

FROM THE SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1913, PAGES 617-637

(WITH PLATES 1-3)

(Publication 2305)

WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFIOE
1»U
 THE MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT IN
HELLENIC LIFE.^

By Arthur J. E5vans.

^ [With 3 plates.]

In his concluding address to this society our late president re-

marked that he cared more for the products of the full maturity of
the Greek spirit than for its immature struggles, and this preference
for fruits over roots is likely to be shared by most classical scholars.
The prehistoric civilization of the land which afterwards became
Hellas might indeed seem far removed from the central interests of
Greek culture, and it was only with considerable hesitation that I
accepted, even for a while, the position in which the society has placed
me. Yet I imagine that my presence in this chair is due to a feeling
on its part that what may be called the embryological department has
its place among our studies.
Therefore I intend to take advantage of my position here to-day
to say something in favor of roots, and even of germs. These are
the days of origins, and what is true of the higher forms of animal
life and functional activities is equally true of many of the vital
principles that inspired the mature civilization of Greece they can —
not be adequately studied without constant reference to their anterior
stages of evolution. Such knowledge can alone supply the key to the
root significance of many later phenomena, especially in the domain
of art and religion. It alone can indicate the right direction along
many paths Amidst the labyrinth of conjecture
of classical research.
we have here an Ariadne to supply the clue. And who, indeed, was
Ariadne herself but the great goddess of Minoan Crete in her Greek
adoptive foim qualified as the most holy?
“ The chasm,” remarks Prof. Gardner, “ dividing prehistoric from
historic Greece is growing wider and deeper.” ^ In some respects
—
perhaps but looking at the relations of the two as a whole I venture
to believe that the scientific study of Greek civilization is becoming

^From the address of the president delivered to the Hellenic Society, June, 1912.
Ueprlnted by permission from The Journal of Hellenic Studies, London, vol. .S2, pt. 2,
1912, pp. 277-297.
*.T. H. S., xxxl (1911), p. lix.

617
G18 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, lyUi.

less and without taking into constant account that of the

less possible
Minoan and Mycenaean world that went before it.
The truth is that the old view of Greek civilization as a kind of
“enfant de miracle” can no longer be maintained. Whether they
like or not, classical students must consider origins.
it One after an-
other the “ inventions ” attributed by its writers to the later Hellas
are seen to have been anticipated on Greek soil at least a thousand
years earlier. Take a few almost at random The Aeginetan claim
:

to haA^e invented sailing vessels, when such already plowed the

Aegean and the Libyan seas at the dawn of the Minoan age; the
attribution of the great improvement in music, marked by the seven-
stringed lyre, to Terpander of Lesbos in the middle of the seventh
—
century B. C. an instrument played by the long-robed Cretan priests
of Hagia Triada some 10 centuries before, and, indeed, of far earlier
Minoan use. At least the antecedent stage of coinage was reached
long before the time of Pheidon, and the weight standards of Greece
were known ages before they received their later names.
Let us admit that there may have been reinventions of lost arts.
Let us not blink the fact that over a large part of Greece darkness for
a time prevailed. Let it be assumed that the Greeks themseh^es were
an intrusive people and that they finally imposed their language on
an old Mediterranean race. But if, as I believe, that vieAV is to be
maintained it must yet be acknowledged that from the ethnic point
of view the older elements largely absorbed the later. The people
whom new dawn are not the pale-skinned north-
Ave discern in the
erners the —
“ yellow-haired Achaeans ” and the rest ^but essentially—
the dark -haired, brown-complexioned race, the ^ocvcKsg or “ Red
men ” of later tradition, of whom we find the earlier portraiture in
the Minoan and Mycenaean wall paintings. The high artistic ca-
pacities that distinguish this race are in absolute contrast to the pro-
nounced lack of such a quality among the neolithic inhabitants of
those more central and northern European regions. Avhence ex hy-
pothesi the invaders came. But can it be doubted that the artistic
genius of the later Hellenes was largely the continuous outcome of
that inherent in the earlier race in Avhich they had been merged?
Of that earlier “Greece before the Greeks” it may be said, as of the
later Greece, capta ferum victorem cepit.
It is true that the problem Avould be much simplified if aa'c could
accept the conclusion that the representatives of the earlier Minoan
civilization in Crete and of its M^ycenaean outgrowth on the mainhmd
Avere themselves of Hellenic stock. In face of the noAv ascertained
evidence that representatiA^es of the Aryan-speaking race had already
reached the Euphrates by the fourteenth centuiy B. C. there is no
a priori objection to the vieAV that other members of the same lin-
guistic group had reached the Aegean coasts and islands at an even
 —
MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT —EVANS. 619

earlier date. If such a primitive occupation

not proved, it cer- is

tainly will not be owing to want of ingenuity on the part of inter-

preters of the Minoan or connected scripts. The earliest of the Cre-
tan hieroglyphs were hailed as Greek on the banks of the Mulde.
Investigators of the Phaestos disk on both sides of the Atlantic have
found an Hellenic key, though the key proves not to be the same, and
as regards the linguisticforms unlocked it must be said that many of
them represent neither historic Greek, nor any antecedent stage of it
reconcilable with existing views as to the comparative grammar of
the Indo-European languages.^
The Phaestos disk, indeed, if my own conclusions be correct,
belongs rather to the eastern Aegean coast lands than to prehistoric
Crete. As to the Minoan script proper in its most advanced types
the successive linear types and B my A — own chief endeavor at the
present moment is to set out the whole of the really vast material in
a clear and collective form. Even then it may well seem presump-
tuous to expect that anything more than the threshold of systematic
investigation will have been reached. Yet, if rumor speaks truly,
the stray specimens of the script that have as yet seen the light have
been amply sutRcient to provide ingenious minds with a Greek it is —
—
even whispered, an Attic interpretation. For that it is not even
necessar}'- towait for a complete sigmary of either of the scripts!
For myself I can not say that I am confident of any such solution.
To me at least the view that the Eteocretan population, who preserved
their own language down to the third century before our era, spoke
Greek in a remote prehistoric age is repugnant to the plainest dictates
of common sense. MTiat certain traces we have of the early race
and language lead us in a quite different direction. It is not easy to
recognize in this dark Mediterranean people, whose physical charac-
teristics can be now carried back at least to the beginning of the
second millennium before our era, a youthful member of the Aryan-
speaking family. It is impossible to ignore the evidence supplied
by a long series of local names which link on the original speech of
Crete and of a large part of mainland Greece to that of the primitive
Anatolian stock, of whom the Carians stand forth as, perhaps, the
IDurest representatives. The name of Knossos itself, for instance, is
distinctively Anatolian the earlier name of Lyttos Karnessopolis
;
—
contains the same element as Halikarnassos. But it is useless to
multiply examples, since the comparison has been well worked out
by Fick and Kretschmer and other comparative philologists.
^ I especially refer to some Hempl. Prof. A.
of the strange linguistic freaks of Dr.
Cuny has faithfully dealt withsome of these in the Revue des Etudes Anciennes, T. XIV
(1912), pp. 95, 96. The more plausible attempt of Miss Stawell leaves me entirely
unconvinced.
620 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913 .

When WG come to the religions elements the sairie Asiajiic relation-

ship is The great goddess of Minoan Crete had

equally well marked.
sisters east of the Aegean even more long-lived than herself. The
Korybantes and their divine child range in the same direction, and
the fetish cult of the double axe is inseparable from that of the
Carian labrys which survived in the worship of the Zeus of
Labraunda.
Some of the most characteristic religious scenes on Minoan signets
are most intelligible in the light supplied by cults that survived to
historic times in the lands east of the Aegean. Throughout those re-
gions we are confronted by a perpetually recurrent figure of a goddess
—
and her youthful satellite son or paramour, martial or effeminate
by turns, but always mortal, and mourned in various forms. Attis,
Adonis, or Thammuz, we may add the Ilian Anchises,^ all had tombs
within her temple walls. Not least, the Cretan Zeus himself knew
death, and the fabled site of his monument on Mount Juktas proves
to coincide with a votive shrine over which the goddess rather than
the god originally presided. So too, on the Minoan and Mycenaean
signets we see the warrior youth before the seated goddess, and in
one case actually seem to have a glimpse of the “ tomb ” within its
temenos. Beside it is hung up the little body shield, a mourning
votary is bowed toward it, the sacred tree and pillar shrine of the
goddess are hard by.^ In another parallel scene the female mourner
lies prone above the shield itself, the divine connection of which is

shown by the sacred emblems seen above, which combine the double
axe and life symbol.^
Doubtless some of these elements, notably in Crete, were absorbed
by later Greek cult, but their characteristic form has nothing to do
with the traditions of primitive Aryan religion. They are essentially
non-Hellenic.
An
endeavor has been made, and has been recently repeated, to
get over the difficulty thus presented by supposing that the culture
exemplified by the Minoan palaces of Crete belongs to two stages,
to which the names of “ Carian ” and “Achaean ” have been oriven.
Rough and ready lines of division between “ older and “ later ’
palaces have been laid down to suit this ethnographic system. It may
be confidently stated that a fuller acquaintance with the archeological
evidence is absolutely fatal to theories such as these.
The more the stratigi*aphical materials are studied, and it is these
that form our main scientific basis, the more manifest it appears that
1 “ Tombs ” of Anchlses —
the baetyllc pillar may also be regarded as sepulchral were —
erected in many places, from the Phrygian Ida to the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Eryx.
= 8ee my “Mycenaean Tree and Pillar-Cult” (J. H. S., 1901),
pp. 81, 83, and p. 79,
ng. 63.
3 Op. clt., p. 78, llg. .62.
 MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT —EVANS. 621

while on the one hand the history of the great Minoan structures is

more complicated than was at first realized, on the other hand the
unity of that history, from their first foundation to their final over-
throw, asserts itself with ever-increasing emphasis. The periods of
destruction and renovation in the different palaces do not wholly
correspond. Both at Knossos and at Phaestos, where the original
buildings go back well nigh to the beginning of the middle Minoan
age, there was a considerable overthrow at the close of the second
middle Minoan period. Another catastrophe followed at Knossos at
the end of the third middle Minoan period. At Phaestos, on the
other hand, the second, and in that case the final, destruction took
place in the first late Minoan period. The little palace of Hagia
Triada, the beginnings of which perhaps synchronize with those of
the second palace of Phaestos, was overthrown at the same time, but
the Minoan sovereigns who dwelt in the later palace of Knossos seem
to have thriven at the expense of their neighbors. Early in the
second late Minoan period, when the rival seats were in ruins, the
Knossian Palace was embellished by the addition of a new fagade, on
the central court of which the room of the throne is a marvelous sur-
viving record. At the close of this second late Minoan age the palace
of Knossos was finally destroyed. But the tombs of Zafer Papoura
show that even this blow did not seriously break the continuity of
local culture, and the evidence of a purely Minoan revival in the
third late Minoan age is still stronger in the new settlement of Hagia
Triada, which may claim the famous sarcophagus as its chief glory.
There is no room for foreign settlement as yet in Crete,^ though the
reaction of mainland Mycenaean influences made itself perceptible
in the island ^ toward the close of the third late Minoan period.
Plere then we have a story of ups and downs of insular life and of
internecine struggles like those that ruined the later cities of Crete,
but with no general line of cleavage such as might have resulted from
a foreign invasion. The epochs of destruction and renovation by no

1 There is no foundation for the view that the later oblong structure at Hagia Triada is

a megaron of mainland type. The mistake, as was pointed out by Noack (Ovalhaus und
Palast in Kreta, p. 27, n. 24) and, as I had independently ascertained, was due to the
omission of one of the three cross walls on the Italian plan. By the close of the Minoan
age in Crete (L. M. Ill, 6) the mainland type of house seems to have been making its way
in Crete. An example has been pointed out by Dr. Oelmann (Ein Achiiisches Herrenhaus
auf Kreta, Jahrb. d. Arch. Inst, xxvii (1912), p. 38, seqq.) in a house of the reoccupation
period at Gournik, though there is no sufflcitot warrant for calling it “Achaean.” It is
also worth observing that one of the small rooms into which the large “ megaron ” of the
“ Little Palace ” at Knossos was broken up In the reoccupation period has a stone-built
oven or fireplace set up in one corner. This seems to represent a mainland innovation.
2 This concluding and very distinctive phase may be described as late Minoan III, b (see

preceding note) and answers at Knossos to the period of reoccupation, L. M. Ill, a, being
represented there by the cemetery of Zafer Papoura, which fills a hiatus on the palace
site. Judging from figures on very late lentold bead seals in soft material (steatite), the
long tunic of mainland fashions was coming in at the very close of the Minoan age
In Crete.
 —
622 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913.

means synchronize in different Minoan centers, but when we come to

regard the remains themselves as stratified by the various catas-
trophes it becomes evident that they are the results of a gradual
evolution. There is no break. Alike in the architectural remains
and in the internal decorations, in every branch of art the develop-
ment is continuous; and though the division into distinct periods
stratigraphically delimited is useful for purposes of classification,
the style of one phase of Minoan culture shades off into that of
another by imperceptible gradations. The same is true of the
remains of the early Minoan periods that lie behind the age of
palaces, and the unity of the whole civilization is such as almost to
impose the conclusion that there was a continuity of race. If the
inhabitants of the latest palace structures are to be regarded as
“Achaeans,” the Greek occupation of Crete must, on this showing, be
carried back to Neolithic times. A
consequence of this conclusion
—
improbable in itself would be that these hypothetical Greeks ap-
proached their mainland seats from the south instead of the north.
Who would defend such a view? Much new light has recently
been thrown on the history of the mainland branch of the Minoan
culture at Mycenae by the supplementary researches made under the
auspices of the German Institute at Athens, at Tiryns, and Mycenae.
It is now clear that the beginnings of this mainland plantation
hardly go back beyond the beginning of the first late Minoan period
in other words, long ages of civilized life in Minoan Crete had pre-
ceded the first appearances of this high early culture on the northern
shores of the Aegean. From the first there seems to have been a
tendency among the newcomers to adapt themselves to the somewhat
rougher climatic conditions, and, no doubt in this connection, to
adopt to a certain extent customs already prevalent among the in-
digenous population. Thus we see the halls erected with a narrower
front and a fixed hearth, and there is a tendency to wear long-sleeved
tunics reaching almost to the knees. An invaluable record of the
characteristic fashions of this Mycenaean branch has been supplied
by the fresco fragments discovered at Tiryns from which, after long
and patient study, Dr. Kodenwaldt has succeeded in reconstructing
a series of designs.^
These frescoes are not only valuable as illustrations of Mycenaean
dress but they exhibit certain forms of sport of which as yet we
have no record in Minoan Crete, but which seem to have had a vogue
on the mainland side. The remains of an elaborate composition rep-
resenting a boar hunt is the most remarkable of these, and though
belonging to the later palace and to a date parallel with the third
late Minoan j^eriod shows extraordinary vigor and variety. Cer-

1 In course of publication.
 —
MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT —EVANS. 623

tainly one of the most interesting features in this composition

—
thoroughly Minoan in spirit is the fact that ladies take part in the
hunt. They are seen driving to the meet in their chariots, and fol-
lowing the quarry with their dogs. Atalanta has her Mycenaean
predecessors, and the Kalydonian boar hunt itself may well repre-
sent the same tradition as these Tirynthian wall paintings.
But the point to which I desire to call your special attention is
this: In spite of slight local divergences in the domestic arrange-
ments or costume, the “ Mycenaean ” is only a provincial variant of
the same “ Minoan ” civilization. The house planning may be
slightly different, but the architectural elements down to the smallest
details are practically the same, though certain motives of decora-
tion may
be preferred in one or the other area. The physical types
shown in the wall paintings are indistinguishable. The religion is
the same. We see the same nature goddess with her doves and pillar
shrines; the same baetylic worship of the double axes; the same
sacral horns; features which, as we now know, in Crete may be
traced to the early Minoan age. The mainland script, of which the
painted sherds of Tiryns have now provided a series of new exam-
ples, ismerely an offshoot of the earlier type of the linear script of
Crete and seems to indicate a dialect of the same language.
In the palace histoiy of Tiryns and Mycenae we have evidence of
the same kind of destruction and restoration that we see in the case
of those of Minoan Crete. But here, too, there is no break whatever
in the continuity of tradition, no trace of the intrusion of any alien
element. It is a slow, continuous process of decay, and while at
Tiiyns the frescoes of the original building were replaced in the sec-
ond palace by others in a slightly inferior style, those of the Palace
of Mycenae, to a certain extent at least, as Dr. Bodenwaldt has
pointed out, survived its later remodeling, and were preserved on
its walls to the moment of its destruction.
The evidence whole must be regarded as conclusive for the
as a
fact that the original Minoan element, the monuments of which ex-
tend from the Argolid to Thebes, Orchomenos, and Volo, held its own
in mainland Greece till the close of the period answering to the third
late Minoan in Crete. At this period no doubt the center of gravity
of the whole civilization had shifted to the mainland side, and was
—
now reacting on Crete and the islands where^ as in Melos, the dis-
tinctive “ Mycenaean ” megaron makes its appearance. But the re-
turn wave of influence can not, in the light of our present knowledge,
be taken to mark the course of invading hordes of Greeks.
Observe, too, that in the late Minoan expansion which takes place
about this time on the coasts of Canaan the dominant element still
seems to have belonged to the old Aegean stock. The settlement of
Gaza is “Minoan.” Its later cult was still that of the indigenous
624 ANNUAL KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913.

Cretan god. In Cyprus, again, the first Aegean colonists brought

with them a form of the Minoan linear script, and a civilization
which sufficiently proclaims their identity with the older stock.
We must clearly recognize that down to at least the twelfth century
before our era the dominant factor both in mainland Greece and in
the Aegean world was still non-Hellenic, and must still unquestion-
ably be identified with one or other branch of the old Minoan race.
But this is far from saying that even at the time of the first appear-
ance of the Minoan conquerors in the Peloponnese, or, approximately
speaking, the sixteenth century B. C., they may not have found
settlers of Hellenic stock already in the land. That there were hostile
elements always at hand is clearly shown by the great pains taken by
the newcomers at Tiryns, Mycenae, and elsewhere to fortify their
citadels, a precaution which stands out in abrupt contrast to the open
cities and palaces of Crete. In the succeeding period, that of the later
Palace of Tiryns, we find on the frescoes representing the boar-hunt-
—
ing scene dating perhaps from the thirteenth century B. C. ^the —
first definite evidence of the existence of men of another and presum-
ably subject race existing side by side with the Mycenaean. An at-
tendant in a menial position, apparently helping to carry a dead
boar, is there depicted with a yellow skin in place of the conventional
red, which otherwise indicates the male sex. Is it possible that the
paler color was here chosen to indicate a man of northern race ?
That there was in fact in the Peloponnese a subject race of Hellenic
stock during the whole or a large part of the period of Mycenaean
domination is made highly probable by certain phenomena con-
nected with the most primitive of the Greek tribes, namely the
Arcadians, whose religion and mythology show peculiar affinities
with those of Minoan Crete. Shortly after the break up of the
Mycenaean society, during the period of invasion and confusion that
seems to have set in about the eleventh century B. C., men of Arca-
dian speech (who must then have been in possession of the Laconian
coast lands) appear in Cyprus in the wake of their former masters,
and this Cypriote offshoot affords the best evidence of the extent to
which this primitive Greek population had been penetrated with
Minoan influences. The very remote date of this settlement is estab-
lished by the important negative fact that the colonists had left their
mainland homes before the use of the Phoenician alphabet was
known in Greece. Considering the very early forms of that alphabet
at the time when it was first taken over by the Greeks, this negative
phenomenon may be taken to show that the Arcadian colonization of
Cyprus took place before 900 B. C. The positive evidence seems
to indicate a still higher date. Thus the fibulae and vases of the early
tombs of the Kuklia Cemetery at Paphos show a distinct parallelism
 MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT EVANS. 625

with the sub-Mycenaean types from those of the Greek Salamis, and
point to an impact on Cyprus from the mainland side about the
eleventh century before our era, which may well have been due to
the advent of the Pre-Dorian colonists from the Laconian shores.
These, as we know from inscriptions, brought with them local cults,
such as that of Amyklae but what is especially interesting to observe
;

is the whole-hearted way in which they are seen to have taken over

the leading features of the Minoan cult. Fanassa, the Queen, the
Lady of the Dove, as we see her at Paphos, Idalion or Golgoi, is the
great Minoan goddess. The Paphian temple to the end of the chap-
ter is the Minoan pillar shrine. Were all these Minoan features taken
over in Cyprus itself ? May we not rather infer that, as the colonists
arrived, with at least a sub-Mycenaean element in culture, so too they
had already taken over many of the religious ideas of the older race
in their mainland home? In the epithet “Ariadne” itself, applied
to the goddess both in Crete and Cyprus, we may perhaps see an
inheritance from a pre-colonial stage.
In Crete, where Hellenic colonization had also effected itself in pre-
Homeric times, the survival of Minoan religion was exceptionally
great. The nature goddess there lived on under the indigenous
names of Diktynna and Britomartis. A remarkable example of the
continuity of cult forms has been brought to light by the Italian
excavation of a seventh century temple at Prinia, containing clay
images of the goddess with snakes coiled round her arms, showing a
direct derivation from similar images in the late Minoan shrine of
Gournia and the fine faience figures of considerably earlier date
found in the temple repositories at Knossos. At Hagia Triada the
earlier sanctuary was surmounted by one of Hellenic date, in which,
however, the male divinity had now attained prominence as the
youthful Zeus Velchanos. As Zeus Kretagenes, he was the object
of what was regarded in other parts of the Greek world as a hetero-
dox cult. But in spite of the jeers of Kallimachos at the “ Cretan
liars ” who spoke of Zeus as mortal, the worship persisted to late
classical times and points of affinity with the Christian point of view
were too obvious to be lost. It is at least a highly suggestive fact
that on the ridge of Juktas, where the tomb of Zeus was pointed out
to Byzantine times and on a height above his birth cave little shrines
—
have been raised in honor of Audevrijc Xpcoxbc Christ, the Lord.
In view of the legendary connection of Crete and Delphi, illus-
trated by the myth of the Delphian Apollo, the discovery there by the
French excavators of part of a Minoan ritual vessel has a quite spe-
cial significance. This object, to which M. Perdrizet first called at-
tention, forms part of a marble rhyton in the form of a lioness’s head
of the same type, fabric, and material as those found with other
44863°— SM 1913 40
626 ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913 .

sacred vessels in a chamber adjoining the central shrine of Knossos.

It clearly proves that at Delphi, too, the religion of the spot goes
back to Minoan times and stands in close connection with a Cretan
settlement.
How profoundly the traditions of Minoan and Mycenaean religion
influenced the early cult of Greece has been nowhere illustrated more
clearly than by the excavations of the British school at Sparta. A
whole series of the types of ivory figurines there found are simply
derivatives of the scheme of the Minoan goddess with her associated
birds and animals. It was the same in Ionia. The Ephesian Arte-
mis has the same associations as the lion goddess of Knossos, and
among the jewels found by Mr, Hogarth in the Temple Treasure
occur miniature representations of her double axe.
1 will venture to point out another feature which the advanced
religious art of Greece inherited from Minoan prototypes, such as
those which influenced the Spartan ivories. The lions’ gate scheme,
appropriate to its position in a tympanum, is only one of a series
of Late Minoan schemes of the same kind in which the central fig-
—
ure either the divinity itself or (as in the above case) a sacred col-
lunn, which as the pillar of the house, stands as the epitome of the
—
temple is set between two heraldically opposed animals.
Seal impressions from the palace shrine of Knossos show the
Minoan goddess in this guise standing on her peak between her lion
supporters. The same idea is carried out in a variety of ways on
Minoan gems and signets.
The Mycenaean element in Doric architecture itself is generally
recognized, but I do not think that has been realized that even the
it

primitive arrangement of the pediment sculptures goes back to a pre-

historic model. That the gabled or pedimental front was itself
known in Minoan times may be gathered from the designs of build-
ings on some intaglios of that date acquired by me in Crete (fig. 1
ft, 1))} When we realize that the pediment is in fact the functional
equivalent of the-tympanimi on a larger scale, it is natural that an ar-
rangement of sculpture appropriate to the one should have been
adapted to the other.
In recently examining the remains of the pedimental sculptures
from the early temple excavated by Dr. Dorpfeld at Palaeopolis in
Corfu, which have now been arranged by him in the local museum
(fig. 2),^ the observation was forced upon me that the essential fea-
tures of the whole scheme were simply those of the Mycenaean tym-
panum. The central divinity is here represented by the Gorgon, but
on either side are the animal guardians, in this case apparently pards,
^The gem la is from Central Crete (steatite).
fig. 16 is from Sitela (cornelian).
2 taken from a diagrammatic sketch kindly supplied me by Mr. J. D. Bourchler,
Fig. 2 is
which accompanied his account of these discoveries in the Times.
 MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT EVANS. 627

heraldically posed. Everything else is secondary, and the scale of

the other figures is so small that at a moderate distance, all includ-
ing Zeus himself, disappear from view. The essentials of the
architectural design were fulfilled by the traditional Minoan group.
The rest was a work of supererogation.
The fragment of a sculptured lion found in front of the early sixth
century temple at Sparta was clearly part of a pedimental scheme
of the same traditional class.
The extent to which the Minoans and Mycenaeans, while still in a
dominant position, impressed their ideas and arts on the primitive
Greek population itself argues a long juxtaposition of the two ele-
ments. The intensive absorption of Minoan religious practices by
the proto- Arcadians previous to their colonization of Cyprus, which
itself can hardly be later than the eleventh century B. C., is a crucial
instance of this, and the contact of the two elements thus involved
itself implies a certain linguistic communion. When, reinforced by
fresh swarms of immigrants from the northwest, the Greeks began
to get the upper hand, the position was reversed, but the long previ-
ous interrelation of the two races must have facilitated the work of
fusion. In the end, though the language was Greek, the physical
characteristics of the later Hellenes prove that the old Mediter-
ranean element showed the greater vitality. But there is one aspect
of the fusion which has a special bearing on the present subject an —
aspect very familiar to those who, like myself, have had experience
of lands where nationalities overlap. A large part of its early popu-
lation must have passed through a bilingual stage. In the eastern
parts of Crete indeed this condition long survived. As late as the
fourth century before our era the inhabitants still clung to their
Eteocretan language, but we know from Herodotos that already
in his day they were able to converse in Greek and to hand on their
traditions in a translated form. It can not be doubted that at the
dawn of history the same was true of the Peloponnese and other
parts of Greece. This consideration does not seem to have been
sufficiently realized by classical students, but it may involve results
of a most far-reaching kind.
The age when the Homeric poems took their characteristic shape is
the transitional epoch when the use of bronze was giving place to that
of iron. As Mr. Andrew Lang well pointed out, they belong to a
particular phase of this transition when bronze was still in use for
weapons and armor, but iron was already employed for tools and im-
plements. In other words the age of Homer is more recent than
the latest stage of anything that can be called Minoan or Mycenaean.
It is atmost “ sub-Mycenaean.” It lies on the borders of the geo-
metrical period, and though the archeological stratum with which
it is associated contains elements that may be called “ sub-Myce-
628 ANNUAL RBPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913.

naean,” it is, artistically speaking, a period of barbarism and degra-

—
dation a period when the great cities of whose rulers the poet sang
had for some two centuries been heaps of ruins. The old art had
passed away. The new was yet unborn.
“ Homer ” lies too high up in time for it to be admissible to seek
for illustration among the works of renascent art in Greece, or the
more or less contemporary importations, such as Cypro-Phcenician
bowls of the seventh or sixth centuries B. C., once so largely drawn
on for comparison. On the other hand, the masterpieces of Minoan
and Mycenaean craftsmen were already things of the past in the days
in which the Iliad and Odyssey took their organic form. Even the
contents of the latest Mycenaean graves have nothing to do with a
culture in which iron was already in use for cutting purposes and
cremation practiced.
How is it, Homer, though professedly commemorating
then, that
the deeds of Achaean heroes, is able to picture them among surround-
ings which, in view of the absolute continuity of Minoan and Myce-
naean history, we may now definitely set down as non-Hellenic?
How explain the modes of combat borrowed from an earlier age and
associated with huge body shields that had long been obsolete.
Whence this familiarity with the court of Mycenae and the domestic
arrangements of palaces that were no more ?
I venture to believe that there is only one solution of these grave
difficulties, and that found in the bilingual conditions
this is to be
which in the Peloponnese, at least, may have existed for a veiy con-
siderable period. The Arcadian-speaking Greek population of that
area, which apparently, at least as early as the eleventh century, be-
fore our era sent forth its colonists to Cyprus, had, as pointed out,
been already penetrated with Minoan ideas to an extent which in-
volves a long previous juxtaposition with the element that formerly
dominated the country. They had assimilated a form of Minoan
worship, and the hymns and invocations to the Lady of the Dove can
hardly have been other than adaptations of those in use in the
—
Mycenaean ritual in the same way as the Greek hymn of the
Dictaean Temple must be taken to reflect an original handed down
by Eteocretan choirs.
We may well ask whether a far earlier heroic cycle of Minoan
origin might not to a certain extent have affected the lays of the
primitive Greek population. When, in a bilingual medium, the pres-
sure of Greek conquest turned the scales finally on the Hellenic side,
may not something of the epic traditions of the Mycenaean society
have been taken over? Englishmen, at least, who realize how largely
Celtic and Komance elements bulk in their national poetry should
be the last to deny such a possibility. Have we not, indeed, the
proof of it in many of die themes of the Homeric lays, as already
 MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT —EVANS. 629

pointed out? They largely postulate a which on the

state of things
mainland of Greece existed only in the great days of Mycenae.
In other words, many of the difficulties with which we have to
deal are removed if we accept the view that a considerable element in
the Homeric poems represents the materials of an earlier Minoan
epic taken over into Greek. The molding of such inherited materials
into the new language and the adapting of them to the glories of the
new race was no doubt a gradual process, though we may still regard
the work in its final form as bearing the stamp of individual genius.
To take a comparison from another field, the arch of Constantine is
still a fine architectural monument, though its dignity be largely due

to the harmonious incorporation of earlier sculptures. Not less does

Homer personify for us a great literary achievement, though the
materials that have been brought together belong to more than one
age. There is nothing profane in the idea that actual translation,
perhaps of a very literal kind, from an older Minoan epic to the
new Achaean, played a considerable part in this assimilative process.
The seven-stringed lyre itself was an heirloom from the older race.
Is it, then, unreasonable to believe that the lays by which it was
accompanied were inspired from the same quarter?
And here we are brought up before an aspect of Minoan art which
may well stand in relation to the contemporary oral or literary com-
positions covering part of the Homeric ground. The Homeric aspect
of some of its masterpieces has indeed been so often observed as to
have become a commonplace. In some cases parts of pictorial scenes
are preserved, such as j)rimitive bards delight to describe in connec-
tion with works of art. The fragment of the silver vase with the
siege scene from Mycenae affords a well-known instance of this.
A similar topic is discernible in the shield of Achilles, but in this
case a still supplied by the combat on the shield
nearer parallel is

of Herakl^, described by Hesiod. Here the coincidence of subject

extends even to particular details, such as the w’omen on the towers
.shouting with shrill voices and tearing their cheeks and the old men
assembled outside the gates,^ holding out their hands in fear for
their children fighting before the walls. The dramatic moment, the
fate of battle —
hanging in the balance so alien to oriental art is
still —
equally brought out by the Mycenaean relief and by the epic descrip-
tion of the scene on the shield, and the parallelism is of special value,
since it may be said to present itself in pari materia artistic compo- —
sition on metal work.
So too at Knossos there came to light parts of a mosaic composi-
tion formed of faience plaques, and belonging to the latter part of the
middle Minoan age. Parts of the composition, of which we have a
vv. 237 seqq. Cf. Tsuntaa, ’Apz., 1891, pp. 20, 21, and UuKfjvat, p. 94 (Tsuntaa and Manatt,
Myc. Age, pp. 214, 215).
630 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913 .

fragmentary record, represent warriors and a city, like the siege

scene on the silver cup. But we also have glimpses of civic life within
the walls, of goats and oxen without, of fruit trees and running
water suggesting a literal comparison with the Homeric description
of the scenes of peace and war as illustrated on the shield of Achilles.
These tours de force of Minoan artists were executed some five cen-
turies before the Homeric poems took shape. They may either have
inspired or illustrated contemporary epic. But if Greeks existed in
the Peloponnese at the relatively early epoch, the close of the middle
Minoan age or the very beginning of the late Minoan, to which these
masterpieces belong, they must still have been very much in the back-
ground. They did not surely come within that inner palace circle
of Tiryns and Mycenae, where such works were handled and admired
in the spirit (with which we must credit their possessors) of culti-
vated connoisseurs. Still less is it possible to suppose that any
Achaean bard at the time when the Homeric poems ciystallized into
their permanent shape had such life-like compositions before his eye
or could have appreciated them in the spirit of their creation.
Again we have the remarkable series of scenes of heroic combat
best exemplified by the gold signets and engraved beads of the shaft
—
graves of Mycenae themselves no doubt, as in like cases, belonging
to an artistic cycle exhibiting similar scenes on a more ample scale,
such as may some day be discovered in wall paintings or larger re-
liefs on metal or other materials. . Schliemann,^ whose views on
Homeric subjects were not perturbed by chronological or ethnographic
discrepancies, had no difficulty in recognizing among the personages
depicted on these intaglios Achilles or “ Hector of the dancing hel-
met crest,” and could quote the Homeric passages that they illus-
“
trated. “ The author of the Iliad and Odyssey ” he exclaims, can
not but have been born and educated amidst a civilization which was
able to produce such works as these.” Destructive criticism has since
endeavored to set aside the cogency of these comparisons by pointing
out that, whereas the Homeric heroes wore heavy bronze armor, the
figures on the signet are almost as bare as were, for instance, the
ancient Gaulish warriors. But an essential consideration has been
overlooked. The signets and intaglios of the shaft graves of Mycenae
belong to the transitional epoch that marks the close of the third
middle Minoan period, and the very beginning of the late Minoan
age.^ The fashion in signets seems to have subsequently undergone

1 In the same way epitomized versions of the scenes on the Vaphelo cups are found in a
series of ancient gems. The taurokathapsia of the Knossos frescoes also reappears in
Intaglios, and there are many other similar hints of the Indebtedness of the minor to the
greater art, of which the “ Skylla ” mentioned below is probably an example.
2 The curious cuirass, which has almost the appearance of being of basket work, seen
on the harvesters’ vase and on seal impressions from H. Triads and Zakro has been cited
as showing that the corselet was known at a very early period (M. M. Ill, L. M. I). This
particular type, however, has as yet been only found in connection with religious or cere-
monial scenes and not in association with arms of offense.
 :

MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT EVANS. 631

a change, and the later class is occupied with religious subjects. But
in the later days of the Palace of Knossos at all events, a series of
clay documents attests the fact that a bronze cuirass, with shoulder-
pieces and a succession of plates, was a regular part of the equipment
of a Minoan knight. Sometimes he received the equivalent in the
—
shape of a bronze ingot or talent a good suggestion of its weight.
On the somewhat later Cypro-Mycenaean ivory relief from Enkomi
(where bronze greaves were also found) we see a similar cuirass.^
This comparison has special pertinence when we remember that in the
Iliad the breastplate of Agamemnon was the gift of the Cypriote
Kinyras.
A close correspondence can moreover be traced between the My-
cenaean and Homeric methods and incidents of combat due to the
—
use of the tall body shield which itself had long gone out of use at
the time when the Iliad was put together. One resvdt of this was
tlie practice of striking at the adversary’s throat as Achilles did at
Hector’s —an from the third
action illustrated by the gold intaglio
shaft grave. On the other hand the alternative endeavor of Epic
heroes to pierce through the “ towerlike ” shield itself by a mighty
spear thrust is graphically represented on the gold bezel of a My-
cenaean ring found in Boeotia." The risk of stumbling involved by
the use of these huge body shields is exemplified in Honler by the
fate of Periphetes of Mycenae, who
tripped against the rim of his
shield, “reaching to his feet,” and was pierced through the breast
by Hector’s spear as he fell backward.® A remarkable piece of evi-
dence to which I shall presently call attention shows that this par-
ticular scene seems to have formed part of the repertory of the en-
gravers of signets for Minoan lords^ and that the Homeric episode
may have played a part in Chansons de Geste as early as the date
of the Akropolis tombs of Mycenae.^
Can it indeed be believed that these scenes of knightly prowess on
the Mycenaean signets, belonging to the very house of Agamemnon,
have no connection with the epic that glorified him in later days?
Much may be allowed for variation in the details of individual epi-
sodes, but who shall deny that Schliemann’s persuasion of their essen-

1 1may refer to my remarks on this in “ Mycenaean Cyprus as illustrateci by the

British Museum Excavations ” (Journ. Anthr. Inst. vol. 30, 1900, pp. 209, seqq., and see
especially p. 213). The round targe was now beginning.
"
In the Ashmolean Museum as yet unpublished.
;

3 II., XV, 645

seqq.
* I note that Prof. Gilbert Murray, who seems to regard the cuirass as a late element,
still sums up his views regarding the armor and tactics of the Ilomeric poems as follows
“ The surface speaks of the late Ionian fighting, the heart of the fighting is Mycenaean ”
(The Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 140). This latter point is the gist of the whole matter.
But it is dlfllcult to accept the view that the cultural phase represented by the Homeric
poems in their characteristic shape is “ late Ionian.” The “ late lonlans ” no longer used
bronze for their weapons. Moreover, they were well acquainted with writing and wore
signet rings.
632 ANNUAL BEPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913.

(ial correspondence was not largely justified? Take the celebrated

design on the signet ring from the fourth shaft grave, in which a
hero, apparently in defense of a fallen warrior, strikes down his
assailant, whose half-retreating comrade, covered behind by a large
body shield, aims his spear apparently without effect at the victorious
champion. Save that in the case of the protagonist a spear is sub-
stituted for a thrusting sword, and that the fallen figure behind the
champion is that of a wounded man who still has strength to raise
himself on one arm, the scene curiously recalls, even in its details, an
episode of the Seventeenth Book of the Iliad. There the Telamonian
Ajax, standing before Patroklos’s body, strikes down Hippothoos,
while Hector behind hurls his spear at Ajax, but just misses his aim.
Much might be added about these pre-Homeric illustrations of
Homer, but I will confine myself here to one more example. In the
temple repositories of the Palace of Knossos, dating from about 1600
B. C., was found a clay seal impression exhibiting a sea monster with
a doglike head rising amidst the waves attacking a boat on which is
seen a man beating it off with an oar (fig. 3).^ But this sea monster
is a prototype of Skylla, and though her dogs’ heads were multiplied

by Homer’s time, we have here, in the epitomized manner of gem

engraving, the essentials of Ulysses’s adventure depicted half a mil-
lenium, at least, before the age of the Greek epic. It would appear,
moreover, that the same episode was made the subject of illustration
in larger works of Minoan art, accompanied, we may suppose, with
further details. A fragment of a wall painting found at Mycenae
shows part of a monster’s head in front of a curving object, recalling
the stern of the vessel on the seal impression; and Dr. Studniczka
has with great probability recognized in this a pictorial version of the
same design.
But, over and above such correspondence in the individual episodes
and the detailed acquaintance with the material equipment of Minoan
civilization, the Homeric poems themselves show a deep community
with the naturalistic spirit that pervades the whole of the best Mi-
noan art. It is a commonplace observation that the Homeric similes
relating to animals recall the representations on the masterpieces of
Minoan art. In both cases we have the faithful record of eyewit-
nesses, and when in the Iliad we are presented with a lifelike picture
of a lion fastening on to the neck of a steer or roused to fury by a
hunter’s spear we turn for its most vivid illustration to Minoan gems.
In the transitional epoch that marks the close of the age of bronze
in Greece and the Aegean lands the true art of gem engraving was
nonexistent,- and so, too, in the Homeric poems there is no mention
1 See my Report, B. S. A., No. IX, p. 58.
-Rudely scratched seal stones of early Geometric dale exist, but they are of soft
materials.
 MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT —EVANS. 633

either of intaglios and signetYet in the Odyssey just such

rings.
a scene of animal proAvess as formed the theme of so many Minoan
gems, a hound holding Avith teeth and forepaAvs a struggling faAvn,
is described as the ornament of Ulysses’s golden brooch. The an-
achronism here involved has been met by no Homeric commentator,
for Ave now know the fibula types of the Aegean “ Chalco-sideric
—
age ” if I may coin such a Avord to Avhich the poems belong, with
their inartistic bows and stilts and knobs. It is inconceivable, even
did their typical forms admit of it, that any one of these could have
been equipped with a naturalistic adjunct of such a kind. The sug-
gested parallels have, in fact, been painfully sought out amongst the
fashions in vogue three or four centuries later than the archeological
epoch marked by the Homeric poems.^ As if such naturalistic com-
positions had anything in common with the stylized mannerisms of
the later Ionian art, with its sphinxes and winged monsters and
mechanically balanced schemes.
Must we not rather suppose that the decorative motive here applied
to Ulysses’s brooch was taken over from what had been the principal
personal ornaments of an earlier age, when in Greece at least fibulae
were practically unknown,^ namely, the perforated intaglios, worn
generally as periapts about the wrist. An example of one such from
eastern Crete with a scene singularly recalling the motive of the
brooch is seen in figure 4. It would not have required much license
on the poet’s part to transfer the description of such a design to a
personal ornament of later usage with which he was acquainted.
But the far earlier associations of the design are as patent to the eye
of the archeologist as are those of a classical gem set in a medieval
reliquary.
When ill the days of the later epos we recognize heroic scenes
already depicted by the Minoan artists and episodes instinct with the

1 Helbig, for Instance (Horn. Epos, p. 277), finds a comparison in a type of gold fibulae,

with double pins and surmounted by rows of gold sphinxes from seventh or sixth century
graves of Caere and Praeneste. Ridgeway (The Early Age of Greece, I, 446) cites in the
same connection “ brooches in the form of dogs and horses found at Hallstatt.” The best
representative of the “ dog ” brooches of this class seem to be those from the cemetery of
S. Lucia in Carniola (Marchlsettl, Necropoli dl S. Lucia, presso Tolmino, Tav. XA'^, figs.
9, 10), where in each case a small bird Is seen in front of the hound. A somewhat more
naturalistic example gives the key to this ; the original of the dog is a catlike animal
(op. cit., 'I'av. XX, fig. 12). We have here, in fact, a subject ultimately derived from the
Nilotic scenes, in which ichneumons are seen hunting ducks. The same motive is very
literally reproduced on the inlaid dagger blade from Mycenae and recurs In variant forms
in Minoan art. The late Hallstatt fibulse of this class are obviously the derivatives of
classical prototypes belonging to the seventh century B. C. (In one case a winged sphinx
takes the place of the cat, or pard, before the bird.) These derivatives date themselves
from the sixth and even the fifth century B. C., since the last-named example was found
together with a fibula of the “ Certosa ” class. The S. Lucia cemetery Itself, according
to its explorer (op. cit., p. .313), dates only from about 600 B. C. It will be seen from
this how little these late Hallstatt “ dog ” fibulse have to do with the design of Ulysses's
brooch.
2 The early “fiddle-bow” type Is hardly found before the L. M. Ill period, when the
art of gem engraving was already in its decline.
634 ANNUAL KEPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913.

naturalistic spirit of that brilliant dawn of art, we may well ask how,
according to any received theory, such perfect glimpses into the life of
that long-past age could have been preserved. The detailed nature of
many of the parallels excludes the idea that we have here to do with
the fortuitous working of poets’ imagination. We are continually
tempted to ask, could such descriptive power in poetry go side by
side with its antithesis in art, the degraded, conventional art of the
period in which the Homeric epos took its final form ?
But if a combination of such contradictory qualities seems in the
highest degree improbable, how are we to explain this phenomenon?
By what means could this undimmed reflection of a pure, great age
have been perpetuated and f>reserved?
Only in one way, I again repeat, could such passages, presenting
the incidents and life of the great days of Mycenae and instinct with
the peculiar genius of its art, have been handed down intact. They
were handed down intact because they were preserved in the em-
—
balming medium of an earlier epos the product of that older non-
Hellenic race to whom alike belong the glories of Mycenae and of
Minoan Crete. Thus only could the iridescent wings of that earlier
phantasy have maintained their pristine form and hues through days
of darkness and decline to grace the later, Achaean world.
AWiere, indeed, would be the fly without the amber? How could
the gestes and episodes of the Minoan age have survived for incor-
poration in later epic lays without the embalming element supplied
by a more ancient poetic cycle ? But the taking over and absorption
of these earlier materials would be greatly simplified by the existence
of such bilingual conditions as have been above postulated. The
process itself may have begun very early, and the long contact of the
Arcadian branch, whose language most approaches the original
speech of Greek epic with the dominant Mycenaeans may have greatly
contributed to its elaboration. Even in its original Minoan elements,
moreover, we may expect stratification —the period, for instance, of
the body shield and the period of the round targe and cuirass may
have both left their mark.
The Homeric poems in the form in which they finally took shape
are the result of this prolonged effort to harmonize the old and the
neAV elements. In the nature of things this result was often incom-
pletely attained. The evidence of patchwork is frequently patent.
Contradictory features are found such as could not have coexisted at
any one epoch. It has been well remarked by Prof. Gilbert Murray ’

that “ even the similes, the very breath of the poetry of Homer, are
in many cases —indeed, usually— adopted ready-made. Their vivid-
1 The Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 219. Prof. Murray remarks (op. clt., p. 215) “The :

poets of our Iliad scarcely need to have seen a lion.

‘ ’
They have their stores of tradi-
tional similes taken from almost every moment of a lion’s life.”
 Smithsonian Report, 1913. — Evans. Plate 1.

(a) (6)

Fig. 1.— Gabled Building^ on Cretan Intaglios (§).

Fig. 2.— Pediment of Temple at Palaeopolis, Corfu.

Fig. 3.— Clay Sealing from T emple Repositories, Fig.4.— Haematite Intaglio from
Knossos (i) (B.S.A. IX. p. 50, Fig. 36). E. Crete with Dog Seizing
Stag (3).
 Evans.
Plate 2.
Smithsonian Report, 1913.

5«

5?>

Figs. 5a-5 &.— Greek Signet Rings with Silver

Hoops and Ivory Bezels Found in Crete (3).
 —
MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT EVANS. 635

ness, their directness of observation, their air of freshnessand spon-

taneity are all deceptive.” Many of them are misplaced and “were
originally written to describe some quite different occasion.”
Much has still to be written on the survival of Minoan elements in
almost every department of the civilized life of later Greece. Apart,
moreover, from oral tradition we have always to reckon with the
possibility of the persistence of literary records. For we now know
that an advanced system of linear script was in vogue not only in
Crete but on the mainland side in the latest Mycenaean period.^
Besides direct tradition, however, there are traces of a process of
another kind for which the early renaissance in Italy affords a strik-
ing analogy. In later classical days some of the more enduring
examples of Minoan art, such as engraved gems and signets, were
actually the subjects of a revival. I venture to think that it can
hardly be doubted that a series of early Greek coin types are taken
from the designs of Minoan intaglios. Such very naturalistic designs
as the cow scratching its head with its hind leg or licking its flank
or the calf that it suckles, seen on the coins of Gortyna, Karystos, and
Eretria seem to be directly borrowed from Minoan lentoid gems.
The two overlapping swans on coins of Eion in Macedonia recall a
well-established intaglio design of the same early class. The native
goats which act as supporters on either side of a fig tree on some types
of the newly discovered archaic coins of Skyros suggest the same
comparisons. On the other hand scheme
a version of the lions’ gate
two lions with their forepaws on the capital of a column, seen on
—
an Ionian stater of about 700 B. C has some claims, in view of the
Phrygian parallels, to be regarded as an instance of direct .survival.
A good deal more might be said as to this numismatic indebted-
ness, nor is it surprising that the civic badge on coins should have
been taken at times from those on ancient gems and signets brought
to light by the accidental opening of a tomb, together with bronze
arms and mortal remains attributed, it may be, to some local hero.
Of the almost literal reproduction of the designs on Minoan signet
rings by a later Greek engraver I am able to set before you a really
astonishing example. Three rings (figs. 5, 6, 7) were recently ob-
tained by me in Athens, consisting of solid silver hoops themselves
penannular with rounded terminations in which swivel fashion are
set oval ivory bezels, with intaglios on either side, surrounded in
each case by a high rim, itself taken over from the prominent gold
rim of Egyptian scarab mountings. These bezels are perforated, the
silver wire that went through them being wound around the feet of
the hoops. From particularities in the technique, the state of the
metal and of the ivory, and other points of internal evidence, it is

Among recent discoveries are a whole series of late Minoan vases from Tiryns with
inscriptions representing a mainland type of the developed linear script of Minoan Crete.
636 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913.

impossible to doubt the genuine antiquity of these objects.^ They

were said to have been found in a tomb in the western part of Crete,
reaching Athens by way of Canea, and their owner set no high value
on them.- This type of ring with the wire wound around the ends
of the hoop is in common use for scarabs, cylinders, and scaraboids in
the sixth and fifth centuries B. C., and itself goes back to Minoan
or Mycenaean prototypes.® From the style of engi’aving, however, it

seems impossible to date the signet rings in question earlier than

about 400 B. C.
The subjects of two of these are a Sphinx with an ibex on the
reverse (fig. 5a, h) and another Sphinx coupled in the same way
with a Chimaera (fig. 5a, h). The intaglios are executed in an ad-
vanced provincial Greek style, in which, however, certain remi-
niscences of artistic schemes dating from the first half of the fifth
century are still perceptible.^
But the designs on the two sides of the third intaglio (fig. 7a and
h), though obviously engraved at the same time as the others and by
the same hand belong to a very different category. On one side a
man in the Minoan loin clothing with a short thrusting sword in his
right hand is struggling with a lion, the head of which is seen as
from above. It will be recognized at once that this scheme corre-
sponds even in details with that of the hero struggling with a lion,
engraved on a gold perforated bead or ring bezel found by Schlie-
mann in the third shaft grave at Mycenae.® On the other side of
the intaglio, we see a bearded warrior with a girdle and similar

1 The exceptional character of these objects and the appearance of Mycenaean motives

on one signet side by side with classical subjects on the others made it necessary, in spite
of their appearance of undoubted antiquity, to submit them to the severest expertise.
I had them examined by a series of the best judges of such objects, but all were unanimous
both as to the antiquity of the signets and as to the fact that the ivory had not been recut
and reengraved in later times. Examination of various parts of the surface under a
strong microscope confirmed these results. In order, however, to make assurance doubly
sure I decided on a crucial test. I intrusted to Mr. W. H. Young, the highly experienced
formatore and expert in antiquities of the Ashmolean Museum, the delicate task of re-
breaking two of the ivory signets along a line of earlier fracture that followed the major
axis of each and of removing all extraneous materials due to previous mendings or restora-
tion. The results of this internal analysis were altogether conclusive. The cause of the
longitudinal fracture was explained in the case of the signet (fig. 7) by the swelling of the
silver pin due to oxidization. The whole of the metal, transmuted to tho purple oxide
characteristic of decayed silver, was here within. In the case of the other signet (fig. 5
i

this had been replaced by a new pin in recent times, and on removing this the whole of
the perforation was visible and proved to be of the ancient character. The ivory has been
attacked on both ends by a tubular drill, the two holes meeting irregularly near the
middle. The modern method of drilling is, of course, quite different. It is done with a
chisel pointed Instrument and proceeds continuously from one end.
= The correspondence of one of the scenes on the third ring with a type on a gold bead

from Mycenae suggests, however, that its prototypes were taken from the mainland side.
“An amygdaloid late Minoan or Mycenaean gem representing a ship, set into a silver
hoop of this type, found at Eretria. is in my own collection.
‘As, for instance, in the attitude of the ibex (fig. h) and in the type of the Chimaera.
The facing sphinx (fig. a) is carelessly engraved and presents an abnormal aspect. Of its
genuine antiquity, however, there can be no doubt. (See note 1, p. 634.)
“ Mycenae, p. 174, fig. 253.
 Plate 3.
Smithsonian Report, 1913 .— Evans.

6b 7b

Figs. 6-7.— Greek Signet Rings with Silver Hoops and Ivory Bezels Found in

CRETE(i).
 MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT EVANS. 637

Minoan costume, wearing a helmet wuth zones of plates and bearing

a figure-of-eight shield on his back. Owdng to the defective preser-
vation of the surface it is difficult to make out the exact character of
the stroke intended or to distinguish the weapon used from the war-
rior’s raised arms. That he is aiming a mortal blow at the figure
before him is clear. The latter wears the same narrow Minoan girdle,
but his helmet, which is broader, is not so w^ell executed. He is

shown in a helpless position, falling backward over the lower mar-

gin of a similar shield and holding a sword in his left hand, which,
however, is rendered unavailable by his fall.
Here we have a scene closely analogous to that on a sardonyx len-
toid from the third shaft grave at Mycenae,^ except that in the pres-
ent case the body shield of the falling warrior reaches to his heels.
If, as seems probable, this latter detail belongs to the original of the
type, and the warrior has tripped backward over the louver rim of
his cumbrous body shield, the scene itself would absolutely corre-
spond with the Homeric episode of Periphetes, to which I have
already referred.

arp£<f)d£lc yap pzzbmaQtv iv danidoc dvzuyt ttcUto,

rijv aurdc <f>opUaK£ 7todrjV£Ki\ tpKoc ducdvrcov.

Tf a y’ ivi pXa(f>d£}c nka£v urcrcoc, Si
apzpSaXkov kov&^t) 0 £ 7t£pi Kpor&^oeai n£abvzog?

We have here, in fact, the curious phenomenon of a pre-Homeric

illustration of Homer revived by a classical engi-aver.

Furtwangler, Antike Gemmen, PI. II, 2, and cf. Reichel, Homerische WafFen, p. 7, fig. 6.
1

A strange and indescribably misleading representation of this gem is given in Schliemann,

Mycenae, p. 202, fig. 313.
- II., XV, 645 seqq.