The Minoan and Mycenaean element in Hellenic life / [Sir Arthur Evans].

  • Arthur Evans
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Minoan and Mycenaean element in Hellenic life / [Sir Arthur Evans]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    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 it has been realized that even the 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 fig. la is from Central Crete (steatite). 16 is from Sitela (cornelian). 2 Fig. 2 is taken from a diagrammatic sketch kindly supplied me by Mr. J. D. Bourchler, which accompanied his account of these discoveries in the Times.