DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.8944#0101
MYCENAEAN TREE AND PILLAR CULT.
199
idol, in this case of conical form. In the section of the Giganteja, drawn for
La Marmara,1 the baetylic cone is still shown in its place within a
small dolmen-like cell; at present both the cell and cone are overthrown,2
though the ornamental blocks in front remain in their places. The
two side-blocks which look like altar stones are decorated with a tongue
and double volute design, recalling the terminal ornamentation on one
of the door-slabs of Castelluccio. The threshold blocks on the other
hand are covered with returning spirals with lozenge-shaped interspaces
(Fig 68), which point even more clearly than the Sicilian parallels to Aegean
models, themselves the derivatives of Egyptian originals. We here in fact
Fig. 68.—Spiral Ornament on Thbxseold of Baetylic Chapel, Giganteja, Gozo.
approach very near the ceiling decoration of Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Dynasty tombs.3
These sculptured blocks of the Maltese monuments must be reckoned
among the later elements contained in them, yet some of them, like the altar
with its foliated sides from Hagiar Kim, suggest parallels belonging to the
earliest Mycenaean period, as represented by the vegetable motives on a gold
cup from the fourth acropolis tomb at Mycenae, and the vases and painted stucco
1 Xom'elles Annulet de Vlnxtitut de Corre-
spondanrc Arrheologique i. (1832); Perrot et
Chipiez, op. cil. iii. p. 299, Fig. 222.
3 The cone is broken in two.
3 It is possible that the Egyptian influence
here arrived by a Libyan channel, but it is
more reasonable to refer it to the same My-
cenaean agency that was undoubtedly at work
on the opposite Sicilian coast.
199
idol, in this case of conical form. In the section of the Giganteja, drawn for
La Marmara,1 the baetylic cone is still shown in its place within a
small dolmen-like cell; at present both the cell and cone are overthrown,2
though the ornamental blocks in front remain in their places. The
two side-blocks which look like altar stones are decorated with a tongue
and double volute design, recalling the terminal ornamentation on one
of the door-slabs of Castelluccio. The threshold blocks on the other
hand are covered with returning spirals with lozenge-shaped interspaces
(Fig 68), which point even more clearly than the Sicilian parallels to Aegean
models, themselves the derivatives of Egyptian originals. We here in fact
Fig. 68.—Spiral Ornament on Thbxseold of Baetylic Chapel, Giganteja, Gozo.
approach very near the ceiling decoration of Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Dynasty tombs.3
These sculptured blocks of the Maltese monuments must be reckoned
among the later elements contained in them, yet some of them, like the altar
with its foliated sides from Hagiar Kim, suggest parallels belonging to the
earliest Mycenaean period, as represented by the vegetable motives on a gold
cup from the fourth acropolis tomb at Mycenae, and the vases and painted stucco
1 Xom'elles Annulet de Vlnxtitut de Corre-
spondanrc Arrheologique i. (1832); Perrot et
Chipiez, op. cil. iii. p. 299, Fig. 222.
3 The cone is broken in two.
3 It is possible that the Egyptian influence
here arrived by a Libyan channel, but it is
more reasonable to refer it to the same My-
cenaean agency that was undoubtedly at work
on the opposite Sicilian coast.