Evans, Arthur J.: The Palace of Minos: a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustred by the discoveries at Knossos (Band 1): The Neolithic and Early and Middle Minoan Ages (London, 1921)

84

THE PALACE OF MINOS, ETC.

Pre-

Dynastic
Egyptian
Tradi-
tion.

Comparative examples from both groups are sketched in Fig. 52.1 These
male figurines entirely diverge in type from the traditional forms inherited in
Crete from Neolithic times. Rude schist idols however, more or less pointed
below, occurred, with Cycladic types, in the Sepulchral Cave of Pyrgos.

d

Pre-dynastic Egypt [Naqada].

L

Fig. 52. Primitive Tholos, Hagia Triada (Alabaster, Marble and Steatite).

Allusion will be made in the next Section to the amulets in the form of
human legs from the same primitive ossuary, which fit on to an Egyptian or
Egypto-Libyan class characteristic of the troubled period that follows on the
Sixth Dynasty. In this, as in the case of the small human figures, we see an
indebtedness on the Minoan side of something more than a formal nature,
and which belongs, in fact, to the domain of popular religion. The
double-spouted ewers, for some dual rite of libation, suggest influences
of the same kind, and it is a highly significant fact that the instrument
used for the ceremonial dance of the harvesters on the vase from Hagia

1 The Naqada specimens are mostly in the Petrie, Naqada, pp. 45, 46, and PL LIX.

Ashmolean Museum. Fig. a is of vegetable A good general view of the early Egyptian

paste ; b, c, and d are of schist and ivory. The figures is given in J. Capart, Les Debuts de Fart

specimens from Hagia Triada are of steatite en Egypte, p. 78 and p. 150 seqq.
and alabaster. For the Naqada figurines see