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)

3H

THE PALACE OF MINOS, ETC.

Scale
Conven-
tion on
Minoan
Rhytons
with
Siege
Scenes.

Theme
of Be-
leaguered
City and
its Epic
Survivals.

It is of special interest to note that this scale convention in a more
decorative reticulated form appears as an indication of a rocky steep on an
interesting fragment of a L. M. I rhyton, where an archer is seen in the act
of mounting it. This fragment, as is shown in a later Section of this
work,1 undoubtedly belongs to a composition analogous to the Siege
Scene on the silver vessel of the same class found at Mycenae. In the
latter case not only the sea margent but the rocky surface of the shallows is
indicated in the same manner, while on a painted clay rhyton from Pseira,
where dolphins are surrounded by a similar reticulation, it may be taken to
represent the sea itself.

The conventional rendering of a rocky background by means of scale
inlays in the Town Mosaic affords another link of connexion with a later cycle
of subjects such as the above, the central theme of which is a besieged city.
There is good warrant indeed for concluding that we have here a version,
coeval with the earliest Palace of Knossos, of epic scenes, the later trans-
formations of which may be detected not only in the Minoan reliefs referred
to, but in the shields of Herakles and Achilles, as described by Hesiod and
Homer. The theme of the beleaguered city treated of in these Minoan
compositions was as old in Egypt as the days of the Early Dynasties.
More, however, will be said on the comparisons there supplied in con-
sidering the Minoan version on the silver rhyton found in the Mycenae Grave.
At a later date it was to take immortal shape in the ' tale of Troy divine'.

1 See Vol. IT.