DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.808#0067
:THE KING OF NESTOR,' ETC.
65
youth or son, mortal but continually resurgent. We feel ourselves in face
of much more human conceptions of the world beyond than the early Greek
view of gibbering shades and fluttering eiddla, where a king was of less count
than was a ploughman upon earth. The only anxiety of Protesilaos, it will be
remembered, was that his wife should join him speedily in the world beyond.
The Lion Guardian and Atas Kovpai.
On the other side of the upper part of the trunk of the ' Tree of the
World' from that by which the young couple stand is a further scene, the
Fig. 55.—Copy of Impression of ' Nestor's Ring ' enlarged four diameters.
lower boundary of which is supplied by the projecting bough. The central
feature here is a great lion, couchant on a kind of bench with three supports
visible, while below this, in kneeling posture and reaching upwards towards
the sacred animal, are two little girlish figures. The lion, with his head raised
and turned back as if in the act of listening, may be described as in the attitude
of vigilant repose. It closely corresponds with the attitude of a couchant
lion on a stepped base with the same pose of the head and the tail drawn
up between the haunches in a similar manner seen on what must be a
contemporary intaglio from the Vapheio tholos tomb.60
The couch on which the lion rests in the present case resembles the
80 Tsountas, 'Ecf>. "j>px-. 1889, PI. X. PI. III. 53. The stone is a sardonyx
27, p. 167; Furtwangler, AM. Gemmen, of the amygdaloid type,
J.H.S.—VOL. XLV. E
65
youth or son, mortal but continually resurgent. We feel ourselves in face
of much more human conceptions of the world beyond than the early Greek
view of gibbering shades and fluttering eiddla, where a king was of less count
than was a ploughman upon earth. The only anxiety of Protesilaos, it will be
remembered, was that his wife should join him speedily in the world beyond.
The Lion Guardian and Atas Kovpai.
On the other side of the upper part of the trunk of the ' Tree of the
World' from that by which the young couple stand is a further scene, the
Fig. 55.—Copy of Impression of ' Nestor's Ring ' enlarged four diameters.
lower boundary of which is supplied by the projecting bough. The central
feature here is a great lion, couchant on a kind of bench with three supports
visible, while below this, in kneeling posture and reaching upwards towards
the sacred animal, are two little girlish figures. The lion, with his head raised
and turned back as if in the act of listening, may be described as in the attitude
of vigilant repose. It closely corresponds with the attitude of a couchant
lion on a stepped base with the same pose of the head and the tail drawn
up between the haunches in a similar manner seen on what must be a
contemporary intaglio from the Vapheio tholos tomb.60
The couch on which the lion rests in the present case resembles the
80 Tsountas, 'Ecf>. "j>px-. 1889, PI. X. PI. III. 53. The stone is a sardonyx
27, p. 167; Furtwangler, AM. Gemmen, of the amygdaloid type,
J.H.S.—VOL. XLV. E