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 2,1): Fresh lights on origins and external relations (London, 1928)

34

IMPULSE FROM THE SOUTH : EARLY NILOTIC

Libyan
influence
on

Minoan
hair-
dressing :
the side-
locks.

given Libyan parallels ranging from the Fifth to the Twentieth Dynasty.
It will be seen, however, that while the Libyan men usually wore a short
pointed beard, the Egyptian practice of clean shaving or depilation was
general in Minoan Crete.

An as yet unpublished head of a male ivory figure from Hierakonpolis

Fig. 16. The Libyan Side-lock as a Minoan Fashion (a-d, Libyan Types : e-h, Minoan)-

(Suppl. PI. xii, a) and examples from Gebel-el-'Arak knife handle show that
the Libyan side-lock dates from pre-dynastic times, though the Cretan com-
parisons must be rather the reflection of later intercourse with the tribes of
the opposite Marmaric or Cyrenaic coast. Another feature in the Libyan male
costume that has been long recognized as presenting a striking analogy to
sheath" Minoan usage is shared both by the historic Libyans and those of the early pre-
compared dynastic stock. This is the ' Libyan sheath' or penistasche, the envelope being
Minoan in this case dependent from the front of the girdle,1 while in the Minoan attire
it seems to have been drawn upwards in a band or ligature which,starting from

1 See above, p. 25, Fig. 9, a, and Suppl. that of Libyans on Egyptian monuments (e. g.

PL I, i. Here, as in other early instances, the Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, i (1878), p. 246,

scrotum is visible on either side of the sheath, Fig. 76, upper row left, and cf. Bates, op. at.,

otherwise the arrangement is identical with p. 133, Fig. 49).