DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.809#0219
194
REACTIONS ON MIDDLE EMPIRE EGYPT
The coincidence is curious, but there is a complete gap between this abortive
class of coiled decoration and that illustrated by the double row of inter-
connected spirals seen on the Platanos stone bowl which belong to the fully
developed Aegean system. This vessel, indeed, affords an extremely sig-
nificant illustration of the meeting of currents of influence which find their
sources very far afield.
The execution of the running spirals, here in high relief, as if laid on in
another material, leads us, indeed, to a particularity of the Aegean spirali-
form system which is itself intimately connected with coiled work in metal,
or perhaps, originally, string. A specimen of this, showing linked rows of
Fig. 104, a. Stone Bowl; Tholos B,
Platanos. (f)
Fig. 104, b. Gold Cylinder with
Applied Spirals, Kalathiana. (f)
Inde-
pendent
curvi-
linear
system
evolved
in E. M.
Crete.
spirals in gold wire, applied to a gold ring-like object, was found in the Second
City of Troy.1 A gold cylinder bead with similar applied spiraliform wire-work
occurred in the Early Minoan ' beehive' ossuary of Kalathiana (Fig. 104, b).2
It probably belongs to the close of E. M. Ill, and has a special interest, as
we here see the intrusive cylinder type from the East, which begins to
make its appearance in Crete about this time, associated with the developed
Aegean type of spiraliform decoration. Both form and ornament reached
Mesara by the same route from the North Coast of Crete.
But although the passage South of the Aegean spiral system is now
generally admitted and its merging into the Cretan decoration and thence
into Egyptian cannot be gainsaid, there is an aspect of the case of the
greatest importance in the history of the evolution of ornament and already
referred to in relation to certain aspects of the Maltese decoration that has
1 Schliemann, Ilios, p. 489, No. 837.
2 Xanthudides, Vaulted Tombs of Mesara
(transl. Droop), p. 82 and PI. VIII, No. 391.
(The length of the cylinder is only 9 milli-
metres.) The great days of this ossuary, the
richest known in Crete, seem to have ended
before the beginning of M. M. I (see op. at.;
p. 84).
REACTIONS ON MIDDLE EMPIRE EGYPT
The coincidence is curious, but there is a complete gap between this abortive
class of coiled decoration and that illustrated by the double row of inter-
connected spirals seen on the Platanos stone bowl which belong to the fully
developed Aegean system. This vessel, indeed, affords an extremely sig-
nificant illustration of the meeting of currents of influence which find their
sources very far afield.
The execution of the running spirals, here in high relief, as if laid on in
another material, leads us, indeed, to a particularity of the Aegean spirali-
form system which is itself intimately connected with coiled work in metal,
or perhaps, originally, string. A specimen of this, showing linked rows of
Fig. 104, a. Stone Bowl; Tholos B,
Platanos. (f)
Fig. 104, b. Gold Cylinder with
Applied Spirals, Kalathiana. (f)
Inde-
pendent
curvi-
linear
system
evolved
in E. M.
Crete.
spirals in gold wire, applied to a gold ring-like object, was found in the Second
City of Troy.1 A gold cylinder bead with similar applied spiraliform wire-work
occurred in the Early Minoan ' beehive' ossuary of Kalathiana (Fig. 104, b).2
It probably belongs to the close of E. M. Ill, and has a special interest, as
we here see the intrusive cylinder type from the East, which begins to
make its appearance in Crete about this time, associated with the developed
Aegean type of spiraliform decoration. Both form and ornament reached
Mesara by the same route from the North Coast of Crete.
But although the passage South of the Aegean spiral system is now
generally admitted and its merging into the Cretan decoration and thence
into Egyptian cannot be gainsaid, there is an aspect of the case of the
greatest importance in the history of the evolution of ornament and already
referred to in relation to certain aspects of the Maltese decoration that has
1 Schliemann, Ilios, p. 489, No. 837.
2 Xanthudides, Vaulted Tombs of Mesara
(transl. Droop), p. 82 and PI. VIII, No. 391.
(The length of the cylinder is only 9 milli-
metres.) The great days of this ossuary, the
richest known in Crete, seem to have ended
before the beginning of M. M. I (see op. at.;
p. 84).