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)

Parallels
to these.

340 THE DOVE GODDESS AND HER ATTENDANTS

There can be little doubt that the small female image, Figs. 193, c,
and 195, with its head turned to its left, has been shifted from the
position that it was designed to occupy on the right of the Dove Goddess
balancing that which was found on her right (Fig. 193, b). The arrangement
as shown in Fig. 193 answers, indeed, to a religious group in which the
taller figure of the Goddess is seen with a handmaiden on either side,
recurring examples of which appear on signet types from the last Middle

b ax a 2 c

Fig 193. Dove Goddess and two Handmaidens ; Shrine of Double Axes.

Minoan Period onwards.1 Examples of this triple group are shown in Fig.
194, that on the seal-impression from Hagia Triada dating from the transi-
tional M. M. Ill 6—h. M. I a epoch. On the large signet-ring, again, from
Mycenae we see once more the two little attendants beside the seated
Goddess, one offering her flowers, the other plucking fruit for her from the
sacred tree that overshadows her (Fig. 194, e). The children in this case are
so small that they are only able to fulfil their tasks by standing on the top
of rocky piles. On a more recently discovered ring from the Sepulchral
Treasure of Thisbe (Fig. 194, d) we recognize another version of the same

1 I first called attention to the recurrence
of this triple group in Minoan iconography, in
my Ring of Nestor, <S~r., p. 12 seqq. {J. H. S.,

xlv (1925), P'igs. n-15), from which parallels
here given are taken.