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 2,2): Town houses in Knossos of the new era and restored West Palace Section (London, 1928)

PAINTED STUCCO DECORATION IN ROOM H 443

remains found in the heap.

These, with their friezes depicting natural
scenery with rocks and
flowers of brilliant hues,

V . . _ _ were almost certainly

derived from the better
lighted upper rooms of
the house. On the other
hand, it appears from the
remains, described below,
of the stucco covering of
the walls of the ground-
floor room where the
vases were found that
those of the lower apart-
ments were tinted in a
more sober manner. There Wall in-

, scriptions

seems to be a strong probably
probability that these in- religious,
scriptions had been paint-
ed on the otherwise plain
walls of the adjacent room
D and of its compartment,
E, and had a definite cult
purpose. These included
the area in which occurred
the inscribed libation
table and ritual stone
'ladle'.

The painted inscrip-
tions may well have been
in the nature of religious

Fig. 260.

Painted Stucco Decoration in Room H,
' House of Frescoes '.

invocations, tahsmanic
formulas, or others equi-
valent to the texts on the
walls of sacred buildings in later times. In a way they also served a certain
decorative purpose, and the tall bright orange characters of Group B might
almost suggest a comparison with the Arabic texts from the Koran that
decorate the walls of early mosques.

Unlike the North end, the Southern section of the house showed no