DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.810#0415
786 CONVENTIONALIZED IRIS OF ELYSIAN FIELDS
Back-
ground of
relief,
Elysian
Fields.
Conven-
tionalized
iris.
a work contemporary with the Priest-King Relief—shows that the monster
thus compounded had been impressed as a principal agent of the Goddess
into a ceremony of initiation and discrimination, which seems to have
ensued on the entry of the departed into the Elysian realms. Female figures
with Griffin's heads are there seen ushering a pair of neophytes into the
presence of an enthroned Griffin, behind whom the Goddess stands.1
The field through which the personage with the plumed lily crown pro-
gresses is in keeping with the sacral subject. The exotic flowers and the
six-winged butterfly that hovers over them are not of this World. The floral
fragments that occurred with the relief and have been restored as part of the
background may best be regarded as highly stylized versions of an iris type
(Fig. 513).2 They are executed with great delicacy, and the minute undula-
tions visible on the edges of the petals recall this flower. Elsewhere, too, it
appears as a sacred flower. On the great signet-ring of Mycenae a hand-
maiden of the Goddess bears to her in one hand a bunch of lilies, and in
the other two sprays of iris. The palmette development on these and other
examples may indeed well have been suggested by the branching yellow
markings of the Iris reticulata, which to-day blooms so abundantly over the
site of Knossos—the fairest harbingers of the Cretan spring. It is this that
is undoubtedly the flower of the Greek Hyakinthos,:i a divine favourite
bound up—like the name itself—with the religion of the earlier race. It
may even be that the mourning cry, AI AI, deciphered on its petal had
first found its suggestion in the characters of the older script.
In these conventionalized floral sprays we already find the prototypes
of the highly stylized plant decoration of the vases representing the Late
' Palace Style' of the succeeding Age—(L. M. I d-h. M. II). As usual, as
has been shown to have happened in other cases, the vase-painters followed
which, from internal evidence, must be referred PI. CI (Archaeologia, vol. lix). The buds on
to L. M. I a, was found in a tholos tomb on the
site of Nestor's Pylos (Kakovatos).
1 For an illustration of the designs on the
Ring, see above, p. 482, Fig. 289.
2 The restoration of these, as shown in
Fig. 513 and in the Coloured Plate (frontis-
piece), is fairly certain with the exception of
the spiral terminations of the lower petals.
These have been completed on the analogy of
the terminal coils of papyrus spray on vases of
the ' Palace Style'. A good example is sup-
plied by a fine amphora from the Royal Tomb
at Isopata, Preh. Tombs of Knossos, p. 15 and
the wall-painting were also restored by M.
Gillieron from this vase at my suggestion.
Another fine ' Palace Style ' vase from the
' Little Palace' at Knossos shows similar
features.
3 See my Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult,
p. 50 (/. H. S., io,oi,p. 148). Apollo Hyakin-
thos was a divine son or consort, evidently
taken over from the Minoan religious cycle.
Greve (Art. Hyakinthos in Roscher's Lexikon)
says of the flower : ' es ist jedenfalls eine Irisart,
aber unbestimmt welche'.
Back-
ground of
relief,
Elysian
Fields.
Conven-
tionalized
iris.
a work contemporary with the Priest-King Relief—shows that the monster
thus compounded had been impressed as a principal agent of the Goddess
into a ceremony of initiation and discrimination, which seems to have
ensued on the entry of the departed into the Elysian realms. Female figures
with Griffin's heads are there seen ushering a pair of neophytes into the
presence of an enthroned Griffin, behind whom the Goddess stands.1
The field through which the personage with the plumed lily crown pro-
gresses is in keeping with the sacral subject. The exotic flowers and the
six-winged butterfly that hovers over them are not of this World. The floral
fragments that occurred with the relief and have been restored as part of the
background may best be regarded as highly stylized versions of an iris type
(Fig. 513).2 They are executed with great delicacy, and the minute undula-
tions visible on the edges of the petals recall this flower. Elsewhere, too, it
appears as a sacred flower. On the great signet-ring of Mycenae a hand-
maiden of the Goddess bears to her in one hand a bunch of lilies, and in
the other two sprays of iris. The palmette development on these and other
examples may indeed well have been suggested by the branching yellow
markings of the Iris reticulata, which to-day blooms so abundantly over the
site of Knossos—the fairest harbingers of the Cretan spring. It is this that
is undoubtedly the flower of the Greek Hyakinthos,:i a divine favourite
bound up—like the name itself—with the religion of the earlier race. It
may even be that the mourning cry, AI AI, deciphered on its petal had
first found its suggestion in the characters of the older script.
In these conventionalized floral sprays we already find the prototypes
of the highly stylized plant decoration of the vases representing the Late
' Palace Style' of the succeeding Age—(L. M. I d-h. M. II). As usual, as
has been shown to have happened in other cases, the vase-painters followed
which, from internal evidence, must be referred PI. CI (Archaeologia, vol. lix). The buds on
to L. M. I a, was found in a tholos tomb on the
site of Nestor's Pylos (Kakovatos).
1 For an illustration of the designs on the
Ring, see above, p. 482, Fig. 289.
2 The restoration of these, as shown in
Fig. 513 and in the Coloured Plate (frontis-
piece), is fairly certain with the exception of
the spiral terminations of the lower petals.
These have been completed on the analogy of
the terminal coils of papyrus spray on vases of
the ' Palace Style'. A good example is sup-
plied by a fine amphora from the Royal Tomb
at Isopata, Preh. Tombs of Knossos, p. 15 and
the wall-painting were also restored by M.
Gillieron from this vase at my suggestion.
Another fine ' Palace Style ' vase from the
' Little Palace' at Knossos shows similar
features.
3 See my Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult,
p. 50 (/. H. S., io,oi,p. 148). Apollo Hyakin-
thos was a divine son or consort, evidently
taken over from the Minoan religious cycle.
Greve (Art. Hyakinthos in Roscher's Lexikon)
says of the flower : ' es ist jedenfalls eine Irisart,
aber unbestimmt welche'.