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 3): The great transitional age in the northern and eastern sections of the Palace (London, 1930)

SCENES OF ASSAULT 87

certainly of leather, for they are strengthened with rows of boars' tushes,1 Megaron
and with cheek-pieces attached. Neither here, nor in the other case, con.
do the warriors bear shields, but they wear gaiters on their legs. On nected
this later work they are associated, however, with chariots and horses, the scenes of
manes of the horses being tied up in tufts in a manner identical with those
on the inscribed clay tablets of Class B belonging to the concluding phase
of the Knossian Palace. It is probable, though owing to the fragmentary
nature of the materials the evidence as to this is wanting, that the chariots
were of the later ' dual' class 2 shown on the tablets, in which there is
a posterior extension of the body, its framework resembling a spanned bow
fitted with an arrow.

On one section of the Mycenae frieze a warrior is seen in the act of Warrior
falling before a building (see Fig. 48, e), while traces of a chariot horse appear j^ted in
above. Rodenwaldt has appositely compared the falling warrior with one fro"' of
seen below a chariot in a relief of the battle of Kadesh (Rameses II).3 This proto-
precipitate fall—into space, as it were—may, however, be itself of still more Kapa-
ancient tradition, since the incident of figures falling from battlements and neus-
walls already appears on Egyptian versions of siege scenes.4 The episode giesfrom
recalls that of Kapaneus struck down from his ladder by the bolt of Zeus Egyptian
when he sought to scale the wall of Thebes.5 scenes.

The ' Town Mosaic', so far as Minoan Art is concerned, supplies
the prototype of the subject of the ' Beleaguered City '. It dates from the
close of M. M. II b, or the very beginning of M. M. Ill a.6 But an important
though evanescent piece of evidence tends to show that similar inlaid com-

1 There is sufficient evidence that helmets possible that the Mycenae fresco painter in
fitted with boars' teeth also existed from an • his own mind connected the falling figure
early date in Crete; cf. A. 'E.,Prehistoric Tombs, with the war-chariot of which we have traces
&°c, p. 67. in the upper zone.

2 See my remarks on the evolution of the 6 P. of M., i, p. 305, and cf. pp. 3or, 302. It
Minoan chariots, Ring of Nestor, &•£., p. 32 is there recognized that the ' House Tablets '
seqq. (J.H.S., 1925). lay in a somewhat ill-defined deposit that

3 G. Rodenwaldt, Fries des Megarons von might belong either to the M. M. II b phase
Mykenai, pp. 55, 56 and cf. Rosellini, Mon. or to M. M. Ill a—a small vase of which
deW Eg. 1, Pt. ii, PI. CM. period was certainly found in the same deposit.

4 See below, p. 104 and Fig. 58. In any case architectural details on these

5 Such is the pictorial effect. One recalls tablets fit on closely to those of the early
the relief on an ash-chest of Volterra on which ' Terra-cotta Shrine', the date of which from
Kapaneus, grasping his ladder, falls in front its association must certainly fall within the
of the local Porta dell' Arco, substituted limits of M. M. II b (see of. at., i, pp. 305,
there for Electra's Gate at Thebes. But it is 306).