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)

MYCENAE DAGGER INLAID WITH LILIES

131

was found, and like it and the other important fragments of painted plaster
there brought to light, the lily border must be regarded as the work of

a Knossian artist of the M. M. Ill
Period.

In the case of the dagger,
too, the resources of the metal-
worker were such as to enable
him to suggest the varying tints
of the flowers. The petals are
here executed in pale electrum,
and the red anthers are distin-
guished from the filaments by a
greater admixture of gold. The
background of the design was
here a hard niello plate, consisting
of an alloy of silver and iron, in-
serted into the blade and into
which were hammered in a cold
state the gold and electrum inlays.
In the last cited examples
it is possible to trace a definite
relation between fresco designs
more or less of the Miniature
class and such tours de force of in-
laid metal-work. The endeavour,
within the limits of the technique,
to reproduce the actual colouring
as well as the design was in itself
the same as that which inspired
the painter's Art.

It cannot be doubted that
the living record in Greek Epic
of great traditional masterpieces
of intarsia work imply on the part
of those who first commemorated such objects in their lays a first-hand
knowledge of Minoan works of this class. Helbig rightly pointed out, long
since,1 that the Phoenician metal-work of the Sixth and Seventh Centuries

Fig. 86. Inlaid Bronze Dagger with
Gold-plated Hilt (as restored) : Mycenae.

Master-
pieces of
inlaid
metal-
work
recorded
in Greek
epic.

1 Homerische Epos (1887 ed.), pp. 408, 409.
K 2