DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.811#0439
386
MINOAN CLAY BATHS
The patterns outside the bath, as shown in Fig. 256, stand in a close
relation to those that appear on an ' amphora' belonging to the same
advanced ' Palace Style' derived from a great Hall on the Western borders
Com-
parisons
with
M. M.III
bath.
Bath-
water
obtained
and dis-
posed of
by hand
labour.
Fig. 257. Painted Terra-cotta Bath (M.M. Ill b), from Room near ' Magazine of the
Lily Vases'. Length i-45 m.
of the building, and reproduced in Fig. 258. The ceramic phase here repre-
sented belongs to the latest palatial epoch, and something of the pathos of
history cannot but be evoked by the fact that the bath, -thus associated with
the annex to this inner hall of the Domestic Quarter, had been placed within it
only a little before the final disaster that terminated the existence of the
building as a royal abode.
As compared with the earlier bath, here reproduced in Fig. 257, the
present example is of heavier and less elegant proportions. It is 1 -295 metres
in length, the other being 1-45. Both are hip-baths, but while the outer line
of the M. M. Ill bath rises about 20 centimetres by a gentle slope from its
foot end to the other which is half a metre high, the walls of Fig. 256 show
only a slight incline upwards, and that in a straight line. One marked
difference in the latter is the absence of the double groove on the two rims
that forms such a noteworthy feature in Fig. 257. It looks as if it had been
used to keep in position a cross-bar from which, as in a modern bath, had been
hung some object useful to the person seated within it.
Unlike the case of the remarkable bath-room of Mycenae, with its mono-
lithic floor, no sink was here perceptible, and the bath must both have been
filled and emptied by means of hand labour. This in itself argues a plenti-
ful staff of servants at the beck and call of the Minoan lords and ladies.
MINOAN CLAY BATHS
The patterns outside the bath, as shown in Fig. 256, stand in a close
relation to those that appear on an ' amphora' belonging to the same
advanced ' Palace Style' derived from a great Hall on the Western borders
Com-
parisons
with
M. M.III
bath.
Bath-
water
obtained
and dis-
posed of
by hand
labour.
Fig. 257. Painted Terra-cotta Bath (M.M. Ill b), from Room near ' Magazine of the
Lily Vases'. Length i-45 m.
of the building, and reproduced in Fig. 258. The ceramic phase here repre-
sented belongs to the latest palatial epoch, and something of the pathos of
history cannot but be evoked by the fact that the bath, -thus associated with
the annex to this inner hall of the Domestic Quarter, had been placed within it
only a little before the final disaster that terminated the existence of the
building as a royal abode.
As compared with the earlier bath, here reproduced in Fig. 257, the
present example is of heavier and less elegant proportions. It is 1 -295 metres
in length, the other being 1-45. Both are hip-baths, but while the outer line
of the M. M. Ill bath rises about 20 centimetres by a gentle slope from its
foot end to the other which is half a metre high, the walls of Fig. 256 show
only a slight incline upwards, and that in a straight line. One marked
difference in the latter is the absence of the double groove on the two rims
that forms such a noteworthy feature in Fig. 257. It looks as if it had been
used to keep in position a cross-bar from which, as in a modern bath, had been
hung some object useful to the person seated within it.
Unlike the case of the remarkable bath-room of Mycenae, with its mono-
lithic floor, no sink was here perceptible, and the bath must both have been
filled and emptied by means of hand labour. This in itself argues a plenti-
ful staff of servants at the beck and call of the Minoan lords and ladies.