DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.811#0473
420
STEATITE SPHINX OF HAGIA TRIADA
H.
Triada
Sphinx of
Hittite
type-
Supplies
key to
restora-
tion of
Knossian
head.
a reflection. The side-locks here are due, it may be thought, to the sugges-
tion of the simple coiling lock that distinguishes her child Horus, itself
a survival of very ancient Libyan custom. The portrayal of the Goddess had a
special vogue in the Semitic lands and
a marked instance of this is supplied
by the effigy of Kadesh,1 representing
Astarte on her softer side as a God-
dess of love, who is shown standing
bare-limbed on her lion, holding a
lotus spray in one hand and a snake
in the other. At the same time the
Hittite princes, who required to have
great Sphinxes before their palaces
to match their rivals of the Nile Valley,
created their own artificial monster by
combining the mask of Hathor, show-
ing two curling side-locks, with the
body of a lion. Such are the pair of
Sphinxes the fronts of which, armed
with lions' claws, appear outside the
citadel gate at Eujuk.2
On the discovery by the Italian
Mission, at Hagia Triada, of a com-
plete figure, also in dark steatite, of a r
small wingless Sphinx (Fig. 286), the showing the Side-locks of Hathor. (After
meaning of the objects from the shaft w- Max Muller.)
deposit, previously misunderstood, became clear and the pieces were sub-
sequently fitted together at the Candia Museum as shown in Fig. 288, and
the Suppl. PI. XXXVI. The larger pieces turned out to be two bulging side-
locks, leaving a space for the face, which was perhaps carved in some other
1 See the comparative examples in W. Max
Muller, Asien und Eurofa, pp. 314-15, from
which the representations in Fig. 285 are
taken. He compares certain facing heads
of Hathor. The type recurs on a sepulchral
stela of Hadrumetum (Perrot et Chipiez, iii,
p. 451, Fig. 347), where the Goddess, here
Tank, holds the sun and moon, and on Cy-
priote stelae. On this Hathor type see also
A. C. Merriam, American Journal of Archaeo-
logy, i (1885), pp. 159, 160 : The arrangement
of the hair on the sphinxes of Eujuk. This
facing Hathor type also appears in the field of
a cylinder (Lajard, Culte de Mithra, PI. 27, 5).
2 Eduard Meyer, Reich und Kultur der
Chetiter, p. 26, further points out that the
folded cloth head-gear of the Egyptian male
Sphinxes has also left its traces in the Hittite
type.
STEATITE SPHINX OF HAGIA TRIADA
H.
Triada
Sphinx of
Hittite
type-
Supplies
key to
restora-
tion of
Knossian
head.
a reflection. The side-locks here are due, it may be thought, to the sugges-
tion of the simple coiling lock that distinguishes her child Horus, itself
a survival of very ancient Libyan custom. The portrayal of the Goddess had a
special vogue in the Semitic lands and
a marked instance of this is supplied
by the effigy of Kadesh,1 representing
Astarte on her softer side as a God-
dess of love, who is shown standing
bare-limbed on her lion, holding a
lotus spray in one hand and a snake
in the other. At the same time the
Hittite princes, who required to have
great Sphinxes before their palaces
to match their rivals of the Nile Valley,
created their own artificial monster by
combining the mask of Hathor, show-
ing two curling side-locks, with the
body of a lion. Such are the pair of
Sphinxes the fronts of which, armed
with lions' claws, appear outside the
citadel gate at Eujuk.2
On the discovery by the Italian
Mission, at Hagia Triada, of a com-
plete figure, also in dark steatite, of a r
small wingless Sphinx (Fig. 286), the showing the Side-locks of Hathor. (After
meaning of the objects from the shaft w- Max Muller.)
deposit, previously misunderstood, became clear and the pieces were sub-
sequently fitted together at the Candia Museum as shown in Fig. 288, and
the Suppl. PI. XXXVI. The larger pieces turned out to be two bulging side-
locks, leaving a space for the face, which was perhaps carved in some other
1 See the comparative examples in W. Max
Muller, Asien und Eurofa, pp. 314-15, from
which the representations in Fig. 285 are
taken. He compares certain facing heads
of Hathor. The type recurs on a sepulchral
stela of Hadrumetum (Perrot et Chipiez, iii,
p. 451, Fig. 347), where the Goddess, here
Tank, holds the sun and moon, and on Cy-
priote stelae. On this Hathor type see also
A. C. Merriam, American Journal of Archaeo-
logy, i (1885), pp. 159, 160 : The arrangement
of the hair on the sphinxes of Eujuk. This
facing Hathor type also appears in the field of
a cylinder (Lajard, Culte de Mithra, PI. 27, 5).
2 Eduard Meyer, Reich und Kultur der
Chetiter, p. 26, further points out that the
folded cloth head-gear of the Egyptian male
Sphinxes has also left its traces in the Hittite
type.