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)

434

MINIATURE HEAD OF FAIENCE BULL

Faience

head of

bull

found

with

ivories.

The coursing bulls, too, seem to have been represented in concrete
form, though in a more composite manner. With the ivories, and corre-
sponding with the prevalent scale of the figures, there was found the head
of a bull of whitish faience with gold tubes for the insertion of the horns and
blue glass eyes set, apparently, in shell (Fig. 302). The somewhat abraded

V^

Fig. 302. Bull's Head of White Faience with Gold Tubes for Insertion
of Horns and Blue Glass Eyes. Ivory Deposit.

Gold condition of the head made it uncertain whether, as is probable, it had

horns and markings on it as in the case of the faience cow from the Temple Reposi-

giass tories,1 but the preference given to this material, in place of ivory, for the

animal figures is best explained by the convenience it afforded for rendering

the characteristic markings. In any case, this figure presents a remarkable

example of the composite use of materials that played so large a part in

Minoan craftmanship and which attained such extraordinary perfection in

the case of the bull's head ' rhyton ' from the ' Little Palace'2 with its shell

and jasper inlays and the crystal eyes with their scarlet pupil and black iris.

The various concomitants, including not only the suspended acrobats

1 P.ofM., i, p. 511, Fig. 367.

Ibid., ii, Pt. II, p. 527 seqq., and Figs. 330-2.