ANCILE COMPARED : BAETYLIC FUNCTION

3i5

Fig. 206. a, Minoan 8-shaped Body-shield
showing Elongated Boss, and Spots of Ox-
hide; b, Ancilb with Boss, and Spots remini-
scent of the Hide.

were endued with divine powers of movement, and gave forth a warning-
clangour.1 In certain respects we may find an anthropological equivalent
for them in the Burmese gongs—themselves essentially round bronze
shields with a central boss—the
sounding of which serves to summon
the divinity to answer the prayers
of his worshippers. With the Mi-
noans the sacred shield—whether
or not it was actually beaten—was
clearly used as a means of spiritual
possession. The scenes such as that
on the Vapheio ring, in which the
votary appears in a state of ecstatic
trance, prone on the body-shield,
recalls an illustration in Johann
Scheffer's account of the still heathen Lapps,2 where the Shamanistic sooth-
sayer, after long chanting, accompanied by the pulsation of his troll-drum,
has fallen in the same ecstatic state of possession, face downwards on the
ground ' swooning and like a dead man ', with the instrument over the back
of his head and shoulders.

A widespread decorative application of the Minoan shields appears at Shields
this time in the shape of attachments or prominences on the circumference tjve acj.
of alabaster and metal vases or other utensils.3 juncts.

The appearance of beads in the form of this Minoan shield type, Amuletic
already before the close of the Early Minoan Age,4 as well as on picto- shield
graphic bead-seals of that date,5 may point to an early use of this symbol as
an amulet. A beautiful specimen of a similar bead, which, from its associa-
tions, probably belongs to the closing M. M. Ill phase, was found a little
beneath the later floor on the East border of the ' School Room '. It is of
lapis lazuli, with a perforated prominence behind for attachment, and the face
of the shield is decorated with looped spirals (Fig. 207).

On Minoan intaglios, especially those representing animals such as lions,
bulls, and wild goats, shields of this form are also frequently inserted in
the field. In some cases, moreover, it seems to stand in a sacral relation to

form.

narius of P. Licinius Stolo (12 B.C.), Grueber,
Cat. of Jioman Coins in British Museum, ii,
p. 80 and in, PI. LXVIII, 9.

1 Liv. Eftit. lxviii.

2 Lapponia (Frankfort, 1673), pp. 138, 139.

3 A. E., The Prehisto>ic Tombs of Knossos,
i, p. 44, Fig. 41 (Archaeoiogia, lix), and cf.
above, p. 91, Fig 50 (silver 'rhyton').

4 P. of M., ii, Pt. I, p. 52, Fig. 25, b.

5 Ibid,, Fig. 25, a.