DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1117#0081
42
SACRIFICIAL TABLE IN FUNERAL SCENE
The Cretan source of this type is indicated by the occurrence of a
cornelian bead-seal, defective above, but of a substantially identical type
(Fig. 25) from the neighbourhood of the important Minoan settlement at
Arkhanes,1 a few miles inland from Knossos. In this case the horns curve
characteristically forward, in contrast to the misleading upright direction
of the other, which indeed had suggested the sabre-horned antelope, of
Central Africa.- Here, too, the tongue protrudes- and the animal is
depicted with crouched legs on a broad base with three supports, roughly
suggestive of those in the other design. A fourth example, also Cretan,
is supplied by a green steatite lentoid in the Museum at Candia, showing
the sacrificed animal on a similar table (Fig. 26).3 Beneath it appears a
horned head, and—stuck, apparently, into its left support—what is possibly
intended for the sacrificial dagger used, resembling that on the Thisbe
seal (Fig. 23).
A variant of this subject occurs on a fresco of the Hagia Triada Sarco-
phagus, where a young bull with the head facing is seen bound up on
a kind of thick table which has high legs turned in such a manner as to
resemble columnar shafts with disproportionately high capitals. Their
architectonic details, as already noted,- help to explain the form of the
supports seen in Figs. 24-6. The composition to which the table and
victim belongs, a completed drawing of which is reproduced in Fig. 27,
forms a complete ritual scene. Two goats, also intended as offerings, are
crouched below the table; behind it appear a female votary, holding her
hands downwards, and a youth playing the double flute.4
Of the sacrificed animal itself an essential feature is the blood pouring
down from the mortal wound—which we know to be in the back of the
neck—into a libation vessel below. The recipient of this shows the same
outline and banded decoration as that used in the companion scene to pour
the blood of the victims into a larger vessel, supported between two-stepped
stands of the sacred Double Axes. Upon these are settled the bird
messengers of heaven that indicate the divine possession.
In the scene with which we are immediately concerned another female
1 Acquired with some other gems from
that locality by a dealer in Athens, in company
with unquestionably Cretan types.
- Oryx kucoryx; identified with this by
Otto Keller in Tier mid Pfianzcnbiider, loc. cit.
3 This head-seal has been published by
Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, p. 195,
Fig. 62 and PI. I, 6. He rightly insists on the
fact that the sacrificial instrument was a
dagger and not an axe. If the suggestion that
the object beneath the table on the Candia gem
was a dagger is right, it affords a new corrobora-
tion to the character of the instrument used.
' See on this P. of A/., iii, p. 39 where
a further illustration of this part of the scene
is given in Fig. 2-1.
SACRIFICIAL TABLE IN FUNERAL SCENE
The Cretan source of this type is indicated by the occurrence of a
cornelian bead-seal, defective above, but of a substantially identical type
(Fig. 25) from the neighbourhood of the important Minoan settlement at
Arkhanes,1 a few miles inland from Knossos. In this case the horns curve
characteristically forward, in contrast to the misleading upright direction
of the other, which indeed had suggested the sabre-horned antelope, of
Central Africa.- Here, too, the tongue protrudes- and the animal is
depicted with crouched legs on a broad base with three supports, roughly
suggestive of those in the other design. A fourth example, also Cretan,
is supplied by a green steatite lentoid in the Museum at Candia, showing
the sacrificed animal on a similar table (Fig. 26).3 Beneath it appears a
horned head, and—stuck, apparently, into its left support—what is possibly
intended for the sacrificial dagger used, resembling that on the Thisbe
seal (Fig. 23).
A variant of this subject occurs on a fresco of the Hagia Triada Sarco-
phagus, where a young bull with the head facing is seen bound up on
a kind of thick table which has high legs turned in such a manner as to
resemble columnar shafts with disproportionately high capitals. Their
architectonic details, as already noted,- help to explain the form of the
supports seen in Figs. 24-6. The composition to which the table and
victim belongs, a completed drawing of which is reproduced in Fig. 27,
forms a complete ritual scene. Two goats, also intended as offerings, are
crouched below the table; behind it appear a female votary, holding her
hands downwards, and a youth playing the double flute.4
Of the sacrificed animal itself an essential feature is the blood pouring
down from the mortal wound—which we know to be in the back of the
neck—into a libation vessel below. The recipient of this shows the same
outline and banded decoration as that used in the companion scene to pour
the blood of the victims into a larger vessel, supported between two-stepped
stands of the sacred Double Axes. Upon these are settled the bird
messengers of heaven that indicate the divine possession.
In the scene with which we are immediately concerned another female
1 Acquired with some other gems from
that locality by a dealer in Athens, in company
with unquestionably Cretan types.
- Oryx kucoryx; identified with this by
Otto Keller in Tier mid Pfianzcnbiider, loc. cit.
3 This head-seal has been published by
Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, p. 195,
Fig. 62 and PI. I, 6. He rightly insists on the
fact that the sacrificial instrument was a
dagger and not an axe. If the suggestion that
the object beneath the table on the Candia gem
was a dagger is right, it affords a new corrobora-
tion to the character of the instrument used.
' See on this P. of A/., iii, p. 39 where
a further illustration of this part of the scene
is given in Fig. 2-1.