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 4,1): Emergence of outer western enceinte, with new illustrations, artistic and religious, of the Middle Minoan Phase (London, 1935)

'BARNACLE WORK'

mould-
ings of
M. M.
III.

creatures that characterize the advanced M. M. Ill stage. These are best
represented by the reliefs on a remarkable clay basin that occurred in the
first discovered 'Kouloura' (i), full-sized drawings of which are here re-

Fig. 67. Part of M. I a Bowl with
' Barnacle Work ': Buff Ground with
Ruddy Streaks. (\)

Fig. 08. M. M. I Cup with
'Barnacle Work'.

Minoan

fondness
for gro-
tesque
natural
designs.

produced for comparison (Fig. 69, a-li)} The naturalistic barnacles above
at once reveal the source of the bizarre reliefs of Figs. 67, 68. Besides the
very realistic pec ten shell Fig. 69,/, which with its baked clay core might
be taken for a geological specimen, the little crabs cast after death, and
the limpet beside one of these, Fig. 69, g, the principal source of this
marine ornament as here seen, Fig. 69, a-e, is to be found in the barnacle
growth on rocks, or on the hard shell of certain sea creatures.

To the grotesquely moulded surfaces that already appear on M. M. I a
pottery we may well apply the general name of ' barnacle work'. That it
should already have had such a-vogue in Crete at a date so early as the close
of the Third Millennium before our era is a singular evidence of the Minoan
taste for bizarre natural forms—otherwise displayed at a slightly later date
by the reproduction of rocks and grottoes. No similar artistic vein is
traceable either in Chaldaea or the Nile Valley, and it was quite foreign to
the early Greeks. We seem to be nearer to the fantasy of the Far East.

See P. of M., i, pp. 521, 522, and Fig. 3S0.