DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1118#0064
420 KNOSSIAN RELATION OF VAPHEIO PRINCE
Intimate
relation
with
Knossos
of
princely
owner of
Yapheio
seals.
' marine ' style—of typically Cretan evolution and certainly of contempon
work—which was subsequently reconstituted from fragments,1 must hiv
stood on the floor of the chamber.
The ceramic associations of the Vapheio interment; as illustrated
by the painted clay goblets and the splendid ' marine ' style amphora thus
point to the first quarter of the Fifteenth Century before our era. The
chariot itself is of the earlier class, without the bowed appendage behind2
that is universal on the Knossian tablets with the linear Script B, belong-in?
to the last Palatial epoch (L. M. II).
Reference has already been made to the remarkable fact that, though
by now, seven different specimens of seal-stones have come to light pre-
senting long-robed personages of the class above described, their provenance
is confined to the Palace Site of Knossos or its neighbourhood, and to the
Vapheio Tomb. To these, indeed, may be probably added a lentoid gem
from a chamber tomb of Mycenae on which a figure, with a long robe less
clearly defined, seems to be performing" the function of a haruspex on the
body of a fat boar, set on a table.3
At Knossos we have seen that the long-robed ceremonial garb is,
so to speak, at home, and was shared by the figures of the ' Camp-Stool
Frescoes', ex hypothesi belonging to some kind of Sacral College connected
with the 'North-West Sanctuary Hall'. In the case of those from the
Vapheio Tomb, like the axe found with them, they must in all probability
be regarded as the peculium of some local vicegerent of the Knossian
Priest-kings, ruling in a Mainland region that stood—as Argos and perhaps
Mycenae seem to have done at a somewhat later date—in a close political
connexion with the great Cretan centre.
If, as the ceramic evidence shows, the actual interment of the prince
for whom this great monument was erected took place at a date but little
later than 1500 B.C., the earlier part of his career might go back we
within the limits of the mature phase of L. M. I a, which corresponds with
the stage of thoroughgoing Minoan occupation on the Mainland side.
It was, in truth, a royal tomb, and nothing, certainly, among the go
hoards of Mycenae itself, can vie as an artistic composition with the
gold cups presenting repoussee groups of bull-catching scenes standing-^'
demonstrated in the preceding Volume of this work—in an intimate rela
1 Bosanquet, Some Late Minoan Vases found
in Greece, J. H. S., xxiv (19041, pp. 31S-20,
and PI. XI.
2 See my observations on the Thisbe bead-
seal, Ring of Nestor, ^c, p.
1 See below, p. 573 and Fi;
"E0. 'APX. iSSS, p. 179 (No. 36), descr
figure as a woman sacrificing
1 seqq-
550. Tsountas,
ibes the
Intimate
relation
with
Knossos
of
princely
owner of
Yapheio
seals.
' marine ' style—of typically Cretan evolution and certainly of contempon
work—which was subsequently reconstituted from fragments,1 must hiv
stood on the floor of the chamber.
The ceramic associations of the Vapheio interment; as illustrated
by the painted clay goblets and the splendid ' marine ' style amphora thus
point to the first quarter of the Fifteenth Century before our era. The
chariot itself is of the earlier class, without the bowed appendage behind2
that is universal on the Knossian tablets with the linear Script B, belong-in?
to the last Palatial epoch (L. M. II).
Reference has already been made to the remarkable fact that, though
by now, seven different specimens of seal-stones have come to light pre-
senting long-robed personages of the class above described, their provenance
is confined to the Palace Site of Knossos or its neighbourhood, and to the
Vapheio Tomb. To these, indeed, may be probably added a lentoid gem
from a chamber tomb of Mycenae on which a figure, with a long robe less
clearly defined, seems to be performing" the function of a haruspex on the
body of a fat boar, set on a table.3
At Knossos we have seen that the long-robed ceremonial garb is,
so to speak, at home, and was shared by the figures of the ' Camp-Stool
Frescoes', ex hypothesi belonging to some kind of Sacral College connected
with the 'North-West Sanctuary Hall'. In the case of those from the
Vapheio Tomb, like the axe found with them, they must in all probability
be regarded as the peculium of some local vicegerent of the Knossian
Priest-kings, ruling in a Mainland region that stood—as Argos and perhaps
Mycenae seem to have done at a somewhat later date—in a close political
connexion with the great Cretan centre.
If, as the ceramic evidence shows, the actual interment of the prince
for whom this great monument was erected took place at a date but little
later than 1500 B.C., the earlier part of his career might go back we
within the limits of the mature phase of L. M. I a, which corresponds with
the stage of thoroughgoing Minoan occupation on the Mainland side.
It was, in truth, a royal tomb, and nothing, certainly, among the go
hoards of Mycenae itself, can vie as an artistic composition with the
gold cups presenting repoussee groups of bull-catching scenes standing-^'
demonstrated in the preceding Volume of this work—in an intimate rela
1 Bosanquet, Some Late Minoan Vases found
in Greece, J. H. S., xxiv (19041, pp. 31S-20,
and PI. XI.
2 See my observations on the Thisbe bead-
seal, Ring of Nestor, ^c, p.
1 See below, p. 573 and Fi;
"E0. 'APX. iSSS, p. 179 (No. 36), descr
figure as a woman sacrificing
1 seqq-
550. Tsountas,
ibes the