DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1118#0171
SCHEME LATER TRANSFERRED TO LION 525
Indication of Minoan Origin of the Well-known Type Depicting Lion
leaping on Quarry.
But the evidence before us, illustrating the native origin of the scheme Lion
of the hound leaping on a wild-goat or a deer and bearing it clown with his leilPins
r ..... on quarry
weight has an obvious relation to the better-known design in which the outgrowth
hon is the hunter. genous
This latter motive has from the Classical point of view been traditionally types-
regarded as the very embodiment of Oriental influence. Was not it, too,
rather the artistic creation of Minoan Crete ?
The date of the appearance of the fully evolved scheme under its
purely indigenous aspect of a dog seizing a Cretan agrimi, as indicated
by its occurrence on the flat-sided crystal lentoid, must go back at least to
the lower limits of the Second Middle Minoan Period. In other words it can
hardly be brought clown later than the Eighteenth Century B.C. It is only
at a distinctly later epoch, which can scarcely be earlier than the initial phase
of the Late Minoan Age, that the lion, so generally associated with this
scheme in later Art, first appears in connexion with this scheme.
Early Appearance of the Lion both in Relief and Intaglio in
Connexion with Minoan Seals.
The first entry of the lion on the scene among the sphragistic elements First
of Crete itself goes back well into the Early Minoan Age. It supplies the 5^"}
formJ as well as the subject of ivory seals, being one among' a series of pre- lion on
primitive
dynastic and proto-dynastic elements, the evidence of which has been mostly Cretan
forthcoming from the contents of the primitive tlwlos tombs of the Mesara "^
district.2 So intensive there, indeed,are the Nilotic elements.as to lead almost Nilotic
perforce to the conclusion, developed in an earlier Section of this Work, that, ences.
over and above a still more remote prehistoric connexion between Crete and
As ot xpvo-eoi JoVres 6 /j-lv Xde veftpbv airdy- (a-dyxyiv) the young stag with his fore-paws is
Xm'> obviously an impossible one. Paws and claws
avrap 6 UcfivyieLv /w/tows rjcnraipe TroSeo-o-t. were doubtless used to obtain an additional
As noted, op. at:, p. 2S2, the ascertained hold on the quarry. 1). B. Monro {Odyssey,
archaeological data forbid us to believe that xiii-xxiv, p. 160) noted the difficulty. Here
a fibula thus decorated could have existed in we have not any kind of 'strangling' but the
the transitional Bronze to Iron Age epoch to paralyzing effect of the carnivore's teeth pene-
which the Odyssey in its historic form trating the vertebrae in such a way as to break
apparently belongs. A further correction is the spinal cord,
needed of the description of the group ' See above, p. 4S6, and Fig. 407.
itself. The picture of the hound 'strangling' '■ P. of M., ii, Pt. I, p. 29 seqq.
Indication of Minoan Origin of the Well-known Type Depicting Lion
leaping on Quarry.
But the evidence before us, illustrating the native origin of the scheme Lion
of the hound leaping on a wild-goat or a deer and bearing it clown with his leilPins
r ..... on quarry
weight has an obvious relation to the better-known design in which the outgrowth
hon is the hunter. genous
This latter motive has from the Classical point of view been traditionally types-
regarded as the very embodiment of Oriental influence. Was not it, too,
rather the artistic creation of Minoan Crete ?
The date of the appearance of the fully evolved scheme under its
purely indigenous aspect of a dog seizing a Cretan agrimi, as indicated
by its occurrence on the flat-sided crystal lentoid, must go back at least to
the lower limits of the Second Middle Minoan Period. In other words it can
hardly be brought clown later than the Eighteenth Century B.C. It is only
at a distinctly later epoch, which can scarcely be earlier than the initial phase
of the Late Minoan Age, that the lion, so generally associated with this
scheme in later Art, first appears in connexion with this scheme.
Early Appearance of the Lion both in Relief and Intaglio in
Connexion with Minoan Seals.
The first entry of the lion on the scene among the sphragistic elements First
of Crete itself goes back well into the Early Minoan Age. It supplies the 5^"}
formJ as well as the subject of ivory seals, being one among' a series of pre- lion on
primitive
dynastic and proto-dynastic elements, the evidence of which has been mostly Cretan
forthcoming from the contents of the primitive tlwlos tombs of the Mesara "^
district.2 So intensive there, indeed,are the Nilotic elements.as to lead almost Nilotic
perforce to the conclusion, developed in an earlier Section of this Work, that, ences.
over and above a still more remote prehistoric connexion between Crete and
As ot xpvo-eoi JoVres 6 /j-lv Xde veftpbv airdy- (a-dyxyiv) the young stag with his fore-paws is
Xm'> obviously an impossible one. Paws and claws
avrap 6 UcfivyieLv /w/tows rjcnraipe TroSeo-o-t. were doubtless used to obtain an additional
As noted, op. at:, p. 2S2, the ascertained hold on the quarry. 1). B. Monro {Odyssey,
archaeological data forbid us to believe that xiii-xxiv, p. 160) noted the difficulty. Here
a fibula thus decorated could have existed in we have not any kind of 'strangling' but the
the transitional Bronze to Iron Age epoch to paralyzing effect of the carnivore's teeth pene-
which the Odyssey in its historic form trating the vertebrae in such a way as to break
apparently belongs. A further correction is the spinal cord,
needed of the description of the group ' See above, p. 4S6, and Fig. 407.
itself. The picture of the hound 'strangling' '■ P. of M., ii, Pt. I, p. 29 seqq.