DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0309
THE ISLANDS IN ART
257
terra-cotta vases, for the most part bearing
incised ornaments, which testify to a stage
of development between the primitive Tro-
jan pottery and the unglazed polychromes of
Mycenae. But the peculiar characteristic of
these graves is the presence of rude marble
statuettes representing, as a rule, a nude
woman with the arms folded upon the breast.
Figures of the same kind have been found
elsewhere in Greece, — at Athens, Eleusis,
Delphi and Sparta, — but never more than
one or two in either place, whereas in the Cy-
clades they occur in great numbers. The ex-
ample here published (Fig. 132) is unusually
large, being nearly five feet high, while ordi-
narily they do not measure more than a foot.1
These rude idols, together with arms and
pottery belonging to the same low stage of
culture, are sometimes ascribed to
. ~ . . _ . ascribed to
the Carians, sometimes to the Lele- Carians or
Leleges
ges^that mysterious race now
represented as merely the double of the Cari-
ans,2 now as a distinct people, dividing with
1 A remarkable series of these idols, nine in number, and all of Parian mar-
ble, found in a pre-Mycenaean deposit at Phaestos in Crete, with two more
from Siteia, in the same island, are published by A. J. Evans (Primitive Picto-
graphs, 124-135). He lays stress, as does Salomon rteinaeb, on "the parallel-
ism presented by the Trojan and Aegean forms of primitive images with those
of Spain, the Danubian regions ami the Amber Coast of the Baltic," and infers
from their frequent occurrence in graves that "they had some connection with
ideas relating to the Nether World."
2 So Ernst Curtius, following Herodotus who describes the Carians as
immigrants from the islands, where they had borne the name of Leleges;
although he admits that this is only the Cretan version of the matter,
whereas the Carians claimed to be autochthons of the Asiatic Mainland and
never to have borne any other name. And the distinction is as old as Homer
Fig. 132. Marble
Statuette from
257
terra-cotta vases, for the most part bearing
incised ornaments, which testify to a stage
of development between the primitive Tro-
jan pottery and the unglazed polychromes of
Mycenae. But the peculiar characteristic of
these graves is the presence of rude marble
statuettes representing, as a rule, a nude
woman with the arms folded upon the breast.
Figures of the same kind have been found
elsewhere in Greece, — at Athens, Eleusis,
Delphi and Sparta, — but never more than
one or two in either place, whereas in the Cy-
clades they occur in great numbers. The ex-
ample here published (Fig. 132) is unusually
large, being nearly five feet high, while ordi-
narily they do not measure more than a foot.1
These rude idols, together with arms and
pottery belonging to the same low stage of
culture, are sometimes ascribed to
. ~ . . _ . ascribed to
the Carians, sometimes to the Lele- Carians or
Leleges
ges^that mysterious race now
represented as merely the double of the Cari-
ans,2 now as a distinct people, dividing with
1 A remarkable series of these idols, nine in number, and all of Parian mar-
ble, found in a pre-Mycenaean deposit at Phaestos in Crete, with two more
from Siteia, in the same island, are published by A. J. Evans (Primitive Picto-
graphs, 124-135). He lays stress, as does Salomon rteinaeb, on "the parallel-
ism presented by the Trojan and Aegean forms of primitive images with those
of Spain, the Danubian regions ami the Amber Coast of the Baltic," and infers
from their frequent occurrence in graves that "they had some connection with
ideas relating to the Nether World."
2 So Ernst Curtius, following Herodotus who describes the Carians as
immigrants from the islands, where they had borne the name of Leleges;
although he admits that this is only the Cretan version of the matter,
whereas the Carians claimed to be autochthons of the Asiatic Mainland and
never to have borne any other name. And the distinction is as old as Homer
Fig. 132. Marble
Statuette from