The Gloiv Spreads West 51 



balanced by the vitamin content of the livers and if, therefore, the 

 whole procedure was not a forerunner of our modern fish-liver-oil 

 industry. 



It appears that the barbarian tribes living on the coasts of the Black 

 Sea maintained a regular and extensive dolphin-fishing industry even 

 prior to 3000 b.c, and this was known to those bold peninsular- 

 insular mariners, the Cretans. The fishermen of the Aegean islands 

 also netted dolphins and hunted them with tridents to which lines 

 were sometimes attached so that the practice became, in one respect, 

 a minor whaling enterprise. In other areas, however, the dolphin was 

 most sacred and was not allowed to be molested. It early became a 

 prominent figure in the folklore and mythology of the Aegean, and 

 even in the pantheon of the Minoans, for it is represented on seals, 

 pottery, gems, and many other artifacts from the earliest times of 

 Cretan and Mycenaean civilization. 



Altogether, the Minoans delighted in the dolphin and some of the 

 most exquisite paintings of it have been found on the walls of what 

 is known as the Queen's Megaton in the palace of Cnossos in Crete. 

 These dophins are quite realistic and are shown frolicking upon a 

 pale-blue background with the sea indicated by wavy lines. They 

 appear also in rather cruder form, again painted on a pale-blue back- 

 ground, on the floors of the Great Megaton Palace at Tiryns in as- 

 sociation with some very realistic representations of octopus and 

 other shellfish. They also appear on burial jars, and in some early 

 Mycenaean shaft-graves in southern Greece ostrich eggs with plaster 

 dolphins appliqued on their surfaces have been found. These eggs 

 had a religious significance, representing birth and future Hfe, while 

 the dolphins represented the termination of life, for these animals 

 were believed to carry away the spirits of the dead. The dolphin's 

 connection with the cult of the dead is lost in the mists of antiquity 

 but in the Aegean area it early became associated with the Dionysus 

 legend. 



The earHest representations of the dolphin in the art of the eastern 

 Mediterranean are not always easily recognizable because the artists 

 regarded the animal as a fish and appear to have muddled it with the 

 tunny. Also, they drew from memory rather than from the animal 

 itself, and they had great difficulty with the perspective of the hori- 

 zontal tail. They were often doubtful as to the animal's exact appear- 



