432 THE PALACE OF MIN<JS. 



to light two large fragments of what proved to be the upper part of a 

 youth bearing a gold-mounted silver cup (fig. 6). The robe is deco- 

 rated with a beautiful quarterfoil pattern; a silver ornament appears 

 in front of the ear, and silver rings on the arms and neck. What is 

 specially interesting among the ornaments is an agate gem on the left 

 wrist, thus illustrating the manner of wearing the beautifulh' engraved 

 signets of which many clay impressions were found in the palace. 



The colors were almost as brilliant as when laid down over three 

 thousand years before. For the first time the true portraiture of a 

 man of this mysterious Mycemean race rises before us. The flesh 

 tint, following perhaps an Egyptian precedent, is of a deep reddish 

 brown. The limbs are finely molded, though the waist, as usual in 

 Mycemean fashions, is tightly drawn in by a silver-mounted girdle, 

 giving great relief to the hips. The profile of the face is pure and 

 almost classically Greek. This, with the dark curly hair and high 

 brachycephalic head, recalls an indigenous type well represented still 

 in the glens of Ida and the White Mountains — a type which brings 

 with it many reminiscences from the Albanian highlands and the 

 neighboring regions of Montenegro and Herzegovina. The lips are 

 somewhat full, but the physiognomy has certainly no Semetic cast. 

 The profile rendering of the eye shows an advance in human portrait- 

 ure foreign to Egyptian art, and only achieved by the artists of clas- 

 sical Greece in the early tine-art period of the fifth century B. C— 

 after some eight centuries, that is, of barbaric decadence and slow 

 revival. 



There was something very impressive in this vision of brilliant 

 youth and of male beauty, recalled after so long an interval to our 

 upper air from what had been till yesterday a forgotten world. Even 

 our untutored Cretan workmen felt the spell and fascination. They, 

 indeed, regarded the discovery of such a painting in the bosom of the 

 earth as nothing less than miraculous, and saw in it the '"icon"' of a 

 saint. The removal of the fresco required a delicate and laborious 

 process of underplastering, which necessitated its being watched at 

 night, and old Manolis, one of the most trustworthy of our gang, was 

 told off for the purpose. Somehow or other he fell asleep, but the 

 wrathful saint appeared to him in a dream; waking with a start, he 

 was conscious of a mysterious presence; the animals round began to 

 low and neigh and "there were visions about;" " (JxxvtocCsi" he said, 

 in summing up his experiences next morning, "the whole place 

 spooks !" 



To the north of the palace, in some rooms that seem to have 

 belonged to the women's quarter, frescoes were found in an entirely 

 novel miniature style. Here were ladies with w 7 hite complexions — 

 due, we may fancy, to the seclusion of harem life — decolletes, but with 

 fashionable puffed sleeves and flounced gowns, and their hair as elab- 

 orately cuiled and frise as if the}^ were fresh from a coiffeur's hands. 



