626 ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



sacred vessels in a chamber adjoining the central shrine of Knossos. 

 It clearly proves that at Delphi, too, the religion of the spot goes 

 back to Minoan times and stands in close connection with a Cretan 

 settlement. 



How profoundly the traditions of Minoan and Mycenaean religion 

 influenced the early cult of Greece has been nowhere illustrated more 

 clearly than by the excavations of the British school at Sparta. A 

 whole series of the types of ivory figurines there found are simph'- 

 derivatives of the scheme of the Minoan goddess with her associated 

 birds and animals. It was the same in Ionia. The Ephesian Arte- 

 mis has the same associations as the lion goddess of Knossos, and 

 among the jewels found by Mr. Hogarth in the Temple Treasure 

 occur miniature representations of her double axe. 



I will venture to point out another feature which the advanced 

 religious art of Greece inherited from Minoan prototypes, such as 

 those which influenced the Spartan ivories. The lions' gate scheme, 

 appropriate to its position in a tympanum, is only one of a series 

 of Late Minoan schemes of the same kind in which the central fig- 

 ure — either the divinity itself or (as in the above case) a sacred col- 

 umn, which as the pillar of the house, stands as the epitome of the 

 temple — is set between two heraldically opposed animals. 



Seal impressions from the palace shrine of Knossos show the 

 Minoan goddess in this guise standing on her peak between her lion 

 supporters. The same idea is carried out in a variety of ways on 

 Minoan gems and signets. 



The Mycenaean element in Doric architecture itself is generally 

 recognized, but I do not think that it has been realized that even the 

 primitive arrangement of the pediment sculptures goes back to a pre- 

 historic model. That the gabled or pedimental front was itself 

 known in Minoan tunes may be gathered from the designs of build- 

 ings on some intaglios of that date acquired by me in Crete (fig. 1 

 a, b).^ "When we realize that the pediment is in fact the functional 

 equivalent of the tympanum on a larger scale, it is natural that an ar- 

 rangement of sculpture appropriate to the one should have been 

 adapted to the other. 



In recently examining the remains of the pedimental sculptures 

 from the earlj'^ temple excavated by Dr. Dorpfeld at Palaeopolis in 

 Corfti, wliich have now been arranged by him in the local musemn 

 (fig. 2),- the observation was forced upon me that the essential fea- 

 tures of the whole scheme were simply those of the Mycenaean tym- 

 panum. The central divinity is here represented by the Gorgon, but 

 on either side are the animal guardians, in this case apparently pards, 



iThe gem fig. la is from Central Crete (steatite), lb is from Siteia (cornelian). 

 ^^ Fig. 2 is taken from a diagrammatic sketch kindly supplied me by Mr. J. D. Bourchier, 

 which accompanied his account of these discoveries in the Times. 



