632 ANNUAL EEPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, i9i;j. 



tial correspondence was not largely justified? Take the celebrated 

 design on the signet ring from the fourth shaft graA'e, in which a 

 hero, apparently in defense of a fallen warrior, strikes down his 

 assailant, whose half-retreating comrade, covered behind by a large 

 body shield, aims his spear apparently without effect at the victorious 

 champion. Save that in the case of the protagonist a spear is sub- 

 stituted for a thrusting sword, and that the fallen figure behind the 

 champion is that of a wounded man who still has strength to raise 

 himself on one arm, the scene curiously recalls, even in its details, an 

 episode of the Seventeenth Book of the Iliad. There the Telamonian 

 Ajax, standing before Patroldos's body, strikes down Hippothoos, 

 while Hector behind hurls his spear at Ajax, but just misses his aim. 



Much might be added about these pre-Homeric illustrations of 

 Homer, but I will confine myself here to one more example. In the 

 temple repositories of the Palace of Knossos, dating from about 1600 

 B. C, was found a clay seal impression exhibiting a sea monster with 

 a doglike head rising amidst the waves attacking a boat on which is 

 seen a man beating it off with an oar (fig. 3).^ But this sea monster 

 is a prototype of Skylla, and though her dogs' heads were multiplied 

 by Homer's time, we have here, in the epitomized manner of gem 

 engraving, the essentials of Ulysses's adventure depicted half a mil- 

 lenium, at least, before the age of the Greek epic. It would appear, 

 moreover, that the same episode was made the subject of illustration 

 in larger works of Minoan art, accompanied, we may suppose, with 

 further details. A fragment of a wall painting found at Mycenae 

 shows part of a monster's head in front of a curving object, recalling 

 the stern of the vessel on the seal impression; and Dr. Studniczka 

 has with great probability recognized in this a pictorial version of the 

 same design. 



But, over and above such correspondence in the individual episodes 

 and the detailed acquaintance with the material equipment of Minoan 

 civilization, the Homeric poems themselves show a deep community 

 with the naturalistic spirit that pervades the whole of the best Mi- 

 noan art. It is a commonplace observation that the Homeric similes 

 relating to animals recall the representations on the masterpieces of 

 Minoan art. In both cases we have the faithful record of eyewit- 

 nesses, and when in the Iliad we are presented with a lifelike picture 

 of a lion fastening on to the neck of a steer or roused to fury by a 

 hunter's spear we turn for its most vivid illustration to Minoan gems. 



In the transitional epoch that marks the close of the age of bronze 

 in Greece and the Aegean lands the true art of gem engraving was 

 nonexistent,^ and so, too, in the Homeric poems there is no mention 



1 See my Report, B. S. A., No. IX, p. 58. 



^ Rudely scratched seal stones of early Geometric date exist, but they are of soft 

 materials. 



