398 



NATURE 



[March 21, 1878 



clearly attest the connection between the two places are the 

 golden diadems (p. 1 86 " Mycen^ ") found on the heads of 

 the bodies in the tombs. These consist of pointed oval 

 plates of gold, sometimes highly ornamented and having 

 at the points, small holes by which they were fastened 

 round the head with a wire. The position of the graves 

 in which similar diadems to these were found at Idalium 

 in Cyprus proves distinctly that they were more recent 

 than the graves of the Phoenician period which lay 

 beneath them. Similar forms of golden diadems from 

 Kouyunjik are in the British Museum. The golden diadems 

 found at Idalium are shown by these associated remains 

 to belong to a more advanced period of art than the 

 larger and more massive ones discovered in the royal 

 tombs in the Agora at Mycenee, the former being probably 

 of the Greco-Roman age. Nevertheless the identity of 

 the forms ought not to escape attention when considering 

 the relative antiquity of the finds ; they were, as Dr. 

 Schliemann truly remarks (p. 189), in very extensive use 

 in early times, and an investigation into the origin of 

 these peculiar brow ornaments will without doubt have 

 an important bearing on the period of the interments 

 with which they are associated. It is to be regretted 

 that General Cesnola, although he mentions the finding 

 of these diadems in p. 75 of his work gives no illustration 

 of them, but a number of them were sold at Sotheby's 

 some years ago, and the remarks here made are based 

 upon observations made at the time of the sale. 



Turning now to Hissarlik our attention is naturally 

 drawn in the first place to the so-called owl- faced vases 

 which form so large a proportion of the antiquities dis- 

 covered by Dr. Schliemann there. No subject has been 

 more frequently applied to the ornamentation of funereal 

 and other vases than the representation of a human face, 

 as examples of which we may call to mind the rude jars 

 representing Besa or Typhon in the Egyptian depart- 

 ment of the British Museum, or our own Bellarmin jugs 

 of the sixteenth century. Such representations are usually 

 at first realistic, and expressive of the best endeavour of 

 the designer, but in process of time the forms suffer de- 

 gradation in the hands of inexpert or hasty workmen ; the 

 transmutation of form observable on British coins affords 

 a well-known illustration of the gradual changes produced 

 by means of imperfect copies, and similar degradation is 

 often seen in the tribal and other ornaments and badges 

 of modern savages. On the pottery found in the Peru- 

 vian graves a human face is of frequent occurrence. 

 Some of these figures of faces are equal to the best pro- 

 ductions of Cyprus or Mycenaa, whilst in others the 

 features are so much dwarfed and distorted that little 

 more than a line for the eyebrows and another for the 

 nose remains to denote the intention of the potter, the 

 other features having disappeared in those examples in 

 which nothing more than a rude symbolism has been 

 aimed at. An examination of the large collection of 

 vases from Hissarlik, now exhibited by Dr. Schliemann 

 at South Kensington is sufficient to show that this has 

 been the true history of the yXav/ccoTrtp, or " owl-faced 

 Goddess Minerva." In some of these vases all the 

 features of the human face are present ; in others some 

 of them disappear or become conventionalised; the 

 mouth is no longer represented, and the nose shrinks into 

 a small beak-like projection beneath the eyebrows. Yet 



if the form of it is looked at carefully, it will be seen that 

 it is still a nose, and in no case has it been the intention 

 of the potter to represent a beak ; its position is never 

 that of an owl's beak beneath the line of the eyes. The 

 eye of an owl is surrounded on all sides by a complete 

 disc of feathers, but in no single instance has the lower 

 and inner side of such a disc been represented on these 

 vases ; even in the most degraded examples the line 

 which sweeps round the upper and outer portions of the 

 eye is still seen to be an eyebrow, which is a feature that 

 is entirely wanting in an owl. In many cases the ear 

 has been retained, where the mouth has disappeared, 

 and the ear is still distinctly human. It may be 

 safely said that there is no example in the whole 

 collection at South Kensington in which the form of 

 an owl's face has been intentionally represented. 

 In like manner the long upright projections on the 

 sides of some of the vases, which, when associated 

 with the symbolic features above spoken of, have been 

 said to represent the wings of an owl, can be shown by a 

 selected series to be nothing more than the handles of the 

 pots developed and adapted to use in another form. 

 Other handles, of which most of the pots are provided 

 with three or four, have been dwarfed so as to dwindle into a 

 mere reminiscence, marked by slightly raised lines on the 

 sides of the vessels. Similar developments of handles may 

 be seen in the specimens of terra-cotta lamps exhibited by 

 the Palestine exploration committee at South Kensington. 

 Then again, the small flat stone objects figured in page 36 

 of Dr. Schliemann's book, " Troy and its Remains," and 

 supposed by him to be Athena idols, are clearly nothing 

 more than symbolic vases. The lines denoting the face on 

 these stone objects represent the face on the vases, the 

 head, neck, and body of the vase and the horizontal 

 lines across the neck marking the separation between 

 the cover and body of the vase are all shown on these 

 miniature models, which correspond to the stone models 

 of vases which at a later period replaced those previously 

 employed in Egyptian tombs, and it was no doubt by 

 means of some such symbolism that these model vases at 

 Hissarlik came to be introduced. 



The peculiar ''crown-shaped" covers found by Dr. 

 Schliemann at Hissarlik, and figured at page 25, are of 

 interest, and serve by their form to fix the position of the 

 Hissarlik antiquities in point of sequence. These crown- 

 like lids are survivals of the neck and handles of earlier 

 forms whose history is to be traced in other parts of the 

 Levant. The form of vase with two handles, one on either 

 side joining the mouth and body of the vessel, of which 

 a good example is represented on page 102 of General 

 Cesnola's work, appears to have given rise to a shape 

 with a closed or dummy neck, in which the form of the 

 neck and handles are retained, but the real opening is in 

 a funnel-shaped mouth adjoining the dummy neck. Dr. 

 Schliemann found specimens of these altered vases in the 

 tumulus at Sparta and also at Mycenee. An illustration of 

 one from the latter place is given at page 64 of his work 

 on Mycenae. They are common in Rhodes, examples of 

 which may be seen in specimens from lalysos, in the 

 British Museum. They are also found in Attica, Cyprus, 

 and in Egyptian tombs. The "crown-shaped" covers 

 found at Hissarlik represent a further degradation of 

 this form in which the neck has disappeared, the mouth 



