Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/218

 Idols. 175 figure, the forms of plants and flowers, which he used as symbols or as purely decorative elements, be it on his weapons, furniture, or trinkets. By dint of repetition the treatment of certain forms became thoroughly conventional towards the end of this period. Although the collections of ancient objects are increasing from year to year, their number is sufficiently large even now, and differences of workmanship are sufficiently distinct, to enable the historian to mark the evolution of Mycenian sculpture throughout its existence, and define the peculiar features which single out this art from that of Egypt, Chaldaea, and Assyria, or the Greek art of the classic age. Idols. The series we are endeavouring to re-constitute opens with a certain class of small figures almost all of marble or terra-cotta, which can only have been idols ; ^ among these specimens some are of lead or bronze. They come from nearly every part of the Mediterranean where the Hellenic race, in historical times, may be said to have reigned supreme. By far the largest number of marble idols is from the islands, notably those lying close to Naxos, south-east of the Cyclades ; some, too, are met with in Crete, Euboea, and Chios ; ^ but they are exceedingly rare on the mainland ; the single specimen that has come from Delphi is of Paros marble, and must therefore have been carried thither from one or other of the islands where marble is found (Fig. 321).^ On the other hand, statuettes are everywhere brought out of sepulchres, whether in the isles, at Troy, Nauplia, Tiryns, is almost always a coarse-grained white marble from Paros and Naxos. The British Museum has a statuette from Carpathos of black limestone. 2 Revue archioiogiqiie, 1888; Athenische Mittheilungen, of Pentelic marble was picked up on the southern declivity of the acropolis. VValpoIe also published a statuette of the same nature, held to have come from a grave in Attica ; but the marble of which it is made is not specified. On the sites which have yielded an abundant supply of marble idols, see Dummler.
 * Marble and trachyte are met with at Troy. The material of the island idols
 * Athenische Mittheilungen^ 1891. Nevertheless, a bit of a very similar figure