Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/334

 Animal Representation. left with but one possible explanation. The small casket to which our lid belongs must have been fashioned somewhere on the JEgean, and carried by commerce on the banks of the Nile, where the Egyptian who purchased the piece valued it sufficiently to have it buried along with him. If this art has handed down realistic representations of wild animals, dogs did not bring it luck. We should very often be FiC; 405. — Six-footed ikn[mal of baked clay. Two-lhirdii of n<:tii.-il size. sorely puzzled as to his identity, but for the function which he fulfils (Fig, 398). A knife-haft from Menidi shows us perhaps the best specimen of dog -portraiture (Fig. 403). We confess to being surprised to find a pair of animals face to face on a gold ornament, whose head and tail can only belong to cats (Fig. 404). The animal, although known in its wild state, does not appear to have been domesticated in Southern Europe until long after that epoch. Fig. 406.— Gold griffin from Tomb II. The Mycenian artist seems to have had feeble leanings towards winged creatures. We have seen doves hovering around small temple models wherein we have recognized chapels of Aphrodite {Figs, iii, 288, 289). Again, doves are held in the hand of two women figured on the handle of a mirror (Fig. 380) ; whilst a gold ornament shows us a very conventional rendering of two eagles face to face.' On one of the daggers panthers chase wild ducks (PI. XVII.), and a couple of swans • SCHLIEMANN, MyCttta.