Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/339

 286 Pk[mit[ve Greece: Mycenian Art. the gentle sex than the sterner one. The head has lost the " imperial," which in Egypt indicated that the visage so adorned was intended for the king's likeness. There is a peculiar detail about the Mycenian sphinx which distinguishes it from that of Anterior Asia ; his head is covered with a low tiara or cap, from the middle of which rises a kind of tuft or tail, brushed back by the wind. This quaint appendage occurs in every instance where the attitude of the animal allows it to be visible, and it returns on engraved stones. As the art of the following age will drop it out of sight, we are a little surprised to find the detail on a fragment of pottery, where it adorns a winged personage. The chip in question is from Troy. Taking into Kio. 412.— Gold hippocampus. Actual siic. Tomb III. consideration the character of the design and the feeble depth below the surface at which it was found, we cannot place it much further back than the seventh century b.c' Then, too, the hippocampus or sea-horse, terminating in the scaly tail of a fish (Fig. 412), crops up in the series of stamped gold leaves from Mycenae, The type does not seem to have been as popular or so well thought of as that of griffins and sphinxes, or as it will become with the decorators of the classic age. The latter animals may have been indebted to their foreign origin, which gave them an uncommon and superior air, for their rapid and enduring success. Hence it is that they outlived other fictitious types composed in the same spirit, and which glyptic art will bring to our knowledge. 1 SCHLIEMANN, IliuS.