Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/384

 Characteristics of Mycenian Sculpture. 331 as well as in the Tirynthian fresco, and on many a glyptic piece (PL XVI. 5 ; Figs. 419, 5. 12, IS. 21 ; 421, I, 7, 23 ; 424, i, 3, 9 ; 425, 2, 4). It is as the personal mark, the signature of the artist. The same remark applies to the character of the costume and head-gear. The leading peculiarities of the dress, whether of man or woman, have already been pointed out ; but there remain details which deserve to be noticed. In Egypt, men and women are always bare-footed. But the personages depicted on the Vaphio vases wear shoes with slightly turned-up tips, fastened above the ankle with strings which go round the leg four or five times. No shoes are visible on the gems, because of the small dimension of these ; but they are plainly indicated in the hunting scene at Tiryns (Fig. 432). The shoes are expressed by a dark brown tone, evanescent bits of which are traceable on one foot, but we know how far they reached by the presence of the dark leather strings. In many parts of the Grecian world very similar shoes, with pointed and turned-up ends, have not long gone out of fashion ; under the name of tsaroukhi they are still worn in Albania.^ Nor should the long flowing hair of the figures be left with- out a word of mention : it sweeps the earth and is tumbled about on the two men overthrown by a bull (Fig. 362) ; whilst the cattle- driver has his fastened by a knot on the nape of the neck, whence it floats in large masses about the shoulders (Fig. 363). In the like fashion does the gem-engraver arrange the hair of his person- ages in those rare instances where he has contrived to insert the head-dress into the narrow field (Fig. 421, i). The epithet which Homer frequently uses in reference to the Achaeans, by way of explanatory note as it were, shows that the heroes wore theirs in some such fashion.^ From the Achseans the mode passed to the lonians, and we have evidence in the archaic statues that the fashion died hard in Greece. There is nothing of the sort in Egypt ; where men shaved their heads and wore a thick bushy wig. Subordinate features, such as the costume and head-gear, are not the only items that help us to recognize in these personages the direct ancestors of the Greeks of history, and not, as some have advanced, aliens, Africans, or ^ See the examples which Tsoundas has collected ('E^iy/xeptV, 1889). 2 Kapi; KTo/idwjTcc 'Axcitoi Helbig, Das Iwmerische Epos.