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Archaic finds at Knossos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2013

John Boardman
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Extract

The bronze vase (Heraklion 2460) shown in Plate 2 and Fig. 1 was found in 1936 by workmen digging to lay pipes beside the main road between A. Ioannis and Teke (Knossos Survey no. 10). With it were the black-figure fragments shown in Plate 3 a. The find was briefly noticed in JHS lvi (1936) 150. The late T. J. Dunbabin had intended to publish the pieces but had written a detailed description of the bronze vase only, which I have drawn upon below.

The bowl is 0·216 in diameter and 0·043 high, but the exact curve of the lower part is not certain. The bowl is made in one piece, with a slight inset at the edge. Over this fits the upper part. This is 0·218 in diameter (0·118 the inner diameter); its height from the inner edge is 0·04, from the outer edge 0·02. It carries two cast swing handles. The attachments for them are 0·046 long, smooth inside, and on the outside decorated with three heavy ribs of beading. The ‘scotiae’ between are marked by pairs of lines. The handles themselves are 0·086 wide, circular in section but flattened on the inside and outside, and with two beaded knobs. Between the handles are two gorgoneia: present widths 0·106 and 0·103. The faces are very broad. The eyelids are strongly marked and thicken at the edge, giving the impression that they are rolled back slightly from the staring eyeballs. There is an almost circular depression round the eyes which is only slightly shallower at the corners. The ridge of the eyebrows is very firm and a ridge runs vertically up the forehead like a tall bud. The nose is not, in its upper part, unduly broad; the fleshy part broadens very much at the base, leaving a considerable depression above it, slanting obliquely downwards. The cheek-bones are high, the angles of the jaw-bone very strongly marked and the chin consists of two bony prominences with a depression between.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 57 , November 1962 , pp. 28 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1962

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References

1 Cf. Kirsten, in Charites 10 ff.Google Scholar and Hesp. xxviii (1959) pl. 70 for ‘kothon’ incised on a fifth-century stemless cup.

2 Cf. Payne, , NC 297 f.Google Scholar; Levi, , Arkades 182 fig. 203.Google Scholar The drawing on the ‘Late Geometric’ Corinthian kothon published in Lullies, , Antiken im deutschen Privatbesitz pl. 61. 147Google Scholar, is surely modern.

3 Boardman, , Cretan Collection in Oxford (hereafter CCO) 148 f.Google Scholar

4 As on the bronze handle from Corinth, , NC pl. 46. 3.Google Scholar

5 Contrast Fouilles de Delphes v. 130, fig. 488.

6 Kunze, , AM lx–lxi (1935–1936) 218 ff.Google Scholar; CCO 152.

7 Kunze, op. cit. 219, pl. 84. 8 a–c.

8 The red and white stripes could have been borrowed from Corinth, with the animals. They appear often on Rhodian vases from the late seventh century on, and there are occasional Rhodian essays in seventh-century Corinthian black-figure (a cup of bird-bowl shape, Istanbul 2190; an olpe in Rhodes, , Clara Rhodos vi–vii. 355, fig. 102Google Scholar; the cup from Hyblaea, Megara, MonPiot xlviii (1956) 40f.Google Scholar, figs. 17, 18). There are other seventh-century Rhodian vases in Crete (CCO 152f.), but it is unlikely that anything like our vase would have travelled, and provincial, imitative, styles like this are better attributed to local schools.

9 CCO 144–6; BSA lvi (1961) 78–80.

10 CCO 134–8.

11 Studien zu den griechischen Reliefpithoi ch. i; cf. CCO 113f.

12 Schäfer, pl. 1; CCO pl. 42. 511, 512.

13 Weinberg, , Hesp. xxiii (1954) 112f.Google Scholar Add Radet, , Cybebe 38, fig. 51, from MycenaeGoogle Scholar; BCH lxxviii (1954) 181, fig. 44, from Argos.

14 Cf. Kunze, , Archaische Schildbänder 54–57Google Scholar; Jacobsthal, , Greek Pins 76 ff. with figs. 300–10.Google Scholar

15 Schäfer, 29.

16 Boll. d'Arte 1956, 271, fig. 57.

17 For the patterns of the applied strips cf. Levi, , Arkades 65Google Scholar, fig. 45, 49; 70, fig. 48.

18 For the markings on the neck cf. Schäfer, pl. 5. 2, a later piece. For the whole creature cf. the Oxford plaque and pithos fragment, CCO pls. 39. 500, 40. 501.

19 Schäfer's Stufe III.

20 Cf. one described in Brock, , Fortetsa 99, no. 1146Google Scholar, now missing (? ours).

21 CCO 60 f.

22 Levi, , Arkades 240, fig. 281, pl. 19.Google Scholar

23 CCO pl. 22 top right and p. 62 for a discussion of its origins.