The next development took place in the second Middle Minoan period (M.M.II). Relief was then introduced, which created an effect of light and shade on the black varnish. Mere blobs of colour, which constituted the original form of relief, soon developed into raised lumps and horns (the so-called “Barbotine” ware). Middle Minoan “Kamares” (so called because the first specimens were found by Professor Myres in a cave on the slope of Mount Ida above the village of Kamares), or polychrome pottery, chiefly consisted of cups, “tea-cups,” jugs, amphoræ (or two-handled jars), and fruit-stand vases. The three best specimens are here reproduced. In the Middle Minoan II period large storage jars, or “pithoi,” made their first appearance. They were as big as a man, and almost exactly like the Cretan storage jars of to-day. Two interesting features in the decoration of these jars are cunningly practical in origin. One was an imitation in relief of the coils of rope which were used in moving the jars, the other a “trickle” ornament produced by allowing splashes of paint to trickle down the side of the jar—a device which made a virtue, in anticipation, of the inevitable trickles which would result from the storage of oil in it.
Towards the end of the Middle Minoan period the exaggerated use of colour which had marked the first introduction of polychrome ware gave way to a concentration upon design. Perhaps the most remarkable specimen of this later phase is the “lily vase” found at Knossos. It stands about two feet high, and for design has a simple row of lilies painted in white on a purple ground. The shape of the vase is artistically made to serve the design by enabling the lilies to bend slightly outward and then curve in a little at the top.
POLYCHROME CUPS
From Journal of Hellenic Studies
[To face [page 62]
Then came a curious clash in the separate evolution of polychrome and monochrome ware. The latter had been used as an easy decoration for ordinary vessels, but towards the end of the Middle Minoan period the two styles began to coalesce in the form of a simple light design on a dark ground. Then a final resolution took place by a “volte face” into a monochrome dark on light brought about by the experience that the black varnish was a more durable colour than the lustreless colour pigments. The varnish, indeed, possessed a remarkable tenacity. It probably was the forerunner of that used in the later Attic Black Figure vases, whose secret still exercises the ingenuity of modern potters. As yet nothing further has been established than that the varnish was not a “glaze” in the modern sense. A contributing factor to the final triumph of the monochrome over polychrome rested upon simple necessity. When naturalist motives became dominant in the painter’s art, the lack of a green pigment left no satisfactory alternative to the general abandonment of variation in colour. In Late Minoan I, when the complete absorption of the polychrome into the monochrome style took place, we find a general use of a brilliantly lustrous brown-to-black “glaze” paint on a buff clay slip, carefully polished by hand on terra-cotta clay. The naturalism of plants and flowers now extends to sea-objects—fish, shells, weeds, rocks—and is marked by careful truth to life. A striking example of this style is a famous “octopus” vase found at Gournia.
As the rise of Cretan civilization had been faithfully reflected in pottery, so was its fall. One can trace in it the general decadence of Crete. In the eventful Late Minoan II period, which saw the final destruction of Knossos and the sudden end of Cretan greatness, the pottery becomes stiff and grandiose. Plants and animals are rendered in a spiritless, conventionalized manner. Degeneration was rapid, and in Late Minoan III, which represented the last stage of Minoan culture, the potter held his brush quite still and let the spinning pot do the rest. There was no decoration beyond an occasional group of horizontal bands, the mere framework of earlier designs.
There were, of course, other forms of pottery besides vases. Cretan potters, even more than those of to-day, used clay as the material for hardware. Not only bricks, drain-pipes, ornaments, but lamps, kettles, even cupboards and tables, were made of clay.
Chapter 9: The Origin of Writing
The Cretans had a system of writing as long ago as 2500 B.C. The language therein embodied is still a mystery to us, in spite of Sir Arthur Evans’s monumental work Scripta Minoa (1909). The hope is that Sir Arthur will find a clue to the mystery, but up to the present the fact is that there is no starting-point for any attempt at interpretation. If a bilingual inscription could be found—a Cretan document, that is, side by side with a translation in some known language such as Egyptian—a start could be made.
It was inevitable that the art of writing should be evolved early in the history of man. Even in the most primitive stages of life there would be the elementary necessity, for instance, of identifying one’s own property, and for this the most likely means would be some system of marking. Then, again, the development of communal life would entail the duty of keeping appointments, or of doing a particular thing at a particular time. It would, one thinks, have been too much of a strain, even for the mind of a Stone Age man, to keep all the details of his daily, still more of his annual, routine in his head, and the handkerchiefs of those remote days may not have been of such a material as to lend themselves readily to mnemonic knots. It is quite conceivable, as an instance of the sort of necessity that would arise, that at a given time it could be calculated how many days ahead the provisions would last, and when, therefore, the hunter must be ready for the hills. He might prepare a handy reminder with a pictographic representation of some commonplace event that was to take place at the same time, and by hanging the picture up in an obvious spot.