The decoration is, as has been indicated, plastic as well as pictorial; the relief ornaments are often of an elaborate type, as may be seen in some of Mr. Hogarth’s finds.[[901]] Some vases are merely covered with knobs, or with a sort of honeycombing in relief[[902]]; in others toothed or bossed bands are employed, either simply or combined into complex patterns. In any case this plastic element is quite a new departure. The pictorial designs include geometrical and linear patterns, zigzags, network, concentric circles, spirals, and swastikas; leaves, rosettes, and other vegetable forms; fishes, and even in one case a human figure.[[903]] The chief field of decoration is the shoulder of the vase.
Although varying in the extent of their naturalism, the patterns exhibit considerable boldness and power of drawing; they seem to be drawn chiefly from floral or textile sources, and are closely parallel to the Thera vases, but more advanced. Some motives are of Mycenaean character, such as the use of rows of white dots[[904]]; on the other hand, the style of the fishes and human figure is more like that of the Geometrical vases.
Mr. Hogarth notes that metal types of Kamaraes cups appear in the hands of Kefti tributaries in the paintings of the tomb of Rekhmara (about 1550 B.C.), and he even found their Neolithic prototypes at Kephala, near Knossos.[[905]] He also traces a connection with the early Aegean pottery of Phylakopi in Melos. The Kamaraes pottery can be shown not to have survived the incoming of the new Mycenaean influences, but the patterns rapidly became conventionalised, and are replaced by the new motives of the Mycenaean wares. It may further be noted that fragments of Kamaraes ware have turned up not only in Egypt, as at Kahun (already mentioned), but at Tiryns, in the fifth and sixth Acropolis graves at Mycenae, and at Curium in Cyprus.
(3) The pottery of the “Late Minoan” period from the palace of Knossos falls into two groups—the “palace” style, and the ordinary Mycenaean fabrics. The former class of vases has been found in considerable numbers in the second palace, and also at Zakro and other sites. The vases are painted in a lustrous brown-to-black glaze on a buff hand-polished slip, with fine and elaborate naturalistic designs, including vegetable patterns, birds, and fishes; others, again, are more architectonic in character.[[906]] We also find adaptations of the Kamaraes style, with bands of white paint laid on the black varnish, the usual forms being a flat bowl and a small cup with flat handles like the Vaphio cups.[[907]]
In their decoration the most highly developed varieties of the “palace” style show a parallelism with the wall-paintings, the patterns consisting of rosettes, spirals, and conventional flowers; in some very naturalistic examples this is strongly marked, the designs of olive and myrtle wreaths and bulbous plants showing an almost Japanese fidelity to nature. Others, again, have marine subjects—seaweed, shells, and rocks. Lastly, there are the representations of the double axe, which Mr. Evans has shown to be a religious symbol.[[908]]
The whole of this pottery belongs to the third or highest period of Mycenaean pottery, a time when decadence was actually beginning to set in, concurrent with the end of the eighteenth dynasty. At this time all over the Aegean area, in Melos, Egypt, and elsewhere, the styles of pottery were perfectly uniform, and had clearly been imported from one centre. In the light of recent discoveries we can no longer doubt that this centre was Crete, and the previous history of its pottery and the early development of its technical processes, as well as its geographical position, point in the same direction. About the year 1500 B.C. the site appears to have been invaded and abandoned, with the consequent result that Mycenaean civilisation now spread all over the Aegean, centring chiefly in Greece, where it lasted several centuries longer. Of its influence on Cyprus we have already spoken.
Mycenaean vases had turned up in Crete for some time previous to 1899 in a sporadic fashion[[909]]; but these, being for the most part of the ordinary type, do not call for separate consideration. There is, however, one class that appears to be peculiar to the island. It consists of large “false amphorae” and other vases, made of a rough coarse-grained clay, and decorated in the “third Mycenaean” style with large cuttle-fish; at Knossos this was found only outside the palace, and was probably a coarse household ware. A good specimen has also been found at Curium in Cyprus.[[910]]
§ 4. MYCENAEAN POTTERY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Furtwaengler and Loeschcke, Mykenische Thongefässe (1879), and Mykenische Vasen (1886); Dumont-Pottier, i. p. 47 ff.; Perrot, Hist. de l’Art, vi. p. 893 ff.; Pottier, Louvre Cat. i. p. 181 ff. General reference should also be made to Schuchhardt, Schliemann’s Excavations (transl. E. Sellers); Schliemann’s own works; Hall, Oldest Civilisation of Greece; Tsountas and Manatt, The Mycenaean Age; and other works.