Fig. 110—P. [81].
Fig. 111.
An allied pattern is the disc surrounded by spots. This is very usual on early Greek pottery, and is found on the Aegean pottery also. This is very rarely seen in pure Egyptian design, and only in the XVIIIth dynasty, when Mykenaean influence was strongest. On Neferhotep’s ceiling two forms are found, put between the horns of the bulls’ heads, like the rosette on the Mykenaean ox head. Elsewhere it is usually seen on the scarves of the negroes as a characteristic decoration, and on the dress of the Amu (C.M. cclviii.). Hence it appears to be distinctly a foreign ornament, like the other spot pattern on a zigzag line. Only three examples are published from Egyptian decoration, and those may well be due to foreign influence.
We now reach the largest and most complex growth of Egyptian ornament in the lotus, so widely spread that some have seen in it the source of all ornament. Without going so far, we shall find plenty in it to tax our reasoning and imagination. If I prefer, in dealing with this, to ignore the developments of it seen outside of Egypt as aids to understanding it, this is only because those foreign examples are so much later that they are a reflex of various Egyptian periods, and cannot show anything certainly as to the long anterior course of development in Egypt itself.
The debated question of lotus and papyrus disappears at once when we look at the feathery head of minute flowers which the papyrus bears. That some flower, such as a nelumbium, was confused with the lotus seems, however, very likely. There is no doubt that in ornament different flowers were sometimes confused, and their details mixed; hence it is of no use for us to be too particular in trying to separate them. We shall therefore use the name lotus in general without necessarily entering on botanical reasons for and against it on each occasion.
112.—L.D. II. 33; I. 27.
113.—L.D. III. 68. XVIIIth dyn.