M.M. III: WINGED CREATIONS AND 'FLYING GALLOP' 703

itself. The wings remain, but the head is reduced to a mere loop, and the
feathered breast converted (/?) into a bit'cranium ! Next, the skull between
the winos clothes itself with flesh and blood, and becomes the horned,
facino- head of a bull (V). But this undergoes a fresh transformation.
The wino-s disappear ; bestial heads grow from the horn-tips, and boar's
tusks protrude from the steer's mouth id). And so, on this and parallel
lines, the metamorphoses proceed.

The incurved border of a butterfly's wing suggests the points of an
antler ; the antler naturally calls up a stag's head, and to this are added

human arms and a woman's breasts (Fig. 525, e).
Sometimes we detect a grim humour, as where a
Minotaur appears to be devouring his own hand
(Fig. 525, _/"), and there is quite a demoniac touch
in the grinning head of a Minoan Puck looking out
beneath a canopy formed of bat's or butterfly's wings
(Fig. 525, g).

Already, on a chalcedony seal-stone of the early
signet type, wre find evidence of the same spirit in the
appearance of a horned imp with upraised hands
(Fig. 526).1 So, too, at Melos, which stood betimes in sympathetic
relation, with Cretan life we see on the same class of high-beaked vases that
show the bird-like imitation of the Griffin in its earliest shape a series of
grotesque creations, Fig. 527, c, d, mainly consisting of winged heads with
goggle eyes, a grinning mouth, and high-set ears.2 These cherubic goblins
have, however, a small, tail-like body provided with clawed limbs. The
wings themselves are suggested by the pairs of hatched triangles, joined
at the apex, which form so prominent a feature in Early Minoan ceramic
decoration and which in the succeeding Age are merged in the sacral type
of the Double Axe. From a comparison of the winged motive shown
in Fig. 527, b, from a vase of the same Melian class,:; with a form of the
Double Axe symbol on a sealing from the Hieroglyphic Deposit at
Knossos, Fig. 527, «,4 the derivative character must in this case be placed

Humor-
ous and
Demonic
Creations.

Fig. 526. Horned
Imp on M. M. II
Signet, Mochlos.

' Horned
Imp ' on
Earlier
Signet.

Winged
Goblins
on Melian
Pots.

Evolved
from

figures of
I )ouble
Axes.

1 Seager, Mochlos, p. 58, Fig. 27, and cf.
p. 274, above. From the rude character of
the engraving and the simple form of the signet
it is possible that it may come within the limits
of M. M. I.

2 For c and d of Fig. 527 compare l^ylakopi,
PI. XIV, 6 />, 6 c, and 9. The figures are here
partly completed 1. wing and part of body of

a , the evidence of 6 b and 6 c combined.
A parallel to these goblins is seen in the
winged serpentine figure (op. ci!., p. 112,
Fig. 84V

1 Op. cit., PI. XIV, 3. The lower 'eye' is
completed.

1 Scripta Minoa, i, PI. Ill, p. 70 a.