FRESH DISCOVERY OF A BABYLONIAN CYLINDER 265

some Syrian offshoot, from an old Chaldaean source, while at a somewhat
later date the idea was adapted to ostrich-egg flasks, the original range of
which is to be sought in the Libyan Desert.

As the earliest Cretan imitations of the bull ' rhytons ' hardly appear
before the approximate date 2100 b. c, it seems probable that their immediate
sources should be sought in the Syrian or Anatolian direction. Zoomorphic
vessels continually recur among the primitive ceramic forms of a wide area

Fig. 158. Babylonian Cylinder of Haematite, from near Candia.

of Anterior Asia, and are well represented at Hissarlik. What look like
true bull ' rhytons', indeed, are already found in the Copper Age Tombs of
Cyprus,1 but, though the opening is seen above the neck, there is no
perforation through the nozzle.

The conclusion already reached that jugs of the Syrian type, repre-
senting a Mother Goddess, were imitated in Crete at about the same date
as the above confirms the view that about the close of the Early and the
beginning of the Middle Minoan Age direct communications were opened
out with the North-Easternmost Mediterranean angle. Evidence of this
has been already given in the shape of the Babylonian cylinder found in the
tholos ossuary of Platanos,2 which lies not far from the point where the

Evidence
of strong
influence
from E. at
close of
E. M. I.

1 A specimen from Dali is illustrated by
Cesnola, Cyprus, PI. VIII. I may refer to
what I have written on this subject in Tomb
of the Double Axes, cV<r., p. 90 seqq. (Archaeo-

logia, lxv, 1914). A later bull's head 'rhyton '
from Ain Tab in Commagene is given there
on p. 94.(£ig. 97).

%'P. of M., i, pp. 197, 198, and Fig. 146.