420

NORTH-EAST HOUSE: INSCRIBED SEALING

Parallel

with 'rhy-

ton' from

Mycenae

Shaft

Grave

and

Central

Treasury

of Palace

at

Knossos.

appear, together with a ' Vapheio' cup, on a tablet of Class B,1 and which
must certainly be identified with ' rhytons' in precious metal similar to those
presented by Cretan envoys to Egyptian Viziers. In this case the lion's head,

Fig. 242. Clay Seal-
ing INSCRIBED WITH

Characters of Linear
Class A and Lion's Head
' Rhyton'.

Fig. 243. Gold Lion's Head ' Rhyton ', Fourth Shaft
Grave, Mycenae.

with the characteristic barbicJie, recalls the magni-
ficent example, executed in thick gold plate, from
the Fourth Shaft Grave at Mycenae'-' (Fig. 243).
A lion's head 'rhyton' based on an original in
precious metal has now been restored from frag-
ments found in the Central Palace Treasury at

of A (No. 34). The ' facing head', No. 1 of
Fig. 242, b (cf. Table 14, a), is generally much
elongated in Class B.

1 See below, p 533, Fig. 336.

2 Reproduced in its unrestored form, and
described as ' a golden mask in form of a lion's
head', by Schliemann, Mycenae, p. 211,

Fig. 326. Stais, Collection Myce'nienne (1909,
p. 33, No. 273), figures it partly restored. It
was first properly illustrated and rightly identi-
fied as a ' rhyton' by Professor G. Karo in his
Minoische Rhyta (Jahrb. d. d. Arch. Inst., xxvi,
1911, pp. 253, 254, and PI. 19, from which
Fig. 243 is taken). See, too, p. 826, below.