494 TRIPLE GROUP OF DATE-PALMS AND DERIVATIVES

Survival
of pic-
torial tra-
dition of
three
palms.

On L. M.
I b vases.

On gold
mouth-
piece
L.M.
III «.

a contemporary agate intaglio (here reproduced) presenting a group of
three palm-trees rising in a rocky knoll (Fig. 299).' In this case, too,
the central palm is taller than the others which, in fact, are mere saplings,
sloping away from it as in the previous case. Palm-trees standing alone
also occur on a late polychrome pot from Phaestos of approximately the
same date.

It is a fair conclusion that a group of palm-trees on a knoll or slight
elevation, as seen on the above examples, answered
to some painted plaster design, decorative in form but
perhaps essentially of a religious character,2 that
filled a prominent place on the Palace walls. It
is possible, indeed, that they may have been associated
in the original composition with human or animal
figures which, owing to the unwritten law of Minoan
ceramic Art, were omitted in the vase-paintings, and
the occurrence of inflorescent palm-trees, of the same
tradition, among the bull-hunting reliefs of the
Vapheio Cup corroborates this suggestion. There
are direct indications that wall-paintings of this cycle go back in the
Knossian Palace at least as far as the beginning of the Third Middle Minoan
Period.

The group of three palms, in this case separate repetitions of similar
trees in a slanting position, recurs in an ornamentalized form on an ostrich-
egg ' rhyton' from Knossos, illustrating the surviving polychromy of
M. M. Ilia (Fig. 301, b). What is more remarkable, however, as showing the
extent to which this design had become a clichd, the triple group, consisting
of a taller and two smaller palm-trees, characterizes a series of vases,
from Crete and elsewhere, belonging to the later phase, b, of the First Late
Minoan Period. A still later survival of this Middle Minoan pictorial type
may, indeed, be recognized on the repousse design of a gold mouthpiece
(Fig. 300) from a rich tomb at Enkomi or Old Paphos, in Cyprus.3 This
tomb (No. 93) contained a silver ring, belonging to the beginning of the reign
1 See P. of M., i, p. 274, and Fig. 204, d. sacred palm-tree, more decoratively rendered,

Fig. 290. Disk-shaped
Bead - seal : Banded
Agate (Central Crete).

2 On a lentoid bead-seal from Palaikastro
the Horns of Consecration are seen before a
palm-tree beside which a dog seizes an agrimi
(see my Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult
(/. H. S., xxi, 1901), p. 154, Fig. 131). In op.
rit., p. 156, Fig. 134 (crystal ring from Mycenae)
two bulls kneel on each side of a similar

while two smaller trees are seen behind them.
3 P.M. Excavations in Cyprus, PI. VII,
no. 517 and cf. pp. 42, 43: from Tomb 93.
This tomb also contained the fine gold orna-
ments, op. cit., Pis. Vand VI. A fragment of
good L. M. Ill pottery with wrestlers occurred
in the dromos.