502

MARINE RELIEFS AND INTAGLIOS

Octopus
and coral-
lines on
M. M. Ill
' Rhyton',
Knossos.

Dolphin
and rocks
on Knos-
sian
relief.

grotesque rock-work belonging to the same epoch. Another specimen
of these, here enlarged in Fig. 306,1 shows a fish and some kind of
long-bodied octopod—perhaps the ' musk-scented' cuttle-fish of common
Mediterranean occurrence 2—surrounded
by rocks, as if stranded in a sea-pool.

But the finest of all known examples
of this marine style is supplied by part of
a steatite ' rhyton ' found above the floor
of the ' Room of the Throne ' at Knossos,
for the first time reproduced in Fig. 130,
p. 227, above; it may have drifted into the
position in which it was found from the
Treasury of the restored Palace, to which
the objects found in the space known at
the time of the excavation as the ' Stone
Vase Room' also belonged. Its form
practically represents the same stage of
evolution from the original ostrich-eg-a-
type as the Harvesters' vase from Hagia
Triada,3 and it seems safest to refer its
execution to the concluding phase of
M.M. III.

The natural beauty of the designs
on this ' rhyton ' will be best realized from
its development in Fig. 307.4 The rich
decorative effect produced by the coiling of the tentacles about the rocks
and corallines is particularly striking. The creature itself is half concealed,
but one watchful eye looks out from its ambush.

A dolphin, swimming above rocks, with sea-growths, on another con-
temporary fragment of a Knossian steatite vessel, is repeated in this place5
as illustrating another aspect of the same style. The crabs, shells, and
barnacles and other ' frutta di mare', moulded with such marvellous
naturalism on sides of clay vessels from the ' Kouloura' of the West Court,6
supply further remarkable illustrations of this class of relief from the Palace
site, all belonging to the last Middle Minoan Period.

Fig. 306. Marine Design on Seal-
impression from Hieroglyphic
Deposit, Knossos (M. M. II).

1 See, too, P. of M., i,p. 273, Fig. 202, b (on
a smaller scale).

1 Eledone moschatus (Lam.): the Italian
' moscardino'.

3 See above, Table, p. 225, Fig. 129, 6.

4 By Monsieur E. Gillieron, fils.

5 See, too, P. of M., i, p. 273, Fig. 202, b.

6 Ibid., i, pp. 521, 522, and Figs. 380, 381.