764 MINOAN VERSIONS OF ADORANT CVNOCEPHALUS

gold signet-ring from the Phaestos Cemetery, Fig. 492, c,1 carries the scene
a step farther. Here a female votary with raised hands is seen beside the
Cynocephalus, and the adoration of both is directed to a seated figure of the
Minoan Goddess behind whom rises a column indicative of her pillar-shrine.
We may in this case detect a further allusion to this chapter of Egyptian
beliefs concerning the Cynocephalus ape in the plume-like object seen in the
field above him. This is the ostrich-feather of Maat, the Goddess of Truth

Mx

Fig. 492. Minoan Seal-types showing Adorant Cynocephalus : a, Clay Impression,
Zakro ; b, Clay Impression, Hagia Triada ; c, Gold Signet-ring, Phaestos.

Collared
Hounds.

and Justice, the weighing of which against the heart of the deceased it was
the special function of the Cynocephalus to observe.

Three fragmentary seal-impressions showed the Minoan Goddess with
a male adorant, and there also occurred an example of an interesting subject
already referred to in connexion with the bronze ' hydria ' from Cyprus2 and
more fully illustrated in a later Section—a Minoan Genius, derived from
the Egyptian Hippopotamus Goddess, holding an ewer.

Numerous impressions, some of them very well preserved, presented as
their sole type a large hound-—a bitch—with her head turned back and
a collar round her neck, executed in the finest transitional M. M. III-L. M. I a
style (Fig. 493). It is noteworthy that other impressions from the same
seal occurred in the neighbourhood of the Central Shrine in the West
Quarter of the Palace. On a seal-stone of the earlier phase of the Late
Minoan Age a huge collared dog appears, led by a male attendant (Fig. 494).3

1 L. Savignoni, Mon. Ant., xiv (1904), p.
578, Fig. 51.

2 See above, pp. 652, 653, and Fig 417.

* Tomb of the Double Axes, o-v. (Archaeo-
logia, lxv, 1914), p. 10, and Fig. 15 ; on a green

jasper lentoid from E. Crete. The chaicedony
intaglio, from the built tomb (No. 1) at Isopata
(Joe. at., pp. 9, 10, Fig. 14), perhaps represents
a lion rather than a mastiff.