PRIEST LEADING SACRED GRIFFIN

785

can be little doubt that this would have been a Griffin, such as on Minoan
and Mycenaean intaglios is held in tether by divinities or priestly personages.
A good illustration of this is supplied by a jasper lentoid from the Vapheio
TombT (Fig. 512), on which a long-robed priest appears holding in
leash a Griffin by a cord attached to the monster's neck.

At other times, as we see from a
lentoid intaglio shown above,2 a collared
hound is similarly led.

The Griffin stood in a specially
sacred relation to the Minoan Goddess.
On a painted stucco relief, probably
contemporary with that of the Priest-
King, from what appears to have been
the Great Hall of the Palace on its
Eastern side, a Griffin is tethered to
a column 3 that seems to have here
represented the divinity in her baetylic
shape. In the somewhat later room
of the West section4 in which, with its
throne and benches and the ' lustral
area' annexed, the Papa Re of Knossos
may well have held small consistories,
the Griffin again plays a leading part. Painted stucco delineations of
a pair of these sacred monsters—in this case mild, wingless, and peacock
crested—were placed on each side of the throne itself and, again* on the
doorway leading to an inner shrine.

Something has already been said about the Griffin in Minoan religious
art.5 In the strong Minoan version the hawk's head of its Egyptian
predecessor, such as we see it in the Twelfth Dynasty wall-paintings of
Beni Hasan, had been converted into that of an eagle. It had legs of a lion,
and thus personified all strength and swiftness, together with a piercing
vision. Some remarkable evidence now supplied by the ' Ring of Nestor'6—

Was the
Priest-
King
leading a
sacred
Griffin ?

Griffins
on Palace
walls.

Fig. 512. Long-robed Priest leading
Griffin by Cord : Jasper Lentoid, Va-
pheia Tomb]

Griffin in
under-
world as
Judge in
scene of
initiation.

'E<f>. 'Apx-, 1889, P'- ^i 32, and p. 167; * A description of the ' Room of the Throne'

Furtwangler, Antike Gemmen, PI. II, 39. On
a signet-ring found at Mycenae in 1905 a long-
robed seated figure is seen holding a cord to
which is attached a couchant griffin.

2 See above, p. 765, Fig. 494.

3 See P. of M., Vol. iii.

is reserved for Vol. iii of this work.

5 P. ofJ/., i, p. 709 seqq.

6 See Fig. 280, p. 482, above, and A. E.,
The King of Nestor, &c. (J. H. S., 1925,
and separately Macmillan's), pp. 68-70, and
p. 65, Fig. 55. The object, a gold signet-ring,

II.

3F