MINOAN GODDESS WITH SWORD AND 'SPRINKLER' 793

to the South-East of the Palace,1 was found a remarkable cornelian intaglio.
This was a bead-seal of the ' flat cylinder ' type still fashionable at the
beginning of the Late Minoan Age to which the hoard belonged, as it had
been in the last Middle Minoan Period. The design (Fig. 517) is a female
figure of matronly proportions with the usual flounced skirt, turned to the

left on the impression, in which we have good
warrant for recognizing the Minoan Goddess
in a new impersonation, illustrating her special
function as a patroness of the Priest-King,
who was her Vicegerent on Earth.

In other respects she appears in the same
guise as that in which she has already been
seen in the case of the faience and other
images, with snakes coiled about her as
symbols of her chthonic power, though here
differently arranged.

The tails of two of these start from
the hem of the lower flounce of her skirt—
the head of one of them rising with open
mouth above her left shoulder. A third is
coiled about her upper right arm, and there
are traces of what may be serpentine coils
about her back hair. The snakes rise at
sharp angles from the horizontal lines of two lower flounces of the Goddess's
skirt which seem indeed to be their continuation.

In her raised right hand the Goddess of the present intaglio holds
a sword with a knobbed hilt and lone blade, like that held before the Younsf
Chieftain described above, but with two pointed projections on either side of
the base of the hilt, which show that it belonged to the ' horned ' type of
sword common at the beginning of the Late Minoan Age.

In her left hand, which is held downwards, she grasps the handle of an
object with flowing streamers above, in which it is difficult not to recognize
a somewhat summary rendering of the ' wisp ' that the retainer holds before
the ' Young Chieftain ' on the cup, balanced in the same way by the sword.
The singular resemblance of this to the aspergillum or ' holy-water
sprinkler' of the Roman Pontifices has been noted above. This consisted
of the hair of a horse's tail attached to a rod. Julius Caesar, as Pontifex
Maximus, placed this implement amongst his insignia on his coins, the

1 See above, p. 631, and-Fig. 395, e.

showing

Minoan

Goddess

holding

similar

symbols.

Snakes
symboliz-
ing

chthonic
power of
Goddess.

Fig. 517. 'Flat Cylinder'
Bead-seal of Cornelian from
near ' Stepped Portico ' showing
Goddess holding Sword and
' Lustral Sprinkler '.

' Horned'
sword.

Lustral

sprinkler.

Com-
pared
with as-
pergillum
of Roman
Pontifex.