YOUTHFUL MALE CONSORT OF GODDESS

465

Goddess, leaning over the parapet of the sepulchral enclosure has been
compared with parallel scenes in which the Syrian women mourn Adonis
dead. Another religious signet-type, in which the Goddess is associated

____ with a figure of a male child

armed with bow and arrow,
beside what seems to be an
analogous mourning scene,1
may well call up a vision
of a Minoan equivalent of
Hyakinthos — whose name,
as is well known, belongs to
the older ethnic stratum.

It is to be noted that
in these and other cases, such
as the figure descending be-
fore the obelisk on the gold
signet from Knossos,2 the
male armed figure is of
comparatively small dimensions, and must be taken to represent a boy rather
than a man. In two instances, indeed, we see what may be regarded as an
armed male God of mature proportions. The first of these, a spearman
with a shield and conical head-piece, who has a lioness beside him, is on a
seal-impression from the Temple Repositories, here reproduced (Fig. 324 a),3
and has a curiously Hittite appearance. The second, a bowman beside a
lion, on a sealing from Hagia Triada,4 also wears a peaked cap.5

It is true that another seal-impression from the Temple Repositories
at Knossos (Fig. 325),G in which the Goddess in a peaked cap and armed with
a spear, walks beside a lion, who turns his head to look up at his divine
mistress, suggests a certain parallelism with the armed male divinities, though
there is no actual grouping of the two classes. But these figures of what
must be recognized as adult'warrior Gods fit in with the evidence of the

1 P. of JII, ii, Pt. II, p. 842, Fig. 557. The and Fig. 40.

Adonis
and Hya-
kinthos
com-
pared.

Fig. 324 A.
Armed God with
Lioness : Clay Sealing,
Knossos.

Fig. 325.
Armed Goddess with
Lion : Clay Sealing,

Knossos.

Excep-
tional
appear-
ance of
mature
warrior
divinity:
but not
coupled
with God-
dess.

gold signet-ring itself is in the Ashmolean
Museum. In this case the mourning female
figure leans over a piihos, recalling the use
of these for sepulchral purposes.

2 Ibid., i, p. 160, Fig. 115 ; Tree and Pillar
Cult, p. 72 [170], and Fig. 48.

3 P. of M., i, p. 505, Fig. 363, b.

4 Ibid., Fig. 363,;-, and cf. Mem. Ant., p. 44,

5 An adult male figure, clearly of a divine
nature, is also seen standing above ' horns of
consecration' between a winged goat and
a Minoan ' Genius' on a gem from Kydonia
{P. ofM., i, p. 708, Fig. 532).

6 Ibid., p. 505, Fig. 363, a. A similar figure
occurs on a seal - impression from Zakro
(Hogarth, B. S. A., xvii, p. 265, Fig. 2).

III.

Hh