PARALLELISM WITH MINOAN GENII

435

indebtedness of the Minoan design indeed might have been still more
striking had the back of the head and the crest been preserved. The stone
itself, of the form described as the flattened cylinder, is interesting as an
indication of a rela-
tively early date, since
the vogue of this type
belongs rather to the
last Middle Minoan
Period and the suc-
ceeding transitional
phase that covers
L. M. hi.1

On the chalcedony
lentoid again ("Fig.
358, i)2 the conforma-
tion of the head and snout of the Minoan daemon betrays a distinct
resemblance to that of the hippopotamus (cf. Fig. 354). Here, too, we
recognize the swollen belly, while a bull is borne on the shoulders in place
of the crocodile carried on her back by Ta-urt in Fig. 358, a.

Fig. 358, a. Cornelian
Bead-seal, Phaestos.

Fig. 358,$. Chalcedony
Lentoid.

Parallelism between Genii and Ta-urt extends to her Astral
Relations.

My own belief, expressed many years since,3 that these daemon types was
were essentially rooted in that of the Hippopotamus Goddess, has only AfJ?'
been strengthened by the materials since accumulated, and the suspicion of Ta-urt
voiced in my monograph on the Tree and Pillar Cult of a surviving fleeted ?

1 The tomb in which the intaglio was
found at Phaestos belongs to a series dated
somewhat later (from the lower borders of
L. M. II to L. M. Ill i), but the fractured
state of the stone allows for the possibility of
its having been somewhat of an heirloom. On
the other side of the gem is a bull-grappling
scene of an abnormal kind {pp. at., p. 626,
F'g- 97, 0). A male figure is seen half kneel-
ing, clad in a kilt with the ends of two cords
hanging down from its girth. This method
of cording round recalls that of the skirt of a
female figure on a M. M. II signet {!'. of St.,
". ?'■ I. P- 33, Fig- 15).

IV** G

" From an impression taken in Pome by
Cades {Impressions, 54, No. 75). Lajard,
Culle de Mithra, PL XLIII, 19; Milchhofer,
An/, d. Kunst, pp. 54, 55, Fig. 44, c. The
animal is clearly a bull, not as Cook suggests
{Animal Worship, &c. : J. II. S., xiv, p. 84),
a Cretan goat.

■' A. E., Myc. Tree and Pillar Cult, p. 71 ;
/.U.S., xxi (1901), p. r6g. The astral
character of the Goddess ' as the image of a
Constellation standing in connexion with the
"Haunch ", our Charles's Wain ', and its paral-
lelism with 'the solar lions, Griffins, Sphinxes,
and Krio-sphinxes' was there insisted on.