REFLECTED BY VERSIONS OF MINOAN GENII 4

41

Fig. 368, 6). On a serpentine bead-seal from Crete (Fig. 364)l a Minoan
daemon is portrayed between two stars, in this case carrying a stag.

The stars here are highly significant of the original astral connexion.
Equally suggestive is a feature of a seal-type repeated on a series of

eighteen clay im-
pressions2 found
in a deposit at the
back of the ' Ser-
vice Stairs ' in
the Domestic
Quarter, known
from them as
the ' Area of the
Daemon Seals',
and in fact form-
ing part of a
more extensive
deposit derived
from the ' Room of the Archives' off the same staircase.

In the design of these, as shown in Fig. 365, Ave see a Minoan Genius
with a composite monster, lion-headed but human-legged, before him. In
the field in front of these appear two animals' hind-legs that might well be
a reminiscence of the 'ox-leg' or khopsh sign of Set, so intimately connected
with the astral functions of the Hippopotamus Goddess, though in that case
it is the foreleg.

Daemon
seals of
Knossos:
appear-
ance of
lc«" si"n.

Fig. 364. Cretan Lentoid
Seal showing Minoan Ge-
nius BETWEEN TWO S'TARS,

carrying Stag.

Fig. 3(io. Seat, Impression
showing Minoan Genius and Man-
Lion with Animals' Legs in front;
' Area of Daemon Seals '.

Genii as Carriers and Leaders of Animals.

Of the carrying function, common both to the prototype and to the Genii as

derivative, the well-known fresco fragment from a private house at anc|

Mycenae 3 supplies a good example (Fig. 366). On this, animals, with heads leaders

compared by their finder to those of asses, are seen bearing a pole with animals:

spiral band.1 The mane of the animals, whose heads certainly resemble fresco.1'10

1 Milchhofer, Anfan°e, &-Y., p. 55, Fig
54, c: Furtwangler, Berlin Mus. Cat. (Ge-
schnittene Steine, PI. I, 12, and p. 3); A. G.,
PI. II. 35 ; Overbed*, Gr. Kumtmytliotogie,
iii, p. 683, Fig. 3; A. B. Cook, /.U.S.,

l894, P- 13s. Fig- 19-
- Many of these were found in a very

imperfect state. In another deposit a type is
also represented with a Genius holding a ewer
and with a kind of spray behind.

' 'Ec/>. 'Apx; rSSy, PI. X, 1.

1 It is rather, as Tsountas points out {pp.
at., p. 161), a pole with a spiral hand round it
than a rope as it has elsewhere heen described.