GENII LEADING ANIMAL

At times they ate depicted as guiding or leading animals. On a Bull mid
lentoid bead-seal of Spartan basalt, Fig. 368, a, a daemon, with a head that ^hmns
combines something of the boar and lion and a bristling mane, guides a bull

443

Fig. 368. a, Minoan Genius leading Bull on Lentoid Bead-seal of Spartan

Basalt ; b, Similar Scene with Cow ; roped by Horns, Banded Agate Lentoid,

found in Crete.

by his horns, while in front is what looks like the conventional head of a
palm tree in a pendant position. This gem is the same as that published
by Milchhofer fifty years since in his Anfauge der Kunst1 from one of Cades'
casts (54, No. 76), made in Rome in 1831 and the following years. The original
was included in the Mayer Collection, and was subsequently purchased by
me.2 By a curious coincidence a lentoid bead-seal of banded agate, which
must be regarded as a companion piece, Fig. 368 b, executed, we may con-
clude, by the same engraver, was later acquired by me at Athens from its
Greek possessor, who had obtained it in Crete, where he formerly resided.
In this case, the animal is a cow—the udder being clearly discernible—and
the daemon—here of the lion-headed type—leads the animal by means of
a cord, which coils round the base of the horns.3

The bovine types on these two parallel seals themselves suggest an
interesting observation. The bull of Fig. 368, a, with his raised head and

described, p. 4, No. 10, as a 'group consisting
of a bull, a dragon-like horse, and a coiled
serpent, grotesquely executed. Early Greek
work.'

3 For photographic reproductions of Figs.
SOS a, b, see Suppl. PI. LV, a, b below.

1 P. So, Fig. 51 (Leipzig, 1883). See, too,
Cook. op. at., pp. 152, 153, Fig. 21.

At the sale of a portion of the Mayer
Collection in 1879. Cf. C. T. Gatty, Cal.of the
Engraved Gems and Rings in the Collection of
Joseph Mayer, F.S.A. (price £1). It is