46o GENII MINISTERING TO GODDESS ON TIRYNS SIGNET

figure of the Minoan Genius, otherwise illustrates the processional an 1
mechanical methods of the Oriental class. On the whole, it seems best t
regard this cylinder as having been made in Cyprus, but as fitting on to a
well-ascertained ' Cypro-Minoan' class.1

: Gold Signet-ring from Tiryns Hoard. Genu bringing
Libations to Seated Goddess.

Scene of Offering on Great Tiryns Signet.

Minoan To the ritual episodes above illustrated in which these daemonic

Genu as ' . ... h ;n

ministers creations are presented to us as pouring libations in connexion with certain

H God. sacrec' objects—trees and baetylic columns, cairns and altar-blocks—must be

added another class in which they act as direct ministrants to the divinity.

Of this the most important illustration is supplied by the huge gold

signet-ring found with other relics in a bronze cauldron near Tiryns in I9'5

(Fig. 385).

The Goddess, grasping a pedestalled chalice, more fully ilhistra e

above,3 is seated on a folding-stool, which below resembles those ot

Palace group of frescoes, but with an inconsistent adjunct in the shape

1 I ventured to assign a series of Cypriote the size of the vrell-known gold signe
seal-stones to this class ('Cypro-Mycenaean' Mycenae. It is also considerably largo •
as there described), in Myc. Tree and Pillar the gold signet-ring found by the e
Cult, p. so [148] seqq. Tomb at Knossos (§ 117, Pt I) and the M5^

' G. Karo, Arch. Am., 1-916, p. 143 seqq., of those from Thisbe (A.E., Sing °J
and pp. r47, 14S, Fig. 5. The length of the cVc. p. 9, Fig. 9.
bezel of this ring is 5-8 cm., more than twice 3 See above, p. 393, Fig. 329 a.