LATE MINOAN VOGUE OF 'CATTLE PIECES'

563

As will be seen from the section, the clay nodule shows a projection
behind, as if it had been pressed into some crevice, but in no cases was
there any trace of a string- running through the material, such as is frequently
found in a carbonized state. That in some way these sealings helped to
officially close the doorway of the sepulchral chamber is a reasonable con-
clusion, and the date—the mature L. M. II phase—is fixed by the fine
' Palace Style' pottery found within the Tomb. It closely corresponds, in
fact with the date of the destruction of the Great Palace itself.

It must be inferred that we have here a design of an architectonic
character. The running" spiral already, as we have seen, appears on facades
as a decorative relief well before the close of the Middle Minoan Age. As
a painted design of friezes it enters largely into the scheme of re-decoration
carried out about the close of the L. M. I a throughout the Domestic Quarter
of the Palace. A spiral frieze similar to that of Fig. 530 is seen beneath
a oroup of three warriors bearing 8-shaped shields on a seal impression found
beneath the landing of the Stepped Portico of the West Quarter of the
Palace.1

Late Minoan Vogue of True ' Cattle Pieces'.

It is significant of a definite cultural advance in Crete and the Minoan vogueof
World generally that from the later phase of the First Late Minoan Period !™eltt]e
(L. M. I 6) at least, onwards, cattle are no longer pieces'.
simply depicted in connexion with hunting
scenes and drives or with the sensational
episodes of the bull-ring.2 Already by the later
phase of M. M. Ill we begin to have defi-
nite evidences of the value attached to stock
rearing and cattle breeding. In the Temple
Repositories we find a seal impression that
apparently portrays the actual parturition of
a kid (Fig. 531)—a complement to the act of procreation shown in Suppl.
PI. L1V, i. Other sealings, referred to below, with the back view of a
recumbent ox, seem to be excerpted from a group by some well-known
master that had appeared, we may believe, on the Palace walls by the close
of the Middle Period.

Throughout, the early part of the Late Minoan Age this bucolic
tendency becomes more and more marked. It will be seen, for instance,
horn the 'Vapheio' deposit that 'Cattle pieces' in the modern agricultural

1 P- o/M., iii, p. 313, and Fig. 204. * See P. of M., iii, p. 218 seqq.

IV ** p p

Fig. 531. Parturition 01
Km Sealing : Temple Reposi

TORIES.