SACRIFICE AND HUNTING OF BOARS

of the same kind.1 There are

573

Fie. 550. Priestly Personage
in Long Robe about to make
Haruspicial Incision on Boar laid
on Sacrificial Table. Agate Len-
toid : Mycenae.

, indeed several parallel examples of bulls
or oxen laid out on similar sacrificial
tables. The animal is depicted as already
slaughtered.

The rite performed with the sacrificed
boar may be certainly taken to show that
divination by the entrails of victims was
practised by Minoan priests—an interesting
anticipation of Etruscan haruspices.

Hunting of Wild Boars.

On the other hand we have also to deal Hunting
with the animal in his wild state. In Late boars.

Minoan Art ' pig-sticking ' scenes are not

infrequent. On a chalcedony lentoid from

the Vapheio Tomb 2 the hunter checks a

charging wild boar with a spear-thrust on the front of his head, the scene

being laid beneath a canopy of rocks (Fig. 551). In this case the design of

Fig. 551. Vapheio Gem show-
ing Boar beneath Rocks.

Fig. 552. Gold Bead-seal : Huntsman
spearing Charging Lion : Thisbe.

the huntsman is much inferior to the spirited representation of the animal
itself. A similar scene recurs on a cornelian amygdaloid from the Pelopon-
nes'e.3 The Thisbe bead-seal,* in which a spearman thrusts his weapon into
the mouth of a charging lion, is here given for comparison (Fig. 552).

I he fine relief of a steatite vessel, originally gold plated, from

' I'urtwangler, A..G., PL II, 22 {Berlin
c«l; No. 21, PI. I). i„ Imhoof-Blumer unci
Keller, Tier ,,. Pflamxnbilder, p. no, the

animal is wrongly identified with an antelope, < A.E., Rim of Nestor, &c, p. 35. l'ig. ~fi.

as Fu'"t«ngler pointed out: from the De

Montigny Collection.

! 'E0. 'ApX., 1SS7, PI X, 15, &c.

3 Furtw., A.G., ii, PI. II, 12.

■' A.E., Ring of Nestor, 6W., p. 3: