THE FALLOW DEER

579

Aegean

islands, seems to have had a more Easterly and Southern range,
extending still to Anatolia and Northern Africa.
Two heads of gold pins of Cycladic type from
the Fourth Mycenae Shaft Grave—as is shown
by the angle at which the tine springs—represent
the antlers of fallow deer (Fig. 503, a, 6).1

On the gold signet-ring from the Fourth
Shaft Grave of Mycenae, what is most probably
a royal male personage in a chariot, with an early
' box' body, is seen driven at full gallop by his
charioteer, while he aims an arrow at a leaping
stag (Fig. 564).

Royal
stag-
hunting in

chariot:
Mycenae
signet.

Fig. 563, a, b. Heads of
Gold Pins from IVth Shaft
Grave, Mycenae, compared
with Antler of Fallow
Deer.

Fig. 564. Royal Male Personage hunting Stag in
Chariot in a Rocky Glen. Gold Signet-ring from
Fourth Shaft Grave, Mycenae.

Deer had existed in Crete from very early times, and it is natural to
suppose that the bow had there also served the Minoan Goddess in the
chase. In spite, however, of the wholesale use of the chariot by the latest
Palace lords of Knossos, of which the clay tablets of the Linear Class B
have supplied so much evidence,'2 it is difficult to believe that the Oriental
usage, affected by the Mainland princes, of taking part in the hunt in chariots
could have had anything but the most limited and artificial vogue.

The great plain of Mesara in the South of the Island, indeed, was
quite as well adapted as that of Argos to make this form of the sport
possible and it is tempting to bring the female personages with diadems of
oeeA.E.,Shaft GraveofMycenae,p.45,Fig. ranean species, foreign to Mainland Greece.

35i- ThiswasanimportedSouthEast-Mediter-

See below, § 114.

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