Minoan art

Minoan large stone sculptures are very rare, in notable contrast to the contemporary mainland cultures, and later Ancient Greek art. However, this may partly be explained by the lack of suitable stone, as there are smaller sculptures and some "evidence for the existence of large wooden and even metal statues in Crete",^[59] which may well have been acrolithic and brightly painted.^[60]


The Palaikastro Kouros is an all but unique find of a chryselephantine statuette of a male (kouros) that may have been a cult image. The body is made of hippopotamus tooth covered with gold foil, the head of serpentine stone with rock crystal eyes and ivory details. Standing roughly 50 cm (19.5 in) talI, it was deliberately smashed when the city was pillaged in the LM period, and has been reconstructed from many tiny pieces.^[61]


Small sculpture of a number of types was often very finely made. Stone vases, often highly decorated in relief or by incision, were a type made before the Bronze Age in Egypt and the Greek mainland, and they appear in Crete, mostly in burials or palace settings, from Early Minoan II onwards. Many were perhaps made specially to be grave goods.^[62]


The most elaborate palace vases are rhyta, probably for libations, some shaped into sculptural forms such as animal heads or seashells, others carved with geometrical patterns or figurative scenes round the sides. They are mostly too large and heavy for convenient use in feasting, and many have holes at the bottom for pouring libations. Most use soft or semiprecious stones such as steatite or serpentine.^[63]


A number of these are of special interest to archaeologists because they include relatively detailed scenes touching on areas of Minoan life that remain mysterious, and are otherwise mostly only seen on tiny seals; for example, the "Chieftain Cup" from Hagia Triada may (or may not) be the most detailed representation of a Minoan ruler, the "Harvester Vase" from the same site probably shows an agricultural festival, and a vase from Zagros shows a peak sanctuary.^[64]


Minoan seals are the most common surviving type of art after pottery, with several thousand known, from EM II onwards, in addition to over a thousand impressions, few of which match surviving seals.^[67] Cylinder seals are common in early periods,^[68] much less so later. Probably many early examples were in wood, and have not survived. Ivory and soft stone were the main surviving materials for early seals, the body of which were quite often formed as animals or birds.^[69]


Later, some are extremely fine engraved gems; other seals are in gold. The subjects shown cover, indeed extend, the full range of Minoan art. The so-called Theseus Ring was found in Athens; it is gold, with a bull-leaping scene in intaglio on the flat bezel.^[70] The Pylos Combat Agate is an exceptionally fine engraved gem, probably made in the Late Minoan, but found in a Mycenean context.^[71]


Small ceramic sculptures were very common, mostly in the same earthenware (known as terracotta when used in sculpture) as Minoan pottery, but also in the heated crushed quartz material known as Egyptian faience, evidently a more expensive material. This was used for the unique snake goddess figurines from the "Temple Depostories" at Knossos, where the largest group of Aegean faience objects were found.^[73]


Basic terracotta figures were often hand-formed and unpainted, but fancier ones were made on the wheel and decorated. Vast numbers, of both human and animal figures, were made as votive offerings, as all over the Near East, and have been found in the sacred caves of Crete and peak sanctuaries. The poppy goddess type, with a round vessel-like "skirt", and two raised hands, and attributes rising from the diadem, a late one Minoan example. Some human figures are quite large, and also painted clay animals, up to the size of a large dog, used as votive substitutes for animal sacrifices; there is a group from Hagia Triada which includes some human-headed types.^[74] The Hagia Triada sarcophagus shows two model animals being carried to an altar, as part of funeral rites.^[75]


The few bronze figurines were probably only made from MM III onwards. They are regarded as votives mostly representing worshipers, but also various animals, and in the Ashmolean Museum a crawling baby. Despite the trouble required to make solid bronze figures with lost wax casting, their surfaces are not finished after casting, giving them what Stuart Hood calls a "Rodinesque look resulting from this neglect of finish". Many also have casting defects in places; for example the famous and impressive bull-leaper group in the British Museum seems to have lacked or lost some of the thinner extremities (in part now restored).^[76]


Other small sculptures, many in relief, are in ivory and tooth from various animals, bone, and seashell. Wood has very rarely survived, but was no doubt very commonly. North Syria had elephants throughout the period, and imported ivory from there or Africa seems to have been readily available for elite art; uncarved tusks were found in the palace at Zagros destroyed c. 1450. A large (96.5 x 55.3 cm) gold-plated ivory gaming board (or perhaps just the lid) richly decorated with carving and inlays from Knossos has lost the wood that probably formed most of the original, but is the most complete survival of the lavish decoration of palace furniture in later periods, which compares with examples from Egypt and the Near East.^[77] Many plaques and pieces of inlay in ivory and various materials have survived without their settings, some carved in high relief.^[78]

Minoan jewellery has mostly been recovered from graves, and until the later periods much of it consists of diadems and ornaments for women's hair, though there are also the universal types of rings, bracelets, armlets and necklaces, and many thin pieces that were sewn onto clothing. In the earlier periods gold was the main material, typically hammered very thin.^[102] but later it seemed to become scarce.^[103]


The Minoans created elaborate metalwork with imported gold and copper. Bead necklaces, bracelets and hair ornaments appear in the frescoes,^[104] and many labrys pins survive. The Minoans mastered granulation, as indicated by the Malia Pendant, a gold pendant featuring bees on a honeycomb.^[105] This was overlooked by the 19th-century looters of a royal burial site they called the "Gold Hole" (Chryssolakkos).^[106]


Fine chains were made from EM times, and much used. Minoan jewellers used stamps, moulds (some stone examples survive), and before long "hard soldering" to bond gold to itself without melting it, requiring precise control of temperature. Cloisonné was used, initially with shaped gems, but later vitreous enamel.^[107]


Apart from the large collection in the AMH, the Aegina Treasure is an important group in the British Museum, of uncertain origin though supposedly found c. 1890 on the Greek island of Aegina near Athens, but regarded as Cretan work from MM III to LM.^[108]


Figurative work on Minoan seals, gold rings and other jewels was often extremely fine; it is covered under sculpture above.