Text IV The Discoveries in Crete

The covering up of a complex of apartments on the north-east, and the simultaneous submergence of many floor deposits, mean that Middle Minoan III, like the two preceding periods, was clo­sed by a general catastrophe. The Late Minoan I that succeeds it is the period of many of the masterpieces of Minoan art already described. The villa of Hagia Triada, with its steatite vases, cat and bird fresco, and sarcophagus with the sacrificial procession, is to be placed here. So probably is the royal draughtboard of the palace of Knossos. The linear writing of Class A is now in regular use. Bronze swords have succeeded the daggers whose blades have been gradually lengthening during the Middle Minoan pe­riod. Naturalistic designs are still dominant, not only in the car­ved work of Hagia Triada, which gives us such vivid pictures of human life in peace or war, but in the flower and shell designs of the painted vases. The white on dark of the last period has now given place to a dark on light, and we find brown or red designs on a ground that varies from buff to a yellowish pink. A good example is a tall slight «filler» from Zakro, with its shells and sea? anemones, and an almost identical vase, made, probably by the same artist, from Palaikastro. There is a blending of the two styles in a still more beautiful vase from the Lakkos or pit at Zakro, on which a delicate design of waving water-lilies is painted in white upon a red-brown slip. The curious point about this white design is that it was painted after the rest of the vase, with its red-brown ornament upon a pinkish clay, had already been fired and glazed; itself it was never fired, glazed or varnished, but, as its discoverer, Mr. Hogarth, tells us, can be removed with the lightest touch of the fingers. Another simple design of the period is that of reeds or grasses, such as are found on the graceful «flower­pots» from Phylakopi in Melos, in which the small hole pierced through the base suggests that this is not only a convenient name for describing a shape, but that they were really used as pots for plants. Phylakopi indeed shows other close connections with the art of this period, as it did with that of its predeccessor, and the latest elements in the second city are contemporary. The Shaft graves at Mycenae too, begin in this period, and stretch on into the next. It is the first time that the word «Mycenaean» can be legitimately introduced into our story.

With Late Minoan II we reach the great architectural period of Minoan art, the period of the Throne Room and the Basilika Hall of the Royal Villa, the period of the great scheme of fresco wall decoration which survives to us in the Cupbearer and the groups of spectators watching the Palace sports. Whole areas, were covered with stone carvings or painted plaster. The plaster-work varied from the sculpturesque high relief of the Bull's Head, and the low modelling of the King with the Peacock Plumes, to the more usual flat-surfaced frescoes. These were either life-sized, like the Cupbearer, or miniature, like the scenes from the Palace sports. The two kinds of fresco seem to have been freely used side by side on the same wall, and were framed in decorative designs of wonderful variety, in which lozenge and zig-zag and fishscale and tooth and dentil ornament played their part along with triglyphs and rosettes and every kind of spiral. Even the decoration of the most characteristic vases of this period shows the influence of the architectural spirit, their rosettes and conventional flowers being imitated from the fresco borders and stone friezes of the Palace. Naturalism, where it survives in pottery, borrows its flo­wers and birds and fishes from the scenes depicted in the frescoes themselves, just as the more conventional style borrows from their decorative framework. On all vases alike the last traces of po-lychromy or of a monochrome light design on a dark ground have disappeared. We have now what used to be called the «best Мусеnaen» style of dark on light; the design being of a lustrous glaze varying from red-brown to black according to the success with which it hides what is beneath it; while the ground is buff clay slip polished by hand on the terracotta body of the vase.

Expressions to be memorized

to be in regular use — использоваться постоянно, широко, как правило to give place (to) —уступать место

the curious point about something — любопытная особенность чего-либо

the rest of — остальная часть

side by side — рядом, бок о бок

to be framed (in) —быть окаймленным

along with — вместе с..., наряду с...

just as — точно так же, как

alike — одинаково, в равной мере