1. THE PREHISTORIC AEGEAN
APAH – GARDNER CHAPTER 4-2 PP

2. Quiz 4-2 pp. 88-96 4. The Snake Goddess is an example of
Mycenaean sculpture
Cycladic sculpture
Assyrian sculpture
Minoan sculpture
5. A type of metal relief sculpture in which the back side of a plate is hammered to form a raised relief on the front is called
repousse
Corbelled
Tholos
Fresco
This photo illustrates a corridor that must have been designed
With engaged columns
As a corbelled vault
As a treasury for ancient art
For a tomb
2. The type of stonework seen here is called
Cyclopean
Megaron
Mycenaean
Egyptian
3. Which of the following civilizations probably built this?
Cycladic
Minoan

3. MINOAN POTTERY Kamares-ware jar 1800-1700 BCE
Creamy white and reddish-brown decoration against black background
Leaping fish/fishnets?/curvilinear abstract patterns of waves and spirals

4. MINOAN POTTERY Marine style octopus jar 1500 BCE, 11” high
Tentacles of octopus reach over the curving surface of the jar
More muted in tone
Dark silhouettes on a light ground
Dark on light will be standard for a millenium

5. MINOAN SCULPTURE In Minoan Crete -> no temples
no monumental statues
Minoan sculpture is uniformly small in scale

6. THE SNAKE GODDESS From the Palace of Knossos 1600 BCE, 1-1 ½’ high
Faience statuette = low-fired opaque glasslike silicate
Fertility figure? Goddess?
Holding snakes in her hands/feline on her head -> power over nature
Frontality – near eastern and eyptian
Open bodice and flounced skirt - minoan

7. PALAIKASTRO YOUTH Young god? 1500-1475 BCE, 1’7”
Chryselephantine sculpture – gold and ivory

8. HARVESTERS VASE Best surviving example of Minoan relief sculpture
The relief shows a riotous crowd singing and shouting as they go to or from the fields
Forward movement and exuberance of youth
One of first works of art to show the underlying musculature and skeletal structure of the human body

9. MYCENAEAN ART
The importance of Minoan culture declines after 1400 BC -> the focus of Aegean culture shifts to Greek mainland
Mycenaeans are the the forerunners of the Greeks on the mainland
Culture traces to beginning of second millennium
By 1500 BCE there was a distinctive Mycenaean culture in Greece

10. MYCENAEAN ARCHITECTURE
Late Helladic civilization = Mycenaean
Best and most impressive remains are the fortified palaces of Tiryns and Mycenae
Both built around 1400 BCE and burned between BCE

11. TIRYNS Homer called Tiryns the city “of the great walls”
CYCLOPEAN MASONRY = huge, roughly cut stone blocks used for massive fortification walls in Mycenaean architecture
CORBELED VAULT/ARCH = builders piled massive Cyclopean blocks in horizontal courses then cantilevered them inward until the two walls met in a pointed arch

12. LION GATE, MYCENAE Mycenae, Greece 1300-1250 BCE
Outer gateway to the stronghold
Largest sculpture in prehistoric Aegean
Gate consists of two monoliths capped by huge lintel/corbelled arch/filling the relieving triangle is a limestone slab with high relief carving of two lions with Minoan typed column between them
Monstrous guardian figures at entrance to palace, tomb and sacred places

13. TREAURY OF ATRUES
Wealthy Mycenaeans laid to rest outside the citadel walls in beehive-shaped tombs covered by earthen mounds
Tholos tombs -> best preserved example is the Treasury of Atreus
Long outside passage approaches the tomb/tomb chamber entered by doorway with relieving triangle/tholos is constructed of corbelled courses forming a dome
Largest vaulted space w/out relieving columns until Rome

14. METALWORK Funerary mask, 1600 BCE Gold, worked in repousse
REPOUSSE = goldsmith worked a single sheet of metal and pushed the features out from behind
Mask placed on deceased’s face
Curlicue ears, eyes rendered as slits, hair detailed with long, thin incised marks
Schliemann called this “the Mask of Agamemon”

15. PLASTER SCULPTURE Female head from Mycenae 1300-1250 BCE
Painted plaster
Woman, goddess?, sphinx?
Monumental statue of a goddess?

16. WARRIORS VASE KRATER = bowl for mixing wine and water
Mycenae, Greece, 1200 BCE
Frieze of soldiers marching off to war
No setting, lacking in landscape elements, soldiers repeat same pattern