Heraklion Archaeological Museum - CollectiveAccess System : Clay objects : Double bell-shaped object with small animal figurine [Π7208]

Double bell-shaped object with small animal figurine

Π7208

Clay

Mended and restored.

Height 10 cm.

Tylissos

Area of the Altar of the historical period

Middle Bronze Age. Protopalatial period, Middle Minoan Ι-Middle Minoan II period.:

1900-1700 BC:

Gallery:

III

Case:

Exhibition thematic unit:

Middle Bronze Age - Protopalatial period (1900-1700 BC). The First Palaces. The emergence of palatial societies

Religion and Cult. Cult in palaces and settlements

Description

This object belongs to a group of similar clay artefacts found in Tylissos, in a Middle Minoan I layer, in the area of the Altar of the historical period. Most of the objects are single rather than double, while some bear painted linear decoration and holes in the top. Due to their shape, the excavator I. Hatzidakis believed them to be “votive robes”, making special mention of the pleats in the truncated-cone-shaped body/skirt and the conical projections/sleeves of the garment. Evans interpreted the similar objects from Knossos as “votive bells”, which worshippers would have hung by the loop handle from “sacred trees”, while Pendlebury argued that they were vessel lids. Hatzidakis held that this particular double example, which also bears a modelled bovid, may have been a votive offering to a goddess of double aspect. Although the offering of garments or models of garments to the goddess in the Minoan period is attested by the archaeological and iconographic data, other approaches to the function of these objects cannot be ruled out, such as the suggestion that they were “models of priests’ masks” or figurines.

Bibliography:

Hazzidakis, J. Les villas minoennes de Tylissos. ?tudes Cr?toises III, Paris, 1934, 104-5, pl. XXIX,1.

Author:

I. N.

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