the minoan lion: presence and absence on bronze age crete
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The Minoan lion: presence and absence onBronze Age CreteAndrew Shapland aa British Museum , LondonPublished online: 23 Apr 2010.
To cite this article: Andrew Shapland (2010) The Minoan lion: presence and absence on Bronze Age Crete,World Archaeology, 42:2, 273-289, DOI: 10.1080/00438241003672989
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The Minoan lion: presence and absenceon Bronze Age Crete
Andrew Shapland
Abstract
Animal depictions are frequently treated by archaeologists either as direct reflections of human-
animal relations or as symbolic of social realities. This paper offers a different way of conceptualizinganimal depictions, as objects which mediate between society and human relationships with non-human animals. The focus here is on the large number of lions depicted on sealstones from BronzeAge Crete, despite there being no evidence (excluding the depictions themselves) that lions were
present on Crete during this period. This paper examines how these depictions change over thecourse of the Bronze Age, and suggests links between iconographic features and knowledge of, andencounters with, real lions. It considers the interplay between the affordances of lions revealed in the
depictions, as dangerous predators, and the affordances of the objects, as a means of socialinteraction. The Minoan lion is an animal which is neither reducible to its iconographicmanifestations nor possible to understand apart from a network of material culture.
Keywords
Affordance; Bronze Age Crete; human-animal relations; lion; seal.
Introduction
In one scene displayed on the film a troop of four or five lions appears in headlong flight
to the right, the hindmost with tail trailing behind, while one braver than the rest turns
on his pursuers, his tail swinging above him.(Evans 1930: 122)
This description of a scene from a wildlife film comes from the third volume of The Palace
of Minos, Sir Arthur Evans’s account of the Minoan civilization he was engaged in
discovering, and re-creating, at Knossos on the island of Crete. He is adducing the
‘remarkable parallelism’ between a lion hunt filmed in Tanganyika and that inlaid on the
World Archaeology Vol. 42(2): 273–289 Humans and Animals
ª 2010 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0043-8243 print/1470-1375 online
DOI: 10.1080/00438241003672989
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famous Shaft Grave dagger from Mycenae in mainland Greece (Karo 1930: 95, no. 394).
The dagger (Plate 1), he suggests, depicts a ‘definite incident’ which had been inlaid with
remarkable skill: ‘It can hardly be doubted that the artist from whose design the engrailed
group was drawn had been an eyewitness of such a lion-hunt. The acquaintance of
Minoans with lions – rather, we may suppose on the mainland than on insular sites – dates
far back’ (Evans 1930: 120). It is exactly the Minoan acquaintance, as mediated by
material culture, with an animal that was not part of the Cretan fauna that is the subject of
this paper. Rather than the animal we know from wildlife films, or even this dagger, it
focuses on the way the lion was known in Bronze Age Crete. It is by examining the
peculiar Bronze Age Cretan depictions of lions that this paper seeks to explore the role of
material culture in human-animal relations. But first it is necessary to reflect on how
Cretan depictions of lions have been contextualized, by Evans and subsequent scholars:
first, within a knowledge of lions informed by modern technology and, second, within a
wider set of depictions from Late Bronze Age mainland Greece. It is by recontextualizing
Minoan lion depictions within Bronze Age Cretan material culture and society that they
can be seen from a new perspective.
Animals into art
The parallel which Evans makes explicit between animal depiction and wildlife film offers
a useful starting point for considering modern approaches to animal imagery. Evans is
arguing for the transparency of the scene on the dagger as a faithful depiction of real
events, placing the viewer of the object in the same relation to the lion hunt as the viewer
of a film. This straightforward correspondence between event, depiction (whether static or
moving) and viewer can be challenged on various grounds, but it is a prevalent approach
to animal depictions in archaeology. Palaeolithic cave paintings, for instance, were
commonly seen as a faithful record of the local fauna before zooarchaeological studies
showed the mismatch between the two (Mithen 1990: 247–9). As Morphy warns, ‘animals
in art do not provide a window to the world, but a selection from the world, a selection
that tells us as much about human societies and human concerns as about the animals
themselves’ (1989: 14).
Although Morphy stresses that animal depictions can provide a window, even if a
distorted one, to another culture, from a post-structuralist point of view the window
becomes a mirror. This line of argument has recently been applied to ancient Near Eastern
animal depictions (Collins 2002), but there is a danger of losing sight of the human-animal
relations which ultimately inform the depictions. This danger is exacerbated by the shift
Plate 1 Replica of the Lion Hunt Dagger (ª Trustees of the British Museum).
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from encounters with real animals to the experience of animal images in industrial
societies. The accessibility of animals via wildlife films, and the profusion of animal
imagery in contemporary society, leads Baker (2001: 27) to suggest that our interactions
with animals are now highly visual, and that there is a ‘space of representation’ which
shapes our attitudes towards them, independently of interactions with living animals. He
terms this process ‘disnification’, which he sees as the trivialization of animal imagery:
‘The animal is the sign of all that is taken not-very-seriously in culture; the sign of that
which doesn’t really matter’ (Baker 2001: 174). Clearly many people in contemporary
society do take animals seriously, but Baker’s approach highlights the operation of the
‘disnified’ images of the present as a challenge to thinking about images from a different
cultural and historical context.
The parallel between dagger and film is easy to dismiss as a type of disnification,
blurring the difference between the accessible animal imagery of modernity and the
cultural significance of lion hunting in the Mycenaean world. Yet it is harder to dismiss
Evans’s observation that the same type of lion behaviour is apparent in the two media.
Acampora argues against the idea that representations are entirely socially constructed,
even if they do not transparently ‘produce’ the animal to the viewer. He argues for
‘translucent’ representations of animals, ‘not ‘in themselves’ but in relation to their
human, organic and geographic environments’ (2001: 303). In other words, the animal
encountered by the human is not entirely socially constructed but nor is it free from
cultural meaning. Following Acampora, Dombrowski (2002) argues for a ‘realist
zoontology’, which allows for the interaction of human and animal: the lion of the
wildlife film and that of Disney’s Lion King, potentially inform people’s image of the lion
encountered in the zoo without the contradictions between these images becoming
apparent; press stories about animals attacking zoo intruders, however, challenge the
cultural construction (e.g. MacDonald 1994). As Dombrowski suggests, ‘There is, from a
theoretical point of view, a dynamic interrelationship between our social constructs and
the world we attempt to describe and evaluate’ (2002: 199). From this point of view the
lion is not an arbitrary symbol of power for ancient rulers: although not every ruler will
express power using the lion, the choice of the lion can be seen partly as the product of its
role as top predator and its dangerousness in relation to humans (Morgan 1998: 29–31).
One way to consider the relationship between humans and lions, as depicted on the
dagger, is the affordance concept proposed by J. J. Gibson. ‘Affordances are properties
taken with reference to the observer. They are neither physical nor phenomenal’ (Gibson
1979: 143). A lion, for instance, affords danger when pursued by humans, providing a
rationale for hunting them for aspirant Mycenaean warriors. The usefulness of the concept
is that it can be applied to humans, animals or objects: affordances lie in the relations
between entities, and are realized in particular encounters between them. Found in a burial
context the dagger afforded display, but the affordance of its sharp edge might have been
used in the cutting of meat, hunting or warfare.
The depiction on the dagger draws attention to the way in which affordances can be
perceived indirectly, through images (Reed 1988: 307). Gibson regarded images as an
incomplete substitute for experience, and did not fully develop the consequences of his
theory for art objects, which arguably require a more complex account in order to place
them in a cultural, rather than just perceptual context (Knappett 2005a: 49). However, the
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value of Gibson’s work is exactly in providing a realist account of both perception and
human interactions with animals which does not take culture as its starting point.
A number of relational approaches to art objects allow the affordances of animals and
objects to be considered within a more sophisticated account of images and social
interaction, consistent with the affordance concept. Gell (1998) suggests that art objects are
indexes from which social agency can be inferred, or ‘abducted’. Hence the dagger allows
Evans to abduct the agency of an artist who was present at a lion hunt. Even though the
artist is no longer present, the dagger survives as an index of their skill. The term index is
derived from Peircean semiotics, and denotes a relationship by contact rather than
resemblance (iconicity) or convention (symbolism) (Peirce 1998). Summers uses Peirce’s
index as the basis for his definition of trace as ‘an indication of former presence and contact’
(2003: 687). He argues that all art objects should be seen as ‘real metaphors’, meaning that
they are substitutions for something that is not present. A similar argument is put forward
by Belting (2005a, 2005b), who suggests that images are brought into existence by a
perceiving body and a transmitting medium, and hence give form to something through an
iconic relationship: ‘Images are present because of and through their media, yet they stage
an absence of which they are an image’ (Belting 2005a: 312–13). From these perspectives the
dagger acts as the trace of a lion hunt, leading Evans to believe that the artist was there in
person. The dagger is the medium which performs what Belting calls the ‘presence of an
absence’, giving a fleeting encounter with lions a durable form.
The following discussion of lion depictions from Bronze Age Crete considers how the
affordances of lions were displayed on these objects, but also the role of the object in
mediating these affordances. As Knappett (2005b: 85–6) has argued, affordances can be
usefully combined semiotics to consider the connections between objects as well as the way
people interact with them. This allows a consideration of how people interacted with
objects depicting lions and whether these objects were ultimately connected with
encounters with lions.
Bronze Age Crete
Sir Arthur Evans, who used the term Minoan to describe Bronze Age Crete (c. 3200–1100
BC), developed a tripartite chronological scheme of Early, Middle and Late Minoan which
is still used to describe the pottery sequence of the island. However, this does not neatly fit
with what are seen as the main architectural and social changes during this period,
centring on the building of monumental buildings Evans termed ‘palaces’. The alternative
scheme used here divides the Bronze Age into Prepalatial (3200–1950 BC), Protopalatial
(1950–1700 BC), Neopalatial (1700–1450 BC) and Final Palace (1450–1350 BC) (Dickinson
1994: 10–17; Fitton 2002: 28–9).
Depictions of lions on Bronze Age seals in particular have often been seen as a window,
leading to the persistent suggestion that lions were present on Crete in the Bronze Age
(Guest-Papamanoli 1996; Pini 1985: 155–6: Warren 1979: 123). Fossil evidence suggests
that lions were not part of the Pleistocene fauna of Crete, and there is no
zooarchaeological evidence that lions were present on Crete during the Bronze Age
(Jarman 1996; Van der Geer et al. 2006). Lion remains have been found elsewhere in the
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Bronze Age Aegean (Thomas 2004: 189–90; Trantalidou 2000), although not all
necessarily indicate the presence of a live lion since pelts can still contain toe bones and
animal remains, particularly teeth and claws, become traces of infrequently encountered
animals. The curation of jaguar parts in various South American societies provides a
useful analogy (Helms 1999: 58; Politis and Saunders 2002: 124–6). The historical, and
growing zooarchaeological, evidence for lions in mainland Greece provides, in contrast to
Crete, circumstantial evidence that there were wild populations of lions on the Bronze Age
Greek mainland (Bloedow 1992: 299; Hughes 2003: 26; Thomas 2004: 192).
As will be suggested, the import of lion pelts to Crete helps to explain some of the
peculiar iconographic features of Cretan sealstones. Although a wild population of
lions on Crete can be discounted, it is possible that lions were brought to Crete in the
Late Minoan period, as Younger puts it, as a ‘palace showpiece’ (1988: xi). As will be
argued, a closer reading of iconographic evidence does suggest an increasingly detailed
knowledge of lions, and, given the way the major palaces were excavated, the absence
of remains is far from conclusive. However, by seeing lion depictions as staging the
presence of an absence, as argued above, reading them straightforwardly as indicating
the presence of lions is to neglect the way these depictions functioned in Bronze Age
Crete. Instead, using depictions to convey knowledge of lions and lion characteristics
was a means of social distinction.
The opposite extreme in interpretation is also apparent, akin to Baker’s argument that
animal representations operate independently of the animals themselves. Hence the lion is
frequently seen as a symbol, whether of chiefdom in the Prepalatial period (Weingarten
2005: 765) or Mycenaean domination of Crete in the Final Palace period (Hallager and
Hallager 1995). These symbolic approaches assert an essentially arbitrary meaning for lion
imagery; an analogy is the mediaeval bestiaries, where lions have a variety of allegorical
meanings and a frequent identification with Christ (Haist 1999). This anthropomorphism
is evident in the rather human-like lion depictions of this period, a tradition even
influencing drawings of lions said to be from life (Gombrich 1977: 68; Mezzalira 2002: 38;
White 1947: 428). In contrast, the lion depictions of Bronze Age Crete exemplify Gibson’s
theory of pictures, depicting the affordances of these animals and interactions with them,
giving these images an indexical character. It can be suggested that these objects were used
to establish connections with lands beyond Crete, and ultimately the practice of lion
hunting.
Lion depictions from Minoan Crete
The following seeks to quantify the appearance of lions in Minoan art, alongside an
iconographic treatment. A number of articles have dealt with depictions of lions in the
Bronze Age Aegean, but in most discussions the Minoan evidence is merged with
Mycenaean iconography, often across media (Ballintijn 1995; Bloedow 1992; Morgan
1988: 44–9; Pini 1985; Thomas 2004). Even without assuming, as Evans did, that the finest
art objects in the Shaft Graves at Mycenae were of Minoan manufacture, iconographic
interchange between Crete and the mainland is apparent from the Late Bronze Age. The
studies tend to focus on the question of the observation of lions and lion hunting, which
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would have occurred on the mainland, using the most detailed Bronze Age depictions.
However, of interest here are the lion depictions in circulation on Crete. These depictions
convey certain lion characteristics, particularly the mane, but frequently show no
understanding of what a lion looks like. However, this is a more complex problem than it
appears, since Cretan artists did seem to know what a griffin looked like, in that it has a
stable and enduring form. It can be argued that both were understood as animals which
inhabited the world beyond Crete: whereas griffins were always known from imported
depictions, it is argued here that lion hunting on the mainland resulted in a new source of
information about lions in Neopalatial Crete. This helps to explain the changing
appearance of lions in Bronze Age Cretan iconography.
Seals
Pictorial designs on seals first appear in the Prepalatial period, when seals are frequently
made from imported hippo ivory as well as local stone. In later periods soft and often
brightly coloured imported hard stones were used in the manufacture of seals. Late
Minoan depictions show that seals were worn around the wrist, while others are likely to
have been worn as pendants (Krzyszkowska 2005: 21); this allows them to be associated
with individual people, although this person might be using a seal as heirloom or as the
holder of an office. In other words, seals afforded use by individual people, although it is
difficult to establish a one-to-one correspondence between seal and user. Their prime
function was to make impressions in clay, which have survived as sealings when
accidentally fired. Hence seals were used to create material traces of their users in clay in a
bureaucratic context. The question is why so many seals and sealings showed lions and
other wild animals.
Cretan seals and sealings have been well-published in the Corpus der Minoischen und
Mykenischen Siegel (CMS), and the numerical data in this paper are based on analysis of
all seals and sealings depicting animals published in the CMS volumes for Cretan
collections. Given the exchange of objects between Crete and the mainland this selection is
more likely to be representative of the seals in circulation in Bronze Age Crete than an
analysis of all extant Minoan seals. Seals and sealings can be dated by context, particularly
so for the sealing deposits found in the destruction deposits marking the end of the palatial
periods. This contextual information provides a useful anchor for the stylistic dating of
unstratified seals. The stylistic groups referred to below indicate the considerable effort
that has gone into the close dating of seals (Krzyszkowska 2005: 10–11); the broad cultural
periods used here largely overcome uncertainties over exact dating. Most of the seals
illustrated are typical of groups of lion depictions; the anomalous seals are included for
particular features of interest.
The lion is the second most frequent closely identifiable animal on Cretan seals (Fig. 1),
and the most frequently depicted identifiable animal in the Prepalatial period. The
characteristics of Prepalatial lions are distinct from later depictions: as can be seen from a
typical depiction (Plate 2a) from the so-called ‘Parading Lions and Spirals Group’ group
(Yule 1980: 208–9), bodily proportions are the most distinguishing feature, as well as the
indication of a mane. In the absence of lions on Crete in this period, the most likely
explanation for the accurate depiction of their proportions is imported depictions
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(Weingarten 2005: 763); apart from these iconic characteristics they do not reveal
information about lion affordances. Lions do appear on an imported Syrian cylinder seal
from a Prepalatial tomb at Mochlos, illustrating the possibility of iconographic transfer; as
Aruz (2008: 40, 65) points out however, the circular composition of these seal depictions
and the more streamlined depictions of lions are distinctly Aegean rather than Levantine.
Prepalatial zoomorphic lion seals have close parallels with Egyptian zoomorphic
amulets. Plate 2b shows an example with a distinctive ridged mane made from a synthetic
material composed of powdered steatite seemingly imitating Egyptian manufacture.
Zoomorphs in this material are collectively known as ‘white pieces’, and include other
Egyptian forms such as scarabs (Pini 1990; Aruz 2008: 57–61). An ivory seal from
Kalathiana shows a sitting lion with a human underneath, which Evans (1928: 55, fig. 26)
saw as an example of the Egyptian idea of the guardianship of the dead, but which has also
Note Proportion of humans includes only seals depicting humans with other animals.Figure 1 Proportions of animal depictions by period (420 depictions).
Plate 2 Prepalatial lion seals: a) Platon (1969: no. 248); b) Sakellarakis and Kenna (1969: no. 7d).
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been seen as showing lions as a threat to humans (Bloedow 1992: 302). Egyptian
zoomorphs of this kind are not known to have human figures underneath, discounting
Evans’s suggestion (Aruz 2008: 58). Whereas Aruz sees it within a Near Eastern tradition
of showing fallen enemies, Bloedow’s interpretation requires the lion form to be imported
into a cultural context which was informed about the threat of lions, presumably from the
mainland. However, the lion’s affordances are not otherwise clearly indicated in the
Prepalatial period because it is typically shown standing or walking. Even on a seal (Platon
1969: no. 222) from Marathokephalo which has been interpreted as a possible Prepalatial
lion hunt scene (Krzyszkowska 2005: 67), there is no interaction between human and lion.
Based on the depictions alone, the lion can best be seen as having iconic significance whose
value derived from indexing prestigious imports rather than unseen lions.
As can be seen in Figure 1, there is a dip in the proportion of lions on seal depictions in
the Protopalatial period: this can be seen as a watershed between two distinct sets of
depictions. On the three-sided prism seals typical of this period, bodily proportions and
indication of a mane remain the lion characteristics. A lion on a three-sided prism from
Ayios Charalambos (Plate 3a) shows a striated mane which resembles ‘white piece’ lions;
neither requires an understanding of what a mane was. Other depictions from the same
period are less easy to see as a continuation of the Prepalatial imagery; Pini (1985: 165)
suggests that it is during the Protopalatial period that first-hand observations of lions are
first apparent in seal depictions. At the end of the period, from the Phaistos palace sealing
deposit, comes a lion depiction which is far more detailed than anything seen before (Plate
3b), although the V-shapes on the mane are markedly stylized. Again this shows the form
of the lion but not its affordances. Here, however, it is shown in a landscape; it can be
argued that this is among the first ‘naturalistic’ animal depictions on seals, the plants
locating it beyond the domestic sphere.
A peculiarly Cretan group of lions with a circular head and dotted eye has been
identified, dated to the Neopalatial period (Betts 1981; Younger 1983; Younger and Betts
1979). An example with a spear over its back comes from a securely dated sealing deposit
at Zakros (Plate 4a); these depictions are common on soft stone seals, that is, locally
available material rather than imported hard stone (Pini 1995). The attribution of some by
Betts (1981) to the ‘Jasper Lion Master’ illustrates that some of the most characteristic are
carved on hard stone seals like jasper, so that the appearance of the lion was not entirely
dictated by material. Their most interesting aspect, that is, how unlike lions they appear
compared with earlier depictions, is often attributed to the competence of the engraver,
Plate 3 Protopalatial lion depictions: a) Pini (1992a: no. 43); b) Pini (1970: no. 270).
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‘certainly not one of the greatest artists of LMI glyptic’ (Betts 1981: 7) or ‘sehr maßige
Arbeiten’, very mediocre pieces (Pini 1995: 196). Instead one can argue that they illustrate
that the engraver knew two things about a lion, that it had a mane and tufted tail, but was
unclear on the head and overall appearance. Rather than the continuation of earlier
imagery, the most obvious explanation for this is that these depictions were based on lion
pelts, with claws, which effectively convey these characteristics, but not a lion’s
proportions or head shape. Less common frontal depictions of lions, such as a steatite
lentoid excavated at Episkopi Pediados (Plate 4b), show this particularly clearly.
There are also very detailed lion depictions on Neopalatial seals. A sealing from Ayia
Triada (Plate 5a) shows a lion with an arrow in its side: even this depiction, however, could
be based on a pelt because of the way the feet are depicted, arguably more like toe bones.
At the same time it is an unambiguous depiction of lion hunting. The detail of this hard
stone depiction, conveying information simultaneously about skilled craftsmanship and
lion hunting, can be seen in contrast with the less informative soft stone seal depictions.
This could indicate that there was competition among seal users for the most detailed
depictions of lion hunting, as a means of demonstrating superior knowledge, as well as
access to skilled engraving and imported materials. The implication perhaps intended is
that the seal owner has hunted or encountered such a dangerous animal, an activity shown
rarely on Cretan seals, but which does appear on a sealing from Chania (Pini 1992a: no.
135). More generally the seal creates an association between seal owner and this socially
Plate 5 Neopalatial hard stone (a) and metal ring (b) impressions: a) Pini (1999: no. 91); b) Pini(1999: no. 233).
Plate 4 Neopalatial soft stone lion depictions: a) Pini (1998: no. 70); b) Platon and Pini (1985: no.156).
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significant animal practice, but some seals appear to be more direct traces of lion hunting
than others.
Seal depictions convey an interesting mix of, from a zoological point of view, correct
and incorrect information about lions. Ballintijn (1995: 36) argues that the wounded lion
pose is in fact borrowed from dogs and cattle. The same can be said of the scenes of a lion
with a mane suckling a cub (e.g. Pini 1992b: no. 276). She argues, however, that the mane
is a useful way to identify a lion, rather than this betraying a lack of first-hand experience
of lions. A final incongruity is the fact that lionesses tend to do the attacking, but again
lions with manes are shown in attack scenes (which account for 19 per cent of lion
depictions in the Neopalatial, and 25 per cent in the Final Palace period). A sealing from
Myrtos Pyrgos (Plate 5b), impressed by a ring dated to LMI, with two lions attacking a
cow, is mirrored by the hunting behaviour of African lions (Pini 1985: 154). There are
other Neopalatial ring impressions showing lions, including the famous Mother on the
Mountain sealing (Pini 2002: no. 256), where lions flank a female figure, and lions running
in front of a palm tree (Pini 2002: no. 298). On the other hand, the arrangement of a Final
Palace seal (Plate 6a), with a lion running alongside a cow and biting it, is borrowed from
dog behaviour (Pini 1985: 162). Ballintijn and Pini usefully compare these depictions with
modern zoological knowledge, showing which aspects of the depictions could have been
based on observation. However, the discrepancies do not affect the information conveyed
in these depictions about the lion’s affordances, as a dangerous animal capable of
attacking goats or cattle.
Depictions of lions in the Final Palace period tend to be seen as more conventional, with
more formal poses and designs. Younger (1985: 51–2) suggests that the later lion
depictions were hardly based on observation. One argument against this is provided by a
sealing from Knossos which, as Rhyne (1970: 186) observed, shows a ‘hair star’ on the
shoulder of the lion (Plate 6b): although this could be an observation imported from the
Near East, nevertheless it points to a continuing interest in the details of lion morphology
(Arkell 1948; Bate 1950; Kantor 1947). The ‘Master of Animals’ depictions are typical of
the Final Palace period, most often featuring lions either side of a central figure. Bloedow
has argued that, rather than seeing such arrangements as symbolic, they can be interpreted
as depicting lion subjugation: ‘Clearly, this is not a fate which lions would have chosen for
themselves, and so depicts in supremely dramatic fashion the sheer violence by which they
had been brought into subjection’ (Bloedow 1996: 1163–4). Like hunting scenes, these
Plate 6 Final Palace depictions of lions: a) Platon and Pini (1984: no. 44), b) Pini (2002: no. 307).
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seals can be seen as providing information about the practices involving lions; these later
depictions make explicit the practice of subduing a dangerous animal, and so can be seen,
like other depictions of lions, as indexes of a dangerous activity.
Lions on Cretan seals are always indexes of overseas contacts: the first evidence for
contact with the Near East is in the Prepalatial period, and extensive contacts between
Crete and the mainland become apparent in the Neopalatial period. These two periods of
contact can be used to explain the way in which information about lions gradually reached
Crete, first as proportionally accurate depictions, then lion pelts and, finally, perhaps, the
animal itself. Even if lions were brought to Crete, however, depictions continue to show
them as dangerous predators, attacking other animals. The mane is the key to lion
depictions throughout Minoan seal engraving, and one can see these depictions as
increasingly providing information about the animal whose mane it was. Often the
information was incorrect, in comparison with modern zoological knowledge about lions,
but this is not always a useful standard against which to judge these depictions. To dismiss
these differences simply as poor artisanship is to overlook the fact that they can be seen as
useful indicators of what the seal engraver and seal owner knew about lions. Later seals
displayed the affordances of the lion as a dangerous animal to be hunted. The seal itself
afforded the user of the seal a way to demonstrate knowledge of an unfamiliar animal and
associate themselves with the animal practice of lion hunting. Yet these seal depictions
reveal varying levels of familiarity with lions.
Rhyta
A small number of lion depictions exist in other media. These media have different
affordances from sealstones, and so would be useful in different social contexts. Three
zoomorphic rhyta, vessels used for pouring liquids, from the Knossos palace are usually
seen as Neopalatial but could be later (Koehl 2006: 122). Manes are indicated on all three,
although the best known is usually identified as a lioness (Plate 7). As well as being a
naturalistic rendering of a lion this shows another detail of lion anatomy, the superciliary
vibrissae above the eyes. This feature, also seen on a gold lion’s head rhyton found, like the
Lion Hunt Dagger, in Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae (Karo 1930: 77–8, no. 273), reveals
Plate 7 Lion’s head rhyton from Knossos. Author’s photo.
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knowledge of lion anatomy which was to become a defining feature of lion depictions in
later Greek art. However, as Napier (1986: 113) argues, later artists were often confused
about exactly what these marks were, resulting in confused depictions.
An important affordance of these vessels was their manipulability. These objects acted
as real metaphors, allowing the lion’s head to be present during drinking ceremonies or
similar performances. The red jasper and rock crystal eyes of the lioness would have made
it particularly striking, and a demonstration of complex craftsmanship. However, Miller
(1984: 131–5) sets these lion’s head rhyta apart from some contemporary bull’s head rhyta,
whose naturalism and detailing, she suggests, make them almost life-like. Even so, these
three-dimensional lion heads mark a new level of realism in Cretan lion depictions,
reinforced by their formal qualities; rather than staging an absence, in Belting’s terms, they
almost stage a presence, blurring the boundary between animal and object. This would
have been particularly the case for those who were not familiar with such objects; their
impact would have been enhanced if they were used only in occasional socially charged
events (Bevan 2007: 11).
Fresco
Given the prominence of lions in Minoan seal iconography, it is of interest that no
fresco depictions of lions are known from Bronze Age Crete. One stucco relief with
detailed hair from the Knossos palace has divided opinion between identification as a
fragment of a lion’s mane or bull’s head (Evans 1928: 332–5, 1935: 538). Hood (1994
[1978]: 73), followed Evans, describing it as ‘lion seizing prey’, but this ambiguous
fragment is not clear evidence for lion frescoes or attack scenes at Knossos (Shaw 1995:
115). In contrast, frescoes of cattle are frequent. This can be explained by regarding the
frescoes as one of the media through which bull-leaping was given a permanent presence
at the palace at Knossos, complementing an activity that took place in the vicinity. Lion
hunting was an overseas activity largely restricted to artefacts associated with the
person, namely seals.
Conclusion
The Mycenaean Lion Hunt Dagger (Plate 1) illustrated the affordances of lions as
dangerous animals, attacking deer and humans alike. Requiring specialized knowledge to
make, it connected the elite burials at Mycenae with an animal practice of great social
significance. The affordances of the dagger, simultaneously a weapon and a depiction of an
animal practice, reinforced the connections between a warrior ideology and lion hunting
(Marinatos 1990). There is no reason to suggest that it was made by a Minoan craftsman,
as Evans did, since no such object has been found in Crete. However, other objects in the
Shaft Graves do show evidence for contact, whether direct or indirect, between Crete and
the mainland at this time. This coincides with the first depictions of lions on Minoan
sealstones which clearly show their affordances, attacking other animals. In the earlier
Prepalatial and Protopalatial periods, the form of the lion was known, but its affordances
as a predator were not shown, making it likely that these depictions were adapted from
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imported objects from Egypt and the Near East. From the Neopalatial period, not only
are these affordances shown, indicating knowledge of lion behaviour, but depictions also
frequently include spears. These sealstones acted as material traces of lion hunting, even
though the form of the lion is frequently less accurate than earlier depictions, particularly
on soft stone seals. It has been argued that this can be related to another material trace of
lion hunting, in the form of lion pelts which were probably brought to Crete as hunting
trophies, providing the prototypes for lion depictions.
From the Neopalatial period onwards, seals were one means to make lion hunting
present in a social context in which animal practices involving non-domestic animals were
clearly of social significance (Shapland 2010). The zoomorphic rhyta from the Knossos
palace show a better understanding of lion anatomy than seals, and their form was suited
to making the lion itself present in certain social events; these were effective substitutes.
This choice of medium, rather than frescoes, suggests that such a detailed depiction would
have been relevant only to a small group of people rather than all users of the palace;
whereas seals conveyed knowledge of the characteristics of a lion skin, these vessels, with
their rock crystal eyes and realistic carving, acted as real metaphors for lions, but only
among an elite social group which had conceivably encountered real lions. Lion hunting
was an activity, however, which was extended more widely in Minoan society through
material culture. The frequency of lion depictions on seals, but also their idiosyncrasy,
could point to a different process, in which using the seal established a connection with
lions in a context where few people knew what a lion looked like (including perhaps the
seal user). Lion depictions on soft stone seals can be seen as inexpensive products
connecting people who had never encountered a lion with an elite animal practice
materialized in more detailed depictions on hard stone seals, which were ultimately linked
to lion hunting abroad. This paper has sought to place lion depictions within a network of
relations involving animals, humans and material culture. Seals were used to leave a trace
of their user, and the same logic can be applied to the depiction, however indirectly, as the
trace of a practice involving an exotic and dangerous animal. Rather than windows or
mirrors these objects can be seen as constituent parts of the extended relations between
humans and animals in Bronze Age Crete.
Acknowledgements
Funding from the AHRC enabled me to complete the PhD thesis on which this article is
based. I would like to thank my supervisors, Louise Martin, Jeremy Tanner and Todd
Whitelaw for their support during my research. Thanks too to Andy Bevan, Cyprian
Broodbank, Thomas Kiely, Carl Knappett and Olga Krzyszkowska for their comments,
to Emily Bonney and Nancy Thomas for permission to cite their theses, to Walter Muller
for supplying images from the CMS archives and to two anonymous reviewers for their
comments.
British Museum, London
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