ART HISTORY OVERTURNED
An astonishing Minoan gem or sealstone, one of the finest works of Aegean Bronze Age art ever unearthed, is set to rewrite the history of art. In 2015, the tomb of a powerful warrior, dating from around 1450 BC, was discovered in an olive grove near the Palace of Nestor in the ancient city of Pylos, southwest Greece. The remarkably intact skeleton has been named the “Griffin Warrior” after an ivory plaque adorned with a griffin was found buried with him. The shaft grave also contained a carved gem encrusted in limestone. After a year of careful restoration, the scene beneath has been uncovered. It depicts an ancient battle in which a barechested warrior plunges a blade into the neck of an assailant, while a corpse lies at his feet. The seal, named the Pylos Combat Agate, has been hailed as one of the finest proto-Greek artworks ever discovered and may depict the mythological war between the Trojans and Mycenæans, related in Homer’s
Iliad centuries later. “What is fascinating is that the representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later,” said Jack Davis, professor of archæology at the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Classics, which conducted the excavation. Even more remarkable is that the meticulously carved combat scene was painstakingly etched on a piece of hardstone measuring just 1.4in (3.6cm) in length. Indeed, many of the seal’s details, such as the ornamentation on the weaponry and jewellery, are too small to be seen with the naked eye. “Some of the details on this are only a half-millimetre big,” said Prof Davis. “They’re incomprehensibly small.” Could the Minoan craftsmen have used magnifying lenses – or has human eyesight deteriorated?
It is believed that the gem was created in Crete due to a longstanding consensus that Mycenæan civilisations imported or stole riches from Minoan Crete. The fact that the stone was found in a Minoan tomb in mainland Greece is suggestive of cultural exchange between the Minoan and Mycenæan civilisations. The. gem is thought to depict the warrior it was buried with, though it remains possible that he was a priest.
The grave revealed more than 3,000 objects, including four solid gold signet rings bearing highly detailed Minoan iconography, silver cups, precious stone beads, finetoothed ivory combs and an intricately built sword, among other weapons. Although the Minoans were culturally dominant to the Greek mainlanders, their civilisation fell to the Mycenæans around 1500-1400 BC – roughly the period in which the Griffin Warrior died.
Jack L Davis & Sharon R Stocker: ‘The Lord of the Gold Rings: The Griffin Warrior of Pylos’, Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2016, 85 (4); Science Daily, 7 Nov; D.Telegraph, 9 Nov 2017.