238-246

The meaning of the lion gate relief

Σκινδαλαμοί

• Καρδαρά, Χρ. Π.

The two lionesses of the relieving triangle over the Main Gate of Mycenae (fig. 1) may have been sphinxes originally. Sphinxes occur on Gates in Anatolia and in North Syria as well. According to H. Frankfort, the male Egyptian sphinx symbolized the king’s supernatural power. This male hybrid creature was replaced by the female in North Syria ( probably in the period between 1950 and 1750 B.C., when Egypt dominated the Levant ) which from there was introduced Northward, as well as Southward, being invented for the queen as a counterpart to the male sphinx. The Mycenaean sphinx, therefore, with its Anatolian and Ca- naanite affinities probably represented the Mycenaean queen, who like the Εάναξ, was deified after death. The Mycenae lionesses, however, may also have represented these queens, for the Mycenae lions seem to have occasionally represented the Mycenae kings.As has already been noticed by Professor Marinatos, the column between the two feline creatures of the relief of this Gate seems originally to have carried an object (plans 1-2). On the analogy of a Mycenaean sealstone (fig. 2) with a similar composition, this object may have been a flower (plan 3 ). In the Hittite pictorial tradition (figs. 3-4), however (from the survival of which Greek Art made borrowings subsequently) (fig. 5), flowers of this type are symbolic renderings of the thunderbolt, often identified with Teshub the Thundergod.The composition, therefore, of the relief over this Gate may have been analogous to that of the Ivory Trio (fig. 6), found by Alan Wace at Mycenae in 1939, possibly a symbolic rendering of this group which shows:Two women, one older than the other, and a boy. The women could be two queens uniting two houses by the marriage of the younger. The unificationis emphasized physically by the effect of a consecutive embrace, of the younger woman by the elder, continued by the caressing gesture of the younger woman toward the boy ( the youthful king? ) —and also by the enveloping wrap which unites the group.That this relief over the Gate may show a unification has been already proposed by Professor Marinatos. Our explanation, therefore, in a modified form, corroborates this conception.

• History and Archaeology

• Αρχαιολογία
• Ιστορία, Αρχαία

γλυπτά, μυκηναϊκή τέχνη, μυκηναϊκός πολιτισμός

Περιέχει εικόνες