Finding
Poursat, in particular, distinguishes the Egyptianizing mythological iconography of the late proto-palatial period from the purely Minoan ritual and cult scenes of the New Palaces, and his emphasis on chronological discontinuities and contrasts harmonizes well with recent trends in work on Aegean religion.
Paper
Randi Haaland & Peter Shinnie (eds): African iron-working–ancient and traditional . Bergen: Norwegian University Press (distributed outside Scandinavia by Oxford University Press), 1985. 211 pp., 53 illus. £22.50.
Citations: 0
Full text
Semantic ScholarAbstract
in the process of interpretation, is in itself an important step forward for the study of Minoan iconography. In what is certainly the most theoretical (and, arguably, also the most valuable) paper in the volume, Lyvia Morgan presents a powerful case for an explicit methodology of interpretation which makes plain the mutual and individual assumptions which lead to variability of meaning. For her, iconography is a language, an arbitrary ‘cultural notation’ which nonetheless is structured through a system of associations, thus providing a code we can hope to decipher. Using excellent examples from the Theran paintings and Cretan talismanic seals, she demonstrates the power of formal syntactic analysis, moving from individual elements, to recognizable units (‘woman with raised arm’, ‘horns of consecration’, etc.) to the semantic implications of recurrent associations of such units in the context of larger scenes. Her conclusions may well not be correct-indeed, as she notes (p. 19). ‘there is no single exhaustive meaning to a work’-but at least we now know how she arrived at them. A fine illustration of what she means can be seen in Warren’s exhaustive analysis of a single fragmentary fresco, recently excavated at Knossos, showing merely five circular garlands of flowers and plants. By exploring first the individual painted elements and the likely botanical identifications, then an extraordinarily wide range of comparative iconographic and mythological associations of these plants, he arrives at the thoroughly convincing conclusion that, far from being purely decorative, the garlands had strong symbolic intention as emblems of fertilityllifeldeath, in connexion with one or more Minoan female divinities. In a rather different way, the importance for meaning of contextual association becomes clear in papers by Hagg and Marinatos, who demonstrate that Theran and Knossian frescoes had a direct connexion with the rooms or buildings in which they were found, and that to some extent they must represent ‘official’ pictorial programmes akin to those seen in Near Eastern temple-palaces. The largest of the four sections of the book is devoted to ‘Themes and Motifs’. Here are to be found a number of business-like studies of, for instance, representations in Minoan art of molluscs (Karali-Yannacopoulos) and other marine animals (Gill), plants (Cerceau), the Minoan ‘genius’ (Baurain), Clite military equipment (Verlinden), attacking lions (Pini), and so on. Several of them, incidentally, reveal the advances made possible by the systematization in recent years of the corpus of Minoan seals. While these contributions are useful enough, one hopes that they are merely the prolegomena to work reaching far beyond mere classification and comparison. In any case, Morgan is surely right to warn of the dangers in assuming the relevance of our own cognitive schemes in such exercises of categorization: should the animals, for example, be distinguished as predator vs. prey or wild vs. domestic, rather than (as seems most natural to us) by species/genus? It is in general the papers of larger scope, dealing with questions of iconographic change or the essential identity of Minoan (as distinct from Mycenaean) art, that are the most disappointing. Perhaps this is because they lack either an explicit methodological framework or a solid foundation of detailed analysis; insufficient illustration makes one or two hard to follow. Nonetheless, there are many fresh insights to be found, notably about Egyptian and Near Eastern idioms in Minoan art (Immerwahr, Doumas, Poursat). Poursat, in particular, distinguishes the Egyptianizing mythological iconography of the late proto-palatial period from the purely Minoan ritual and cult scenes of the New Palaces, and his emphasis on chronological discontinuities and contrasts harmonizes well with recent trends in work on Aegean religion. Will iconographic data ever tell us more than we can currently guess about Minoan mythology or the intentions behind palatial art? The clear message of this rewarding book is that the airy generalization typical of so much earlier work is not a likely route to understanding. Deconstruction and reflexive awareness are the order of the day. J O H N F . C H E R R Y
Authors
D. Phillipson
Journal
Antiquity