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Baikie, James, 1866-1931

"The Sea-Kings of Crete"

Conspicuous among these was one figure, probably that of
a Queen, dressed in magnificent apparel, while there were also
remains of the figures of two youths, wearing gold and silver belts
and loin-cloths, one of them bearing a fluted marble vase with a
silver base. At the southern angle of the building, this corridor--the
'Corridor of the Procession'--led round to a great southern portico
with double columns, and in a passage-way behind this portico there
came to light one of the first fairly complete evidences of the
outward fashion and appearance of the great prehistoric race which
had founded the civilization of Knossos and Mycenae. This was the
fresco-painting, preserved almost perfectly in its upper part, of a
youth bearing a gold-mounted silver cup (Plate VI.). His loin-cloth
is decorated with a beautiful quatrefoil pattern; he wears a silver
ear-ornament, silver rings on the neck and the upper arm, and on
the wrist a bracelet with an agate gem.
'The colours,' says Dr. Evans in teat brilliant article in the
_Monthly Review_ which first gave to the general public the story
of his first season's discoveries, 'were almost as brilliant as
when laid down over three thousand years before. For the first
time the true portraiture of a man of this mysterious Mycenaean race
rises before us. The flesh-tint, following, perhaps, an Egyptian
precedent, is of a deep reddish-brown.


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