A seal from Mycenae,
representing three ladies adorned with accordion-pleated skirts,
shows that heels of a fair height were sometimes worn on the shoes.
Necklaces, bracelets, and other articles of adornment were in general
use, and the workmanship of some of the surviving specimens is
astonishingly fine (Plate XXXII.). Altogether, so far as can be
estimated from the representations which have come down to us,
the appearance of a Minoan assembly would, to a modern eye, seem
curiously mixed. The men would fit in with our ideas of their period,
but the women would remind us more of a European gathering of the
mid-nineteenth century.
The houses which were occupied by these modern-looking ladies and
their mates were unexpectedly unlike anything in the house-building
of the Classical period. There is little of the uniformity of style
and arrangement which characterizes the ordinary Greek house. The
Minoan burgher built his home as the requirements of his site and
of his household suggested, and was not the slave of any fixed
convention in the matter of plan. The houses at Gournia, Palaikastro,
and Zakro, which may be taken as typical specimens of ordinary
Minoan domestic architecture, must have been much more like modern
houses than anything that we know of in Greek towns of the Classical
period; and the elevations of Minoan villas preserved in the faience
plaques from the chest at Knossos suggest the frontages of a suburban
avenue.
Pages:
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241