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In Crete Phoenician metal objects have been found, which were imported during the Geometric period, and the Cretan Geometric pottery soon takes up motives of decoration borrowed from the Oriental or Orientalizing metal industry. The row of ‘S’s,’ which plays a part in Geometric bronzes, appears as we have seen on the Kavusi jug (ssss1). Its climax is the cable pattern (guilloche), which is obviously borrowed from Phoenician metal vessels (Fig. ssss1). The tongue pattern (Fig. ssss1) which surrounds the lower part and the shoulder of the vases, like the rays similarly used (Fig. ssss1), goes back ultimately to Egyptian plant calyces. The connection with bronze patterns is fully proved by the dots often placed on the ornaments, by the technique of adding white on black painted vases (Fig. ssss1)

PLATE XIV.

Fig. 27. CRETAN MINIATURE JUG.

Fig. 28. THE FLIGHT FROM THE CAVE OF POLYPHEMUS, FROM A JUG FROM ÆGINA.

which aims at a metallic effect, and by the change of the vase shapes. These often get a quite non-ceramic appearance (Fig. ssss1), and in their rounding and contouring, especially by the emphasis on the foot (Figs. ssss1 and ssss1), they are in contrast with the Geometric forms. The Praisos jug (Fig. ssss1) is obviously under Cypriot influence, as is the delicate Berlin jug (Fig. ssss1), in which a previously described class (ssss1) reaches its high water mark. The Praisos pitcher (Fig. ssss1) to the Orientalizing patterns enumerated already adds the hook spirals, which are characteristic of the 7th century, and the Berlin jug adds also the volute and the palmette. The plastic head which crowns this little bottle, and is entirely inspired by the Egypto-Phoenician ideas of form, inaugurates a new era in the representation of man. We are now in the time when Greek sculpture was born, in that notable period when Greek art under the influence of Oriental art took to the chisel, to enter on a century of development which ended in giving shape to the loftiest and most delicate creations that can move the spirit of man. It is noteworthy that Greek tradition embodied the beginnings of this development in a Cretan, Daedalus, and to a kinsman of this ancestor of all Greek sculptors it traced back the invention of the great art of painting, without the influence of which we cannot conceive of vase-paintings henceforward.