Myth and Epic in Mycenaean Vase Painting

Abstract

The character of Mycenaean vase painting is mainly ornamental; not only when it employs floral or abstract motives, but also when pictorial compositions are used. This has already been observed by Furumark;' he adds, however, that there is little or nothing in that can be justly claimed to be individual, historical or mythological.2 The present writer will not discuss the bearing of this statement on the whole of Aegean art but will confine himself to Mycenaean vase painting alone. The Mycenaean vase painting of the pictorial style, which appeared in the Levant ca. 1400 B.c. and flourished throughout the i4th and i3th centuries' had only a very limited repertory of motives and compositions. The chariot group was its most favourite composition,' but it was standardized from the very beginning and did not have any individual The human figure is often used purely conventionally in chariot compositions and occasionally in other groups,5 but it never occurs in complicated compositions in Mycenaean pictorial decoration. In the i3th century it almost disappeared and Mycenaean pictorial decoration is dominated by animal, fish and bird compositions of an exclusively decorative character. Unlike his Greek colleagues of six hundred years later the Mycenaean vase painter in the Levant was never so ambitious as to try and reach the heights of fine art. From the very beginning he stylized his motives and made his compositions simpler in order to decorate as many vases as possible in a short time, a main levde.' To achieve this he tried to choose compositions which did not as a rule have human figures in action, a d his tendency was to reduce the figures of he composition to as few as possible until at the end he retained only one figure. His craft was considered a hum le one, judging from the taste of his contemporaries for objects in precious materials and from what one reads in Homer, several hundred years afterwards.8 He, therefore, did not refine his craft like the contemporary stone carver or goldsmith, or even the wall painter, but remained a humble craftsman, far from the centre of his inspiration, the Aegean, trying to satisfy the taste of his Levantine patrons.' In choosing his subjects he was always looking back to for inspiration but often he was also influenced by his Levantine surroundings, as one can see in details of his compositions.' J. M. Cook, speaking about early Attic vase painti g, very ightly remarks that the spread of H meric epic must have undoubtedly contributed to the appearance of epic and mythological scenes in late Geometric and post-Geometric vase painting. This ought to be the case with Mycenaean vase painting, since myths and epics were circulating b th in Greece and the Levant in Mycenaean tim s.'2 Their rarity in contemporary vase painting, howev r, may be explained as follows: a) The vase painter did no consider his craft suitable for the repr sentati n of such ambitious subjects. b) Myth and epic were in their formation' in the heroic ag and their best expression was song rather than pictures. The Myce aean society, and even more the Levantine society, was less of a book-minded society, to use a modern term, than that of Classical