Condition: New, Made in Greece.
Material: Pure Bronze
Height: 18 cm - 7,1 inches
Width: 12 cm - 4,7 inches
Length: 3,5 cm - 1,4 inches
Weight: 530 g
The
Prince of the Lilies, or the Lily Prince or Priest-King Fresco, is a
celebrated Minoan painting excavated in pieces from the palace of
Knossos, capital of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization on the Greek
island of Crete. The original is now in the Heraklion Archaeological
Museum ("AMH"), with a replica version at the palace which includes
flowers in the background. Though often called a fresco, the figure (not
including the flat background) is one of the smaller group of "relief
frescos" or "painted stuccos", as the original parts of the image are
built up in plaster before being painted. It is dated to "Late Minoan
IA" by Sinclair Hood, circa 1550 BC, in the Neoplatial ("new palace")
period between 1750 and 1500 BC). Maria Shaw says that estimated datings
(in 2004) ranged between MM IIIB and LM IB "and occasionally later".
Only
a few pieces of the original image were excavated; it was probably
removed from its wall deliberately during rebuilding or renovating the
palace. There have been a number of different suggestions from
archaeologists as to the appearance of the original image, many very
different from the grand male figure reconstructed a century ago. These
go back to the original excavation under Sir Arthur Evans in 1901, as he
first thought the fragments belonged to at least two figures, a
possibility that remains under discussion. The uncertainty surrounding
the fragments may be summarized by the title of a paper published in
2004: "The Priest-King Fresco from Knossos: Man, Woman, Priest, King, or
Someone Else?", though in fact the paper tends to back more of Evans'
conclusions that some subsequent scholars do.
T 3172 ΠΡΙΓΚΗΠΑΣ ΜΕΓΑΛΟΣ