The Master of Animals

Among the bronzes from the Payne Knight collection in the British Museum is a small openwork relief representing a kneeling frontal figure, male and bearded, between a pair of seated griffins arranged heraldically to right and left (P1. 35a).x The kneeling personage wears a tunic with tight-fitting sleeves which reach to the wrists, and over his left shoulder a skin which hangs in a point in front and down the sides, but leaves the thighs bare. In his hands he grasps the tails of the griffins, who raise their forepaws and turn their heads towards him. The griffin on the left has the head of an eagle, that on the right the head of a lion: in other words, they are respectively of the Greek and Persian types.2 Although this piece is not unknown, its archaological and mythographical interest have not hitherto been recognized. The main points requiring elucidation are the meaning of the motif, the identity of the personage represented, and the date and stylistic affinities of the object. It will be convenient to treat them in this order. First the motif: the heraldic scheme and the action of the central figure in grasping the tails of the griffins at once suggest that he is a male counterpart of the n6rcv 0-p"v, a 'master of animals.' Although abundant in the East from a very early period,3 and although not infrequent in Minoan and Mycenaean times,4 it is much less common in Greek art, at any rate after the archaic period.5 The late Mycenaean type found on the gold ornament from the Aegina Treasure 6 (P1. 35b) reappears on some of the ivory plaques from the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta7 (P1. 35c) : the winged Master of Animals strides along, holding a bird in each hand; or, unwinged, clasps a pair of confronted griffins by their necks. After the seventh century, the date of the Spartan ivories, the motif disappears for a time in the explicitly antithetical form derived from the orient; though a reminiscence of it may be detected in the common late