¹ PM II. 431–67 (434, fig. 251, for plan of house).

² Ibid. 447–50.

³ Ibid. figs. 262, 268, 270, 272, and PM III, pl. xxii.

⁴ Ibid. 435–8.

⁵ Ibid. 446.

⁶ Europa (MC), pl. iia; compare PM II. 451, fig. 264.

⁷ Europa (MC), no. 1, pl. iib, and fig. 1a.

⁸ Ibid., nos. 8–10, pl. iiia–c, and figs. 3–4.

⁹ Ibid., nos. 11–14, pls. iiid–e, iva–b, and figs. 2b, 5, and 6.

¹⁰ For a brief account of the painting process, see Cameron ‘The painted signs on fresco fragments from the “House of the Frescoes”’: Kadmos vii. 1 (1968).

¹¹ In HM tray 162, Gamma VII ‘Ohne Angabe der Fundstelle’ (but certainly HOF).

¹² For a description of this process as used in Renaissance times, see Constable, W. G., The Painter's Workshop (1954) 62.Google Scholar The word ‘fresco’ is retained throughout the present article since it has become the normal term of reference to Minoan wall paintings.

¹³ PM II, pl. x (panel A); ibid., fig. 264 (panel B); Europa (MC), no. 3, fig. 1c.

¹⁴ PM II. 448.

¹⁵ Thanks are due to Dr. J. S. Gartlan, who has made a special study of cercopithecid monkeys, for this information.

¹⁶ This fragment served as a model for the restored head of the bird in panel C (PM II. 454).

¹⁷ No. 10: not an ‘argonaut shell’, as Evans suggested (PM II. 500).

¹⁸ The heads of other birds in left profile all may have been painted on red grounds (nos. 10, 21, 22) and the remaining birds for which there is certain evidence all appear to have been flying to the right, except for the bird in panel C whose head, on a white ground here, was probably depicted in left profile as indicated by its surviving shoulder and wing fragments.

¹⁹ That the wing-tip on no. 14 is represented in grey and black paints need not signify a different species of bird: the scale and conventions of brushwork match those features on other ‘wing fragments’ of ‘blue birds’seen against a white background, and the colours on the present fragment seem from a realistic point of view more appropriate than bright blue, if, as is suggested, the birds on our frescoes are akin to the ‘rock-dove’. Moreover, the colour variations of Columbidae are considerable, no doubt because the wild sub-species and domesticated or semi-domesticated doves often interbreed.

²⁰ References to this and other comparative objects cited here are given in the Catalogue (no. 23).

²¹ Measurements of the nests and bird support this conclusion.

²² PM II. 110 f. and Frontispiece (in colour).

²³ The significance of the thin black line to the left of the horn (fig. 4 b) is unknown.

²⁴ PM III, pl. xxii; Europa (MC), nos. 12–13, pl. iva–b, and fig. 5, for new joins and restoration.

²⁵ Europa (MC) 57–62.

²⁶ (a) in HM tray 171, Epsilon 1 (fragments 5, 14, 17), HOF: PM II. 465, fig. 275d; (b) in HM tray 181, Epsilon XI (fragment 2), HOF, joining a piece from tray 171, Epsilon 1, HOF, unpublished.

²⁷ Europa (MC), no. 13, pl. ivb, and fig. 5.

²⁸ Ibid., no. 4, pl. iia, and fig. 2a.

²⁹ The ‘Captain of the Blacks’ fragment, found at a high level in the north-east area of the house (PM II. 755 f., pl. xiii). The height of the fresco stack is given in one of Evans's notebooks (1923/4) in the Knossos Archive at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

³⁰ For example, the ‘North Threshing Floor Area’ at Knossos; down the north-western scarp at Pylos, (AJA lxviii (1964) 98 Google Scholar, and see 96 for pots and other debris similarly dumped); over the west wall of the Palace at Tiryns (frescoes excavated by the late Dr. N. Verdelis).

³¹ PM II. 436 f.

³² In support of this ‘reconstruction’ of the collapse and ‘stacking’ of the paintings from the ‘House of the Frescoes’, mention must be made of the physical state of some twenty derelict late-nineteenth century English houses, some partially gutted by fire, which the present writer visited. In well over half this number, the wall plaster had collapsed in the manner described above into ‘stacks’ at the bases of the ground-floor walls, the heaps matching in breadth and occasionally in height (but on average 0·5 m.) the size of the deposit in the ‘House of the Frescoes’; the average size of the stucco fragments, facing upwards or downwards indifferently, was similar to that of our Minoan pieces (about 23 cm., as squared, according to Evans) and there was a similar ratio of larger and smaller fragments. In about five of these houses (all on the one street), wooden beams from the upper floors and roofs were lodged at an angle on the stumps of the ground-floor walls, protecting the areas at the bases of the walls.

The cause of the destruction of the HOF paintings seems best put down to seismic disturbance: firstly movable objects are thrown about (cf. the positions of the decorated pots in room H and of the ‘fallen pithos’ outside HOF); then walls and floors start to split and wall plaster is shaken down; finally, the main structures of the building collapse. The ‘South House’ at Knossos suffered some structural damage in L.M. IA, perhaps at the very same time; PM II. 378 f.; and Part VIII below.

³³ As Evans thought in the case of the ‘South House’ at Knossos, : PM II. 373–90Google Scholar, especially figs. 210 and 223.

³⁴ The walls of ‘Main Halls’ in both palaces and private houses of the period generally seem to have been decorated: cf. the ‘Jewel Fresco’ and other stucco reliefs from the palace at Knossos; floral and faunal paintings from the upper floors of the South and South-east houses at Knossos; House A at Tylissos ( Graham, J. W., The Palaces of Crete (1962) 61 Google Scholar); and the reliefs from Pseira ( Seager, R. B., Excavations on the Island of Pseira, 11 and 15Google Scholar), to cite a few examples.

³⁵ PM II. 459, fig. 271.

³⁶ Ibid. 501, fig. 305 upper left (upside-down: corrected, PM III. 364 f., fig. 241.Cf. Europa (MC) 62 f.).

³⁷ PM II, Suppl. pl. xx a, b, e, g; c, d, f of the same illustration could perhaps have belonged to our main frieze whose border stripes in fact vary in width from place to place because they were largely painted ‘by eye’ without the help of many string-impressed guide-lines.

³⁸ Interconnections 76.

³⁹ As arranged in the L.M. II ‘Throne Room’ at Knossos (PM IV, Frontispiece, pl. xxxiii).

⁴⁰ Throughout the ‘West Magazines’ at Knossos; in the ‘Queen's Bathroom’, and in the ‘Throne Room’ (PM IV, Frontispiece, pl. xxxiii: but note the different series of dado stripes (in situ) on the walls of the adjoining ‘Lustral Basin’); and in the ‘Caravanserai’ (PM II. 108, fig. 49).

⁴¹ No lower white stripe (as found on panels A and B) is visible below the red stripe here. The lower side of the white stripe on the monkey panels was marked out with a string-impressed guide-line whilst the slip was still soft; but on some border fragments of the same frieze, and perhaps in this particular case, such impressions were worn away—evidently during the polishing process. So, too, on frescoes from the Royal Road excavations at Knossos.

⁴² Pieces of the larger frieze may, of course, have been found in room F, and parts of the ‘Crocus Panel’ in room E.

⁴³ PM II. 450.

⁴⁴ PM II, fig. 271; Europa (MC), no. 4, fig. 2a; no. 47 here; and a very large ‘dado fragment’ in HM tray 182, Epsilon XII, HOF.

⁴⁵ PM II. 450; panel B assigned to L.M. IA in PM Index Vol. 52.

⁴⁶ PM II. 446.

⁴⁷ This is largely true of Crete as a whole, and certainly of the Knossos area. Some plants, including certain species of crocuses, flower after the autumnal rains.

⁴⁸ Morris, D. and Morris, R., Men and Apes (1966) 199.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ As early as the Vth Dynasty (Tomb of Ti, at Saqqara): thereafter an increasingly common mural theme.

⁵⁰ PM II. 447. Gartlan writes that our monkeys may, in captivity, take to eating birds'; eggs, but adds that he himself has not seen them doing so in their natural surroundings. For a report of a monkey's skull found below lava deposits on Thera, see The Times, 5 Sept. 1966, p. 11.

⁵¹ On nesting sites, see Peterson, and others, A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe (1966) 178.Google Scholar

⁵² This bird's head was very probably shown in left profile, perhaps giving the impression of a craning neck (carried to an extreme in Gilliéron's restoration: PM II, pl. xi). The posture is one sign of ‘interest’, and often of anxiety, common to many birds—not least to semi-domesticated ‘town’ pigeons.

⁵³ Peterson and others, loc. cit.

⁵⁴ As on the ‘Procession Fresco’ from Knossos, and on other Minoan and Mycenaean figured paintings. So, too, on many Egyptian murals.

⁵⁵ Ten other pieces in HM tray 191, Epsilon XXI, HOF, give the same impression.

⁵⁶ As it would appear on analogy with known fruit-eating habits of cercopithecids (Gartlan).

⁵⁷ The length of the animal's body (tail excluded) here reached 28·2 cm.—restored on the basis of nos. 3 and 6. That of the monkey seen in PM II, fig. 264 (to left, in enlarged panel B) is about 26·0 cm. There are slight differences in the sizes of our animals' heads.

Gartlan has kindly pointed out that the mouth of the monkey seen in Fig. 10 may be too wide for the purpose of sucking out the yolk—which perhaps, in any case, may be scooped out with a paw (see n. 56). Fig. 10 may require correction—if only for those reasons; but a strict comparison with facts of nature could perhaps be taken too far: Minoan wall painters rendered naturalistic subjects in a conventional manner, and rarely in strict and detailed accord with realities of nature. Further discovery of joining pieces to the head fragment, no. 3, is clearly of primary importance—for the ‘proof of the pudding’ here lies in the reconstruction of the original paintings.

That the orange ‘egg’ held by the same monkey may rather be explained as some form of fruit (the correctness of the restoration being assumed)—on the ground that it is too large for an egg in relation to the size of the monkey (about half true size)—seems ruled out, (1) by the lack of any evidence to suggest the presence of fruit-bearing trees or bushes in these paintings, and (2) because the various subjects are not consistently represented in realistic proportion to one another (e.g. the monkeysand papyrus plants in panel B); the ‘egg’ is restored after those seen on nos. 23–6 (cf. p. 8 above).

⁵⁸ PM II. 459: but the analogy drawn with the ‘Cat and Bird’ fragment from HT (now restored in a panel about 1·5 m. in height) no longer holds good. Even so, the smaller main features and more complicated details of the HOF paintings weigh in favour of Evans’s calculation.

⁵⁹ See ‘Addendum’, Europa (MC), 68 f.

⁶⁰ e.g. PM II, pl. x. Also represented on unpublished fragments.

⁶¹ Compare the posture of a partridge on the frieze from the ‘Caravanserai’ (PM II. 115, fig. 52. Repeated in restoration, ibid., Frontispiece, section 2. The original fragment is now in HM tray 177, Epsilon VII, HOF).

⁶² Ibid. 458, fig. 270; Europa (MC), no. 14, pl. iiie, and fig. 6, for new join and restoration.

⁶³ About 80 cm. of the original length of the upper border stripes survive.

⁶⁴ PM II. 435–7; PM Index Vol. 52.

⁶⁵ Ibid. 378 f., fig. 211 (in HM tray 170, Eta III).

⁶⁶ Ibid. 378; J. D. S. Pendlebury, A Guide to the Stratigraphical Museum in the Palace at Knossos (1933) S I 6: ‘L.M.I; one or two M.M.III’.