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Painting the Wine-Dark Sea: Traveling Aegean Fresco Artists in the Middle and Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean

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Painting the Wine-Dark Sea: Traveling Aegean Fresco Artists in the Middle and Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean PAINTING THE WINE-DARK SEA: TRAVELING AEGEAN FRESCO ARTISTS IN THE MIDDLE AND LATE BRONZE AGE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by JOHN TRISTAN BARNES Dr. Susan Langdon, Thesis Supervisor MAY 2008 © Copyright by John Tristan Barnes 2008 All Rights Reserved The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled PAINTING THE WINE-DARK SEA: TRAVELING AEGEAN FRESCO ARTISTS IN THE MIDDLE AND LATE BRONZE AGE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN presented by John Tristan Barnes, a candidate for the degree of master of arts, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Susan Langdon Professor Kathleen Slane Professor James McGlew I would like to thank my parents and friends, both here in Columbia and back home in Kentucky, without whose encouragement and concern I could never have gotten this far. I thank them all for listening time and again to my stories and for seeming genuinely interested in the material presented herein. If I have accomplished anything it is only because of them. “It has been said that bright ideas are rather like young St. Bernards in that they get into everything, their size and energy are spectacular, and they tend to run off with their handlers.” - Mary Helms 1993, xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Langdon for advising me throughout and for steering me toward numerous helpful sources and away from the pitfalls of Bronze Age study. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Doctors Slane and McGlew, for their assistance and inquiries over the last year and a half. I thank them all for not letting this topic run away with me like so many young St. Bernards. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………...ii List of Illustrations............................................................................................................vii Chapter 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………..1 Previous Scholarship………………………………………………………2 Approach…………………………………………………………………..6 2. The Eastern Mediterranean Sites……………………………………………...10 The Major Sites…………………………………………………………..12 Avaris (modern Tell el-Dab‘a / ‘Ezbet Helmi)…………………..12 Non-Figural Motifs………………………………………14 Floral Motifs……………………………………………..15 Animal Motifs……………………………………………15 Bull Sports/Athletes/Acrobats…………………………...16 Other Human Figures…………………………………….18 Stucco Reliefs……………………………………………18 Non-Figural Motifs………………………………………19 Floral Motifs……………………………………………..20 Human Figures…………………………………………...20 Stucco Reliefs……………………………………………21 iii Tel Kabri (ancient Rehov?)………………………………………21 Non-Figural Motifs………………………………………23 Floral Motifs……………………………………………..25 Animal Motifs…………………………………………....25 Human Figures…………………………………………...26 Alalakh (modern Tell Atchana / Tell Atçana…………………….26 Non-Figural Motifs………………………………………27 Floral Motifs……………………………………………..28 Animal Motifs……………………………………………28 The Minor Sites…………………………………………………………..29 Mari (modern Tell Hariri)………………………………………..29 Non-Figural Motifs………………………………………30 Animal Motifs……………………………………………30 Qatna (modern Tell el-Mishrife)…………………………………31 Non-Figural Motifs………………………………………31 Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh……………………………………...32 Conclusions………………………………………………………………32 3. Aegean and Mainland Mycenaean Greek Comparanda……………………….34 Non-Figural Motifs………………………………………………………35 Floral Motifs……………………………………………………………..42 Animal Motifs……………………………………………………………47 Bull Sports/Athletes/Acrobats…………………………………………...51 iv Other Human Figures…………………………………………………….55 Stucco Reliefs……………………………………………………………57 Technique and Composition……………………………………………..59 Conclusions………………………………………………………………64 4. Contact and Trade between the Aegean and the East…………………………67 Egypt and the Aegean……………………………………………………67 Syria-Palestine and the Aegean………………………………………….71 Cyprus, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and the Aegean……………………..74 The Nature of Commerce………………………………………………...77 5. Traveling Artisans and their Contexts………………………………………...82 The Nature of Aegean Workshops……………………………………….85 Why Travel? ……………………………………………………………. 90 The Near Eastern and Egyptian Perspective……………………………..93 International Politics and Gift-Exchange………………………………...96 Conclusions……………………………………………………………..108 6. Conclusions…………………………………………………………………..113 v Appendix I. Catalogue of Frescoes………………………………………………………...121 II. Catalogue of Selected Non-Fresco Comparanda……………………………151 III. Shared Motifs between the Eastern Mediterranean Sites and the Aegean and Greek Mainland: The Frescoes (Appendix I)………………………………160 IV. Shared Motifs between the Eastern Mediterranean Sites and the Aegean and Greek Mainland: Non-Fresco Comparanda (Appendix II)…………………162 V. Motifs in the Eastern Mediterranean Major and Minor Sites……………….164 VI. Comparative Chronologies…………………………………………………165 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………177 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1. Map of selected sites mentioned in the study………………………………………..173 2. Avaris, plan of Palace F and findspots of frescoes…………………………………..174 3. Plan of Tel Kabri……………………………………………………………………..175 4. Plan of Alalakh Level VII……………………………………………………………176 vii Chapter 1 Introduction Frescoes in the Bronze Age were elite commodities that adorned the walls and floors of palaces, villas and communal ceremonial spaces on Crete, the Aegean islands and the Mycenaean Greek mainland. These frescoes are distinguished by an emphasis on animal and floral motifs, but also display non-figural motifs such as imitation stone paneling and geometric designs. Human figures feature prominently and are distinguished by style of dress and characteristically Aegean activities such as bull- leaping. Such motifs are best known from palace sites on Crete and the Mycenaean mainland, but also occur in domestic settings on the island of Thera. Generally, frescoes display scenes of power and authority, just as contemporary decorations in Egypt and the Near East, although there is likely a religious significance to many of the motifs.1 Aegean fresco painters formed part of an artistic culture that was widely renowned as far away as Egypt and the Near East.2 Frescoes recently found at the palace sites of Avaris in Egypt, and at Tel Kabri and Alalakh in the Levant, strongly resemble Aegean frescoes in subject, style and range of motifs. Smaller, more easily transportable goods were exchanged between these regions and the Aegean, but the existence of large immovable wall and floor paintings is a different matter altogether. For these goods to exist well beyond the direct Aegean 1 Due to the present uncertainty over the boundaries between the religious and secular realms in the Bronze Age Aegean it is not always possible to determine the exact function or significance of the motifs. 2 Documents from Mari and Ugarit along with tomb paintings from Egyptian Thebes, to be discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, attest to the wide-ranging respect for Aegean craftsmanship in other media. 1 sphere of influence, a different process must have been in effect. Small elite goods in isolation, such as metal vessels and fine pottery, do not necessarily require a high degree of cultural contact to be transmitted from one region to another. However, since walls cannot be shipped overseas as cargo, the frescoes must have been created locally by artists versed in Aegean styles and techniques. This process could have taken the form of stories from foreign travelers or merchants, copybooks,3 or the movement of artists themselves. Based on the composition and construction of the frescoes, I propose that the last possibility is the most likely. The origin of these artists and the processes by which they traveled between regions will be the focus of this examination. Previous Scholarship Evidence for artistic transmission between the Aegean and the Near East and Egypt is not new. Orientalia, or objects of eastern manufacture, in the Aegean were known to Arthur Evans, and when Leonard Woolley discovered “Minoan-style” frescoes at Alalakh in the Hatay in the 1940s a connection with Crete was immediately apparent.4 What was not clear, however, was whether or not the artists had traveled themselves and if so what their region or regions of origin had been. Woolley himself stated in 1953 that “there can be no doubt but that Crete owes the best of its architecture, and its frescoes to the Asiatic mainland,” and that “we are bound to believe that trained experts, members of the Architect’s and Painter’s Guilds, were invited to travel overseas from Asia (possibly from Alalakh…) to build and decorate the palaces of the Cretan rulers.”5 While the idea that Aegean frescoes were painted by non-Aegean artists never took hold, the concept of 3 Attested in contemporary Egypt; see Wachsmann 1987, 12-7. 4 See Evans (1921, 419); see also Woolley (1955, 92-4, 228-32) for Alalakh. 5 Quoted in Niemeier 1991, 189-90. 2 eastern influence became widely adopted, especially in light of later finds of additional orientalia on Crete, the Aegean islands and the mainland.6 Wall paintings at Mari, Qatna and also Ebla contributed to the issue, but their distance from the coast made it difficult to trace the modes of artistic transference. As with many aspects of the Bronze Age, the primary scholarly difficulty was a simple lack of evidence, which allowed incompatible conclusions to be drawn simultaneously from the same data. The announcement in the early 1990s of wall and floor paintings at Tel Kabri and Avaris changed the situation.7
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