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10 Hariclia Brecoulaki, Sharon R. Stocker, Jack L. Davis, and Emily C. Egan / AN UNPRECEDENTED NAVAL SCENE FROM PYLOS: FIRST CONSIDERATIONS And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and We set up mast and sail on that swart ship, Bore sheep aboard her, and our bod...

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AN UNPRECEDENTED NAVAL SCENE FROM PYLOS: FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 10 Hariclia Brecoulaki Mycenaean Wall Painting in Context. New Discoveries, Old Finds Reconsidered, ed. H. Brecoulaki, J. Davis and S. Stocker

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10 Hariclia Brecoulaki, Sharon R. Stocker, Jack L. Davis, and Emily C. Egan /

AN UNPRECEDENTED NAVAL SCENE FROM PYLOS: FIRST CONSIDERATIONS

And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and We set up mast and sail on that swart ship, Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also Heavy with weeping, so winds from sternward Bore us out onward with bellying canvas, Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess . . . (Ezra Pound, Canto I)

We here describe what must surely be one of the most exciting and unexpected discoveries in Aegean art in recent years: a Naval Scene from Hall 64 of the Southwestern Building of the Palace of Nestor (Figs. 1, 2).1 The publication of this collection of papers allows us to bring these finds to the attention of a broad audience and to present for the first time high quality images that illustrate the composition. Assembling the many fragments of this work has in itself been a laborious task that has occupied us for nearly a decade,

Fig. 1

Palace plan showing location of Hall 64. Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati.

1. We are grateful for the support and cordial relations we enjoyed from 1991 until 2011 with Xeni Arapogianni, former Director of Antiquities responsible for the Palace of Nestor, and currently enjoy with Anna Karapanayiotou, the present Acting Director. We would also like to express our sincere thanks to the Institute for Aegean Prehistory and to the Semple Fund of the University of Cincinnati for the financial support that has made possible the study and publication of the wall paintings that form the focus of this paper. Davis and Stocker collaborated in composing the introduction and first three sections of this paper; the remainder is the work of Brecoulaki and Egan.

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Fig. 2

H a r i c l i a B re c o ul a k i , Sh aron R. Stock e r, J ack L . D av i s, an d Emi l y C . Egan

An U np reced ented Naval S cene from Pylos : Firs t Cons id erations

but, even so, the restoration of the Naval Scene constitutes only one part of a much larger project: the reconstruction of the entire iconographic program of Hall 64. Pylos is unique in the Mycenaean world in that it permits such an approach. It is one of a very few places in the prehistoric Aegean where the archaeological record is so complete and the excavation history so well documented. Our approach to the study of the wall paintings of the Palace of Nestor is considerably different from that represented by The Palace of Nestor II. In the latter work, Mabel Lang focused in the Hall 64 after excavation first instance on individual figures and scenes that were grouped in 1953, photo 53.F15. according to their iconographic character: nonfigural, floral, animal, Courtesy Department or human. Although in another part of the volume she did describe of Classics, University of Cincinnati. the palace’s wall paintings by individual rooms, her primary concern was with broad themes, and not with the meaning of specific iconographic programs. At Lang’s urging, however, the latter approach was later explored by Lucinda McCallum, who studied the iconographic program of the central corridor of the palace.2 In subsequent years a similar approach was pursued by other scholars, also drawing on Lang’s catalogue. John Bennet, for example, paid considerable attention to the interaction between viewers and painted spaces at Pylos, suggesting that the coherence of the program of wall paintings in the Throne Room depended on the wanax being seated on his throne.3 Iconography became scenery in a theater of power that was only completed by the presence of human actors. Closer to our central theme here, several years ago Bennet, together with one of the authors of this paper, considered the paintings in Hall 64 in their architectural context, emphasizing the emotional responses that those in attendance at feasts in the adjacent Court 63 might have had when confronted with scenes of war–such as the Battle Scenes between warriors in Mycenaean armor and Lang’s so-called Tarzans.4 Was it in such locations that a Mycenaean identity was shaped in opposition to a non-Mycenaean “other” as Davis and Bennet suggested? Although these newer analyses have produced many important insights, they and others like them, all suffer from the same shortcoming: the data on which they rely is incomplete.5 In the case of Hall 64, this is well illustrated by Lang’s near exclusive emphasis

on the paintings on the room’s northeastern wall, a “glorious display” that was “sufficient to take our breath away.”6 Large parts of its dado were preserved in situ, while

2. 3. 4. 5.

McCallum 1987. Bennet 2007. Davis and Bennet 1999. Notably, Lang’s research “team” consisted only of herself and Piet de Jong; she was fortunate if she had even a single conservator to help with the restoration of paintings. Limited human resources meant that there was no labor to invest in particularly time-consuming activities such as the joining together of small or damaged fragments. The Palace of Nestor II consequently offers us only a partial view of the total decorative program of any particular room or area.

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vast amounts of plaster were found in front of the northeast wall, apparently because the wall fell inwards and protected the plaster on its face. For the most part these pieces were laid out in order so that it is possible to reconstruct the appearance of this wall more certainly than that of any other wall in the palace.7

Lang restored the composition of the northeastern wall almost from floor to ceiling. The dimensions and number of ashlar blocks from the wall that collapsed into Court 88 suggested to Blegen and Rawson that the distance between the ground and upper floor was ca. 3.25–3.50 m. Lang imagined that the friezes were separated by colored bands, and that finished horizontal edges had abutted horizontal wooden beams. She further speculated that the dado with painted imitations of cut stone panels continued onto the room’s northwest wall (on both sides of the doorway leading to Lobby 66). While she described the room’s northeastern wall in considerable detail, Lang had little to say about the decoration of the remaining walls of Hall 64, and it is here that our principal contribution lies. The discovery and mending of unpublished fragments has filled out the picture and gives us some idea of how other parts of the room were decorated. The most significant find has been the discovery of the Naval Scene, originally positioned, in our view, on the room’s northwestern wall. In the remainder of this paper, we examine the history of our work on this particular scene. First, we consider the circumstances of its discovery and the evidence for its original position within Hall 64. We then discuss the composition itself in detail, its art historical precedents, and finally, its meaning within the room’s overall iconographic program.

The “Rediscovery” of the Naval Scene

Carl W. Blegen first came to Pylos in the late 1920s at the invitation of his friend and then current director of the National Museum in Athens, Kostantinos Kourouniotis. A decade later an academic partnership was formed between the two men, and on April 4, 1939, they broke ground on the ridge of Englianos. On that first dark and stormy day, work was eventually interrupted by rain–but not before walls, Linear B tablets, and numerous fragments of painted plaster had been uncovered.8

6. Palace of Nestor II, p. 214. For Lang’s discussion of Hall 64, see pp. 42–49, 214–215; see also Palace of Nestor I, pp. 247–253. 7. Palace of Nestor II, p. 214. 8. See CWB 1939, p. 45. That there were antiquities at the site had long before been reported to the Archaeological

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An U np reced ented Naval S cene from Pylos : Firs t Cons id erations

After Kourouniotis’s death in World War II and following a long hiatus, excavations at the palace resumed in 1952 and continued uninterrupted through the 1960s. Over thirty individuals joined Blegen’s team, including some of the most renowned archaeologists in Greece: George Mylonas, Dimitris Theocharis, Lord William Taylour, George Papathanasopoulos, David French, and William A. McDonald. Over a decade of study resulted in the publication of three substantial volumes in the series The Palace of Nestor at Pylos. These seminal works describe in detail what remains of the most complete Mycenaean palatial complex, as well as its surroundings.9 From the time of Blegen’s death in 1971 through the 1980s, research at Pylos was intermittent and no longer centrally coordinated. This situation changed dramatically in 1991. First, a team from the University of Minnesota (Minnesota Archaeological Researches in the Western Peloponnese, under the direction of the late Fred Cooper) began to study the architecture of the palace with the aim of producing an architectural state plan, a task that Blegen never undertook.10 At the same time, between 1991 and 1995, the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project (PRAP), sponsored by various institutions, including the University of Cincinnati, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, and the University of Ioannina, investigated surface archaeological remains on the Englianos Ridge and in the surrounding area.11 Following the completion of fieldwork for PRAP, work at the Palace from 1997 onwards continued under the auspices of the Hora Apotheke Reorganization Project (HARP). The main goal of this project has been to reexamine finds from Blegen’s excavations that are stored in the basement of the Hora Archaeological Museum in order to gain a more sophisticated understanding of the development of the community on the Englianos Ridge throughout its long life.12 As HARP got underway, it became immediately apparent that large numbers of artifacts from the palace were either partly or completely unpublished. The animal bones

are a case in point. Some 300 kg have now been studied. Cattle bones found in a heap on the floor of Room 7, Annex to the Archives Room, and in several pits northwest of the palace attest to sacrificial rituals similar to those known from Homeric and later times. A deposit of miniature kylikes found near the bones in Room 7 is indicative of ritual discard.13 Also under the auspices of HARP, in 2000, a long-term plan to clean and register all painted plaster fragments began, and today more than 17,000 pieces–the majority of which were previously unpublished–have been documented. This project has resulted in the discovery of entirely new iconographic elements and scenes and has prompted us to reconsider many of the reconstructions published in The Palace of Nestor II. Among the first of the new representations to be uncovered were two joining fragments of a female archer that had been excavated in 1939. This composition, now fully published, had already been removed from the walls of the palace prior to its final destruction and was found outside Room 32.14 An even bigger surprise among the wall-painting fragments, however, was a scene depicting a squadron of ships making its way through a purple sea populated with fish; it had been on the upper part of the northwestern wall of Hall 64 in the Southwestern Building. The discovery of this exciting scene encouraged us to reconsider carefully the program of wall paintings in Hall 64, and, as a result, we now have much more to add to Lang’s discussion. Since our goal has been to reconstruct the room’s entire program, this has required attention to the precise contexts in which the fragments of the painted plaster were found at the time of excavation. Fortunately, in the archives of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and those of the University of Cincinnati there is a wealth of documentation pertinent to Blegen’s campaigns at Pylos: detailed excavation notebooks, Blegen’s own log recording the progress of the excavations, preliminary plans, manuscripts and early typescripts, and photographic albums and slides. These sources of information, together with storage labels found accompanying many unpublished fragments, have allowed us to be relatively certain about the original findspots of our new pieces.

Service by Konstantinos P. Tsakonas, and Blegen and Kourouniotes had visited Englianos already a decade earlier; see Palace of Nestor I, p. 4. 9. Blegen’s excavations at Pylos were organized for the University of Cincinnati, operating in Greece under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. 10. The results of this study have thus far been presented only in Nelson 2001, but will be fully published in Cooper forthcoming. 11. Davis et al. 1997; Zangger et al. 1997; Davis and Bennet 1999; Lee 2001; Stocker 2003; Davies 2004; Alcock et al. 2005; Zarinebaf, Bennet, and Davis 2005; Davis 2008; Parkinson and Cherry 2010. In the final year of PRAP, a season devoted exclusively to study for publication of finds from fieldwork, Cynthia Shelmerdine suggested that Stocker look in the storerooms of the Museum of Hora for ceramic finds similar to those of the Middle Helladic period that she and Yiannos Lolos were then preparing for publication. It was in the course of that visit that the seed was planted that grew into HARP. 12. HARP has been funded entirely by the Semple Fund of the University of Cincinnati and the Institute for Aegean Prehistory. For a summary of research and principal publications see Stocker and Davis 2011.

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Locating the Naval Scene

The following section contains a brief description of the way in which we approached the study of Hall 64, and how the original location of the Naval Scene came to be determined. Our first step was to unravel the complicated excavation history of Hall 64, which 13. Halstead and Isaakidou 2004; Stocker and Davis 2004. 14. Brecoulaki et al. 2008. In the summer of 2011, in the course of photographing the entire inventory of watercolors from Pylos now stored in the Archives of the Blegen Library of the ASCSA, an unlabeled, unsigned, and unpublished drawing of the larger fragment of this composition was recognized (ASCSA, Pylos Frescoes 44). The style is not obviously that of de Jong, nor is there any indication that the artist understood it to represent an archer.

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An U np reced ented Naval S cene from Pylos : Firs t Cons id erations

was problematic because Blegen’s team dug without using a grid and trenches were of various shapes, sizes, and orientations. Furthermore, the Southwestern Building in which Hall 64 is located is itself a complex structure, believed by Blegen (and more recently confirmed by Nelson) to have been, in its basic elements, older than the Main Building of the palatial complex.15 At least part of the building in its final form was two-storied. On the ground floor, a dog-legged passageway led into a broad courtyard (Court 63) that faced the majestic Hall 64. From Hall 64, one could have turned left to enter Hall 65, with its megaron-like plan, or one could have continued straight into a rabbit warren of rooms to the northwest. Court 63 and Court 88, located between Hall 64 and the Main Building, may have been loci for feasting, provisioned with tablewares stored in Room 60 and in the Pantries (Rooms 18–22) of the Main Building.16 The area of Hall 64 was first explored in 1939 by McDonald in two trial trenches: Trench II and Trench V. Trench II, measuring 2 m wide and 36 m long, cut across Court 63, passed directly over Anta “B,” continued through Hall 64, and entered Hall 65—passing cleanly through the doorway of the room without hitting either jamb. In his excavation notebook, McDonald observed plaster on the southwestern face of Anta B and on the floor of the room, but did not note that it was painted. Trench V extended about 4.5 m into Hall 64, exposing the northern corner of the room where many wall paintings were found but not removed. As McDonald noted: “A good deal of plaster fallen above the floor and this has been left.”17 In 1952, George Mylonas cleared the larger, southeastern entrance to Hall 64, located all three of its columns, and exposed the southern end of the room’s northeastern wall. Mylonas did not explicitly mention any fallen wall plaster, only a floor of thin “cement” in part of the area, with outlines of circular fluted column bases impressed into it. He did, however, find plaster adhering to the inner face of Anta B (as McDonald had observed) but, unlike McDonald, mentioned that it was painted. In 1953 Rosemary Hope and McDonald excavated the remainder of Hall 64 in a series of smaller trenches that cleared the northern and northeastern parts of the room down to the plaster floor. Nearly all wall plaster found in Hall 64 were removed in that same year; the fragments were labeled by trench, with the findspots of only a few individual pieces located on sketch plans. The fact that the 1953 trenches were smaller than those dug in 1939 allowed Lang to gain a reasonably good idea of the fragments’ original locations (Fig. 2).18

Information from the excavators’ notebooks has also been sufficient for us to determine the original placement of Naval Scene. Although the largest pieces of the composition were found unlabeled, contextual information associated with small joining fragments pointed to Trench H7, extension 6, making it clear that the composition originally adorned the northeastern end of the northwestern wall of Hall 64.19

15. 16. 17. 18.

Palace of Nestor I; Nelson 2001. Davis and Bennet 1999. WAMD 1939, pp. 80, 120. Cleaning the fragments and initial discussion of their iconography was the work of Watson Smith, an attorney and archaeologist experienced in conserving Hopi frescoes in the American Southwest. Smith worked briefly at Pylos in 1954 and summarily recorded his observations in a notebook entitled: “Preliminary General Observations on Pylos Mural Paintings,” now stored in the Archives of at the ASCSA.

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History of the Southwestern Building and Its Paintings

By the time of excavation most of the walls of the Southwestern Building had been leveled to one or two courses, and in some places only beddings for walls remained.20 Erosion had also taken its toll, a particularly pronounced problem in Hall 65. Nelson, nonetheless, was able to conclude that a “Building A,” including the basic unit that later formed Hall 64 and Hall 65, was one of two or three buildings built on the Ano Englianos acropolis in LH IIIA.21 Building A stood on the edge of the acropolis plateau and was built in an ashlar style of masonry. Its northeastern facade extended farther northwest than the later 13th-century B.C. wall of Hall 64, as did its southwestern facade.22 The original placement of doorways is unclear, since interior walls were at least partly rebuilt after LH IIIA. It seems, however, that in LH IIIA there were rooms of Building A northwest of Hall 65, since the northwestern wall of Hall 64 was not of ashlar construction. T...