Counterpoints to Koine in Mycenaean Painting (15 min)

Presenters

Emily Egan, University of Maryland

Abstract

The existence of shared visual elements in the figurative art of Mycenaean Greece is undeniable. Across the known corpus, scenes and motifs repeat with frequency, with palaces being the favored locations for display. Never, however, are artworks from different sites truly “twinned.” This is especially clear in palatial wall paintings, where each depiction of a common theme, be it a procession, a presentation, a hunt, a battle, a lion and griffin, figure-eight shields, marine life, a patterned grid, and so on, comes with a unique package of formal details, associations, techniques, context, and chronology. Further, it is never the case that all themes are represented at all sites, nor is it the case that shared types represent the whole of a palace’s artistic program. Disparities like these, often downplayed in the hunt for overarching trends and patterns in palatial culture, pose a significant challenge to the concept of a Mycenaean koine, a phenomenon underpinned by expectations of homogeneity.

Using case studies from the seven attested mainland palaces (Pylos, Mycenae, Tiryns, Thebes, Gla, Orchomenos, and Ayios Vasileios), this paper argues that, in the case of paintings, such expectations of homogeneity are simply not met. Instead, formal differences in the representation of common themes, as well as differences in where, when, and with what they were displayed attest to both the simultaneous presence of true and frequent artistic innovation in the late 14th and 13th centuries B.C.E., and the absence of interpalace consensus about the meaning and utility of certain iconographies. While changes in representational style need not alter the fundamental character of a shared scene, if that same scene, as a core element of a larger iconographic vocabulary, lacks a stable meaning, can we really speak of a “koine”?

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