The Girl on the Mycenaean Ivory Triad: Identifying Her Garment, Hairstyle, and Identity (20 min)

Presenters

Bernice R. Jones, independent Scholar

Abstract

Although the Ivory Triad from Mycenae is among the most magnificent and widely published works of art from the Aegean Bronze Age, it took approximately 60 years to recognize that the child held by the two women was not a boy but a girl.

This paper takes the opportunity to fully explore the girl’s garment on the sculpture and considers whether she wears the heanos or the side-banded kiton. It replicates both possibilities in cloth and models them on a child who poses in the position in the art.

A thorough examination of the child’s head accompanied by detailed photographs reveal clues to her hairstyle that is consistent with the coiffures of other little girls. Her hairstyle and cloth garment replicas are then arranged on three live models who imitate the poses of the sculpted figures and bring them virtually to life. I ultimately propose an identification of the three figures based on the original version of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter that, according to Nilsson, derived from Minoan Crete: that the two women are the Minoan prototypes of Demeter and Hecate and that the girl prefigures Persephone.