The Mixing of Sexual Characteristics in Animal Depictions in the Glyptic Art of the Aegean Late Bronze Age: Ignorance or Deliberate Contrivance?

Abstract

At the end of the Middle Bronze Age and the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, nature-orientated depictions of animals are very popular in Aegean glyptic art. In this context, commonly occurring depictions of a lioness with a mane and pronounced teats have met with incomprehension. The transfer of the sexual characteristics of the male to the female animal can also be observed, however, in other species native to Greece such as deer, sheep, goat and cattle. Consequently this phenomenon by all appearances does not reflect the artists’ ignorance with respect to animal anatomy, but represents a deliberate contrivance for the unambiguous identification of the species concerned.