The design is skilfully composed to fill the
triangular space, and the attitudes of men and beasts are varied,
expressive, and fairly truthful. Another of these dagger-blades
has a representation of panthers hunting ducks by the banks of a
river in which what may be lotus plants are growing, The lotus
would point toward Egypt as the ultimate source of the design.
Moreover, a dagger of similar technique has been found in Egypt in
the tomb of a queen belonging to the end of the Seventeenth
Dynasty. On the other hand, the dress and the shields of the men
engaged in the lion-hunt are identical with those on a number of
other "Mycenaean" articles--gems, statuettes, etc.--which it is
difficult to regard as all of foreign importation. The
probability, then, seems to be that while the technique of the
dagger-blades was directly or indirectly derived from Egypt, the
specimens found at Mycenae were of local manufacture.
The greatest triumph of the goldsmith's art in the "Mycenaean"
period does not come from Mycenae.
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