Krater with Lid

Krater with Lid

Fig. 2. Krater with lid. H: 115 cm. Euboean, Late Geometric, 750–700 B.C. (Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cesnola Collection; purchased by subscription 1874–76 [74.51.965]).

The tree of life as a pictorial prayer for the fertility of the land might suggest a relationship with the nearby sanctuary founded toward the end of the eighth century B.C. The name of the god worshipped there, Apollo, is only first attested in inscriptions of the fifth century B.C., and the epithet Hylates, “of the woodlands,” does not appear until the Hellenistic period; but the god may well have possessed his woodland character several centuries before it is confirmed by inscriptions. Terracotta trees from the Archaic Precinct in the Sanctuary support this notion (Young and Young 1955: 41, nos. 840–41; Winter 1996: 99, no. 447). The heraldic animals, usually goats, that accompany the tree of life also represent fertility, in this case for the herds, and could be imagined as symbolic of the goats sacrificed to the god.

Buitron-Oliver, Diana. “Kourion: The Evidence for the Kingdom from the 11th to the 6th Century B.C.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (November 1997) 308 (1997): 30. Print.