| Abstract: | "What did this Minoan or Mycenaean mirror once reflect with its surface blistered with green oxides, still mixed with the earth of the tomb in which it was deposited? Ancient luxury of convenience, fruit of technical and artistic precision, and materials imported at great expense, could not have a metal mirror that wanted: more than thirty centuries ago, the common use is that of the plane of water, from the bowl of oil, which after all offer a sufficient reflection in response to other needs. What did we look for, then, through its brilliant shine with copper reflections? Was it a question of impressing with a new way of life made of superfluous things, of imitating the hierarchical codes of refined distant oriental courts, of competing in prestige and innovation with neighboring powers? And what were the marvelous interpretations of its optical properties? It is through these questions that this book attempts to revise the depressed image of banal ornament which has long prevailed on the ancient Aegean mirror, whose first appearances and evolution, during the second millennium BC, were carried by new ideological, social and political, but also commercial, flows between the Greek shores and those of the Mediterranean rim. More than a third of the archaeological corpus, estimated at around 200 pieces, was studied, photographed and drawn in the reserves of the Hellenic museums. The best preserved examples, with finely opened handles, are often among the centerpieces of their collections. Objects, archaeological contexts, and sources of various nature and provenance (iconographic, literary, ethnographic), are combined to offer an updated look at a part of the history of the ancient mirror, with its actors, its processes, and its trajectories. The sequence of events thus reconstructed shows that the appearance of the metal mirror in Aegean societies, rather than being the simple corollary of cultural, social, or political changes, was also the catalyst."-- Page 3 of cover |
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