Prince of the Lilies



The Prince of the Lilies is a celebrated ancient Minoan fresco on the Greek island of Crete dated to about 1550 BC.

A copy of the painting is placed at the Procession Fresco a long passageway known as the Corridor of the Procession at the palace of Knossos, while the original is on display in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. The reconstitution of the so-called "Priest-king" from Knossos is one of the more popular figures of minoan art. It is made with three ancient fragments of painted plaster (the crown, the torso, the left leg); the other parts are modern, hypothetic painting. When A.Evans uncovered the plaster fragments in 1901, he wrote they belonged to different personages and "the torso may suggest a boxer". . Anatomical observation of this torso show a contracted powerful musculature anthe left disappeared arm was surely in ascendant posotion because the pectoral muscle is raised. These observations allow us to conclude the torso was one of a boxer resembling the many athletic representations engraved on the Boxer Vase from Agia Triadha. The lily crown belonged to another personage, perhaps a priestess (like on Agia Triadha sarcophagus). The painted reliefs of two athlets boxing in the palace of Knossos were surely the model of the "boxing children" fresco in Akrotiri at Thera.