Where did you get your hat?

The Master is wearing a tall headdress, possibly made of feathers. The top part of the headdress is shaped like a tube: the pendant could be suspended from here. R. B. Koehl, ‘South Levantine Middle Bronze Age gold-work in the Aegean’, in ΠΕΠΡΑΓΜΕΝΑ Ι’ ΔΙΕΘΝΟΥΣ ΚΡΗΤΟΛΟΓΙΚΟΥ ΣΥΝΕΔΡΙΟΥ, Τομοσ Α1:ΠΡΟΪΣΤΟΡΙΚΟΙ ΧΡΟΝΟΙ, (ΧΑΝΙΑ, 2011), 189-208.

The headdress can have multiple origins. It is often identified as a feathered headdress known from the Levant. However, it could also be compared to the headdress often worn by the ancient Egyptian god Amun (Fig. 15).

Others compared the headdress to a Minoan one that can be seen on the famous ‘Prince of Lillies’ fresco from Knossos (Fig. 16).C. Hopkins, ‘The Aegina treasure’, in The American Journal of Archaeology 66-2 (1962), p. 182-184.

The large earrings the Master is wearing do not seem to tell us much in and of themselves, but the way they are manufactured might. The motif of the earrings resembles a sort of sphere with a raised edge. We will also see this technique later on the base of the pendant. In his 2011 article, Robert Koehl compares this to the central motif in a pair of star pendants found in Tell el Ajjul, in the southern Levant (Fig. 17). The same technique can be found on a supposedly Minoan pendant from Tell el Dab’a, a site in the Egyptian delta. In his article, Koehl argues that both these pendants (and others that were previously thought to be Minoan), actually originate from workshops in the Levant. R. B. Koehl, ‘South Levantine Middle Bronze Age gold-work in the Aegean’, in ΠΕΠΡΑΓΜΕΝΑ Ι’ ΔΙΕΘΝΟΥΣ ΚΡΗΤΟΛΟΓΙΚΟΥ ΣΥΝΕΔΡΙΟΥ, Τομοσ Α1:ΠΡΟΪΣΤΟΡΙΚΟΙ ΧΡΟΝΟΙ, (ΧΑΝΙΑ, 2011), 189-208. We will see more of his comparisons later.