(1.) _The faces looking the same way._—The belt of Fig. 11 has four
faces, which are as degenerate as those in the last example; three of
these look one way, and the fourth, which is at one end of the pattern,
looks in the opposite direction. It is not unusual for a face to be
carved at each end of the decorated portion of a belt, and as these
faces almost always look towards the pattern, the anomaly of one face
in this belt looking a different way from the remainder is apparent
rather than real. But the most interesting feature in this belt is the
meander or fret pattern. The extremely degenerate face appears to be,
as in. Fig. 10, a red mouth containing an eye-spot; the central chevron
also occurs in Fig. 19, where it represents the nose.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.—Kerrama, Berlin Museum.]
(2.) _The faces alternately looking towards and away from one
another._—I will omit examples in which (_a_) _all the faces are
separate_, and (_b_) _the faces looking towards one another are grouped
together_, and pass on to (_c_) _the faces looking away from one
another are grouped together_. An elegant example of this is seen in
Fig. 12. The two pairs of eyes of the two faces which are turned away
from each other are represented by a single eye from which a horizontal
line extends on either side to the two mouths; each line represents
a nose, the nostrils of which are placed quite close to the eye. The
eyes are surrounded by simple red areas. The spaces between the mouths,
above and below the eye (speaking in terms of the belt, and not of
the faces), are occupied by additional mouths, which are evidently
inserted from a sense of symmetry; that they are supplemented, and not
essential, is proved by the absence of any nasal line connecting them
with the eye. The spirals below each mouth occur on several shields.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.—British Museum.]
An interesting belt (Fig. 13) exhibits quite a different modification
of the same motive. The pattern consists of a series of eight-rayed
figures with bent arms, and a central eye-spot. A comparison of these
figures with the eyes on masks, and other objects from this district,
proves that the six rays are but a symmetrical coalescence of two
pairs of eye-areas.[7] The angled double lines are clearly those
prolongations of the eye-area which in many cases tend to enclose the
mouth, and which probably represent the cheek-folds; and thus they
demonstrate the interpretation that each star is derived from two
horizontal faces which are looking away from each other, and of which
nothing remains but a confluent eye-area, enclosing a single eye. The
terminal faces are sufficiently normal; but if two such faces were
placed back to back, and the eye-areas were confluent, and the four
eyes fused into one, and finally the nose and mouth were eliminated,
we should have star-like figures resembling those which do occur. If a
reflector is placed across the eyes in the terminal face in Fig. 13 (at
right angles to the plane of the paper, and across the long axis of the
belt) a star-like figure can be seen, which is very similar to those in
the rest of the belt. This is one of the few belts that have no border
pattern.
[7] I have adopted the term “eye-area” to denote the eye
device, which includes the eye, the eye-lashes, and often the
cheek-fold of that side.