Fig. 3

Sea daffodil, Pancratium maritimum L., depicted in a fresco section of the House of the Ladies in Akrotiri (b, d) and a Mycenaean bronze blade (e). The top-left picture (a) shows a Pancratium maritimum specimen that was mounted to look like the plant in the fresco by opening the bell-shaped corona on one side and removing the outer parts of the perianth (tepal lobes). The middle-left image (c) shows the details of a sea daffodil flower with six tepal lobes of which two were left attached (yellow arrows) to increase the resemblance with the flowers depicted in the fresco (d) and the bronze blade (e). The similarity in the banana-like anthers between the real specimen and the fresco (blue arrows), where they are depicted as seven instead of six (possibly due to the magic associated with this number across many traditions), is astonishing. Note that unrolling, omitting, and modifying floral elements for the purpose of stylization in ornamental reproduction is a typical feature of the two-dimensional ancient Greek painting [75]. Pictures (a) and (c) courtesy of Agustina Venegas Lagüens. Figure: picture (b) is protected under CC-BY 3.0 license (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prähistorisches_Museum_Thira_Papyrusfresko_03.jpg) and is authored by Olaf Tausch; picture (e) is protected under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license (Bronze Blade: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dagger_inlaid_Mycenaean_16_c_BC,_NAMA_765_102881.jpg) and is authored by Zde