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… two centaurs from Enkomi recur on several terracottas and vases from Cyprus from Rhodes and Crete, notably at Vrokastro.
On the other hand, in the present state of our comparative iconographic research, we do not see any work comparable to the two-headed centaurs, these hybrid beings produced by the imaginative fancy of Cypriot coroplasts around the year 1000 before our era, neither in Cyprus nor elsewhere in the ancient Near East. Certainly, the fabulous beings and genii of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilisations are not lacking in any period, whether sphinxes, griffins or bulls Assyrian man-headed bulls. But none, it seems, combines the characteristics of the Enkomi monsters, namely: two human heads on the body of a quadruped animal.
As for the origin of this two-headed feature, which is not found among the centaurs more developed and more recent, of four aiselles from the sanctuary of Ayia Irini, all monocephalous, one must turn towards Anatolia. Anatolia, where the most ancient anthropomorphic two-headed idol has just been uncovered, appears to have many other figurines, in a Early Neolithic sanctuary dated to the VII millennium, at Çatal Hüyük near Konya, by the English archaeologist James Mellaart. The latter proposes to see in it a prototype Janus of the Demeter and Kore group, and recalls the series of primitive two-headed idols from Cappadocia and Tell Brak, which lie chronologically roughly midway between the idol of Çatal Hüyük and the centaurs of Enkomi. On the other hand, one should not forget the frequency of two-headed animals in Hittite art (eagle and duck, at Boghaz Keui and Yazilli Kaya) in the XV century before our era.
As regards more specifically the style and certain iconographic details, it is in sub-Minoan Crete, at Gazi, at Karphi, at Pseykokephalo, at Kisamo, at Palaikastro but above all at Vrokastro, that the new Enkomi figurines and idols, human and theriomorphic, are best compared. Heads in painted terracotta on cylindrical base, found at Vrokastro in halls 9 and 17 associated with wild goat horns and sub-Minoan pottery constitute the best comparanda for the heads of the larger of the two Enkomi centaurs. In Greece, one may cite the late Mycenaean idols of the small sanctuary at Asine (hall 32 of House G), aitte already mentioned for having yielded pottery whose painted decoration seems to have directly inspired the painter of the small two-headed centaur. 22
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain