Griffins in ancient art

 Early depictions of griffin-types in Ancient Greek art are found in the 15th century BCE frescoes in the Throne Room of the Bronze Age Palace of Knossos, as restored by Sir Arthur Evans. Bird-mammal composites were a decorative theme in Archaic and Classical Greek art, but became quite popular in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, when the Greeks first began to record accounts of the "gryps" creature from travelers to Asia.  In Central Asia, the griffin image appeared in Scythian artifacts of the 6th–4th centuries BCE. Herodotus reported the Arimaspians,  a legendary tribe of one-eyed people of northern Scythia who lived in the foothills of the Riphean Mountains (either the Ural or the Carpathian mountains), battled these griffins for their deposits of gold. In his Naturalis Historia, Pliny the Elder wrote, "griffins were said to lay eggs in burrows on the ground and these nests contained gold nuggets."  

Since griffins were said to guard particularly valuable treasure, perhaps this small vessel was used to contain expensive ointment.

Image: Molded vessel with the body of a griffin and tail of a dolphin from Memphis, Egypt, Ptolemaic or early Roman imperial period at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada courtesy of the museum.