Round aryballos (jar for holding oil) depicting an octopus,

ca. 625–600 BCE

The predominance of water and aquatic imagery in Minoan art may derive from the lived experience of these island dwellers, who depended on the sea for trade and sustenance. The hydria, or water vessel, was made on Crete and has been decorated with cuttlefish and papyrus plants, which grow in the water. The Minoans were involved in extensive trade across the Mediterranean at this time, and their visual forms, including the predilection for water imagery, quickly spread to other cultures, including to the Mycenaeans, a group of people who lived on mainland Greece. The inclusion of the cuttlefish on the Mycenaean goblet hints at the introduction of maritime Minoan imagery to Mycenaean visual forms. The small aryballos, or jar, was made many centuries later in Corinth, but the use of the octopus on it points to the lasting legacy of Minoan visual culture in Greece.