Such pictures raise the question: what human or preterhuman person had subdued and tied these fierce creatures? Evans observed:
It is possible, for instance in the case of the Lions’ Gate scheme, to give a series of examples in which a divinity is introduced between the lion supporters in place of the column.47
He illustrated that with another sealstone (Fig. 32):
It was probably Boetticher (Carl W. Boetticher, Der Baumkultus der Hellenen, Berlin, 1856) who was responsible for Evans’ speculation that this male anthropomorph who replaced the column was a deity. But there was not in Evans’ time nor is there now any factual evidence pro or con concerning the divinity of this figure. It is nevertheless noteworthy that the male figure, be he deity or not, replaced only the hewn column between carnivores, and never the corresponding green tree flanked by herbivores. As in modern oral fable, this Bronze-Age subduer of potential manslayers and ogres was also identified with the hewn pillar, not the green wood.
Rods of dry wood as well as hewn columns were attributes of male figures, as on Evans’ gold signet from Knossos (Fig. 11) or on the ring of electrum from Mycenae in Figure 33:
