Mycenae

Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
State Party	Greece
Type	Cultural
Criteria	i, ii, iii, iv, vi
Reference	941
Region**	Europe and North America
Coordinates	37°43′51″N 22°45′22″E
Inscription history
Inscription	1999  (23rd Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. ** Region as classified by UNESCO.

Mycenae (Greek Μυκῆναι), is an archaeological site in Greece, located about 90km south-west of Athens, in the north-eastern Peloponnese. In the second millennium B.C.E. Mycenae was one of the major centres of Greek civilization, a military stronghold which dominated much of southern Greece. The period of Greek history from about 1600 B.C.E. to about 1100 B.C.E. is called Mycenaean in reference to Mycenae.

History

View from the acropolis, or "high city".

It is believed that Mycenae was settled by Indo-Europeans who practiced farming and herding, close to 2000 B.C.E., but little is known of these people and there cultures. At the same time, Minoan Crete developed a very complex civilization which interacted with Mycenae, and most likely influenced Mycenae development.

At some point in the Bronze Age, the civilization on Mycene began to become more Hellenistic in nature. The settlement pattern changed into a fortified hill surrounded by hamlets and estates, instead of the dense urbanity present on the coast (such as at Argos). Soon, Mycenae became incoporated local and small city-states into its civilization, such as Tiryns, Pylos, Thebes, and Orchomenos. These city states paid taxes to the Mycenae rulers, pledged their allengaince to Mycenae and donated soliders in times of battle. Around this time, the first great palaces of the city were constructed. Due to its position in the Mediterrean, Mycenae became a central port of trade and economic growth flourished. They soon rivaled Minoa as a central power, both economic and militarily. The general consensus is that the Mycenaen civilization reached its pinnacle of power around 1400 B.C.E. This period is generally refered to as Late Helladic IIIA-IIIB.

The so-called "Tomb of Aegisthus" outside the walls of the citadel

Mycenae civilization did not stay in power for long. By 1200 B.C.E., the civilization was in decline. There are numerous theories for this turnaround. Around this time, a series of catastrophies struck the entire Greek mainland. Nearly all of the palaces of southern Greece were burned, including the one at Mycenae, which is traditionally attributed to a Dorian invasion of Greeks from the north, although some historians now doubt that such an invasion took place. Another circulating theory is that a drought caused the Mycenaean decline and that frustration with the powerful caused the burning of graineries and palaces. Another theory is that the destruction of the palaces is related to the Sea People who destroyed the Hittite Empire and attacked the 19th then the 20th dynasties of Egypt. The evacuation of the area was also due to the drought; although there is no climatological evidence for it other than lack of evidence for an invasion. Volanic and geological activity, such as is sometimes attributed to the decline of Minosa, has also been thought to have caused the desctruction of Mycenae.

In the period, LHIIIC, also termed "submycenaean," Mycenae was no longer a power. Pottery and decorative styles were changing rapidly. Craftmanship and art declined. The citadel was abandoned at the end of the 12th century, as it was no longer a strategic location, but only a remote one.

During the early Classical period, Mycenae was once again inhabited, though it never regained its earlier importance. Mycenaeans fought at Thermopylae and Plataea during the Persian Wars. In 462 B.C.E., however, troops from Argos captured Mycenae and expelled the inhabitants. In Hellenistic and Roman times, the ruins at Mycenae were a tourist attraction (just as they are now). A small town grew up to serve the tourist trade. By late Roman times, however, the site had been abandoned.

Excavation

Myceanean swords and cups.

The first excavations at Mycenae were carried out by the Greek archaeologist Kyriakos Pittakis in 1841. He found and restored the Lion Gate. In 1874 Henriech Schliemann defied popular convention regarding Mycenae as a place of myth (Just as the lost city of Troy had been considered) and used ancient texts and literature to discover the buried city. In conjuction with the Athens Archaeological Society, Schliemann discovered what is called Grave Circle A, in which he found royal skeletons and spectacular grave goods. Henriech's discovery captured the attention of the academic world, igniting interest in ancient Greece and is sometimes considered the father of Ancient Greeece archaeology.

A clay tablet with writing in Linear B from Mycenae.

Since Schliemann's day more scientific excavations have taken place at Mycenae, mainly by Greek archaeologists but also by the British School at Athens. The acropolis was excavated in 1902, and the surrounding hills have been methodically investigated by subsequent excavations, which have led to a wealth of information regarding Mycenea and Ancient Greece in general.

Architecture

Alan Wace divided the nine tholos tombs of Mycenae into three groups of three each based on architecture. His earliest - the Cyclopean Tomb, Epano Phournos and the Tomb of Aegisthus - are dated to IIA.

Burial in tholoi is seen as replacing burial in shaft graves. The care taken to preserve the shaft graves testifies that they were by then part of the royal heritage, the tombs of the ancestral heroes. Being more visible, the tholoi had all been plundered either in antiquity or in later historic times.

The Lion Gate (detail).

At a conventional date of 1350 B.C.E. the fortifications on the acropolis, and other surrounding hills, were rebuilt in a style known as "cyclopean," because the blocks of stone used were so massive that they were thought in later ages to be the work of the one-eyed giants known as Cyclops. Within these walls, parts of which can still be seen, monumental palaces were built. The palace (what is left of it) currently visible on the acropolis of Mycenae dates to the start of LHIIIA:2. Earlier palaces must have existed but they had been cleared away or built over.

The construction of palaces at that time with a similar architecture was general throughout southern Greece. They all featured a megaron, or throne room, with a raised central hearth under an opening in the roof, which was supported by four columns in a square around the hearth. A throne was placed against the center of one wall. Frescos adorned the plaster walls and floor.

In the Temple at the citadel, a scarab of Queen Tiye of Egypt - married to Amenhotep III - was placed in the "Room of the Idols," alongside at least one statue of either LHIIIA:2 or B:1 type. Amenhotep III's relations with m-w-k-i-n-u, *Mukana, have corroboration from the inscription at Kom al-Hetan - but Amenhotep's reign is thought to align with late LHIIIA:1. It is likely that Amenhotep's herald presented the scarab to an earlier generation, which then found the resources to rebuild the citadel as Cyclopean and then to move the scarab here.

The room was accessed from a courtyard with a columned portico. At Mycenae a grand staircase led from a terrace below to the courtyard on the acropolis. One can easily imagine Clytemnestra rolling out the proverbial red carpet upon it, but there is no evidence beyond the stories of poets and playwrights where she might have rolled it, or whether she really did.

Wace’s second group of tholoi are dated between IIA and IIIB: Kato Phournos, Panagia Tholos, and the Lion Tomb. The final group, Group III: the Treasury of Atreus, the Tomb of Clytemnestra and the Tomb of the Genii, are dated to IIIB by a sherd under the threshold of the Treasury. The largest, it was discovered by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann. Since it had long ago been looted of its contents, he did not realise it was a tomb and called it the Treasury of Atreus.

The Lion Gate at Mycenae

The pottery phases on which the relative dating scheme is based (EH, MH, LH, etc.) do not allow very precise dating, even augmented by the few existing C-14 dates, which have a tolerance. The sequence of construction of imperial Mycenae is approximately as follows. At the beginning of LHIIIB, around 1300 or so, the Cyclopean wall was extended to the south slope to include grave circle A. The main entrance through the circuit wall was made grand by the best known feature of Mycenae, Lion Gate, through which passed a stepped ramp leading past circle A and up to the palace. The Lion Gate was built in the form of a 'Relieving Triangle' to support the weight of the stones. It went past some houses considered to workshops now: the House of Shields, the House of the Oil Merchant, the House of the Sphinxes and the West House. An undecorated postern gate was also constructed through the north wall.

Somewhat later, at the LHIIIB:1/2 border, around 1250 or so, another renovation project was undertaken. The wall was extended again on the west side, with a sally port and also a secret passage through and under the wall, of corbelled construction, leading downward by some 99 steps to a cistern carved out of rock 15 m below the surface. It was fed by a tunnel from a spring on more distant higher ground. The Treasury of Atreus was constructed at about this time.

Already in LHIIIA:1, Egypt knew *Mukana by name as a capital city on the level of Thebes and Knossos. During LHIIIB, Mycenae's political, military and economic influence likely extended as far as Crete, Pylos in the western Peloponnese, and to Athens and Thebes. Hellenic settlements were already being placed on the coast of Anatolia. A collision with the Hittite empire over their sometime dependency at a then strategic location, Troy, was to be expected. In folklore, the powerful Pelopid family ruled many Greek states, one branch of which was the Atreid dynasty at Mycenae.

File:Homeric greece.png

Homeric Greece

Culture

Religion

In many ways we know Mycenean religion for much of it survives into classical Greece in the pantheon of Greek gods. However, the specifics of Mycenaen religion.There are several reasonable guesses that we can make, however, Mycenean religions was almost certainly polytheistic, and the Myceneans were actively syncretistic, adding foreign gods to their pantheon of gods with surprising ease. The Myceneans probably entered Greece with a pantheon of gods headed by some ruling sky-god which linguists speculate might have been called *Dyeus in early Indo-European. This *Dyeus shows up in almost all Indo-European languages, suggesting that this god is a common heritage for all Indo-European peoples. In Greek, this god would become "Zeus." Among the Hindus, this sky-god becomes "dyaus pitar" ("pitar" means "father"). In Latin he becomes "deus pater" or "Jupiter"; we still encounter this word in the etymologies of the words "deity" and "divine."

At some point in their cultural history, the Myceneans adopted the Minoan goddesses and associated these goddesses with their sky-god; scholars believe that the Greek pantheon of gods do not reflect Mycenean religion except for Zeus and the female goddesses. These goddesses, however, are Minoan in origin. In general, later Greek religion distinguishes between two types of gods: the Olympian or sky-gods (which you have all heard of in some form or another), and the gods of the earth, or chthonic gods—these chthonic gods are almost all female. The Greeks believed that the chthonic gods were older than the Olympian gods; this suggests that the original Greek religion may have been oriented around goddesses of the earth, but there is no evidence for this outside of reasonable speculation.

Mycenean religion certainly involved offerings and sacrifices to the gods, and some have speculated that they involved human sacrifice based on textual evidence and bones found outside tombs. In the Homeric poems, there seems to be a lingering cultural memory of human sacrifice in King Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia; several of the stories of Trojan heroes involve tragic human sacrifice. This, however, is all speculation.

Beyond this speculation we can go no further. Somewhere in the shades of the centuries between the fall of the Mycenean civilization and the end of the Greek Dark Ages, the original Mycenean religion persisted and adapted until it finally emerged in the stories of human devotion, apostasy, and divine capriciousness in the two great epic poems of Homer.

Mycenae in mythology

Perseus, from Pompei

Legend asserts that Mycenae was founded by Perseus, grandson of king Acrisius of Argos, son of Acrisius' daughter, Danae. Having killed his grandfather by accident, Perseus could not or would not inherit the throne of Argos. Instead he arranged an exchange of realms with his half-brother, Megapenthes, and became king of Tiryns, Megapenthes taking Argos. From there he founded Mycenae and ruled the kingdoms jointly from Mycenae.

Perseus married Andromeda and had many sons but in the course of time went to war with Argos and was slain by Megapenthes. His son, Electryon, became the second of the dynasty but the succession was disputed by the Taphians under Pterelaos, another Perseid, who assaulted Mycenae and losing retreated with the cattle. The cattle were recovered by Amphitryon, a grandson of Perseus, but he killed his uncle by accident with a club in an unruly cattle incident and had to go into exile.

The throne went to Sthenelus, third in the dynasty, a son of Perseus. He set the stage for future greatness by marrying Nicippe, a daughter of king Pelops of Elis, the most powerful state of the region and the times. With her he had a son, Eurystheus the fourth and last of the Perseid dynasty. When a son of Heracles, Hyllus, killed Sthenelus, Eurystheus became noted for his enmity to Heracles and for his ruthless persecution of the Heracleidae, the descendants of Heracles.

This is the first we hear in legend of those noted sons, who became a symbol of the hated Dorians. Heracles had been a Perseid. After his death Eurystheus determined to annihilate these rivals for the throne of Mycenae, but they took refuge in Athens, and in the course of war Eurystheus and all his sons were killed. The Perseid dynasty came to an end. The people of Mycenae placed Eurystheus' maternal uncle, Atreus, a Pelopid, on the throne.

Atreid dynasty

The people of Mycenae had received an oracle that they should choose a new king from among the Pelopids. The two contenders were Atreus and his brother, Thyestes. The latter was chosen at first. At this moment nature intervened. The sun appeared to reverse direction and set in the east. Because the sun had reversed direction, he argued, the election of Thyestes should be reversed. Atreus became king. His first move was to pursue Thyestes and all his family, but Thyestes managed to escape Mycenae.

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The Return of Agamemnon

In legend, Atreus had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, the Atreids. Aegisthus, the son of Thyestes, killed Atreus and restored Thyestes to the throne. With the help of King Tyndareus of Sparta, the Atreids drove Thyestes again into exile. Tyndareus had two ill-starred daughters, Helen and Clytemnestra, whom Menelaus and Agamemnon married, respectively. Agamemnon inherited Mycenae and Menelaus was regent in Sparta.

File:The Murder Of Agamemnon - Project Gutenberg eText 14994.png

The Murder of Agamemnon

Helen eloped with Paris of Troy. Agamemnon conducted a 10-year war against Troy to get her back for his brother. Because of lack of wind, the warships could not sail to Troy. In order to please the gods so that they might make the winds start to blow, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. Hunting goddess Artemis replaced her at the very last moment with a deer on the altar, and took Iphigenia to Tauris (See Iphigenia en Tauris by Euripides). The gods having been satisfied by such a sacrifice, the winds started blowing and the warfaring fleet departed.

Legend tells us that the long and arduous Trojan War, although nominally a Greek victory, brought anarchy, piracy and ruin. After the war, returning Agamemnon was greeted royally with a red carpet rolled out for him and then slain in his bathtub by Clytemnestra, who hated him bitterly for having sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia. Clytemnestra was aided in her crime by Aegistheus, who reigned subsequently, but Orestes, son of Agamemnon, was smuggled out to Phocis. He returned as a man to slay Clytemnestra and Aegistheus. He then fled to Sparta to evade justice, and, a matricide, became insane for a time. Meanwhile, the throne of Mycenae went to Aletes, son of Aegistheus, but not for long. Recovering, Orestes returned to Mycenae to kill him and take the throne.

Orestes then built a larger state in the Peloponnesus, but he died in Arcadia from a snake bite. His son, Tisamenus, the last of the Atreid dynasty, was killed by the Heracleidae on their return to the Peloponnesus. They claimed the right of the Perseids to inherit the various kingdoms of the Peloponnesus and cast lots for the dominion of them.

Tourism

Today Mycenae, one of the foundational sites of European civilization, is a popular tourist destination, less than two hours' drive from Athens. The site has been well-preserved, and the massive ruins of the cyclopaean walls and the palaces on the acropolis still arouse the admiration of visitors, particularly when it is remembered that they were built a thousand years before the monuments of Classical Greece.

Gallery

• 

  The Palace today

• 

  The entrance of the so-called "Tomb of Clytemnestra" out side the Citadel at Mycenae, a good example of the architectural type known as the Beehive tombs

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  Detail of the high city of ancient Mykenai

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  ruins in Mycenae

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  City's Walls before Lions' Gateway

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  Fully armed warriors. Detail from the Warrior Vase, a Pictorial Style krater discovered by Schliemann at Mycenae, in a house on the acropolis

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  Mycenaen Gold Death Mask of Agamenmnon

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  Tomb grave "Treasure of Atreus" (Mykenai)

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Elizabeth French, Mycenae: Agamemnon's Capital, Tempus, Stroud 2002, ISBN 07524 1951 X.
• K.A. and Diana Wardle, Cities of Legend: The Mycenaean World, Bristol Classical Press 1997, 2000, ISBN 1-85399-355-7.
• W.D.Taylour, E.B. French, K.A. Wardle, Well Built Mycenae, Oxbow Books Oxford, 1983-2007.
• A.J.B. Wace, Mycenae: an archaeological history and guide, Princeton 1949 (reprinted 1964).
• John Chadwick, The Mycenaean World, Cambridge University Press, 1976, ISBN 0-521-21077-1 hardcover or ISBN 0-521-29037-6 paperback
• Emily Vermeule, Greece in the Bronze Age, the University of Chicago Press, 1964, LC 64-23427
• Martin P. Nilsson, The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology, 1932, reissued by the University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-01951-2 Cloth, ISBN 0-520-02163-0 Paper
• George E. Mylonas, Mycenae's Last Century of Greatness, Sydney University Press, 1968, SBN 424-05820-3
• George E. Mylonas, Mycenae Rich in Gold, Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 1983.
• Leonard R. Palmer, Mycenaeans and Minoans, 1961, 2nd ed. 1965
• M. I. Finley, Early Greece, The Bronze and Archaic Ages, W. W. Norton & Company, 1981, ISBN 0-393-01569-6 Hard, ISBN 0-393-30051-X Paper
• Reid Bryson and Thomas J. Murray, "Climates of Hunger," University of Wiconsin Press, 1977, ISBN 0-299-07370-X

External links

• British School at Athens Mycenae page
• Well Built Mycenae project pages
• Mycenae
• Pictures of Mycenae
• Artifacts from Mycenae
• Objects from Grave Circle A, including votive weaponry
• The Odyssey Mycenae site
• The Greek Mythology Link
• The Entrance to the Citadel
• The Design of the Palace
• Bronze Age Highways at Mycenae
• 360° Virtual tours of Mycenae
• Mycenae
• Mycenae Religion

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