Exploring Mycenaean Greece

Joseph Pett (2021, Classics)

I’m grateful to Jesus College Cambridge Society for funding my trip to Greece in May 2022 I visited many impor tant archaeological sites including Mycenae and the National Archaeological Museum in Athens

The place I was most excited to go was the citadel of πολυχρύσοιο Μυκήνης (Mycenae), the famous ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον home to Agamemnon in Homer’s Iliad. As a student studying Mycenaean Greece, it was excellent to visit the place I’ve read so much about Of fame here are the ‘Lion Gate’ and the shaft graves of ‘Grave Circle A’, in which Schliemann (the original excavator of the site) located his Agamemnon

Of course, these Shaft Graves dated from around 1650-1550 BC (the dates are vague and were revised half a centur y either way ever y decade or so), whilst the Trojan War was supposedly 1250 BC, so this identification is clearly incorrect, to leave aside questions about the historicity of the Trojan War

The citadel itself was in use for half a millennium in the Bronze Age, so there is plenty to see. The museum at the site is extensive, well-laid out and enlightening Some of the remains within the site of Mycenae, but outside the actual citadel, were much neglected by the other visitors These included: the ‘Lion Tomb’, the less well-known tholos (‘beehive’) tomb at the site, still impressive (in scale and acoustics) despite missing its dome; the more famous tholoi known as the ‘Tomb of Aegisthus’ and the ‘Tomb of Clytemnestra’; the Mycenaean town, including the ‘House of the Sphinx’ amongst others; the shaft graves of Grave Circle B I consider this last point to be the most egregious omission by tourists (and indeed the site’s own signage) Grave Circle B –prominent in both the Mycenae and National Archaeological Museum collections – is tucked away on the right of the entrance and is visible from the car park through the fence, essentially hiding in plain sight. These graves, from the 18-17th centuries BC, are the immediate predecessors of the grander graves of Grave Circle A and mark the site’s emergence as an impor tant Bronze Age centre. The ‘Treasur y of Atreus’ is the largest and most famous of the tholos tombs and can be found a five-minute walk from the site entrance

The National Archaeological Museum in Athens has an impressive collection from various par ts of the ancient Mediterranean The main area of interest for me was the entrance hall, which displays the Mycenaean finds from Mycenae (the more impressive and shiny ones absent from the Mycenae Museum), as well as from other Mycenaean sites around Greece Whilst in need of updating and re-organisation, there are lots of objects and plentiful information – though some background knowledge is required to make sense of some of it

Probably the most famous item in the collection is the ‘Death Mask of Agamemnon’, though a minority of scholars have suggested Schliemann actually identified the mask displayed next to it as Agamemnon

The ground floor has an impressive selection of Greek, Hellenistic and Roman statuar y, as well as a temporar y exhibit and one on bronze casts The famous ‘Antikythera Mechanism’ can theoretically be found on this floor, if one can locate it in the labyrinthine halls (and variously obser ved one-way system). To my surprise, as well as an over whelming selection of potter y, the upstairs contains a collection of finds from Thera, the ‘Aegean Pompeii’, destroyed by a volcano around the 15th centur y BC.