The Dendra panoply is a near-complete suit of Mycenaean bronze plate armour, one of the most important finds of Bronze Age Europe. Excavators unearthed it at Dendra in the Argolid, close to Mycenae, inside a chamber tomb near the ancient site of Midea. The armour dates to around the fifteenth century before the common era, … Read more
The boar’s tusk helmet stands among the clearest emblems of the Mycenaean warrior, a headpiece unlike any other in the ancient world. Craftsmen built it by splitting the tusks of wild boars into curved plates and sewing them in overlapping rows onto a padded leather cap, often finished with cheek-pieces and a tall plume. The … Read more
Mycenaean frescoes are the painted wall decorations that once covered the Bronze Age palaces of mainland Greece, the citadel of Mycenae among them. Painters spread mineral colours over wet lime plaster in a technique carried across from the Minoans of Crete, filling halls, corridors and shrines with bright scenes. Their palette ran to red, blue, … Read more
Mycenaean pottery is the decorated ceramic ware of Bronze Age mainland Greece, produced in quantity at centres such as Mycenae itself. Potters threw it on the fast wheel and fired it to a hard, pale surface, then painted it with lustrous dark designs. Early pieces borrowed flowing motifs from Minoan Crete, while later work turned … Read more
Menelaus stands in Greek myth as the king of Sparta and the younger brother of Agamemnon, the great king of Mycenae. Both were sons of Atreus, raised within a cursed royal line whose seat was the citadel above the plain of Argos. Menelaus married Helen, named the most beautiful woman in the world, and ruled … Read more
Pelops stands as the great ancestor of the royal house of Mycenae in Greek myth, the figure who gave the Peloponnese, the island of Pelops, its very name. A son of Tantalus, he won his bride Hippodamia by defeating her father Oinomaos in a deadly chariot race. That victory came through the treachery of the … Read more
Thyestes stands among the darkest figures in the legend of Mycenae, a doomed prince of the royal house and the bitter rival of his own brother Atreus. Greek myth made the two sons of Pelops enemies from the start, locked in a struggle for the throne of the citadel that would end in horror. Thyestes … Read more
Electra ranks among the most haunting figures in the legend of Mycenae, a princess trapped inside the crime that tore her royal family apart. Greek myth named her a daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, sister to Orestes and to the sacrificed Iphigenia. Her mother and her mother’s lover murdered the returning king, and … Read more
Cassandra was the Trojan prophetess whose tragic story ends inside the citadel of Mycenae. A daughter of King Priam of Troy, she received the gift of true prophecy from the god Apollo, yet the same god cursed her when she refused him, so that no listener would ever believe her warnings. She foresaw the destruction … Read more
Aegisthus stands among the darkest figures in the legend of Mycenae, the usurper king whose crime and downfall belong to the bloodiest chapter of the royal saga. Greek tradition made him the son of Thyestes, born of the old feud between his father and Thyestes’ brother Atreus over the throne of the citadel. As King … Read more