Linear B is the earliest known script used to write the Greek language, the writing system of the Mycenaean palaces in the Late Bronze Age. It survives on clay tablets, baked hard by the very fires that destroyed the palaces they belonged to. Copies of the script have turned up at Mycenae, Pylos, Tiryns, Thebes … Read more
Heinrich Schliemann was a wealthy German businessman who turned late in life to archaeology, driven by a stubborn belief that Homer’s poems held real history rather than pure invention. Fresh from his celebrated digs at Troy, he brought that same conviction to the citadel of Mycenae in the later nineteenth century. Where scholars saw only … Read more
The House of Atreus is the doomed royal dynasty of Mycenae in Greek myth, a family pursued across generations by a curse of murder and revenge. Its story descends from Pelops and Tantalus and runs through the brothers Atreus and Thyestes into the reign of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. Bloodshed answers bloodshed here, and each … Read more
Tiryns is a fortified Bronze Age citadel on the Argolid plain of the Peloponnese, a short drive from Mycenae and close to the town of Nafplio. It ranked among the great centres of the Mycenaean world, its low hill crowned by walls of astonishing scale. Massive stone ramparts wrap the summit, pierced by long corbelled … Read more
Grave Circle B is the older of the two royal grave circles at Mycenae, lying just outside the walls of the citadel a short distance from the Lion Gate. It holds shaft graves and simpler cist graves where early rulers were buried with pottery, weapons, jewellery and gold objects, though with less gold than the … Read more
Grave Circle A is a royal cemetery of deep shaft graves lying inside the walls of the citadel of Mycenae, just beyond the great gateway. A double ring of upright stone slabs marks the circle, which held the bodies of men, women and children of the early ruling house. The graves belong to the dawn … Read more
Agamemnon stands as the legendary king of Mycenae in Greek myth, the commander who led the Greek forces against Troy in the war told by Homer. He was the son of Atreus and the brother of Menelaus, born into a dynasty stained by murder and revenge across generations. Myth ties his name to the shaft … Read more
The Mycenaean civilization was the first great civilization of mainland Greece, rising in the Late Bronze Age and named after Mycenae, its most important centre in the Argolid. Its people spoke an early form of Greek and wrote it in the Linear B script, kept mainly for palace records. Powerful kingdoms grew around fortified citadels, … Read more
The palace of Mycenae crowned the highest point of the citadel, rising above the Lion Gate and the grave circles that guard the slope below. Here the rulers of Mycenae held their seat through the Late Bronze Age, governing the surrounding kingdom from a hall built for command and ceremony. Courtyards, corridors and storerooms spread … Read more
The Mycenae Archaeological Museum stands on the slope of the citadel, a short walk from the Lion Gate, gathering the finds pulled from the site and its cemeteries under one roof. Pottery, painted plaster, figurines, jewellery, bronze weapons and clay tablets fill its cases, arranged to explain how a Bronze Age capital lived, worshipped and … Read more
Mycenae is the great fortified citadel of the Argolid, set on a low hill in the Peloponnese near the modern village of Mykines in southern Greece. The site sits about a two-hour drive from Athens and around half an hour from Nafplio, which makes it an easy heritage stop on any tour of the region. … Read more
The Cyclopean walls of Mycenae are the vast fortification circuit that rings the Bronze Age citadel in the Argolid, in the Peloponnese. Builders raised them from huge, roughly worked limestone boulders set without mortar, the largest weighing tonnes apiece. The scale of the stones stunned later Greeks, who decided that only the giant Cyclopes could … Read more