Mycenae

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This article is about the ancient Greek city. For the hamlet in New York, see Mycenae,
New York.
"Lion Gate" redirects here. For other uses, see Lions' Gate (disambiguation).
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article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (February 2008)

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

374351N 224522E / 37.730833N

22.756111E

Inscription history
Inscription 1999

(23rd Session)

* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List.

** Region as classified by UNESCO.

Mycenae (Greek Myknai or Mykn), is an archaeological site in

Greece, located about 90 km south-west of Athens, in the north-eastern Peloponnese.
Argos is 11 km to the south; Corinth, 48 km to the north. From the hill on which the
palace was located one can see across the Argolid to the Saronic Gulf.
In the second millennium BC 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 BC to about 1100 BC is called Mycenaean in reference
to Mycenae.
See also: Mycenaean civilization

Contents
[hide]

1 Name
2 History
o 2.1 Neolithic
o 2.2 Early Bronze Age
o 2.3 Middle Bronze Age
o 2.4 Late Bronze Age
2.4.1 Late Helladic I
2.4.2 Late Helladic II
2.4.3 Late Helladic III
o 2.5 Decline
o 2.6 Revival and end
3 Religion
4 Mycenae in Classical Greek mythology and legends
o 4.1 Perseid dynasty
o 4.2 Atreid dynasty
o 4.3 Atreids in Asia Minor?
5 Excavation
6 See also
7 References
8 Notes

9 External links

[edit] Name
The reconstructed Mycenaean Greek name of the site is Muknai, which has the form of
a plural, like Athnai. The change of to is a development of later Attic-Ionic.
Although the citadel was built by Greeks, the name is not thought to be Greek, but is
rather one of the many pre-Greek place names inherited by the immigrant Hellenes. John
Chadwick said:

"Names such as ... Mukanai ... are certainly derived from one or more unknown
languages, previously spoken in Greece."[1] The pre-Greek language remains
unknown, but there is no evidence to rule out a member of the Indo-European
superfamily. (See Pelasgian, Minyans)

[edit] History

The Tomb of Aegisthus outside the walls of the citadel.

[edit] Neolithic
Only scattered sherds from disturbed debris have been found datable to this period, prior
to about 3500 BC. The site was inhabited but the stratigraphy has been destroyed by later
construction.

[edit] Early Bronze Age

It is believed that Mycenae was settled by Indo-Europeans who practiced farming and
herding, close to 2000 BC. Scattered sherds have been found from this period, 2100 BC
to 1700 BC. At the same time, Minoan Crete developed a very complex civilization that
interacted with Mycenae.

[edit] Middle Bronze Age

The first burials in pits or cist graves began to the west of the acropolis at about 18001700 BC. The acropolis was enclosed at least partially by the earliest circuit wall.
Of the cist graves and the Middle Helladic Emily Vermeule said:
"...there is nothing in the Middle Helladic world to prepare us for the furious
splendor of the Shaft Graves."

[edit] Late Bronze Age

View from the acropolis, or high city

The settlement pattern at Mycenae during the Bronze Age was a fortified hill surrounded
by hamlets and estates. Missing is the dense urbanity present on the coast (such as at
Argos). Since Mycenae was the capital of a state that ruled, or dominated, much of the
eastern Mediterranean world, the rulers must have placed their stronghold in this less
populated and more remote region for its defensive value. Since there are few documents
on site with datable contents (such as an Egyptian scarab) and since no dendrochronology
has yet been performed upon the remains here, the events are listed here according to
Helladic period material culture.
[edit] Late Helladic I
Outside the partial circuit wall, Grave Circle B, named for its enclosing wall, contained
ten cist graves in Middle Helladic style and four shaft graves, sunk more deeply, with
interments resting in cists. Richer grave goods mark the burials as possibly regal. Mounds
over the top contained broken drinking vessels and bones from a repast, testifying to a
more than ordinary farewell.[2][3] Stelae surmounted the mounds.[4][not in citation given]
A walled enclosure, Grave Circle A, included six more shaft graves, with 9 female, 8
male, and two juvenile interments. Grave goods were wealthier than in Circle B. The
presence of engraved and inlaid swords and daggers, with spear points and arrowheads,
leave little doubt that warrior chieftains and their families were buried here. Some art
objects obtained from the graves are the Silver Siege Rhyton, the Mask of Agamemnon,
the Cup of Nestor, and weapons both votive and practical.

Mycenaean swords and cups.

[edit] Late Helladic II
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 all had been plundered either in antiquity,
or in later historic times.
[edit] Late Helladic III
At a conventional date of 1350 BC 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 the cyclopes (singular: Cyclops). Within these walls, much of which can
still be seen, successive monumental palaces were built. The final palace, remains of
which are 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.[5]
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 a wall to the side of
the hearth, allowing an unobstructed view of the ruler from the entrance. Frescos adorned
the plaster walls and floor.[5]

The entrance of the Tomb of Clytemnestra outside the Citadel at Mycenae, a good
example of the architectural type known as the tholos.

Tomb of Clytemnestra from the inside

The Lion Gate (detail) - two lionesses flank the central column whose significance is
much debated.[6]
The room was accessed from a courtyard with a columned portico. A grand staircase led
from a terrace below to the courtyard on the acropolis.
In the Temple built within the citadel, a scarab of Queen Tiye of Egypt, who was 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.
Waces 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 of Atreus, the largest of the nine tombs. Like the Treasury of
Minyas at Orchomenus the tomb had been looted of its contents and its nature as funerary
monument had been forgotten. The structure bore the traditional name of "Treasury".
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 due to the
tolerance inherent in these. The sequence of further construction at Mycenae is
approximately as follows. In the middle of LHIIIB, around 1250 or so, the Cyclopean
wall was extended on the west slope to include grave circle A.[7] The main entrance
through the circuit wall was made grand by the best known feature of Mycenae, the Lion
Gate, through which passed a stepped ramp leading past circle A and up to the palace.
The Lion Gate was constructed in the form of a 'Relieving Triangle' in order to support
the weight of the stones. An undecorated postern gate also was constructed through the
north wall.
One of the few groups of excavated houses in the city outside the walls lies beyond Grave
Circle B and belongs to the same period. The House of Shields, the House of the Oil
Merchant, the House of the Sphinxes, and the West House. These may have been both
residences and workshops.
Citadel facts and figures
Circuit length: 1105M
Preserved height: up to 12.5M
Width: 7.5-17M
Minimum stone required: 145,215 Cu.M or 14,420 average stones (10 tons)
Time to move 1 Block using men: 2.125 days
Time to move all Blocks using men: 110.52 years
Time to move 1 Block using oxen: 0.125 day
Time to move all Blocks using oxen: 9.9 years
based on 8 hour work day
The largest stones including the lintels and gate jambs weighed well over 20 tonnes some
may have been close to 100 tonnes. [8]
Somewhat later, toward the end of LHIIIB, another extension to the citadel was
undertaken. The wall was extended again on the north east, with a sally port and also a
secret passage through and under the wall, of corbeled 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.
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 already were 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.

[edit] Decline

Homeric Greece.
By 1200 BC the power of Mycenae was declining; during the 12th century, Mycenaean
dominance collapsed. The destruction of Mycenae is part of the general Bronze Age
collapse. Within a short time around 1200 BC, all the palaces of southern Greece were
burned, including the one at Mycenae.[5] This is traditionally attributed to a Dorian
invasion of Greeks from the north, although some historians now doubt that such an
invasion took place. Displaced populations escaped to former colonies of the Mycenaeans
in Anatolia and elsewhere, where they came to speak the Ionic dialect. A further theory,
mentioned by Egyptian hieroglyphs, is that the destruction of the palaces is related to the
attacks of the mysterious Sea Peoples who destroyed the Hittite Empire and then attacked
the 19th then the 20th dynasties of Egypt. Other theories have been that a drought caused
the Mycenaean decline, but there is no climatological evidence for this. Amos Nur argues
that earthquakes played a major role in the destruction of Mycenae and many other cities
at the end of the Bronze Age.[9] However, no conclusive evidence has been brought
forward to confirm any theory of why the Mycenaean citadel and others around it fell at
this time.
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.

[edit] Revival and end

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 BC, 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.

[edit] Religion
Much of the Mycenean religion survived into classical Greece in their pantheon of Greek
deities, but it is not known to what extent Greek religious belief is Mycenean, nor how
much is a product of the Greek Dark Ages or later.
There are several reasonable guesses that can be made, however. Mycenean religion was
almost certainly polytheistic, and the Myceneans were actively syncretistic, adding
foreign deities to their pantheon of deities with surprising ease. The Myceneans probably
entered Greece with a pantheon of deities headed by some ruling sky-deity which
linguists speculate might have been called *Dyeus in early Indo-European. In Greek, this
deity would become Zeus (pronounced zdeus in ancient Greek). Among the Hindus, this
sky-deity becomes "Dyaus Pita". 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 deities does not reflect Mycenean religion except for the goddesses and Zeus. These
goddesses, however, are Minoan in origin. In general, later Greek religion distinguishes
between two types of deities: the Olympian (including Zeus) or sky-deities (which are
now commonly known in some form or another), and the early deities of the earth, or
chthonic deitiesthese chthonic deities are almost all female. The Greeks believed that
the chthonic deities were older than the Olympians; 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.
Walter Burkert warns:
"To what extent one can and must differentiate between Minoan and Mycenaean
religion is a question which has not yet found a conclusive answer"[10]
and suggests that useful parallels will be found in the relations between Etruscan and
Archaic Greek culture and religion, or between Roman and Hellenistic culture.
Mycenean religion certainly involved offerings and sacrifices to the deities, and some
have speculated that their ceremonies 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 that exists in the two great epic
poems of Homer.

[edit] Mycenae in Classical Greek mythology and

legends
[edit] Perseid dynasty

Perseus, from Pompei.

Classical Greek myths assert that Mycenae was founded by Perseus, grandson of king
Acrisius of Argos, son of Acrisius' daughter, Dana. 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 cousin, 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
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.

[edit] Atreid dynasty

The people of Mycenae had received advice from 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.

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 illstarred daughters, Helen and Clytemnestra, whom Menelaus and Agamemnon married,
respectively. Agamemnon inherited Mycenae and Menelaus was regent in Sparta.

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 deities 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 was 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 an adult to slay
Clytemnestra and Aegistheus. He then fled to Athens to evade justice and a matricide, and
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.

[edit] Atreids in Asia Minor?

Map showing the Hittite empire and the Ahhiyawa (possibly the Acheans)
In fact, there was a total eclipse of the sun in the Aegean on March 5, 1223 BC, which
Atreus might have twisted into a setting of the sun in the east. This date does not solve all
the unknowns, however.
A late date is implied for the Trojan War, which would, in that case, have been against
Troy VIIa after all. The Perseids would have been in power ca. 1380, the date of a statue
base from Kom el-Heitan in Egypt recording the itinerary of an Egyptian embassy to the
Aegean in the time of Amenophis III. M-w-k-i-n-u (phonetic "Mukanuh"?) was one of the
cities visited, a rare early document of the name of Mycenae. It was one of the cities of

the tj-n3-jj ("Tinay"?),[11] Homeric Danaans, named, in myth, after Dana, which suggests
that the Perseids were in fact in some sort of dominion.
Also in the 14th century BC the Ahhiya began to be troublesome to numerous kings of
the Hittite Empire. Ahhiyawa or Ahhiya, which occurs a few dozen times in Hittite tablets
over the century, is probably Achaiwia, reconstructed Mycenaean Greek for Achaea. The
Hittites did not use Danaja as did the Egyptians, even though the first Ahhiya reference in
"Indictment of Madduwatta"[12] precedes the correspondence between Amenhotep III and
one of Madduwatta's subsequent successors in Arzawa, Tarhunta-Radu. The external
LHIIIA:1-era sources do, however, agree in their omission of a great king or other
unifying structure behind Tinay/Ahhiya.
For example, in the "Indictment of Madduwatta", Attarissiya, the "man of Ahhiya" (i.e.
ruler), attacks Madduwatta and drives him from his land. He obtains refuge and military
assistance from the Hittite Great King Tudhaliya. After the death of the latter and in the
reign of his son, Arnuwanda, Madduwatta allies with Attarissiya and they, along with
another ruler, raid Alasiya, i.e. Cyprus.
This is the only known occurrence of a man named Attarissiya. Attempts to link this
name to Atreus have not found wide support, nor is there any evidence of a powerful
Pelopid named Atreus of those times.
During LHIIIA:2, Ahhiya, now known as Ahhiyawa, extended its influence over Miletus,
settling on the coast of Anatolia, and competed with the Hittites for influence and control
in western Anatolia. For instance Uhha-Ziti's Arzawa and through him ManapaTarhunta's Seha River Land. While establishing the credibility of the Mycenaean Greeks
as a historical power, these documents create as many problems as they solve.
Similarly, a Hittite king wrote the so-called Tawagalawa letter[13] to the Great King of
Ahhiyawa, concerning the depredations of the Luwiyan adventurer Piyama-Radu. Neither
of the names of the great kings are stated; the Hittite king could be either Muwatalli II or
his brother Hattusili III, which at least dates the letter to LHIIIB by Mycenaean standards.
But neither the Atreus nor the Agamemnon of legend have any brothers named
*Etewoclewes (Eteocles); this name, rather, is associated with Thebes, which during the
preceding LHIIIA period Amenhotep III had viewed as equal to Mycenae.
Elsewhere, Muwatalli II (reg. 12961272) makes a treaty with Alaksandu (possibly
Alexander), king of Wilusa (Ilium); and another document has Wilusa swearing by
Appaliuna (Apollo). But the Alaksandu of the treaty is too early to be king of a city
assaulted by Agamemnon, and besides, Priam was king of that city.

[edit] Excavation

A view of the citadel.

A clay tablet with writing in Linear B from Mycenae.

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 Heinrich Schliemann
arrived at the site and undertook a complete excavation. Schliemann believed in the
historical truth of the Homeric stories and interpreted the site accordingly. He found the
ancient shaft graves with their royal skeletons and spectacular grave goods. Upon
discovering a human skull beneath a gold death mask in one of the tombs, he declared: "I
have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon".
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.