The Lion Gate of Mycenae

ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ

The Lion Gate was the main entrance of the Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae, southern Greece. It was erected during the 13th century BC in the northwest side of the acropolis and is named after the relief sculpture of two lionesses or lions in a heraldic pose that stands above the entrance.

The Lion Gate is the sole surviving monumental piece of Mycenaean sculpture, as well as the largest sculpture in the prehistoric Aegean. It is the only monument of Bronze Age Greece to bear an iconographic motif that survived without being buried underground, and the only relief image which was described in the literature of classical antiquity, such that it was well known prior to modern archaeology.

The first correct identification of the Lion Gate in modern literature was during a survey conducted by Francesco Grimani, commissioned by the Provveditore Generale of the Kingdom of the Morea in 1700, who used Pausanias's description of the Lion Gate to identify the ruins of Mycenae.

The greater part of the cyclopean wall in Mycenae, including the Lion Gate itself, was built during the second extension of the citadel which occurred in the Late Helladic period IIIB (13th century BC).

At that time, the extended fortifications also included Grave Circle A, the burial place of the 16th-century BC royal families inside the city wall. This grave circle was found east of the Lion Gate, where a peribolos wall was also built. After the expansion, Mycenae could be entered by two gates, a main entrance and a postern, while the most extensive feature was undoubtedly the remodeling of the main entrance to the citadel, known as the Lion Gate, in the northwestern side built circa 1250 BC.

Stereoscopic image of the gate from 1897.

The Lion Gate was approached by a natural, partly engineered ramp on a northwest-southeast axis. The eastern side of the approach is flanked by the steep smooth slope of the earlier enceinte. This was embellished with a new facade of conglomerate. On the western side a rectangular bastion was erected, 14.80 m (49 ft) long and 7.23 m (24 ft) wide, built in pseudo-ashlar style of enormous blocks of conglomerate. The term "Cyclopean" was therefore applied to imply that the ancient structures had been built by the legendary race of giants whose culture was presumed to have preceded that of the Classical Greeks, as described in their myths. Between the wall and the bastion, the approach narrows to a small open courtyard measuring 15 m × 7.23 m (49 ft × 24 ft), possibly serving to limit the numbers of attackers on the gate. The bastion on the right side of the gate facilitated defensive actions against the attackers' right hand side, which would normally be vulnerable as they would carry their shields on their left arms. At the end of the approach stands the Lion Gate.

Construction

The Lion Gate is a massive and imposing construction, standing 3.10 m (10 ft) wide and 2.95 m (10 ft) high at the threshold. It narrows as it rises, measuring 2.78 m (9 ft) below the lintel. The opening was closed by a double door mortised to a vertical beam that acted as a pivot around which the door revolved.

The gate itself consists of two great monoliths capped with a huge lintel that measures 4.5×2.0×0.8 m (15×7×3 ft). Above the lintel, the masonry courses form a corbelled arch, leaving an opening that lightens the weight carried by the lintel. This relieving triangle is a great limestone slab on which two confronted lionesses or lions carved in high relief stand on either sides of a central pillar. The heads of the animals were fashioned separately and are missing. The pillar, specifically, is a Minoan-type column that is placed on top of an altar-like platform that the lionesses or lions rest their front legs on.

Lions Gate of  Mycenae 3D Model

Another view is that the figures were male lions. The Mycenaean artist did not indicate the sex of lions by the genital organs on any artifact known to have been recovered from an excavation. Neither were teats indicated on the body of the lions to indicate they were female. Furthermore, on the Lion Gate relief, cuttings on the side of the neck of the lion to the left of the spectator indicate that the animal represented is male, for the cuttings were where the ends of the mane of the animal were fitted to provide additional support to the block, perhaps of steatite, on which the head, face, and mane of the animal were carved. The same section of the lion to the right has weathered badly. However, there too we have at least the remnants of one cutting which would indicate that a similar provision was made for the head of that lion. Consequently, both animals can be considered lions and not lionesses. Griffins or sphinxes have also been depicted on opposite sides of a column on gems and gold rings but always with wings. The absence of wings also indicates that the animals were probably lions.

The imposing gate of the citadel with the representation of the lionesses or lions was an emblem of the Mycenaean kings and a symbol of their power to both subjects and foreigners. It also has been argued that the lionesses (assuming they are not male lions) are a symbol of the goddess Hera. The Lion Gate may be compared to the gates of the Hittite Bronze Age citadel of Hattusa, in Asia Minor. Since the heads of the animals were of a different material from their bodies and originally were fashioned to look toward those approaching below, a number of scholars have suggested that they were composite beasts, probably sphinxes, in the typical Middle Eastern tradition. On the top of the pillar is a row of four discs, apparently representing rafters supporting a further piece of sculpture that has since been lost. Another view is as follows: above the head of the column and what is probably a slab supporting an architrave is a row of discs (ends of transverse beams) and another slab the same size as the slab on top of the column. The beams and the block above them represent a more extended superstructure shortened here because of the diminishing space in the triangle. Thus, no further piece of sculpture has been lost.

From Crete and Mycenae published by Thames & Hudson, London, and Harry N. Abrams, New York; photograph, Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich

The design of the gate had precedents in other surviving artworks of the time; a similar design was depicted on 15th-century Minoan seals and a gem found at Mycenae. Many other pieces of Mycenaean artwork share the same basic pattern of two opposed animals separated by a vertical divider, such as two lambs facing a column and two sphinxes facing a sacred tree representing a deity. The architectural design in the gate relief may reflect an entrance of a type characterized by a central support, commonly a single column. More specifically, the gate relief may allude to the propylon (structure which forms the entrance) that provides the main direct access to the palace. The lions acted as guardians to the entrance of the palace. If so, the symbol of a sanctified palace entrance would have appeared above the gate of the fortifications: a double blessing.

Beyond the gate and inside the citadel was a covered court with a small chamber, which probably functioned as a guard post. On the right, adjacent to the wall, was a building that has been identified as a granary because of the pithoi found there containing carbonized wheat.

Excavations

The Lion Gate stood in full view of visitors to Mycenae for centuries. It was mentioned by the ancient geographer Pausanias in the 2nd century AD. In 1840, the Greek Archaeological Society undertook the initial clearing of the site from debris and soil that had accumulated to bury it, and in 1876 Heinrich Schliemann, guided by Pausanias's accounts, excavated the area south of the Lion Gate

Mycenae, Lion Gate, 1880's: Doerpfeld, seated Heinrich Schliemann 

Aquatint view of the Lions Gate, Mycenae

Dodwell, Edward. The Gate of the Lions. "The Gate of the Lions at Mycenae." London Rodwell & Martin. 1821

Aquatint view of the Lions Gate, Mycenae from the Deluxe edition of Dodwell's "Views in Greece". Original hand colour, mounted on card with title caption to verso

The view shows the passage up to the famous Gate of the Lions at Mycenae, Dodwell states that is still in much the same condition as it was when visited by Pausanius sixteen centuries before. Generally clean and bright; stain to upper left corner of surrounding card [margin] upon which it is mounted; 1 light spot to sky.

Edward Dodwell (1767 1832) 

was an Irish painter, traveller, antiquary and a writer on archaeology. Educated at Trinity College Cambridge. 

Dodwell travelled to Greece in 1801 in company with Sir William Gell touring the Ionian Islands and the Troad, In 1805-6 when he was allowed leave of absence to travel by the government of Bonaparte, in whose hands he was a prisoner, he returned to Greece accompanied by the Italian artist Simone Pomardi, touring mainland Greece and the Ionian Islands meeting again with Sir William Gell towards the end of the tour. During this second tour he and Pomardi produced around 1000 drawings which would become the basis for A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece during the years 1801, 1805 and 1806published in 1819, the work was dedicated to 

Le Chevalier who had arranged his parole. 

"The Dodwell-Pomardi practice was to draw freehand on the spot if the landscape or ruin was condensed into a particular feature rather than an extensive view, often in pen in grey or sepia ink and wash if by Pomardi, and more roughly in pencil if by Dodwell; much more deliberate drawing followed, with the assistance of the camera obscura if a more detailed and complex composition was required — without it, Pomardi and Dodwell would have produced far fewer illustrations. The finished drawings were developed later, in Italy, from a compilation of outlines, sketches and precise notes; on these, both men worked together in a concerted campaign to reach a definitive publishable stage, probably with the assistance of other artists,"[ Brian Sewell ;"In Search of Classical Greece: Travel Drawings of Edward Dodwell And Simone Pomardi 1805-1806," British Museum - exhibition review]

The Classical Tour is illustrated with lithographs of the drawings as the intended aquatint illustrations proved too expensive to produce. Thirty aquatint plates were chosen to be issued separately as Views in Greece published in 1821.

Dodwell settled in Italy after his return, living chiefly in Naples and Rome. He had amassed a large collection of ancient artifacts including the well-known Dodwell Vasewith a representation of a boar-hunt; at his death the collection consisted of over 1000 pieces and even more mineral specimens; the collection of vases is now in the possession of the Munich Glyptothek

He died in Rome from the effects of an illness contracted in 1830 during a visit of exploration to the Sabine Mountains. His last work, "Views and Descriptions of Cyclopian or Pelasgic Remains in Italy and Greece", was published posthumously" in 1834. 

" Dodwell and Pomardi, like many travellers, chose to go beyond the established Mediterranean regions of the Grand Tour. The understanding these travellers brought to the archaeological remains of ancient Greece encouraged the taste among British Hellenists for Greek architecture. This gave new vigour to the Greek Revival, already begun in the middle of the 18th century by the expeditions of the Society of Dilettanti. Hellenism, the love of ancient Greece, was to promote a new movement of Philhellenism, a sympathy for modern Greek people and a desire to realise the dream, as Byron put it, "that Greece might still be free."

[Catalogue British Museum "In Search of Classical Greece: Travel Drawings of Edward Dodwell And Simone Pomardi 1805-1806,"]

Simone Pomardi 1757-1830

Lion Gate, by unknown, at Mycenae, Greece

Source/Photography/Bibliography

Beaudouin, Mondry (1880). "Fragments d'une description de l'Argolide faite en 1700 par un ingénieur italien". Bulletin de correspondance hellénique. 4: 206–210. doi:10.3406/bch.1880.4318.
Blakolmer, Fritz (2010). "Images and Perceptions of the Lion Gate Relief at Mycenae during the 19th Century". In F. Buscemi. The Representation of Ancient Architecture in the XIXth Century. Cogitata. pp. 49–66.
Castleden, Rodney (2005). Mycenaeans. London, United Kingdom: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-24923-2.
Gates, Charles (2003). Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece, and Rome. New York, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-12182-5.
Hampe, Roland; Simon, Erika (1981). The Birth of Greek Art: From the Mycenaean to the Archaic Period. New York: Oxford University Press.

http://www.paralosgallery.com

Iakovidis, Spyros E. (1983). Late Helladic Citadels on Mainland Greece. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill. ISBN 90-04-06571-7.
Kleiner, Fred S. (2009). Gardner's Art Through the Ages: A Global History. Cengage Learning Incorporated. ISBN 0-495-11549-5.
https://www.britannica.com
Moore, Dudley; Rowlands, Edward; Karadimas, Nektarios (2014). In Search of Agamemnon: Early Travellers to Mycenae. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4438-5776-5.
Mylonas, George Emmanuel (1957). Ancient Mycenae: The Capital City of Agamemnon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
https://en.wikipedia.org
Mylonas, George Emmanuel (1966). Mycenae and the Mycenaean Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
O'Brien, Joan V. (1993). The Transformation of Hera: A Study of Ritual, Hero, and the Goddess in the Iliad. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-8476-7808-2.
Younger, John G. (1978). "The Mycenae-Vapheio Lion Group". American Journal of Archaeology. Archaeological Institute of America. 82 (3): 285–299. JSTOR 504459.

Archaeologist Claims He's Found Ancient Greek Kings' Throne

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A Greek archaeologist believes he has found a fragment of the lost throne of the rulers of Mycenae, famous from ancient myth and the story of the Trojan War.

Christofilis Maggidis, who heads excavations at the site in southern Greece, said Tuesday that the chunk of worked limestone was found two years ago, in a streambed under the imposing citadel.

He told a press conference in Athens that the royal throne was among sections of the hilltop palace that collapsed during an earthquake around 1200 B.C.

Greek Culture Ministry officials have distanced themselves from the identification, citing a separate study that ruled the chunk to be part of a stone basin.

But Maggidis said the find was unmistakably made for sitting on, and would have been no use for holding liquids as it is made of porous stone.

"In our opinion, this is one of the most emblematic and significant finds from the Mycenaean era," he said.

Mycenae flourished from the mid-14th to the 12th century B.C. and was one of Greece's most significant late bronze age centers. Its rulers are among the key figures of Greek myth, caught in a vicious cycle of parricide, incest and dynastic strife.

The most famous of all, Agamemnon, led the Greek army that besieged and sacked Troy, according to Homer's epics. It is not clear to what extent the myths were inspired by memories of historic events.

No other thrones have been found in mainland Greece's Mycenaean palaces. An older, smaller example was found in the Minoan palace of Knossos, on the island of Crete.

Maggidis said other parts of the throne may lie be beneath Mycenae, and hopes to secure a permit to fully excavate the streambed.

The precise type of stone used has not been found anywhere else in the palace of Mycenae, although a similar material was used extensively in the citadel's massive defensive walls and in the magnificent beehive tombs where its rulers were buried.

Mycenaean Seminar / ΜΥΚΗΝΑΪΚΟ ΣΕΜΙΝΑΡΙΟ

Πέµπτη, 16 Ιουνίου 2016
"Από τις οικίες µε διαδρόµους στα µυκηναϊκά ανάκτορα: Οι κοινωνικές πρακτικές ως κλειδί κατανόησης των κοινωνικών αλλαγών στη νησίδα Μήτρου"
Οµιλήτρια: ∆ρ Aleydis Van de Moortel
Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια Κλασικών Σπουδών Πανεπιστηµίου Τενεσσί
Η 7η συνάντηση του Μυκηναϊκού Σεµιναρίου
θα πραγµατοποιηθεί στις 19:00
στο Αµφιθέατρο Ι. ∆ρακοπούλου
(Κεντρικό Κτήριο Πανεπιστηµίου Αθηνών
Πανεπιστηµίου 30)
Οργανωτική Επιτροπή
Νάγια Πολυχρονάκου-Σγουρίτσα, Ιφιγένεια Τουρναβίτου, Αιµιλία Μπάνου

The Religious Center of Mycenae

The Religious Center of Mycenae

Starting in 1968, British and Greek archaeologists resumed excavations at and around a large structure southeast of Circle A (Fig. 1, K) which Tsountas and Wace had partly cleared long before, In the process they discovered an LH III B religious complex of altars and sanctuaries unlike any previously known in the Mycenaean world.1 Until quite recently, scholars felt that the Mycenaean Greeks practiced their religion only at rustic shrines, or else in parts of the urban palaces where their kings served as priests. Those seeking to date the various institutions and objects which Homer described, decided that his references to an independent priesthood and to stone-built, roofed, freestanding urban temples, which he ascribed to the Mycenaean Age, were, in fact, anachronisms 500 years out of place.2 The recent discoveries of Late Bronze Age temples inside the cult center of Mycenae, at Kition on Cyprus, Ayia Irini on the island of Kea (which began in the Middle Bronze Age), and most recently in the lower citadel at Tiryns, now vindicate Homer.3

Those discoveries also add urban temples and an independent clergy to a staggering list of Homeric references which one can ascribe as easily to the thirteenth-twelfth centuries as to the eighth-seventh, but not to the period between. 4 Archaeologists face the additional problem that the ground plan of temples starting in the eighth century seems to be a throwback to the groundplan of Mycenaean palaces and temples,5 after a 400-500 year period which shows an abrupt abandonment of, and “an essential discontinuity” with Mycenaean architecture6—a Dark Age whose architectural forms also seem to be a 500-year throwback to pre-Mycenaean structures.7 With regard to Homer’s epics, for over a century now, archaeologists have “divided themselves into two parties as if engaged in a tug of war,” either championing his references as accurate, 500-years-old Mycenaean reminiscences retained in the poems, or else viewing them as a reflection of eighth-century reality.8

Literary critics have, as we noted for tripods, engaged in the same tug of war for over 2000 years now.9 Contemporary philologists, employing linguistic criteria in an attempt to determine the precise date of Homer’s allusions, and thereby resolve the debates of their colleagues, find themselves as perplexed as the other disputants, since they cannot neatly separate the manifestations of eighth-century Greek from those which they judge to be 500 years older, and find numerous cases of “Mycenaean” language describing late material and late language describing Mycenaean material.10

The philologists, trying to aid the archaeologists to establish dates, readily confess their consternation that “‘older’ and ‘younger’ elements (whether archaeological, linguistic, or social) interlock,”11 and that those same components, which “differ in age by more than half a millennium . . . are inextricably blended”—a fact which they term “most bewildering,”12 and for dating purposes, even “fatal.”13 Since the linguists’ attempts to separate the elements into distinct strata has met with failure,14 they send the problem back to the archaeologists. As Snodgrass remarked, the whole matter is “a sorely vexed question, but it cannot be shirked. It remains as true today [1971] as it has been for some years past, that there are only two positively and widely identifiable historical ‘strata’ in the world described in the Homeric poems,” the LH III period and the eighth century.15 For temples specifically, and for each of a number of other items, he saw “a pattern. . . emerging,” wherein they belonged either to the thirteenth-twelfth centuries or the eighth-seventh, but not between. ”16

The dating controversy still rages over temples and an astonishing number of other matters,17 with the recent discoveries of Mycenaean temples encouraging those who prefer to see all of Homer’s references as genuine Mycenaean memories rather than eighth-century anachronisms.18 But two gnawing questions arise: how did the LH III and eighth-century elements become so “inextricably blended” in the poems, if the epics grew through accretion; and why are those the only two periods in evidence? The second question goes to the very heart of the notion that oral poetry sustained Mycenaean memories through 500 years of illiteracy. If the epics in their original form were so sacrosanct that no poet, who transmitted them, altered them for centuries, why did an eighth-century hard feel that he could insert language, customs and objects of his own day in such a pervasive manner? On the other hand, if it is true that no oral poet memorizes another bard’s songs verbatim, or even sings his own tale twice the same way,19 then one should expect that those transmitting enormous, unwritten secular sagas for 500 years would gradually omit or alter many of the Mycenaean details, which would only have confused or had no meaning to themselves or their audience during the Dark Age; one would further expect that the bards between the LH III period and the eighth century would have added contemporary language and references to make their epics more relevant and comprehensible to their own day and their own listeners:20 yet they seem to have done neither of those things. Consequently, for Homer’s temples, as for other matters, the “tug of war” across a 500-year chasm continues, and the entire situation remains “most bewildering.”

Among the discoveries inside the cult center were two fairly large ivory figurines, representing a couchant lion and a very delicately modeled male head. Ivory carving in the round was very rare in Mycenaean times, and those two pieces struck the excavators “unique” among them. Since they come from a building of LH III 3 date, they can be no later than the thirteenth century B.C.21 The lion foreshadows a similarly-posed, lake seventh-century sculpture from the island of Corfu,22 and the face reminds one very much of archaic statuary of the seventh-sixth centuries, although, as we noted above, most critics agree that seventh-century sculptors began their art afresh, with no discernible ties to the bygone works of their ancestors.23 As for the material itself, ivory statuettes vanished towards the end of LH III only to reappear in Greece ca. 750 B.C.24 There is, moreover, an important deposit of ivory figurines from Ephesus in Asia Minor, dating to the late seventh-early sixth century, including lions, one of which bears some resemblance to the specimen from Mycenae, and a statuette of a priestess (?), which shows close similarities to the ivory head from Mycenae in the shape and piercing of the head, the facial features, and the modeling of the hair. The peculiar rendering of the eyes on the ivory face from Mycenae also foreshadows the similar, though slightly more realistic, eyes of an early seventh-century ivory sphinx from Perachora, less than twenty-five miles northeast of Mycenae.25 Between the two “unique” LH III B ivories and comparable works of the late eighth-sixth centuries lies the centuries-long Dark Age.

Other cult objects include quite a few terracotta figurines whose lower bodies were formed on a potter’s wheel as hollow tubes, in a typical Mycenaean process.26 They range in date from LH III A - late LH III B, i.e., the fourteenth-thirteenth centuries B.C. One of the thirteenth-century idols had a “curious” trait: the lips formed an “archaic smile”27—a feature which derives its name from its prevalence on seventh-sixth-century Greek sculpture, but is essentially unknown in Greece before that era.28 After the manufacture of fourteenth-thirteenth-century Greek cylindrical idols of Mycenae, and the recently-discovered twelfth-century ones from a shrine at Tiryns,29 there apparently follows a centuries-long break in their production throughout the Peloponnese, until ca. 700 B.C., when “wheel-made work in the old technique” suddenly makes a “strange revival;” terracotta figurines in general then started to become “universal throughout Greece once more,” as they had been during LH III, before their virtual disappearance during the Dark Age.30

In every case where the idols from the cult center still possessed their arms, they were “invariably raised,”31 as were those on the more schematized specimens from the shrine at Tiryns,32 and, in fact, most of the numerous handmade and wheel-made figurines of the LH III B-C period. That pose presumably designates a worshipper in the posture of supplication, or a deity in the set of epiphany or benediction. The type suddenly became extinct at the end of the Mycenaean Age. With the return of the Peloponnesian wheel-made figurines and female idols ca. 700 B.C., there is “a remarkable associated phenomenon, the reappearance of the goddess with raised arms,” which, like other features of contemporary terra cottas, made a “strange revival.”33 They then “kept reappearing spontaneously in widely separated parts of the country without any direct continuity that can be traced among the votive statuettes themselves. Something much more than an archaeological zeal on the part of the faithful needs to be invoked to explain this!”34

References

1. W. Taylour, “Mycenae, 1968,” Antiquity 43 (1969), pp. 91-97; idem, “New Light on Mycenaean Religion,” Antiquity 44 (1970), pp. 270-280; G. Mylonas, “The Cult Center of Mycenae,” (English summary), Pragmateiai tes Akademias Athenon, 33 (1972), pp. 36-40. 
2. R. Carpenter, Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics (Los Angeles, 1946), p. 85; Lorimer, (1950), pp. 433-440; J. Myres, “Homer and the Monuments: A Review,” Antiquity 25 (1951), p. 73; M.I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (New York, 1954), p. 39; T.B.L. Webster in Wace-Stubbings,(1962), p. 454; Dickinson,(1973-4), p. 40; cf. Kirk,(1964), p. 179. 
3. Hope Simpson-Lazenby,(1970), p. 2; Mylonas,(1972), p. 40; Snodgrass, (1974), p. 12. For Tiryns, see M.E. Caskey, “Newsletter from Greece,” AJA, 81 (1977), p. 511, and AJA, 82 (1978), p. 339. 
4. Snodgrass, loc. cit.; idem,(1971), p. 26. cf. n. 25 below. 
5. Tsountas-Manatt,(1897), p. 322; W.B. Dinsmoor, The Architecture of Ancient Greece (New York, 1950), p. 21; M.L. Bowen, “Some Observations on the Origin of Triglyphs,” BSA, 45 (1950), p. 123; W. McDonald, Progress into the Past (New York, 1967), pp. 423-424; Richter,(1969), p. 22; B. Schweitzer, Greek Geometric Art (tr. P. & C. Usborne) (New York, 1971 [pub’d posthumously]), pp. 223-224; Robertson,(1975), pp. 60-61; Cf. Snodgrass,(1971), pp. 409, 424. 
6. Snodgrass, ibid., p. 369; cf. H. Drerup, Griechische Baukunst in geometrischer Zeit (Archaeologia Homerica II,0) (Göttingen, 1969) p. 77.
7. Snodgrass, ibid., pp. 369, 383-384; Drerup, ibid., p. 82; Dinsmoor, (1950), p. 58; Starr,(1961), pp. 247-248; D.M. Robinson, “Haus” in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real-Encylopädie, Supp. 7 (1940), 235. 
8. M. P. Nilsson, Homer and Mycenae (London, 1933), p. 121. 
9. Cf. above “The Bronze Age,” ns. 17-21.
10. Nilsson, (1933), pp. 120, 159, 211; Gray,(1954), p. 15; idem, “Homer and the Archaeologists” in Fifty Years of Classical Scholarship (ed. M. Platnauer) (Oxford, 1954), p. 29; Webster, (1964), pp. 212, 226; J. Davison, “The Homeric Question” in Wace-Stubbings,(1962), p. 257; G.F. Else, “Homer and the Homeric Problem” in Lectures in Memory of L.T. Semple I (ed. D. Bradeen et. al.) (Princeton, 1967), p. 331; E.A. Havelock, “Prologue to Greek Literacy” in Lectures in Memory of L.T. Semple II (ed. C.G. Boulter et. al.) (Princeton, 1973), p. 335; Kirk, (1976), pp. 37-38, 42-43; for the problem of dating the language, cf. Whitman,(1958), p. 61. 
11. Davison, ibid., p. 257. 
12. Nilsson, (1933), p. 159.
13. Else,(1967), p. 331. 
14. Havelock,(1973), p. 335. 
15. Snodgrass,(1971), p. 389. 
16. Idem,(1974), p. 123.
17. Loc. cit.; Kirk,(1964), pp. 176, 178; Nilsson, (1933), pp. 121, 159, 211; Gray,(1954), p. 15; Vermeule, (1972), p. 309. In addition to the few items we already noted (silver-studded swords, chariots, tripods, corselets, temples) the list also includes references to Sicily, Egypt, Amazons, political geography, lamps, the brooch of Odysseus, helmets, greaves (leg guards), bows and arrows, thrusting spears, twin throwing spears, shields and shield devices, horse burials, hunting, fishing, farming, hording, overseas trade, ivory-inlaid furniture, even the principal characters in the poems and Homer himself - in fact nearly everything imaginable, where one side could favor the Mycenaean Age, the other the eighth/seventh century, and no one can make a good case for the intervening centuries. 
18. Hope Simpson-Lazenby,(1970), p. 2. 
19. J.A. Notopoulos, “Homer, Hesiod and the Achaean Heritage of Oral Poetry,” Hesperia, 29 (1960), p. 187; A. Andrewes, The Greeks (London, 1967), p. 40. 
20. Cf. Dickinson,(1973-4), pp. 36-37, 43-44. 
21. Taylour, (1969), p. 96, cf. p. 97 n. 14; (1970), p. 275. 
22. Cp. Taylour, ibid., (1970), pl. 41 a-b to Barron,(1970), p. 16. 
23. Taylour, loc. cit. pl. 41 c-d; cf. above “A Terracotta Figurine and a Terracotta Head,” ns. 6-7. 
24. Snodgrass,(1971), p. 345. 
25. Cp. Taylour, (1970), pl. 41 to Hogarth,(1908), pls. 21.3, 25.12 (lion) and 21.6, 22 (priestess), and to T.J. Dunbabin et. al., Perachora II (Oxford, 1962), pi. 171 (sphinx). 
26. Taylour, (1969), p. 92 and cf. Nicholls,(1970), p. 3. 
27. Taylour, loc. cit. 
28. It appears much earlier in Egypt; the 18th and 19th Dynasty examples, by the revised chronology, inspired the Greek ones directly. It also apperies on the Enkomi bronze mentioned above. (see “A Terracotta Figurine and a Terracotta Head,” n. 16) 
29. Caskey, (1977), p. 511 and fig. 7; (1978), pp. 339-340 and figs 2-4. 
30. Nicholls,(1970), pp. 17-18. There were a very few Dark Age wheel-made figurines from Athens and Euboea, but despite their acknowledged similarity to Mycenaean specimens, they, too, seem to return to Greece after a centuries-long break—a fact which causes contention among experts (cf. above “Shaft Grave Art: Modern Problems,” n. 11, to which add Dietrich,(1970), pp. 21-22). Since the Greeks continued to fashion ceramic objects, including wheel-made pottery, and no one seriously doubts that their religious beliefs and practices remained essentially unchanged, the Greeks’ failure to fashion wheel-made or even handmade figurines between the peak periods of production in LH III and the eighth-seventh centuries lacks a convincing explanation.  
31. Taylour, (1970), p. 277 and cf. pl. 42. 
32. Cf. n. 29 above.
33. Nicholls,(1970), pp. 17-18. 
34. Ibid., p. 20; cf. Snodgrass, (1971), pp. 192, 399, and Dietrich, (1970), pp. 21-22. On Crete and Cyprus, the type did persist during the “Dark Age” (Desborough, (1972), p. 285; V. Karageorghis, “The Goddess with Uplifted Arms in Cyprus,” Scripta Minora [Lund], 1977-1978 [2], pp. 5-44)—a fact which Nicholls (ibid., p. 13) termed “inescapable.” Nevertheless, as in the case of the wheel-made figurines from those islands (cf. above “Shaft Grave Art: Modern Problems,” n. 11), he did not believe that the type returned from there after the 500-year gap in Greece itself. Closer to Mycenae, the sole intermediary example known is a crude bronze figurine from the island of Naxos, which falls sometime during the late eleventh-tenth century (Snodgrass, ibid, pp. 200, n. 34, 399). By the revised chronology, the Naxian statuette, as well as the early Cretan and Cypriote specimens—none of which comes from Greece proper—precede the Mycenaean examples which they supposedly follow.
    “The only simple explanation” for the revival which Nicholls offered (ibid., p. 20) is that the later figurines copied wooden models, which spanned the Dark Age, but unfortunately failed to survive. The “perishables theory” is a favorite one among historians who note very similar non-perishable remains on either side of the Dark Age (e.g., figurines, statues, architectural forms, writing, decorative motifs, etc, etc.) and try to bridge the intervening centuries. By this very nature it is a hypothesis which is incapable of proof or refutation, and fails to explain why the Greeks, who still modeled, painted and incised clay, did not continue to make imperishable figurines during that period. Even if the gap was real, which is the main issue of the present essay a still simpler explanation would be that art imitated life, i.e, that people from Mycenaean times onward prayed with both hands uplifted, and that sculptors showed that pose at those times when they did produce figural art in permanent materials.

Mycenae

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Mycenae is under protection of UNESCO.

Mycenae, Modern Greek Mykínes,  prehistoric Greek city in the Peloponnese, celebrated by Homer as “broad-streeted” and “golden.” According to legend, Mycenae was the capital of Agamemnon, the Achaean king who sacked the city of Troy. It was set, as Homer says, “in a nook of Árgos,” with a natural citadel formed by the ravines between the mountains of Hagios Elias (Ayios Ilias) and Zara, and furnished with a fine perennial spring named Perseia (after Perseus, the legendary founder of Mycenae). It is the chief Late Bronze Age site in mainland Greece. Systematic excavation of the site began in 1840, but the most celebrated discoveries there were those of Heinrich Schliemann. The term Mycenaean is often used in reference to the Late Bronze Age of mainland Greece in general and of the islands except Crete (Modern Greek: Kríti).

There was a settlement at Mycenae in the Early Bronze Age, but all structures of that or of the succeeding Middle Bronze Age have, with insignificant exceptions, been swept away by later buildings. The existing palace must have been reconstructed in the 14th century bce. The whole area is studded with tombs that have yielded many art objects and artifacts.

From the Lion Gate at the entrance to Mycenae’s citadel, a graded road 12 feet (3.6 metres) wide leads to a ramp supported by a five-terrace wall and thence to the southwestern entrance of the palace. The latter is composed of two main blocks—one originally covering the top of the hill but largely destroyed on the erection of the Hellenistic temple and the other occupying the lower terrace to the south banked up artificially on its western edge. The two blocks were separated by two parallel east-west corridors with storerooms opening off them. The existence of a palace shrine on the upper terrace seems implied by discoveries of a magnificent ivory group consisting of two goddesses and an infant god with fragments of painted tripod altars and other objects.

At the southwestern corner of the later palace, the west lobby led to the grand staircase of 22 steps, a landing, and another 17 or 18 steps culminating in a small forecourt that afforded entrance to the great court and to a square room immediately to the north. There an oblong area with a raised plaster border has been interpreted by some scholars as the base for a throne where the king sat in audience. Other scholars, however, have regarded it as a hearth and the room as a guest chamber; the throne might then have stood on the right of the megaron (great central hall), a part that has now disappeared. Both the porch and the main portion of the megaron had floors of painted stucco with borders of gypsum slabs and with frescoes on the walls, one apparently representing a battle in front of a citadel. In the centre was a round plaster hearth enclosed by four wooden columns, possibly implying the existence of a clerestory. The 10 plaster layers of the hearth and 4 of the floor suggest that this hall was in use for a considerable time. The roof was probably flat. East of the corridor lay a series of rooms, the most interesting known from its decoration as “the room of the curtain frescoes.”

Within the citadel were various houses of retainers. The most imposing, “the house of the columns,” rose to three stories in height. South of the grave circle lie the ruins of the “ramp house,” the “south house,” and the “house of Tsountas.” Another building, known as “the granary,” from the carbonized barley, wheat, and vetches found in its basement, was erected in the 13th century bce between the Cyclopean citadel wall and one of the grave circles; it continued in use up to the destruction of the city by fire about 1100 bce.

The Late Mycenaean period (1400–1100 bce) was one of great prosperity in the Peloponnese. After the destruction of Knossos, on Minoan Crete, Mycenae became the dominant power in the Aegean, where its fleet must have controlled the nearer seas and colonized the Cyclades, Crete, Cyprus, the Dodecanese, northern Greece and Macedonia, western Asia Minor, Sicily, and some sites in Italy. Mycenaean, rather than Minoan, goods could be found in the markets of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. Mycenaean raiders harried the coasts of the Egyptians and the Hittites, and at a date traditionally supposed to be 1180, but by some scholars now estimated at about 1250 bce, Agamemnon and his followers sacked the great city of Troy.

In the 16th century bce, Mycenaean art was temporarily dominated by the influences of Minoan art. Cretan artists must have immigrated to the mainland, and local varieties of all the Minoan arts arose at Mycenae. Minoan naturalism and exuberance were tempered by Greek formality and sense of balance, which were already visible in Middle Helladic painted wares and were later to culminate in the splendid Geometric pottery of the Dipylon cemetery at Athens.

Until the mid-20th century, Mycenaean literacy was attested only by a few symbols painted on vases, but in 1952 the excavation of “the house of the oil merchant” and “the house of the wine merchant” outside the walls disclosed a number of tablets in the Linear B script first identified at Knossos (Knosós) and later interpreted by the English architect and cryptographer Michael Ventris to be an earlier form of the Greek language.

Mycenae was burned and destroyed, perhaps by invading Dorians, about 1100 bce, but the outer city was not deserted; graves of the Protogeometric and Geometric periods have been excavated. Mycenae evidently continued to exist as a small city-state, and the walls were not pulled down. Early in the 6th century bce a temple, from which one fine relief survives, was erected; in 480 Mycenae sent 400 men to fight against the Persians at Thermopylae, and its men were at Plataea in 479. In 470, however, its aggressive neighbour Árgos, which had been neutral in the Persian war, took an ignoble revenge by besieging Mycenae, and in 468 Árgos destroyed it. In the Hellenistic period Mycenae revived, and a new temple was built on the crown of the acropolis; in 235 bce the Argive tyrant Aristippus was killed there, and the city wall was repaired. Nabis of Sparta carried off some of the young men about 195 bce, and an inscription from 194 refers to their detention. A few Roman objects have been found, but when the Greek traveler and geographer Pausanias visited the site about ad 160, he found it in ruins.

History

 Mycenae 'Rich in Gold', the kingdom of mythical Agamemnon, first sung by Homer in his epics, is the most important and richest palatial centre of the Late Bronze Age in Greece. Its name was given to one of the greatest civilizations of Greek prehistory, the Mycenaean civilization, while the myths related to its history have inspired poets and writers over many centuries, from the Homeric epics and the great tragedies of the Classical period to contemporary literary and artistic creation. Perseus, son of Zeus and Dana?, daughter of Akrisios, king of Argos and descendant of Danaos, is traditionally considered as its mythical founder. Pausanias (2, 16, 3) reports that Perseus named the new city Mycenae after the pommel (mykes) of his sword, which fell there, or after the Perseia spring, discovered there under the root of a mushroom (mykes). According to the myth, Perseus's descendants reigned at Mycenae for three generations. After the last of them, Eurystheas, died childless, the Mycenaeans chose Atreus, son of Pelops, father of Agamemnon and Menelaos, as their king.

 

Mycenae was founded between two tall conical hills, Profitis Ilias (805 m.) and Sara (660 m.), on a low plateau dominating the Argive plain and controlling both the land and sea routes. The site was first occupied in the seventh millennium BC (Neolithic period). Very little remains of this early settlement because of continuous re-occupation up until the historical period. Most of the monuments visible today were erected in the Late Bronze Age, between 1350 and 1200 BC, when the site was at its peak. In the early second millennium BC a small settlement existed on the hill and a cemetery with simple burials on its southwest slope. Grave Circle B, a stone-built funerary enclosure containing monumental graves with rich grave gifts, indicates that the first families of rulers and aristocrats appeared at Mycenae at approximately 1700 BC. This social structure developed further in the early Mycenaean period, c. 1600 BC, when a large central building, a second funerary enclosure (Grave Circle A) and the first tholos tombs were erected on the hill. The finds from these monuments show that the powerful Mycenaean rulers participated in a complex network of commercial exchange with other parts of the Mediterranean.

The construction of the palace and fortification wall currently visible began c. 1350 BC (Late Helladic IIIA2). The latter saw three construction phases, the first wall being built of Cyclopean masonry. A new wall was erected to the west and south of the early one approximately one hundred years later (Late Helladic IIIB1), together with the Lion Gate, the citadel's monumental entrance, and its bastion. Included in the newly fortified area were the city's religious centre and Grave Circle A, which was refurbished and used for ancestral cults. The famous tholos tomb known as the 'Treasure of Atreus', with its gigantic lintels and tall beehive vault, was probably built during the same period. At approximately 1200 BC, in the Late Helladic IIIB-C period, following a large destruction probably caused by an earthquake, the walls were extended to the northeast so as to include the subterranean well. Successive destructions and fires led to the site's final abandonment c. 1100 BC.
After the collapse of the palatial system and of the 'Mycenaean Koine', the hill was sparsely inhabited until the Classical period. Meanwhile, several local cults of heroes developed in the area, fuelled by Mycenae's fame, which the Homeric poems spread throughout Greece. A temple dedicated to Hera or Athena was erected on the top of the hill in the Archaic period. In 468 BC, after the Persian Wars, in which Mycenae took part, the town was conquered by Argos and had part of its fortification wall destroyed. In the Hellenistic period, the Argives founded a 'village' on the hill, repaired the prehistoric walls and the Archaic temple, and erected a small theatre over the dromos of the tholos tomb of Clytaemnestra. The town was abandoned in subsequent centuries and was already in ruins when Pausanias visited it in the second century AD.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the impressive Cyclopean walls of the Mycenaean acropolis attracted many travellers and antiquaries who did not hesitate to loot the site, taking advantage of the indifference and greed of the Turkish authorities. In 1837, after the Greek Independence, the archaeological site of Mycenae came under the jurisdiction of the Greek Archaeological Society, whose representative K. Pittakis cleared the Lion Gate in 1841. In 1876, after opening several small test trenches in 1874, Heinrich Schliemann began excavating Grave Circle A, where he uncovered five graves. His work was continued in 1876-1877 by trench supervisor P. Stamatakis who uncovered the sixth grave. In subsequent years C. Tsountas (1884-1902), D. Evangelidis (1909), G. Rosenwaldt (1911), A. Keramopoulos (1917) and A. J. B. Wace (1920-1923, 1939, 1950-1957) excavated the palace and cemeteries. In 1952-1955 I. Papadimitriou and G. Mylonas of the Greek Archaeological Society excavated Grave Circle B and several houses, while G. Mylonas with N. Verdelis of the Archaeological Service excavated parts of the settlement. Excavations by the British School at Athens under Lord W. Taylor uncovered the religious centre, while further investigations were conducted by the Greek Archaeological Society under G. Mylonas and S. Iakovidis in 1959 and 1969-1974. In 1950-1955 A. Orlandos and E. Stikas supervised the restoration of the Tomb of Clytaemnestra, the palace, Grave Circle B and the area surrounding the Lion Gate. The project for the 'Restoration-Conservation-Presentation of the Monuments of the Acropolis of Mycenae and its Greater Area', begun in 1998, was overseen initially by the Work Group for the Restoration of the Monuments of Epidaurus and subsequently by the Mycenae Committee, created in 1999. 

Description

 

The archaeological site of Mycenae comprises the fortified acropolis and surrounding funerary and habitation sites, which are located mainly to its west and southwest. Most of the visible monuments date to the centre's great floruit, from 1350 to 1200 BC.

Great Cyclopean walls surround the almost triangular acropolis, which is accessed from the northwest through the famous Lion Gate, the symbol of the Mycenaean rulers' power. The gate was named after the two opposing lions carved in relief and set into the relieving triangle, a typical feature of Mycenaean architecture, over the door. To the right of the Lion Gate are the remains of a building dubbed the 'Granary', because its basement contained carbonized grain. South of the Granary is Grave Circle A, whose six large shaft graves contained numerous gold objects and other works of art. Beyond this is a series of buildings, possibly the residences of high officials: the House of the Warrior Krater, the Ramp House, the South House and the Citadel House. The citadel's religious centre, along the south fortification wall, includes the Temple of the Idols, the House of the Frescoes, Tsountas's House and the Priest's House. A staircase and a large processional street connected these shrines to the palace.

The palace, symbol of the power of Mycenaean rulers, dominates the citadel's highest point. It sprawls over artificial terraces and was reached by a large ramp beginning at the Lion Gate. The main palace building includes a large courtyard, a guesthouse and, at its very centre, the Mycenaean megaron. The latter consisted of three parts: a columned porch, a vestibule (prodomos) and the main chamber (domos), which housed the ruler's throne. The palace also included workshops and storerooms, both related to the palatial monopoly of goods, cult buildings and houses, which probably belonged to high officials.

At the northeast corner of the fortifications is the entrance to the underground spring, built during the third construction phase to safeguard access from the interior of the citadel during sieges. A corbelled corridor leads to the underground cistern located eighteen metres below, outside the fortification walls. Near the entrance to the cistern, to its west, is the citadel's second gate, the so-called North Gate, of similar construction as the Lion Gate, only smaller.

Outside the fortification walls, west of the Lion Gate, is Grave Circle B, which encloses fourteen shaft-graves. Four of the nine tholos tombs discovered so far at Mycenae are also located in this area. The so-called tombs of the Lions, Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra, and the Treasury of Atreus, further south, illustrate the development of this type of funerary structure, the latter being its most perfect example, with its enormous lintels, imposing vault and richly decorated fa?ade.

Approximately fifty metres south of Grave Circle B, next to the modern asphalt road, are the remains of four buildings, the so-called houses of the Shields, of the Oil-Merchant, of the Sphinxes and the West House. Several inscribed clay tablets discovered in the House of the Oil-Merchant mention workers, oil and perfumes. These indicate that this was probably a workshop specializing in the production of perfumes and perfumed oils, which the Mycenaeans exported.

Traces of the highly developed road network, which connected Mycenae with the other large centres in the area, are still preserved around the citadel. One of these roads with its bridge is visible near the cemetery of the modern village, while a second road along the northern fortification wall still shows tracks made by ancient chariot wheels.

Site Monuments

Treasure of Atreus

 The Treasury of Atreus or Tomb of Agamemnon is an impressive "tholos" tomb on the Panagitsa Hill at Mycenae, Greece, constructed during the Bronze Age around 1250 BC. The lintel stone above the doorway weighs 120 tons, with approximate dimensions 8.3 x 5.2 x 1.2m, the largest in the world. The tomb was used for an unknown period. Mentioned by Pausanias, it was still visible in 1879 when the German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the shaft graves under the 'agora' in the Acropolis at Mycenae. The tomb has probably no relationship with either Atreus or Agamemnon, as archaeologists believe that the sovereign buried there ruled at an earlier date than the two; it was named thus by Heinrich Schliemann and the name has been used ever since.

Subterranean cistern

The corbelled passage is wide enough for two people to stand side by side. It leads to the underwater cistern, 18 meters below the surface, through a steep decenting path paved with stone. The cistern itself at the end of the path is a quadrilateral roofed shaft and collected water through clay pipes, from the natural spring that lay outside the citadel.

Religion Centre of Mycenae

Situated on the southwest point of the citadel, this building complex was created for religious purposes. As well as the existence architectural elements supporting this, artefacts used in religious ceremonies have also been found here. READ MORE HERE

Cyclopean Walls

The characteristic of the Mycenaean walls is that they are made of huge limestone boulders, which have been fitted together rather roughly. As these boulders are very big in size, the ancient people believed that it was the Cyclops who built these gates, as the thought it impossible for men to move such big rocks. That is why these walls were named Cyclopean Walls. Notable is that the hammer was rarely used for the construction of these walls and thus they fit very roughly together. The cracks or gaps between the boulders were filled with smaller limestone. Dating since the 13th century AD, these Cyclopean walls are the characteristic feature of the Mycenaean architecture. Archaeologists have noticed that this type of architecture can be seen in other Mycenaean towns, too, such as Tyrins or Argos. However, Harry Thurston Peck, in 1898, divided Cyclopean architecture in four styles. The first style consists of stones of various size filled in between with smaller stones. The second style consists of polygonal stones that fit precisely. The third style is characterized by stone of unequal size but of the same height and the fourth is known for its rectangular stones of unequal height. The walls in Mycenae match to the third style.

Grave Circle B

 Grave Circle B at Mycenae was part of the prehistoric cemetery at Mycenae (end of 17th cent. 16th cent. BC) together with Grave Circle A, and today is situated" outside the fortified citadel. It was excavated by I. Papadimitriou and G. Mylonas in 1952-1954. Surrounded by a Cyclopean dry-stone wall twenty-eight meters in diameter, it comprises fourteen large shaft graves similar to those of Grave Circle A, for members of the royal family, and twelve smaller, shallow graves possibly for courtiers. Several graves were marked with vertical stone stelai, five of which were found in situ. Those stelai with relief decoration belonged to male graves, while the undecorated ones marked female graves.

The graves in Circle Grave B, most of which were discovered unlooted, contained approximately thirty-five inhumations of men, women and children. The men were aged between twenty-three and fifty-five years, and the women between thirty and thirty-seven. Most male remains bore evidence of wounds and healed skull and spinal injuries, which together with indications of great muscular mass, prove that they were often involved in violent conflict.

The grave gifts from Grave Circle B are similar to those from Grave Circle A, although less opulent. They do include, however, some quite important artefacts, such as the death-mask made of electrum (gold and silver alloy) and the amethyst seal stone with a representation of a male figure from Grave Gamma, and the duck-shaped rock-crystal kymbe (elongated shallow vessel) from Grave Omicron. The grave gifts are both local, that is of Middle Helladic tradition, and imported from Minoan Crete and the Cyclades. This amalgam of diverse elements characterizes the period of the Mycenae shaft graves and contributed to the formation of the Mycenaean civilization.

Δημοσίευση by Ancient Hellas (Greece).