Mycenae 2004

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Mycenae 2004

The Tombs The Stronghold

 

stronghold of Mycenae

More Photos from the stronghold

According to legend, Mycenae was the capital of Agamemnon, the Achaean king who sacked the city of Troy, and it was set, as Homer says, “in a nook of Argos,” 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.
 

entrance to one of the tombs

More Photos of the tombs and the objects taken from them


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 BC. The whole area is studded with tombs that have yielded many art objects and artifacts.
 

 

The Lion Gate at Mycenae, Greece, c. 1250 BC.

 

Palace side of the Lion gate


From the Lion Gate at the entrance to Mycenae's citadel, a graded road, 12 feet(3.6 m) 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, 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.

Text from the Encyclopedia Britannica

 

Spring at Mycenae

 

flowers in the room called the "Granary"

Link to interactive map of ancient Greece


The Tombs The Stronghold

Athens Athens 2004 Corinth Canal Corfu Crete Antiquities Crete Delphi Edessa Elderhostel Epidaurus Greater Macedonia Homeric Legend Ioannina Ionian Islands Kalambaka Meteora Meteora  2004 Metsovo Mycenae Mycenae 2004 Mystras Nafplion Northern Greece Olympia Orthodox Easter Pella Rhodes Santorini Synagogue on Rhodes Thessaloniki

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