Mycenae is a city of great significance in
Greek history that
named the Mycenaean Civilization that flourished here in the late Bronze Age around 1600–1200 BC.
The palace of Mycenae, known in legend as the palace of
Agamemnon, is an important archaeological site located in the Argolid region of Peloponnese which has been excavated in the 19th century by Heinrich Schliemann, providing valuable information about the Mycenaeans who left behind no written history.
The Palace of Mycenae is situated on the top of a hill, overlooking the Argive plain. Archaeology shows that the site was first inhabited in the 3rd millennium by Neolithic settlers. The heyday of the Mycenaean civilization came in 1400–1200 BC and the most representative structure of its acme is the huge limestone fortification walls, usually referred to as the “Cyclopean Walls”, believe to have been built by the Cyclops because of their huge size. At the main entrance of the Palace of Mycenae we see the most distinctive surviving feature of the Mycenaean grandeur: the Lion Gate, built around 1260 BC.
The
preeminence of the Mycenaeans is shown by the many
royal tombs that were found around the Palace, now called by archaeologists Grave Circle A and B, with rich burials findings of silver and gold, named tomb treasures, among them the so-called Treasury of Atreus, a monumental tomb outside the Palace of Mycenae.
The Mycenaeans formed a warlike society, bearing fundamental social differences to their precedents, the Minoans.
The ruins of Mycenae were first investigated
by the British Lord Elgin in 1802, but were excavated by
Schliemann in 1874–1876. The findings that the excavations brought to light were of vital historic importance, as this way the existence of a whole civilization was proved. The ruins of Mycenae indicated the existence of the city “rich in gold” as the poet Homer called Mycenae and therefore it was the proof that legendary heroes recalled in mythology like Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, actually have lived.
The history of Mycenae is strongly connected with the Greek expedition against Troy, the Trojan War, as it is described in Homer’s epic poem of Iliad. Among Schliemann’s important findings was the golden Death Mask of Agamemnon, which is now exhibited in the
National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
The excavations in Mycenae have shown many weapons, swords, shields, pottery and everyday life tools that are now exhibited in the adjacent to the site archaeological Museum of Mycenae. Outside the Palace of Mycenae there are the tombs of Atreus and Clytemnestra.