The Mycenaeans A Civilization of Bronze Age Greece

Did you know that the Mycenaeans who lived 3,500 years ago built walls and fortifications so huge that the ancient Greeks who came after them called them Cyclopean, thinking that they could have only been built by the race of giant cyclops from Greek mythology. Hello and welcome to Ancient History Encyclopedia. My name is Kelly and today we're going to have a look back to the time before classical Greece to the world of the Mycenaeans. The Mycenaeans flourished on mainland Greece between around 1700 BCE and 1100 BCE. Their name was taken from the home of the legendary King Agamemnon, Mycenae. The Mycenaeans are best known for the Trojan War, as King Agamemnon was brothers with Menelaus, whose wife Helen was abducted by Paris of Troy, which was the catalyst for the Ten Year War. The Mycenaeans had palace complexes and they served the same function as those on Crete, however they were smaller and were fortified. The largest sites are those of Mycenae, Tyrrhenes and Pelos, all of which have preserved the base of the palace structures, along with Cyclopean fortification walls at Mycenae and Tyrrhenes, as well as some rich burials. Mycenae is the largest of the sites and was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann between 1876 and 1877, and he believed he had found the palace of the great King Agamemnon, as Schliemann was also preoccupied with mythological endeavors. The dominant trading partner of the Mycenaeans were the Minoans on the island of Crete, until that civilization fell in around 1450 BCE. The Mycenaeans were in contact with a number of including the Egyptians, the Hittites and the Cypriots, but they seemed to have preferred artifacts from Minoan craftsmen. They were trading throughout the Aegean and were the dominant entity in the region after the fall of the Minoans, with the Mycenaean Linear B script present on Crete at this time. The Mycenaeans expanded throughout the Aegean, raiding small sections of land of the Egyptians and the Hittites, and set up small colonies on the The Mycenaeans used a unique type of burial for their elite, called the tholos or beehive tomb, and these have been found at the palace complexes, but due to their obvious size, many of them have been looted for most of their treasures. The Mycenaeans are also known to have been focused on war, and often depicted scenes of battle, and in these scenes of battle they were often wearing boar's tusk helmets, and evidence for these types of helmets have been found in Mycenaean burials. The Mycenaeans developed their script Linear B from Linear A, the script of the Minoans, and Linear B has been deciphered and identified as the earliest version of Greek. Although many of the tholos tombs were plundered, there were still many rich burial goods, most notably the gold death masks found at Mycenae in Grave Circle A, with the most famous one being called the Mask of Agamemnon. Due to clay tablets at Pelos, which were cooked by fire when the palace of Nestor was destroyed, we know that the Mycenaeans were readying themselves for an attack from the sea, potentially from the mysterious sea peoples, which were believed to have been the cause of destruction all throughout the ancient world during the time which is known as the Bronze Age Collapse. In 1200 BCE, every Mycenaean center had suffered with the eventual collapse of the civilization in circa 1120 BCE. After this collapse, writing fell out of use for around 400 years, but we know that the Greek language developed from Linear B and the Mycenaeans are considered as the first Greeks. And just a small disclaimer of the dating of the Aegean Bronze Age, there is a long-standing controversy over the dating of the Bronze Age and the eruption of Thera, which is modern-day Santorini. It has scholars divided and there is still no widely accepted chronology for this period. The city of Mycenae in Greek mythology was founded by the hero Perseus. The second dynasty was the Atreid dynasty, with the first king being Atreus and the second Agamemnon. Agamemnon was the brother of the king of Sparta, whose wife Helen was abducted by Paris of Troy, which sparked the 10-year Trojan War to retrieve her. Our main source for the Trojan War is Homer's epic, the Iliad, which only covers 52 days at the end of the Trojan War, with Agamemnon, Menelaus, King Nestor from Pelos, and the hero Achilles as four of the main central figures. The city of Mycenae was described in the Iliad as a well-founded citadel, wide-weighed, and golden Mycenae, with Agamemnon being the leader of all Achaean Greeks. Agamemnon and his story is also known through the Greek tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides, which takes place before the Trojan War, and the trilogy the Oresteia by Aeschylus, which takes place after it. The goddess Artemis had been offended by the arrogant king, and had stilled the winds so they could not sail to Troy. Artemis demanded a human sacrifice of Iphigenia, a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. As with most myths, there are multiple different versions, with Aeschylus writing that Agamemnon ruthlessly sacrificed his daughter, leaving his wife Clytemnestra in a rage, and another one saying that Artemis took Iphigenia away at the last moment and made her a priestess, and left the body of Edea in her place. After the sacrifice was complete, the winds picked up and the fleet sailed to Troy. Whilst Agamemnon was gone for 10 years, Clytemnestra had an affair with his cousin Aegisthus, and when Agamemnon returned with the concubine Cassandra, both Agamemnon and Cassandra were killed by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, so they could rule together. At this point you may be thinking, did the Trojan War actually happen? And was King Agamemnon really there? Or better yet, did Agamemnon ever exist at all? It is now widely believed that Hisarlik in modern-day Turkey, a site excavated by Heinrich Schliemann, is the site of Troy, but didn't have just one settlement, but nine, all built on top of the ruins of the one before. It is now believed that the Troy dating between 1700 and 1250 BCE, or Troy VI, was the Troy of the Trojan War. The archaeology of the destruction of Troy VI relays both an attack and destruction by fire, although it cannot be known whether this was because Helen was taken from Menelaus. Whether these heroes of the Homeric epic were real or not is completely unknown, and although the death mask of Agamemnon was named as such by Schliemann, it is dated 400 years too early to be the Agamemnon of myth. The Mycenaeans are considered the first Greeks, not only because they occupied the same territory on mainland Greece, but because they used the first version of the Greek language. Some of the Greek gods that were venerated by the classical Greeks have been found in Linear B tablets, such as Artemis, Poseidon, Zeus and Hermes. The Mycenaean civilization were an inspiration to later classical Greeks, who adopted architectural feats and legendary names of the Mycenaean Greeks, such as Agamemnon, Menelaus, Achilles, Nestor and Odysseus, have been immortalized in art and literature ever since. So do you think the Trojan War ever happened? And do you think these people of legend ever really exist? Let us know down in the comments below. 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