Inside the tomb

Looking up at the dome inside the tomb, and one of the spooky side chambers. That stonework is more than 3000 years old, and the dome is still intact. Clearly the Cyclops did excellent work.

Treasury of Atreus

This site is also known as the Tomb of Agamemnon. It is was definitely a tomb, but any treasure it may have contained was robbed long ago.

It dates from around 1300 BC and is one of the best-preserved of this kind of beehive tomb. It's hard to judge the scale from a picture, but that doorway is almost 18 feet high (5.4 m).

View from the citadel

 

The Lion Gate

The entrance to the citadel, front and back.

The heads of the lions may have originally been made from something other than stone, but they're long gone. The Classical Greeks called this stonework “Cyclopean” because they thought only the Cyclops would have been able to hoist those enormous stones.

Mycenaean mythology

As you climb up to the citadel, this is the view from outside the walls.

In mythology, Mycenae was founded by Perseus, who landed here one day while he was riding around on Pegasus.

I prefer to think of Agamemnon, and imagine him striding off to the coastline on his way to retrieve his wayward sister-in-law, with Clytemnestra glaring daggers at his retreating back.

Mycenae

The citadel on the acropolis.

I really had very little idea of the historical—as opposed to mythological—significance of Mycenae (apart from remembering it as the place where Schliemann found that cool gold mask).

In fact the period from 1600-1100 BC in Greek history is called Mycenaean because the city was the major power in southern Greece. By the end of this period, though, it was part of the general Bronze Age Collapse in the eastern Mediterranean, and though it was partially rebuilt and had a brief renaissance during the Hellenistic era, its glory days were over. It's been a ruin for far longer than it was a thriving city.

I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon

This is what the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann is supposed to have wired to the King of Greece after finding this mask at Mycenae.

It's still referred to as the Mask of Agamemnon, even though it's from the 16th century BC, at least 300-400 years before the Trojan War. (And there's no proof that a king by that name ever existed outside of mythology.)

This mask in the museum at Mycenae is a replica—the orginal is in Athens—but I didn't care. I loved reading about archaeology when I was a kid—Howard Carter and King Tut's tomb, Sir Arthur Evans and Knossos, Heinrich Schliemann and Troy and Mycenae. Having a chance to gaze upon that face myself gave me goosebumps.

Cats in Greece

Patroling the acropolis at Mycenae.