Mycenae Tours

Mycenae tours are small-group and private trips into the Argolid, a region of the Peloponnese. Here, the Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae gave its name to a whole civilisation. Its past links the Mask of Agamemnon, Heinrich Schliemann, Cyclopean walls and the Linear B script. Related trips include a classical Greece tour, a Mycenae and Epidaurus day trip and an Epidaurus tour. Wider options sit under Greece tours.

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What are Mycenae tours?

Mycenae tours are trips through Greece with a host, linked to the age of Mycenaean Greece. That culture was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Greece. It lasted from about 1750 to 1050 BC. Bronze, a metal for tools, gave the age its name.

The culture takes its name from Mycenae, the leading site of the era. Modern archaeologists call the Bronze Age of mainland Greece the Helladic period. The word comes from Hellas, the Greek name for Greece. On Mycenae tours, an archaeologist means an expert who digs up and studies traces of the past.

Mycenaean Greece was the first advanced and truly Greek civilisation on the mainland. A civilisation is a society with towns, art, rulers and writing. Other centres of power grew at Pylos, Midea and Tiryns, in the Peloponnese. For Mycenae tours, a centre of power means a seat of rule over the land around it.

The Mycenaean period became the setting for much Greek literature and myth. Its stories include the Trojan Epic Cycle, a set of long poems about the war at Troy. Myths are stories of gods and heroes, passed on from one age to the next. In Mycenae tours terms, literature means written works such as poems and plays.

• Warrior rule: A warrior elite, a small ruling class of fighters, led a network of states run from palaces.
• Fall of Mycenae: Around 1190 BC, a second wave of destruction hit Mycenae and ended its time as a major power.
• Open question: Theories for the end include a Dorian invasion and the actions of the Sea Peoples.

After the collapse came the Greek Dark Ages, a period with no written records. On Mycenae tours, the Dark Ages mean the gap between the palace world and Archaic Greece. In that later age, power moved away from the palaces to looser local networks.

Why is the Mask of Agamemnon a talking point for Mycenae tours?

Mycenae tours share a famous find, the Mask of Agamemnon. This gold funeral mask was found at Mycenae, a Bronze Age site in southern Greece. A funeral mask is a cover laid over the face of a dead person.

The German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann found the mask in Grave V, part of Grave Circle A. That grave was a shaft tomb. On Mycenae tours, a shaft tomb means a deep, narrow pit cut for a burial. Grave Circle A held eight men, each buried with weapons. Only five of them wore masks.

The gold sheet was heated and then hammered against a wooden backing. A sharp tool later chased in the details. To chase metal is to press lines and patterns into its surface. Unlike three other masks, this one is three-dimensional rather than flat. For Mycenae tours, three-dimensional means having depth as well as height and width.

Critics point to Schliemann’s name for salting digs with objects from elsewhere. To salt a dig is to plant finds in it on purpose. Defenders answer that its lip and beard nearly match the mane on a lion-head rhyton of gold. That rhyton came from Shaft Grave IV. A rhyton is a vessel for drinking or pouring.

• Rank in death: The weight of gold and the fine craft in the graves point to honour, wealth and status.
• Older date: Other experts place the contents of the find as early as around 2500 BC.
• Family name: Schliemann later gave his own son the name of the legendary king.

Schliemann named the mask after Agamemnon, the legendary king in Homer’s Iliad. In Mycenae tours terms, the Iliad is an ancient epic, or long poem, set during the Trojan War. Legendary means known from old stories rather than from written proof or remains.

Who was Heinrich Schliemann, and how is he tied to Mycenae tours?

Mycenae tours share their story with Heinrich Schliemann, a German businessman and influential archaeologist. He dug at Mycenae and Tiryns, two Mycenaean sites. He also dug at Hisarlik, the site now presumed to be Troy. Mycenaean means belonging to the age named after Mycenae.

Heinrich Schliemann was born in 1822 in Neubukow. The town lay in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, then part of the German Confederation. On Mycenae tours, a confederation means a union of states that keep their own rulers. Trading in indigo dye later brought him a good profit. Indigo is a deep blue colouring taken from plants.

By 1858, at 36 years old, he was wealthy enough to retire. By the end of his life, he was able to talk in English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. He also spoke Italian, Russian, Swedish, Polish, Greek, Latin and Arabic. German was his native tongue, the language he learned first as a child.

In 1870, Schliemann began digging a trench at Hisarlik. For Mycenae tours, a trench means a long, narrow ditch cut into the ground. By 1873 he had found nine buried cities there. That same year he found gold that he took to be Priam’s Treasure. Priam was the king of Troy in Homer’s Iliad.

• Homer and history: His work lent weight to the idea that the Iliad reflects real events.
• Family: He and his wife Sophia later had two children, named Andromache and Agamemnon.
• Tomb frieze: A frieze, or band of carved scenes, on his tomb shows him digging at Mycenae.

Schliemann collapsed on Christmas Day 1890 and died in Naples the next day. The cause was cholesteatoma, a disease of the ear. Friends carried his body to the First Cemetery in Athens. In Mycenae tours terms, a cemetery means a burial ground set apart for the dead.

Which building secrets does Cyclopean masonry hold for Mycenae tours?

Mycenae tours look to Cyclopean masonry, a type of Mycenaean stonework. Its walls use massive limestone boulders, fitted roughly together with little space between them. Masonry means building work in stone. Limestone is a pale rock long used for building.

The best-known examples of the style survive in the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns. Between the great boulders, smaller pieces of limestone plug the gaps. Builders set the stones in clay mortar or used no mortar at all. On Mycenae tours, mortar means a paste spread between stones to bind them.

The Cyclopes were giants of Greek myth. Pliny, a Roman author, reported a tradition credited to Aristotle. It held that the Cyclopes invented towers built of stone. The ancient writer Pausanias said the Cyclopes built the Tiryns wall for Proetus, a legendary king. He added that a pair of mules was unable to shift its smallest stone.

Modern archaeologists use the word Cyclopean in a narrower sense than Pausanias did. For them, only parts of the walls at Mycenae and Tiryns count as Cyclopean. Cut blocks appear only at and near the gateways. At Mycenae and Tiryns, that cut stone is conglomerate. For Mycenae tours, conglomerate means rock made of pebbles bound in natural cement.

• Old labels: Writing in 1898, Harry Thurston Peck split Cyclopean masonry into four styles.
• Ashlar: Peck’s fourth style, ashlar, uses neat cut blocks and no longer counts as Cyclopean.
• Firm footing: The walls tend to rest on shallow beds cut into the bedrock, the solid rock underground.

Very large boulders mark the Mycenaean walls at Mycenae, Tiryns, Argos and Krisa. Krisa lay in Phocis, a region of central Greece. At Gla, large slabs of limestone form the walls instead. In Mycenae tours terms, a slab means a broad, flat piece of stone.

How does Linear B, the palace script, fit into Mycenae tours?

Mycenae tours tie in with Linear B, the script used to write Mycenaean Greek. Its finds come mainly from palace record rooms at Knossos, Kydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae. A script is a set of signs for writing down a language.

The earliest known Linear B texts date to around 1450 BC. The script grew out of Linear A, an older script that no one has yet read. Linear B is the only Bronze Age script of the Aegean to be deciphered. On Mycenae tours, to decipher means to work out what a code or script says.

Linear B has around 87 syllable signs, plus over 100 signs that stand for things, called ideograms. A syllable is one beat of sound in a word, such as ta or ko. The ideograms carry no sound value. For Mycenae tours, an ideogram means a sign for an object or a kind of goods.

In Mycenae tours terms, a tablet means a flat piece of clay used for writing. A palm-leaf tablet records a single deal, while a larger page-shaped tablet sums up a set of deals. When fire destroyed the buildings, the heat baked large numbers of clay tablets and so preserved them.

• Daily goods: Common items in the palace records included wool, sheep and grain.
• Jar labels: Inscribed stirrup jars, a kind of storage jar, come mainly from Thebes, Mycenae, Tiryns and Khania.
• Lost skill: Greeks of the later historical era were unable to read Linear B.

Michael Ventris and John Chadwick did the bulk of the decoding between 1951 and 1953. The script vanished when Mycenaean civilisation fell in the Late Bronze Age collapse. On Mycenae tours, a collapse means the breakdown of a whole way of life.

What do travellers ask about Mycenae tours, and what are the answers?

Mycenae tours raise questions about four subjects from the site and its legends. They are Grave Circle B, the Tomb of Clytemnestra, the hero Perseus and King Agamemnon. Two are real Bronze Age remains, while Perseus and Agamemnon are figures of Greek myth.

Before Mycenae tours, what is Grave Circle B?

Grave Circle B is a royal cemetery from the 17th to 16th centuries BC. It lies outside the walls of the Bronze Age stronghold of Mycenae. The circle holds 26 graves, and 14 of them are shaft graves. Each grave bears a Greek letter, while the graves of Circle A bear Latin numbers.

For Mycenae tours, what is the Tomb of Clytemnestra?

The Tomb of Clytemnestra is a Mycenaean tholos, named after the wife of King Agamemnon. A tholos is a circular burial chamber of stone, roofed by a tall dome. It was the last tomb of this type built in the region. Half-columns of gypsum, carved with ornate tops called capitals, decorate the front of its doorway.

Ahead of Mycenae tours, how is Perseus linked to the city?

In Greek myth, Perseus beheaded the Gorgon Medusa and rescued Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus. A Gorgon was a monster with snakes for hair. The writer Pausanias told of a sacred fountain at Mycenae called Persea. Perseus was said to have ruled there with Andromeda in a long, successful reign.

Why does Agamemnon come up in Mycenae tours questions?

Agamemnon was a mythical king of Mycenae who led the Achaeans in the Trojan War. Achaeans is one of Homer’s names for the Greeks. Legends call him king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be names for one area. In the Oresteia, a set of plays by Aeschylus, misfortune followed each generation of his family.