Mycenae, Greece

Mycenae was the main centre of the Mycenaean world, and gave its name to a period and a civilization that evolved throughout the entire Greek world between the 16th and 12th century BC.  The Mycenaean acropolis, dominating the surroundng area and Argive plain, uniquely placed to control the commuication routes in all directirections.  It was the strongly defended royal house of the Atreidae and their people.

 

 This is The Lion's Gate.  It is the oldest monumental relief in Europe.  It is dated circa

 1240 BC and was built during the second building stage of the citadel.  The lions heads were made of a softer material and have disappeared.

Life on the hill goes back much further.  The site was already inhabited in the 3rd millennium BC.  This is said to be the city of Agamemnon.  Artifacts have been found from the Middle Helladic period (1900-1580 BC)!

 Me and two lions

 The "Cyclopean" walls, up to 14 m (46 ft) wide were unbreachable.  Later Greeks imagined that they had been built by giants.

This is the entrance to a tholos tomb (circa 1250 BC)

This is looking up at the ceiling inside of the tomb.  A 9 m (30ft) long lintel stone stands over the entrance to the tomb.  It weighs almost 120 tonnes (264,550 lb), and nobody knows how it was hoisted into place.

 This grave circle contained six royal family shaft graves containing 19 bodies.  The 14 kg (31 lb) of gold funerary goods are on display on Athens (many reproductions are on display at the museum here).

In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of king Atreus and queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra and the father of Iphigenia, Electra or Laodiki (Λαοδίκη), Orestes and Chrysothemis. The myths make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area. When Helen, the wife of Menelaus, was abducted by Paris of Troy, Agamemnon commanded the united Greek armed forces in the ensuing Trojan War.

Upon Agamemnon's return from Troy, he was murdered (according to the oldest surviving account, Odyssey 11.409–11) by Aegisthus, the lover of his wife, Clytemnestra. In old versions of the story, "[t]he scene of the murder, when it is specified, is usually the house of Aegisthus, who has not taken up residence in Agamemnon's palace, and it involves an ambush and the deaths of Agamemnon's followers too".In some later versions Clytemnestra herself does the killing, or they do it together, in his own home.

 Slightly less drama than Agamemnon's family

A flight of 99 steps drops to a cistern deep beneath the citadel.  It is linked to a spring outside and provided drinking water in times of siege.  We stopped going down when it got dark.