What was the purpose of Mycenae?
Mycenae is an ancient city located on a small hill between two larger hills on the fertile Argolid Plain in Peloponnese, Greece. The Bronze-age acropolis, or citadel built on a hill, is one of the great cities of the Mycenaean civilization that played a vital role in classical Greek culture.
Does Mycenae still exist?
Mycenae was briefly reoccupied in the Hellenistic period, when it could boast a theatre (located over the Tomb of Clytemnestra). The site was subsequently abandoned, and by the Roman period in Greece its ruins had become a tourist attraction.
What does the Lion Gate symbolize?
The imposing gate of the citadel with the representation of the lionesses was an emblem of the Mycenaean kings and a symbol of their power to both subjects and foreigners. It also has been argued that the lionesses are a symbol of the goddess Hera.
What caused the collapse of Mycenaean Greece?
Suggestions from scholars to explain the general collapse of the Mycenaean culture (and other contemporary ones in the Mediterranean) include natural disaster (earthquakes, volcanic explosions, and tsunami), overpopulation, internal social and political unrest, invasion from foreign tribes such as the Sea Peoples.
What Mycenaean means?
1 : of, relating to, or characteristic of Mycenae, its people, or the period (1400 to 1100 b.c.) of Mycenae’s political ascendancy. 2 : characteristic of the Bronze Age Mycenaean culture of the eastern Mediterranean area.
Who did the Mycenaeans worship?
The major gods of classical Greece that were worshipped in Mycenaean Greece included Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hermes, Artemis, Ares, Athena, and Dionysus.
Where was the mask of Agamemnon found?
Mycenae
The “Mask of Agamemnon” is one of the most famous gold artifacts from the Greek Bronze Age. Found at Mycenae in 1876 by the distinguished archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, it was one of several gold funeral masks found laid over the faces of the dead buried in the shaft graves of a royal cemetery.
How did Mycenaean culture end?
New study finds: Ancient Mycenaean civilization might have collapsed due to uprising or invasion. For many years, the prevailing theory on how the Mycenaean civilisation collapsed was that devastating earthquakes led to the destruction of its palaces in the Peloponnese, southern Greece around 1,200 BC.
What did the Mycenaeans invent?
The Mycenaeans adopted the numeration and measurement system of Minoan Crete thus facilitating the control of production and trade. The most significant Mycenaean achievement was the invention of a new writing system, the syllabary named Linear B.
When was the cult centre of Mycenae destroyed?
Among the artifacts found in the ruins are the wall paintings and the clay figurines exhibited at the Mycenae Museum. The Cult Centre was destroyed in late 13th c. BCE and the site was occupied by houses which were used until the end of the Mycenaean period.
Who was responsible for the demise of the Mycenaean civilization?
The Sea People that decimated the shores of the eastern Mediterranean at that time are also credited with direct or indirect involvement in the demise of Mycenaean civilization, with some scolars indicating that the Sea People might have been Mycenaeans forced to flee their invaded homeland.
When was the Mycenaean period of Greek history?
Damn OP got me questioning and shit. In the second millennium BC, Mycenae was one of the major centres of Greek civilization, a military stronghold which dominated much of southern Greece. The period of Greek history from about 1600 BC to about 1100 BC is called Mycenaean in reference to Mycenae.
What kind of records did the Mycenaeans have?
In terms of written records, Mycenaeans have left us with countless Linear B which almost exclusively contain catalogues and official records of a very stout bureaucracy which itself denotes a complex political and economic organization that was uniform throughout their area of influence.