Mycenae Museum

The Mycenae Musem, down the hill from the city

Inside one of its halls

Mycenaen figurines

"Call home!"

Bronze Age assortiment

Replicas of Schliemann's dig; the originals are in the Mycenaen Hall of the 
National Museum in Athens

More Bronze Age bronze

Mycenaen worry beads

Mycenae

Next we toured Mycenae, the great hill-top capital of the Mycenaen world. More defensive architecture, monumental stone work, but a written language (linear B), and all the gods, heroes, and other figures of early western civilization...

Mycenae, set on a hill-top in the mountains, but just a few miles from the sea

The Lions' Gate



Closer-up

Alas, we walked around mostly in squalls, but there was a  nice rainbow in the 
distance 

Grave Circle A; when Schliemann dug his first hole at Mycenae, he hit here, 
a grave complex that yielded about 30 pounds of gold, including what 
Schliemann fancifully dubbed "Agamemnon's death mask"; he was about 
three centuries off, however

Descending, boldly, the ninety steps down to the cistern

Half-way down, rusted-out braces...not very

reassuring

The bottom

Another massive gate

Palace area near the top

Entrance to Clytemnestra's Tholos (very similar to Treasury of Atreus in 
structure and dimensions)

A last look at the great complex

Treasury of Atreus

From Tiryns we drove the few miles on to ancient Mycenae, parking for the night at the Treasury of Atreus, a tholos (round) tomb, a tumulus, sort of, but with a monumental beehive stone structure beneath. We toured it the next morning, and then did Mycenae, a few hundred yards up the hill, and its museum. All this is Bronze Age, 16th-12th centuries BC, the stuff of Homer. Well, the stuff Homer wrote about, centuries later. Mycenae was Agamemnon's home town. Also Clytemnestra's, et al. And Pelops, too.

Entrance to the Treasury of Atreus, also called, fancifully, Agamemnon's Tomb; 
again, the stones are huge although more finely dressed at Mycenae

Inside the beehive; nothing was found here nor in other tholos tombs in the area; 
they are fairly conspicuous and have been used by shepherds and others for aeons...
just as soon as the Mycenean world collapsed in the 12th century BC, I speculate

The enormous doorway

Vicki poses for scale; the tomb is immense

As do I, by the doorway; the lintel measures 28x23x5 feet, 
130 tons; Cylcopean indeed; the triangular space above it 
is characteristically Mycenean, devised to reduce the weight 
the lintel carries

Wall-Girt Tiryns

...as Homer called it, is a 13th century BC Mycenean fortress a few miles from Nafplio. It is about the size of a standard Edward castle in Wales and is, similarly, a largely defensive undertaking: high walls, gates that, if breached, lead into killing-fields, cisterns accessible only from within, and all the rest. The medieval military architects had nothing on the Myceneans, 2500 years earlier. The most impressive thing about Tiryns, I thought, was the sheer size of the stones employed in its building. The classical Greeks attributed the building of these Mycenean structures to the Cyclopes, a race of giants, hence their description as Cyclopean. Anyhow, I was pretty impressed.

Ramp leading to main gate

Along the ramp; these stones are mostly 8x4x4 feet or so, very roughly cut

Palace area at the top of the fortress

Passage-way within the walls

Toward another gate, more monumental stone-work

Another view

View of walls from sea-side

Length of the sea-side wall; the whole fortress is about 1500 meters around

Nafplio

Our route to ancient Mycenae took us through the beautiful coastal city of Nafplio, where we stopped for lunch and some strolling and shopping in its old town. Nafplio has little of classical or pre-classical interest, but is within site of Argos, Tiryns, and Mycenae; and it is an ambience-laden little place well worth a stop, or longer.

Fortress over-looking Nafplio

Even more scenic little fortress out in the harbor



Beautiful old building on the square; when Greece won its 
independence from the Ottomans in the 1820s, Nafplio was 
its first capital

Alley way

So far as we could tell, Nafplio is the worry-bead capital of Greece; the amber 
ones are very attractive

Amber's House of Amber, where Vicki stimulated the local 
economy

Nafplio's square

Back on the road, past modern Greece, classical Greece, the dark ages that 
followed the Bronze Age, and into the world of the Myceneans, the stuff of 
Homer; here, a Mycenaen bridge out in the countryside

Epidauros

Epidauros is best known for its theatre, but it was actually the oldest and perhaps largest of ancient Greece's Asclepeions: healing centers. Asclepeios, the god of healing, was the son of Apollo and was born at Epidauros. We saw many such healing centers of Greek origin in Turkey.

The theatre in Epidauros, reputedly the best in the Greek

world; which must mean Greece, because we saw half a

dozen better in Turkey

Vicki checks out the front-row seat-backs

And the acoustics, which were remarkable (we had
the place to ourselves, as we often do, camping on

site the night before, getting an early start, way ahead of the

tour buses)

Surgical instruments in the museum

Offering in thanks for healing deafness (original in Athens)



Main hall of the museum

Statue of Asclepios; note the snake thing;
the Hippocratic oath is addressed to Apollo
and Asclepeios

Out on the grounds, near the ruins of the baths, where we

had camped

More of the grounds; such healing centers included baths,

gymnasium, temples, theatre, lodgings for priests and
patients...

Even a stadium