"genuine but predates the period of the Trojan War by about 300 years. Mask of Agamemnon The Mask of Agamemnon is a gold funeral mask discovered at the ancient Greek site of Mycenae. The mask, displayed in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, has been described by Cathy Gere as the """"Mona Lisa"" of prehistory"". German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered the artifact in 1876, believed that he had found the body of the Mycenean king Agamemnon, leader of the Achaeans in Homer's epic of the Trojan War, the ""Iliad"", but modern archaeological research suggests that the mask predates the"
"was the first in Greece to be subjected to modern archaeological excavation. It was excavated by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in 1876. Schliemann, inspired by Homer’s descriptions in the ""Iliad"", in which Mycenae is termed ""abounding in gold"", began digging there. He was also following the accounts of the ancient geographer Pausanias who, during the 2nd century AD, described the once prosperous site and mentioned that according to a local tradition, the graves of Agamemnon and his followers, including his charioteer Eurymedon and the two children of Cassandra, were buried within the citadel. What Schliemann discovered in his excavation"
"six shaft graves, where a total of nineteen bodies were buried. It has been suggested that a mound was constructed over each grave, and funeral stelae were erected. Among the objects found were a series of gold death masks, additionally beside the deceased were full sets of weapons, ornate staffs as well as gold and silver cups. The site was excavated by the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in 1876, following the descriptions of Homer and Pausanias. One of the gold masks he unearthed became known as ""The Death Mask of Agamemnon"", ruler of Mycenae according to Greek mythology. However, it has"
"deceased Mycenean nobles. Among them, the most famous is the one that was named erroneously as the mask of Agamemnon. There are also finds from the citadel of Mycenae including relief stelae, golden containers, glass, alabaster and amber tools and jewels. Other features include an ivory carving of two goddesses with a child, a painted limestone head of a goddess and the famous warrior's vase dating from the 12th century. The Egyptian collection dates back to the last twenty years of the 19th century. Notable is the donation of the Egyptian government which in 1893 offered nine mummies of the"
"Agamemnon (Seneca) Agamemnon is a ""fabula crepidata"" (Roman tragedy with Greek subject) of c. 1012 lines of verse written by Lucius Annaeus Seneca in the first century AD, which tells the story of Agamemnon, who was killed by his wife Clytemnestra in his palace after his return from Troy. The scene is laid partly inside and partly outside the palace of Agamemnon at Argos or Mycenae, on the day of the return of the king from his long absence at Troy, beginning in the period of darkness just preceding the dawn. The blood-feud between Atreus and Thyestes was not ended"
"Archimedes was slain. The legend of Archimedes gave rise to a considerable amount of research on burning glasses and lenses until the late 17th century. Various researchers worked with burning glasses, including Anthemius of Tralles (6th century AD), Proclus (6th century) (who by this means purportedly destroyed the fleet of Vitalian besieging Constantinople), Ibn Sahl in his ""On Burning Mirrors and Lenses"" (10th century), Alhazen in his ""Book of Optics"" (1021), Roger Bacon (13th century), Giambattista della Porta and his friends (16th century), Athanasius Kircher and Gaspar Schott (17th century), and the Comte de Buffon in 1740 in Paris. The"
"Similarly, a number of Mycenaean tholos tombs were named after mythical persons of the local ruling dynasties, like Atreus and Aegisthus. The ancient Greek geographer Pausanias referred to the location of the tombs of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus a little further from the walls of Mycenae, as they were not judged fit to be buried within the walls due to the murder of king Agamemnon. 19th century archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann followed this passage of Pausanias and searched at the vicinity of Mycenae for their tombs. Excavations in the 1960s led to the discovery of the surrounding walls of the tomb. In"
"on the face of the deceased. This mask was believed to strengthen the spirit of the mummy and guard the soul from evil spirits on its way to the afterworld. The best known mask is Tutankhamun's mask. Made of gold and gems, the mask conveys the highly stylized features of the ancient ruler. Such masks were not, however, made from casts of the features; rather, the mummification process itself preserved the features of the deceased. In 1876 the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered in Mycenae six graves, which he was confident belonged to kings and ancient Greek heroes—Agamemnon, Cassandra, Evrimdon and"
"to reopen until Stamatakis had provided the work with credible witnesses. The three other masks were not discovered until the 28th. The Mask of Agamemnon was found on the 30th. A second critique is based on style. The Mask of Agamemnon differs from three of the other masks in a number of points: it is three-dimensional rather than flat, one of the facial hairs is cut out, rather than engraved, the ears are cut out, the eyes are depicted as both open and shut, with open eyelids, but a line of closed eyelids across the center, the face alone of"
"there were several grave goods found that were made out of gold; masks, cups, swords, jewelry, and more. Because there were so many gold grave goods found at this site there's a legend of Golden Mycenae. Each family group would add ostentatious grave goods to compete with the other family groups for who is the wealthiest. There was more gold found at Grave Circle A and B than in all of Crete before the late Bronze Age. Heinrich Schliemann, a German archaeologist, excavated Mycenae in 1876. Of the six shaft graves in Grave Circle A, ""The Mask of Agamemnon"" was"
"his granddaughter Julia Balbilla in two epigrams in Aeolic Greek which is dated in 130. The two epigrams are a part of four epigrams recorded which are inscribed and are preserved on lower parts on one of the Colossi of Memnon. The Colossi of Memnon are two massive stone statues built by the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III (flourished 14th century BC), to stand guard at the entrance of Amenhotep’s memorial temple. Balbilla had travelled to Egypt and was the escort to the Roman emperor Hadrian with his wife, Vibia Sabina in the country. The inscriptions that Balbilla commissioned commemorated their"
"stood in full view of visitors to Mycenae for centuries. It was mentioned by the ancient geographer Pausanias in the 2nd century AD.. The first correct identification of the Lion Gate in modern literature was during a survey conducted by Francesco Grimani, commissioned by the Provveditore Generale of the Kingdom of the Morea in 1700, who used Pausanias's description of the Lion Gate to identify the ruins of Mycenae. In 1840, the Greek Archaeological Society undertook the initial clearing of the site from debris and soil that had accumulated to bury it, and in 1876 Heinrich Schliemann, guided by Pausanias's"
"Plutarch, and Galen. Surviving fragments attributed to Alcmaeon include, ""The earth is the mother of plants and the sun their father"", and may be also, ""Experience is the beginning of learning"", attributed to an Spartan poet named Alcman. Calcidius' commentary on Plato's ""Timaeus"" praises Alcmaeon (as well as Callisthenes and Herophilus), about their work on the nature of the eye. He mentions that Alcmaeon excised an animal eye to study the optic nerve. However, there is no evidence that Alcmaeon himself dissected the eye or the skull. Based on this observation, and more rudimentary, Alcmaeon described the senses, except for"
"northeast of Argos between the archaeological sites of Mycenae and Midea, two important Mycenaean cities. The traveller Pausanias, visiting the site in the 2nd century CE, referred to the area as Prosymna (Προσύμνη). The ""temenos"" occupies three artificially terraced levels on a site above the plain with a commanding view. Most of the remains at the site date to the 7th through 5th centuries B.C. The Old Temple, destroyed by fire in 423 BCE, and an open-air altar stood on the uppermost terrace. The famous ivory and gold-plated bronze sculpture of Hera by Polykleitos stood in the New Temple on"
"in the Crimean Peninsula. Hesiod said she became the goddess Hecate. Agamemnon was the commander-in-chief of the Greeks during the Trojan War. During the fighting, Agamemnon killed Antiphus and fifteen other Trojan soldiers, according to one source. But in the ""Iliad"" itself, he's shown to slaughter hundreds more in Book 11 during his ""aristea"" loosely translated to ""day of glory"" which is the most similar to Achilles' ""aristea"" in Book 21 (they both are compared to lions and destructive fires in battle, their hands are described as ""splattered with gore"" and ""invincible,"" the Trojans flee to the walls, they both"
"written in response to what he felt were inaccuracies being taught to his son in school; ""Mycenae: The Capital City of Agamemnon"" (1957); ""Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries"" (1961); ""Mycenae and the Mycenaean Age"" (1966); ""Grave Circle B of Mycenae"" (1972); ""Mycenae, A Guide to Its Ruins and Its History"" (1981); and ""Mycenae Rich in Gold"" (1983). George E. Mylonas George Emmanuel Mylonas (Γεώργιος Εμμανουήλ Μυλωνάς, December 9, 1898, in Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey) – April 15, 1988, Greece) was a prominent Greek and Aegean archaeologist. While a student in Athens during the Greco–Turkish War of 1919–1922, he joined the"
"if not before, were visited by Pausanias in the second century CE. He explored the sacred grove by the spring Aganippe thoroughly and left a full description as it then was. He saw images of Eupheme, nurse of the Muses, and of the legendary poet Linus ""in a small rock which has been worked into the manner of a cave"" (cf. the religious use of grottoes). In the ""temenos"" were statues, some by famous masters, of Apollo and Dionysus and famed poets. The absence of Homer at Helicon has been noticed by Richard Hunter: ""The presence of Homer would spoil"
"Clytemnestra Clytemnestra (; , ""Klytaimnḗstra"", ) was the wife of Agamemnon and queen of Mycenae (or sometimes Argos) in ancient Greek legend. In the ""Oresteia"" by Aeschylus, she murdered Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan princess Cassandra, whom he had taken as war prize following the sack of Troy; however, in Homer's ""Odyssey"", her role in Agamemnon's death is unclear and her character is significantly more subdued. Her Greek name ""Klytaimnḗstra"" is also sometimes Latinized as Clytaemnestra. It is commonly glossed as ""famed for her suitors"". However, this form is a later"
"wife undertook the duty of making certain that the water flowed every night. Mylonas is well known for his fieldwork at Olynthus as well as investigations at Mycenae, Nemea, Corinth and Eleusis. During 1951 and 1952, he led the important excavation of Grave Circle B at Mycenae (ca. 1650-1550 BCE, Middle Helladic III to Late Helladic I), and succeeded in establishing that it pre-dated Heinrich Schliemann's Grave Circle A. He also briefly appeared in parts one and four of Michael Wood's televised series, ""In Search of the Trojan War"" (1985). In a charming interview conducted at the citadel of Mycenae,"
"template for the group we possess today, which was found in the ruins of Hadrian's villa and is now in Naples. According to Arrian, when Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire, in 330, he discovered the statue at Susa and had it shipped back to Athens. When the statue, on its journey back, arrived at Rhodes it was given divine honors. Several comments of the ancients regarding the statue have come down to us. When asked, in the presence of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, which type of bronze was the best, Antiphon the Sophist replied, Lycurgus, in his"
"Olympiad. According to a passage in ""Deipnosophistae"", the sophist and dithyrambic poet Licymnius of Chios tells a different tale, in which Hypnos, the god of sleep, in awe of his beauty, causes him to sleep with his eyes open, so he can fully admire his face. The ""Bibliotheke"" claims that: According to Pausanias, Endymion deposed Clymenus, son of Cardys, at Olympia. Describing the ""early history"" of the Eleans, Pausanias reports that: Pausanias also reports seeing a statue of Endymion in the treasury of Metapontines at Olympia. Propertius (Book 2, el. 15), Cicero's ""Tusculanae Quaestiones"" (Book 1), and Theocritus discuss the"
"legends of Homer's Epics were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past and it was not until the 19th century that scholars began to question Homer's historicity. At this time, German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann undertook the first modern archaeological excavations in Greece at the site of Mycenae in 1876. Thus, Schliemann set out to prove the historical accuracy of the ""Iliad"" by identifying the places described by Homer. As part of the Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of later antiquity. Moreover,"
"Agamemnon In Greek mythology, Agamemnon (; , ""Ἀgamémnōn"") was a king of Mycenae, 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 Laodike (Λαοδίκη), Orestes and Chrysothemis. Legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area. When Helen, the wife of Menelaus, was taken to Troy by Paris, Agamemnon commanded the united Greek armed forces in the ensuing Trojan War. Upon Agamemnon's return from Troy, he was killed (according to the oldest surviving account, ""Odyssey"""
"front of the image was paved with black tiles and surrounded by a raised rim of marble, to contain the oil. This reservoir acted as a reflecting pool which doubled the apparent height of the statue. According to the Roman historian Livy, the Roman general Aemilius Paulus (the victor over Macedon) saw the statue and ""was moved to his soul, as if he had seen the god in person,"" while the 1st centuryAD Greek orator Dio Chrysostom declared that a single glimpse of the statue would make a man forget all his earthly troubles. According to a legend, when Phidias"
"been proved that the burials date circa three centuries earlier, before Agamemnon is supposed to have lived. The valuable objects found in the graves suggest that powerful rulers were buried in this site. Although Agamemnon was supposed to have lived centuries later, these graves might have belonged to the former ruling dynasty of Mycenae – according to Greek mythology, the Perseides. According to later Greek mythology Mycenae had a period where two kings ruled. Archeologists have suggested that these dual graves may correspond to both kings. During the end of the 3rd millennium BC (circa 2200 BC), the indigenous inhabitants"
"death at the hands of Aegisthus, Agamemnon made an appearance in Homer's ""Odyssey"" within the kingdom of Hades. There, the former king met Odysseus and explained just how he was murdered before he offered Odysseus a warning about the dangers of trusting a woman. Agamemnon In Greek mythology, Agamemnon (; , ""Ἀgamémnōn"") was a king of Mycenae, 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 Laodike (Λαοδίκη), Orestes and Chrysothemis. Legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different"
"it that the name was connected to the Greek word ""mycēs"" (μύκης, ""mushroom""). Thus, Pausanias ascribes the name to the legendary founder Perseus, who was said to have named it either after the cap (""mykēs"") of the sheath of his sword, or after a mushroom he had plucked on the site. The earliest written form of the name is ""Mykēnē"" (Μυκήνη), which is found in Homer. The reconstructed Mycenaean Greek name of the site is 𐀘𐀏𐀙𐀂 (mu-ka-nai), which has the form of a plural like ""Athênai"". The change of ""ā"" to ""ē"" in more recent versions of the name is"
"the archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean. In 1973, Asaro and his colleagues embarked on a study of the Colossi of Memnon, two statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III that have stood for 3400 years in the Theban necropolis, across the River Nile from the modern city of Luxor. Collaborating with Professor Robert Heizer and his research group in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeological Research at the University of California, Berkeley, the Asaro group analyzed the stone used to construct the statues. Erected in the early fourteenth century B.C. as guardians of the Mortuary Temple, the two 50-foot monoliths consist of"
"the two great epic poems of Homer. It was the beginning of the religion which later the Greeks considered Hellenic, and embodies a paradox. Though the world is dominated by a divine power that the gods bestow in different ways on men, nothing but ""darkness"" lay ahead and life was sometimes frail and unsubstantial. Classical Greek myths assert that Mycenae was founded by Perseus, grandson of king Acrisius of Argos, son of Acrisius's daughter, Danaë and the god Zeus. Having killed his grandfather by accident, Perseus could not, or would not, inherit the throne of Argos. Instead he arranged an"
"Mylonas, with a chuckle and a twinkle in his eye, speaks of Agamemnon, with whom he converses ""all the time."" He once said that the task of the archaeologist was to ""infer from withered flowers the hour of their bloom."" He was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America's Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement in 1970, and a scholarship for undergraduate humanities majors at Washington University is named in Mylonas' honor. His daughter, Ione Mylonas Shear (1936–2005), was also an archaeologist until her death from lung cancer. Mylonas' works include: ""The Balkan States; An Introduction to Their History"" (1946) --"
"the walls, this was perhaps the spring that filled the citadel's underground cistern. He states also that Atreus stored his treasures in an underground chamber there, which is why Heinrich Schliemann named the largest tholos tomb the Treasury of Atreus. Apart from these more historical references, the only accounts of him are from folk-etymology: Perseus dropped his cap or found a mushroom (both named ""myces"") at Mycenae, or perhaps the place was named from the lady Mycene, daughter of Inachus, mentioned in a now-fragmentary poem, the ""Megalai Ehoiai"". For whatever reasons, perhaps as outposts, Perseus ""fortified"" Mycenae according to Apollodorus"
"Treasury of Atreus The Treasury of Atreus or Tomb of Agamemnon is a large ""tholos"" tomb on the Panagitsa Hill at Mycenae, Greece, constructed during the Bronze Age around 1250 BC. The lintel stone above the doorway weighs 120 tons, with approximate dimensions 8.3 x 5.2 x 1.2m, the largest in the world. The tomb was used for an unknown period. Mentioned by Pausanias, it was still visible in 1879 when the German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the shaft graves under the 'agora' in the Acropolis at Mycenae. The tomb has probably no relationship with either Atreus or Agamemnon, as"
"Here ""Euryphaëssa"" (""wide-shining"") is probably an epithet of Theia. Other accounts make Selene the daughter of Pallas, the son of Megamedes (possibly identified with Titan Pallas) or of Helios. Selene is best known for her affair with the beautiful mortal Endymion. The late 7th-century – early 6th-century BC poet Sappho apparently mentioned Selene and Endymion. However, the first direct account comes from the third-century BC ""Argonautica"" of Apollonius of Rhodes, which tells of Selene's ""mad passion"" and her visiting the ""fair Endymion"" in a cave on Mount Latmus: Quintus Smyrnaeus' ""The Fall of Troy"" tells that, while Endymion slept in"