Mycenae and the Lion Gate (c. 1250 BC): Citadel of Agamemnon

Mycenae was the greatest fortified palace centre of Late Bronze Age Greece, on a hill in the north-eastern Argolid of the Peloponnese. Its Lion Gate, built around 1250 BC, is the largest surviving sculpture of the prehistoric Aegean and still stands in its original place. Mycenae was so important that modern scholars named the whole civilisation of Greece between about 1600 and 1100 BC “Mycenaean” after it, while Greek legend made it the city of King Agamemnon, leader of the expedition against Troy.

Setting and early history

Mycenae stands on a rocky hill between two higher mountains, Profitis Ilias and Sara, overlooking the Argive plain. The position controlled routes between the plain and the Isthmus of Corinth, which helps explain its importance.

People lived on the hill from the Neolithic period, but Mycenae became wealthy in the 17th and 16th centuries BC. Its rulers were buried in shaft graves in two enclosures, Grave Circle B and the later and richer Grave Circle A, with gold masks, weapons and imported luxury goods. These burials show a warrior elite with contacts reaching Minoan Crete, Egypt and the Baltic amber trade.

From about 1500 BC kings were buried in monumental tholos tombs outside the citadel. The largest, the Treasury of Atreus, dates to the 13th century BC.

Mycenae at its height

Between about 1400 and 1200 BC Mycenae was probably the richest and most powerful of several palace centres on the Greek mainland, alongside Tiryns, Pylos, Thebes and others. Whether its kings ruled the whole Argolid or simply led a loose network of allied rulers is uncertain. Some historians link the Mycenaean world with Ahhiyawa, a western power named in Hittite letters of the 14th and 13th centuries BC, whose king was once addressed as a “brother” of the Hittite Great King; this identification is widely accepted but its centre is not known for certain.

Mycenaean pottery travelled widely, to Cyprus, the Levant, Egypt, Anatolia and southern Italy. In return the palaces imported copper, tin, gold, ivory and glass. The Uluburun shipwreck off southern Turkey, dated to the late 14th century BC, shows the kind of mixed cargo that moved around the eastern Mediterranean in this period.

The Cyclopean walls

The citadel was first enclosed by a wall around 1350 BC. About a century later, around 1250 BC, the walls were rebuilt and extended to the west and south, bringing Grave Circle A inside the fortifications. A final extension around 1200 BC added a north-eastern section that protected an underground stairway leading to a hidden water cistern.

The walls run for roughly 900 metres and are mostly between about 5.5 and 7.5 metres thick. They are built in the Cyclopean style, using huge roughly shaped limestone blocks. Near the gates the builders used more regular, squared blocks of conglomerate to create an impressive facade. Later Greeks thought only the giant Cyclopes could have built such walls, as they did for nearby Tiryns.

The Lion Gate

The Lion Gate was the main entrance to the citadel. Visitors approached up a ramp, between the gate wall on one side and a projecting bastion on the other, so attackers would have been exposed to defenders on three sides.

The opening is roughly 3 metres wide and 3 metres high, framed by two massive upright stones and topped by a single lintel about 4.5 metres long, commonly estimated at around 20 tonnes. Above the lintel the builders left a triangular gap to relieve the weight, and filled it with a slab of limestone carved in relief.

The relief shows two animals, usually called lions, standing face to face with their front paws on a pair of altars. Between them rises a column of the type seen in Minoan and Mycenaean palaces. The heads, which were made separately and attached, are lost; they probably faced outwards towards visitors. The image may have been a royal or religious symbol, but its exact meaning is unknown.

Pausanias, who visited in the 2nd century AD, described the gate with its lions and said the walls were the work of the Cyclopes. The gate was never fully buried, and travellers recognised it long before modern excavation.

The palace and the town

On the summit stood the palace, built on terraces around a central court. Its core was the megaron, a great hall with a porch, a vestibule and a throne room with a large circular hearth surrounded by four columns. The walls were painted with frescoes.

Below the palace lay houses, workshops, shrines and storerooms. The Cult Centre, excavated in the 1960s and 1970s, contained painted rooms and clay figures used in religious rituals. Clay tablets written in Linear B, the script of the Mycenaean palaces, were found in buildings both inside and outside the walls, showing that scribes recorded goods such as oil, spices and textiles.

The first Linear B tablets from Mycenae were found in 1952 by Alan Wace in the so-called House of the Oil Merchant, just outside the walls, in the same year that Michael Ventris showed the script recorded Greek. The texts confirmed that the rulers of Mycenae, like those of Pylos and Knossos, ran a centralised economy managed by scribes.

Outside the walls lay a wider settlement and cemeteries of chamber tombs. The total population of Mycenae and its surroundings at its height is unknown, and modern estimates vary widely.

Mycenae in legend

In Greek myth Mycenae was founded by the hero Perseus. Later it was ruled by the family of Atreus, whose story was full of murder and revenge. Atreus’s son Agamemnon led the Greek army against Troy and was murdered on his return by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, a story told in Aeschylus’s tragedy Agamemnon. Homer calls Mycenae “rich in gold”.

These legends were written down centuries after the Bronze Age, and no Mycenaean document names Agamemnon or Atreus. Their connection with the real ruins is a matter of tradition, not proof. The relationship between the legends and history is examined in Trojan War: History, Archaeology and the Legend of Troy.

Collapse and later history

Around 1250 BC and again around 1200 BC parts of Mycenae were damaged by fire, possibly linked to earthquakes. About 1200 BC the palace itself was destroyed. The causes are still debated and probably included a combination of natural disasters, conflict and the breakdown of trade during the Late Bronze Age collapse.

People continued to live on the site in reduced numbers. In the 12th century BC some buildings inside the walls, such as the so-called Granary near the Lion Gate, were reused, and a distinctive pottery style shows that local workshops kept going. But the palace administration, the scribes and the Linear B script disappeared, and Greece entered a period with far fewer large settlements and no writing that lasted until the adoption of the alphabet in the 8th century BC. In the classical period Mycenae was a small independent town. According to Herodotus it sent 80 men to Thermopylae in 480 BC, and Mycenaeans also fought at Plataea in 479 BC. Around 468 BC its powerful neighbour Argos captured the town and expelled its people. A modest settlement existed in Hellenistic times, but by Pausanias’s day the site was a ruin.

Excavation, myths and facts

The German businessman Heinrich Schliemann, inspired by Homer, began digging at Mycenae in 1876 and uncovered the shaft graves of Grave Circle A. His dramatic finds, including the gold mask he linked with Agamemnon, made Mycenae world famous. The Greek archaeologist Christos Tsountas excavated the palace and many chamber tombs from the 1880s.

The British archaeologist Alan Wace led excavations from the 1920s to the 1950s and established much of the site’s chronology. George Mylonas and later Spyros Iakovidis continued the work. In 1999 Mycenae and Tiryns were inscribed together on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

A famous story claims Schliemann sent a telegram saying he had gazed on the face of Agamemnon. There is no reliable evidence that he wrote these words, and the mask he found dates to the 16th century BC, around three centuries before any likely date for a Trojan War.

Another misconception is that the Lion Gate shows a coat of arms of the house of Atreus. The relief is a symbol from Bronze Age religion and kingship, and its precise meaning remains unknown. Nor did the Cyclopean walls need giants: they were raised in several phases over about 150 years, most likely with levers, earth ramps and large organised workforces that the palace could feed from its stores.

Timeline

• c. 1650-1500 BC: Shaft graves of Grave Circles B and A are in use.
• c. 1350 BC: The first citadel wall is built.
• c. 1250 BC: The walls are extended and the Lion Gate is built.
• c. 1200 BC: The north-eastern extension and cistern are added; the palace is later destroyed by fire.
• 480 BC: Men from Mycenae fight at Thermopylae.
• c. 468 BC: Argos destroys Mycenae.
• 1876: Heinrich Schliemann excavates Grave Circle A.
• 1999: Mycenae and Tiryns become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Mycenae is the type site of Europe’s first literate Greek-speaking civilisation and a key to understanding the Bronze Age world behind Greek myth. The Lion Gate, still standing after more than three thousand years, has become one of the most recognisable symbols of ancient Greece.