Travels through History : The Peloponnese – Mycenae

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book called Travels through History : The Peloponnese.

This is probably the busiest archaeological site on the Peloponnese because of the number of day trippers that arrive here from Athens. Therefore, get to the site as early as you can. In the summer months, it will also be far cooler in the morning as the site doesn’t have much shelter from the sun. 

Mycenae is associated with the House of Atreus or The Atreids, as they’re also called. Sophocles, Homer, and Euripides, amongst others, wrote about this family’s internecine rivalries and some historians do now believe they were an actual family. 

The site of Mycenae dates from around the middle of the 2nd Millennium BC. The primary site comprises the cyclopean walls surrounding the acropolis, Royal Palace, temples and royal tombs. Outside the walls are other tombs, merchants’ houses, and the Treasury of Atreus.  

The Mycenaean civilisation began around 1700 BC when the Achaeans, an eastern steppe people, settled in The Peloponnese. Their society was hierarchical and had a warrior class devoted to horses. They built enormous fortresses such as those at Mycenae and Tiryns. When the Mycenaeans ventured out to sea, they encountered the Minoan people from Crete, and the Minoan influence led them to trade with the surrounding people. 

When the volcanic eruption on Santorini effectively ended the Minoan civilisation, the Mycenaeans would have been the supreme traders in this part of Greece, and as they expanded, they would have come up against the Hittite Empire in modern day Turkey. You can see how and why the Trojan War might have started. 

On the way up to the primary site containing the acropolis, do not miss the Treasury of Atreus on the left-hand side of the road. This is the finest example of a Mycenaean Tholos tomb (a tholos had a domed roof and is a circular room that served as the funerary chamber) in the area around the acropolis of Mycenae. This tholos has 33 rings of ashlar blocks, each fitted perfectly so that they project beyond the edge of the block below. 

The entrance path has cyclopean walls on either side, which are impressive and perfectly preserved. At the primary site, the tombs of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are not as impressive and neither is The Lion Tholos Tomb. The Treasury of Atreus dates from the mid-13th Century BC and so predates the likely time of the Trojan War by four centuries. Visitors can buy their entrance tickets for the primary site here.