Mycenae is a legendary city ruled by the conqueror of the Trojans, the "lord of men", King Agamemnon. It was here, following the instructions of Homer, that Heinrich Schliemann went after he excavated the ruins of ancient Troy on the Hisarlik hill.
In 1876, 54 years old, Schliemann began excavations at Mycenae. In 1880 he opened the treasury of King Minia in Orchomenos. In 1884 he began excavations in Tiryns … So, step by step, from the depths of time, an ancient civilization began to emerge and take shape, which until then was known only from the "fairy tales" of the blind Homer.
This civilization was spread over the entire eastern coast of Greece and the Aegean islands, and its center was probably on the island of Crete. Schliemann found only the first traces, but Arthur Evans was destined to discover its true scale.
Troy, judging by the descriptions of Homer, was a very rich city. Mycenae was even richer. It was here that Agamemnon and his warriors delivered rich Trojan prey. And somewhere here, according to some ancient writers, was the tomb of Agamemnon and his friends who were killed with him.
The memory of the "lord of men" Agamemnon, one of the most powerful and richest rulers of ancient Greece, never faded. The great Aeschylus dedicated his famous tragedy to him. About 170 BC, the Greek geographer Pausanias visited Mycenae and described the majestic ruins of the city.
Unlike Troy, the task of Heinrich Schliemann was greatly facilitated by the fact that Mycenae did not need to be sought. The place where the ancient city was located was clearly visible: the remains of huge structures loomed on top of the hill dominating the surrounding area.
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Schliemann managed to find and explore nine domed tombs, which at one time they were mistaken for ovens for baking bread. The most famous of them was called "The Treasury of Atreus" - after the name of Agamemnon's father. It was an underground, domed room more than thirteen meters high, the vaults of which were built of huge stones, held only by their own gravity.
The tomb, to which the dromos led, an open corridor 36 meters long and 6 meters wide, was deeply cut into the hillside. The ten-meter high entrance to the tomb was once decorated with columns of green limestone and lining of red porphyry.
Inside there was a circular tomb room with a diameter of 14.5 meters, covered with a dome with a diameter of 13.2 meters. The "Treasury of Atreus" until the construction of the Roman Pantheon (II century BC) was the largest domed structure of the ancient world.
The Greeks believed that this tomb was a repository of the untold wealth of the Mycenaean kings: Pelops, Atreus and Agamemnon. However, the search for Schliemann revealed that all nine tombs at Mycenae were plundered in ancient times. Where were the treasures of Agamemnon?
The already mentioned ancient Greek geographer Pausanias, the author of the "Description of Hellas", helped Schliemann find these treasures. In his text, Schliemann found one passage that he considered to be incorrectly translated and misinterpreted. And it was this indication that became the starting point of the search.
Heinrich Schliemann.
“I began this great work on August 7, 1876, together with 63 workers,” wrote Schliemann. “Starting from August 19, I had an average of 125 people and four carts at my disposal, and I managed to achieve good results.”
Schliemann called five shaft tombs dating back to the 16th century BC and located outside the fortress walls "not bad results". Already the first finds made there far surpassed in their grace and beauty those of Schliemann in Troy: fragments of sculptural friezes, painted vases, terracotta figurines of the goddess Hera, molds for casting jewelry, glazed ceramics, glass beads, gems.
Schliemann had no last doubts. He wrote: "I have no doubt that I managed to find the very tombs about which Pausanias writes that Atreus, the king of the Hellenes Agamemnon, his driver Eurymedon, Cassandra and their companions are buried in them."
Treasury of Atreus, the outdated name - tomb of Agamemnon.
On December 6, 1876, the first grave was opened. For twenty-five days, Schliemann's wife Sophia, his tireless assistant, loosened the earth with a knife and sifted it with her hands. The remains of fifteen people were found in the graves, literally covered with jewelry, gold and expensive weapons.
At the same time, there were clear signs of the hasty burning of bodies. Those who buried them did not even bother to wait until the fire had completely done its job: they simply threw earth and pebbles at the half-burnt corpses with the haste of murderers who want to cover their tracks.
And although the precious jewelry testified to the observance of the funeral ritual of that time, the graves had such an openly indecent appearance that only a killer who hated her could prepare for his victim.
Shaft tombs at Mycenae.
“I opened a completely new world for archeology, which no one even suspected,” wrote Schliemann. The treasure he found in the tombs of the Mycenaean rulers was huge. Only much later, already in the XX century, it was surpassed by the famous find of the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt.
In the first grave, Schliemann counted fifteen golden diadems - five on each of the deceased, and golden laurel wreaths were also found there. In another grave, where the remains of three women lay, Schliemann collected more than 700 gold plates with magnificent ornaments from images of animals, jellyfish and octopuses, gold jewelry depicting lions and other animals, fighting warriors, jewelry in the form of lions and vultures, lying deer and women with pigeons. One of the skeletons had a golden crown with 36 gold leaves. Nearby lay another magnificent diadem with the remains of a skull attached to it.
In the tombs opened by Schliemann, countless adornments of rock crystal and agate, gems of sardonyx and amethyst, axes of gilded silver with handles of rock crystal, goblets and caskets of pure gold, a model of a temple made of gold, a golden octopus, gold rings with seals, bracelets, tiaras and belts, 110 gold flowers, about three hundred gold buttons.
But most importantly, Schliemann found golden masks of the Mycenaean kings and golden breastplates, which were supposed to protect the dead from enemies in the afterlife. Golden masks captured the features of the ancient rulers of Mycenae. The most magnificent of these masks was later called the "mask of Agamemnon".
However, as in the case of Priam's treasure, Schliman's dating of the finds turned out to be incorrect: not the remains of Agamemnon ended up in the Mycenaean tombs - people who lived about 400 years earlier were buried there.
Source: Materials from NN Nepomnyashchy's book "100 Great Treasures"