Mycenae, Greece

We fell asleep last night with our shuttered windows open to catch a bit of breeze drifting off to sounds of occasional local chatter as others arrived home. I enjoy this as you really get a local feel to the place verses an impersonal hotel with air conditioning. We had a good sleep and got up relatively early as we had a private taxi booked to take us on a day tour of some key classical sights in the area starting at 8:30.

Our €4 breakfast was served in a little courtyard downstairs and consisted of freshly squeezed local oranges, warmed croissant, fresh toast, a cheese and ham toasted sandwich, greek yoghurt and runny honey, butter and marmalade. All served by a very sweet young waitress with gentle stilted and heavily accented softly spoken english. I note that it was soft and sweet as this is more of an exception to the general loud, harsh and rapid greek one hears. It was absolutely delicious and the atmosphere in the little courtyard in old town was perfect for getting us in the groove of this holiday and soaking up the atmosphere.

Our taxi driver arrived on time, his name is George and he owns Greek Taxi with his wife Maria. We choose them on recommendation from Trip Advisor and Rick Steves forum. Our car was an air conditioned diesel Mercedes so we were nice and comfortable. It was great value time and money wise to have a personal driver whisk us through the back roads and get us to the places we wanted on our own schedule and he organised it to miss out on the bulk of the crowds too.

Mycenae was our first stop, I will give a bit of history taken from Rick Steves Greece book to give context to the photos. Mycenae is a fortress city on top of a hill and was the hub of a mighty civilisation that dominated the Greek world between 1600 and 1200 B.C., a thousand years before Athens Golden Age. It is so old that the Mycenaeans were as distant and mysterious to the Golden Age Greeks as Plato and Socrates are to us today. Even Ancient Greek Tourists visited the site.

No one knows exactly who the Mycenaeans were or where they come from, but they were a bronze age civilisation that covered the southern half of mainland Greece and Mycenae was the main city with a population of around 60,000 inside and outside the city walls. Again, it is unclear why, but after the city of Troy (on north west coast) fell under the hands of the Myceneans, they themselves disappeared and their empire crumbled.

It is a beautiful setting amongst mountains, valleys with clear views to the sea. It was impressive to stand on top where the palace was and touch old things to my hearts content. I like to feel and try and connect in some tiny way through the passage of time to when the artefact was part of an alive time, place and people. For example I marvel and wonder as I see and trace ancient lettering on a piece of rubble and wonder about the stone engraver or artisan who carved such precise lettering or delight in the detail of the curl of hair on a female statue, the shape of her female body and the intricacy of jewellery and hair adornments and know that women thousands of years ago were not so different to me.

The walls that surround the base of the hill (c. 1300 b.c.) were about 40 ft hight, 20 feet thick, and 3,000 feet long. They were built with an estimated 14,000 boulders weighting 5 to 10 tons each. They were probably put there with ramps and ox. The Lion’s gate guards the entrance to the fortress city and they think that the lioness had heads that faced the people and were either gold or stone. There are some metal fasteners rust stain still evident where this would have been screwed on. The lintel (cross beam above the door) of the gate weighs an impressive 18 tons; as much as a WWII B-17 bomber.

The grave circle just inside the gate had 19 embalmed bodies of men, women and children accompanied by personal belongings which indicates that they were royalty. They were also placed in a circle and this together with facing the sun was an indication of a belief in the after life. It was here that the gold mask of ‘Agamemnon’ was found (the man that legend has led the fall of Troy). It is in the archaeological museum in Athens that we will see later.

The fortress has natural water springs on the side of the mountain and we were fascinated to see (and go down as far as we could) the ruins of the cistern which has steps going down 50 feet to water storage underground. They had build clay pipes from the stream to this underground storage system – fantastic!

The Treasury of Atreus aka Tomb of Agamemnon is one of two big royal tombs on the site. Mycenae’s royalty were buried in massive beehive shaped underground chambers which replaced the circle one up on the hill around 15th century b.c. The entryway is on a grand ‘cyclopean’ scale and is 110 feet long and 20 feet wide. The lintel over the door way is a huge 26 feet across, by 16ft by 3ft and weighs 120 tons. For comparison the biggest stones of the Egyptian pyramids were 30 tons. Inside this 3,000 year old chamber the 42ft tall igloo dome has 33 rings of stones, each weighing about 5 tons.

I enjoyed the visit to Mycenae very much, especially as there was ************e else there when we arrived which provided a nice solitude for contemplation. As we left loads of tour buses had arrived which we were also pleased in a smug way not to be on as we glided away in the back of the Merc to our next destination; Ancient Corninth.