News from the ancient world
Mycenae is a Bronze Age citadel in the north-eastern Peloponnese of Greece, near Argos. It gave its name to the Mycenaean civilisation, which flourished on the Greek mainland from around 1600 to 1100 BC. The Mycenaeans built fortified palaces at sites such as Mycenae, Tiryns and Pylos. Their scribes kept records on clay tablets in Linear B, a script that writes an early form of Greek. Later Greeks set Homer's heroes in this world.
Recent stories add detail on the palaces and their records. Historian Hans Beck argues that a Bronze Age palace near Sparta, which has yielded 204 Linear B pieces, was the first royal seat of the Lacedaemonians. Researchers studying tablets from Pylos read two Linear B signs as perfume ingredients. They take one as a plant root and the other as a dry stalk such as cinnamon or fenugreek. Christopher Nolan's film The Odyssey has also drawn comment. Nolan told Time magazine that Agamemnon's dark armour draws on blackened bronze Mycenaean daggers, though scholars quoted by ARTnews call the costumes anachronistic.
On Screen · Late Bronze Age (Mycenaean) · Ithaca, Ionian Islands, Greece
University of Cincinnati archaeologists Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker point film fans to the Palace of Nestor, Ithaca and a cave the film gives to the Cyclops.
On Screen · Late Bronze Age, c. 12th century BC · Ithaca, Ionian Islands, Greece
Scholars quoted by ARTnews accept the costumes are anachronistic, but two argue that Homer's own poems already mixed objects from different eras in the same way.
On Screen · Late Bronze Age, c. 1300–1100 BC · Ithaca, Ionian Islands, Greece
Nolan told Time magazine that the king's costume draws on blackened bronze Mycenaean daggers, while admitting the Bronze Age record is fragmentary.
Bronze Age · 13th–10th century BC · Aghios Vasileios, near Xirokambi, Laconia, Greece
Historian Hans Beck says the palace, which has yielded 204 Linear B pieces, housed the Lacedaemonian king, and a nearby hilltop sanctuary later became their place of memory.
Bronze Age · c. 1200 BC · Pylos, Messenia, Greece
Researchers read one sign as a plant root and argue that another, long taken to mean fruit, records a dry stalk such as cinnamon or fenugreek.