Where was the golden mask found? Treasures of Great Civilizations: Mask of Agamemnon
Another golden mask found during excavations in Mycenae
During excavations in 1874 on the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Mycenae, the famous amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered several burial grounds with human remains and gold jewelry and weapons lying next to them. But his most important find was a unique chased gold mask, which he mistook for the death mask of King Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army in the Trojan War.
It is known from history that Agamemnon was a Mycenaean king, and in the ancient Greek epic - the famous "Iliad" of Homer - he became one of the main characters, distinguished by his courage and glorified himself by many feats.
The reason for the Trojan War was the abduction by Paris of the beautiful Helen, the wife of King Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon. And then Menelaus, together with Agamemnon, persuaded the Greek kings to participate in the campaign against the Trojans. Agamemnon led the army. The Trojans were defeated, but fate turned away from the hero. His wife Clytemnestra did not wait for her husband, moreover, she planned to kill him, since she had a lover Aegisthus. They managed to fulfill their plan, and Agamemnon was killed. His sad fate was the subject of many ancient tragedies.
The city of Mycenae, where Agamemnon ruled, was the center of a great civilization that lasted about 500 years, from 1600 to 1100 BC. Its traces - many potteries - have been found in Southern Italy, Egypt, Cyprus, Syria and Palestine.
Schliemann's confidence that he discovered the mask of the king of Mycenae Agamemnon was based precisely on the legend of Homer in the Iliad about the Trojan War and on the writings of the Greek geographer Pausanias, who lived in the 2nd century AD.
Pausanias, for example, claimed that Agamemnon was buried in the city itself, and his murderers, his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, were buried outside the city wall as unworthy people.
Schliemann, starting excavations in Mycenae, was guided by precisely these data, he was sure that inside the city walls he would be able to find the remains of the ancient Greek heroes that Homer spoke about. And his instinct did not deceive him - inside the city walls, in several open graves, he found golden masks. The total weight of these gold items was 14 kg, but not all of them are well preserved. The most valuable was the one that Schliemann called the "mask of Agamemnon."
Modern archaeologists do not agree with Schliemann on everything. They determined the age of the cemetery in Mycenae, discovered by Schliemann, at 1600 years. The Trojan War, about which Homer wrote, if it was not a figment of his imagination, took place around 1200 BC. Consequently, the gold chased mask found by Schliemann could not have belonged to the king of Mycenae Agamemnon.
But in Schliemann's time this question was not discussed. Schliemann was too big an authority in archeology, and no one objected to him. The archaeologist himself did not even allow the thought that he had found something else. He really liked his own version, and he did not take into account any others. Since that time, the name “mask of Agamemnon” has been attached to the golden mask he found.
Archeology keeps many mysteries related to ancient artifacts and historical finds. Let's open the veil of secrecy and debunk the myth about the origin of the Golden Mask of Agamemnon.
Place of discovery
In 1876, the German archaeologist and ethnographer Heinrich Schliemann led excavations in the Peloponnese in the acropolis of ancient Mycenae. After four months of painstaking work at the entrance gate of the upper city, the scientist discovered a valuable artifact - a golden funeral mask. Along with the mask, Schliemann found numerous gold jewelry in a large circular burial: earrings, tiaras, buckles. The total weight of the precious find is 15 kilograms. Schliemann was sure that he had discovered the tomb of the legendary king of Mycenae - Agamemnon, his charioteer Eurymedon, the prophetess Cassandra and their friends, who were killed by Agamemnon's wife - Clytemnestra and her lover.
On the photo: Heinrich Schliemann - German archaeologist and entrepreneur, one of the founders of field archeology.
Historical reference
Mycenae is the ancient center of the Mycenaean culture, the progenitor of the Greek civilization. The city is located in the Peloponnese and dates back to the second millennium BC. Currently, Mycenae are ruins.
Agamemnon is the king of Mycenae in ancient Greek mythology, the most powerful ruler of ancient Greece, the leader of the Greek troops in the Trojan War, one of the main characters of the ancient Greek epic of Homer - the poem "Iliad". King Agamemnon was famous for his nobility, courage and his untold riches.
In the Foto: the tomb of Agamemnon in Mycenae, also known as the Treasury of Atreus, father of Agamemnon.
Mask of Agamemnon
Schliemann was not a professional archaeologist, but an enthusiastic self-taught amateur who was concerned about the history of the ancient city of Mycenae. He was obsessed with the idea of finding the tomb of the great king Agamemnon. It is not surprising that the ethnographer directly associated the most beautiful of the masks found in the burial with the ruler of Mycenae. In this regard, he named the mask after Agamemnon.
The death mask is made of a thick gold plate and depicts the face of an elderly bearded man of the Indo-European type: close-set eyes, thin nose, large mouth. The tips of the mustache are raised up. Whiskers are visible near the ears. The mask has holes for the threads with which it was attached to the face.
Myth and reality
As time has shown, Heinrich Schliemann's assumption that the death mask belongs to King Agamemnon turned out to be incorrect. In the course of researching the golden mask, modern archaeologists have come to the conclusion that it belongs to 1550-1500 BC and does not correspond to the period when King Agamemnon supposedly lived. The powerful lord of Mycenae ruled three centuries earlier. It turned out that the precious find is much older than the legendary ancient Greek ruler. Despite this, the golden funeral mask still retains its name.
Mask of Agamemnon, 1550-1500 BC Gold. National Archaeological Museum, Athens "Mask of Agamemnon" - a golden funerary mask of the middle of the second millennium BC, found in 1876 in Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann. It got its name from the legendary king Agamemnon, since Schliemann was sure that he had found his grave. However, by the time of creation, the mask is more ancient.
The mask was found during excavations near the Lion's Gate, on the western side of the Mycenaean fortifications. Schliemann discovered a group of burials (grave circle A), consisting of five shaft tombs. They contained 19 skeletons (8 male, 9 female, 2 children). Some of the men's faces were covered with golden masks. In addition to them, golden diadems, buckles, earrings and golden scales for "weighing souls" were found in the burials. The total weight of the gold treasures was 15 kilograms.
Schliemann was sure that he had found the tomb of the legendary king. He wrote to the King of Greece: “With the greatest joy I inform Your Majesty that I managed to find the burials in which Agamemnon, Cassandra, Eurymedon and their friends were buried, killed during the meal by Clytemnestra and her lover Egistus.” 5 golden funeral masks were found in the tombs, the last of which, according to the time of discovery, Schliemann associated with the legendary king of Mycenae.
The mask depicts the face of an elderly bearded man with a thin nose, close-set eyes and a large mouth. The face corresponds to the Indo-European type. The tips of the mustache are turned up in the shape of a crescent, sideburns are visible near the ears. The mask has holes for the thread with which it was attached to the face of the deceased.
The main part of the treasure is now in the Athens Museum, but there are some interesting gizmos in the local exhibition hall.
Here are such grandmas-hedgehogs.
All artifacts found in the tombs, including the mask of Agamemnon, are on display at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. A copy of the mask is exhibited in the archaeological museum of Mycenae.
"Gold-rich" Mycenae ... The legendary city where the winner of the Trojans, the "lord of men" King Agamemnon ruled. It was here, following the instructions of Homer, that Heinrich Schliemann went after he unearthed the ruins of the ancient Throne on the Hissarlik hill. And again Ariadne's thread of legends did not let him down
Mycenae is an ancient fortified city on the Peloponnese peninsula, 90 km from Athens and about 40 km from Nafplion. Mycenae is perhaps the most famous city in Greece, the kingdom of Agamemnon, the leader of the Achaean campaign against Troy, the city that dominated Greek history for 400 years, the acropolis that gave Schliemann a golden mask, history textbooks - megaron, architecture - Lion's Gate, literature - Homeric characters. Nestled between two squat mountains, the ruins of Mycenae are hardly less majestic. Red poppies add aesthetic touches to landscapes
According to legend, Mycenae was founded by the killer of the medusa Gorgon Perseus, the son of Zeus and Danae irrigated with golden rain ("beware of the Danaans who bring gifts"). The dynasty of the descendants of the Perseyevs was replaced by the Pelops clan, cursed by a little-known driver for all sorts of meanness and greed, which ultimately resulted in complete devastation.
A bathroom has been preserved in which Clytemnestra and her lover slaughtered her husband Agamemnon, who brought from Troy not only the gold that Schliemann inherited, but also Apollo's beloved, the soothsayer Cassandra. The act of the jealous queen, who, by the way, was not embarrassed by her lover, was avenged by her son, Orestes. The gate through which he fled from Mycenae, having killed his mother, is still there
From the ruins of the palace of Agamemnon, a regal view of the entire Argolis valley opens up.
On the way to Mycenae, there is the famous treasury of Atreus - a monumental domed tomb of the 13th century. BC e. King Atreus, the parent of the legendary Agamemnon, very subtly sat his brother Fiesta, feeding the latter with his own children. In horror, Fiesta jumped out from behind the table, cursing Atreus and his entire family. The gods supported the unfortunate, and the punishment was not slow to be fulfilled. Atreus was slaughtered. His son Agamemnon was beheaded in the bathroom by his wife Clytemnestra.
The tomb was built in the 13th century BC. and consists of a long (36 meters) corridor, a round room covered with a dome, and another small one, rectangular shape, a camera located to the right of the entrance. The slab above the main entrance to the tomb weighs about 120 tons, immediately above it is an empty space in the form of a triangle, the so-called "facilitating triangle".
The tomb is deeply cut into the slope of the hill, an open corridor leads to it - “dromos” 36 m long and 6 m wide. The ten-meter-high entrance to the tomb was once decorated with green limestone columns and red porphyry lining. Inside there is a round room of the tomb with a diameter of 14.5 m, covered with a dome with a diameter of 13.2 m. The "Treasury of Atreus" until the construction of the Roman Pantheon (II century AD) was the largest domed structure of the ancient world.
No traces of burial in the tomb have been found, and although its existence has been known since antiquity, it was first described by Pausanias in the 2nd century AD. - it is obvious that even then it was completely empty. Probably, the tomb was plundered in ancient times.
The Treasury of Atreus inside was lined with bronze, silver and gold sheets. A few words should be said about Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890), who was a German merchant who made his fortune supplying food for the Russian army during the Crimean War of 1853-56. Having no special education, based only on the descriptions of Homer and Pausanias, in 1874-1876 he. discovered the ruins of Homeric Troy on the coast of Asia Minor, and two years later excavated at Mycenae in the hope of finding the tomb of Agamemnon himself.
In Mycenae, G. Schliemann discovered five royal burials with the remains of nineteen dead, numerous objects made of gold and silver (vases, various decorations, funeral masks, etc.). The finds dazzled the entire scientific world with their artistic merit. G. Schliemann himself wrote later: "All the museums of the world, taken together, do not possess even one fifth of these riches."
The graves were literally filled with gold. But for G. Schliemann, it was not gold that was important, although it was almost 30 kilograms. After all, these are the graves of the Atrids, of which Pausanias spoke! These are the masks of Agamemnon and his relatives, everything speaks for it: the number of graves, and the number of those buried (17 people - 12 men, 3 women and two children), and the wealth of things put in them ... After all, it is so huge that to collect it could only the royal family. Schliemann had no doubt that the mask of a man with a beard covered the face of Agamemnon.
Later studies have shown that the mask was made almost three centuries before the birth of Agamemnon, but it is still associated with the famous Mycenaean king and is called: "Mask of Agamemnon."
Here it is, the famous golden mask found by Schliemann (copy).
In 1876, at the age of 54, Schliemann began excavations at Mycenae.
In 1880, he opens the treasury of King Minia in Orchomenus. In 1884, he began excavations in Tiryns... Thus, step by step, from the depths of time, an ancient civilization began to emerge and take shape, which until then had been known only from the “fairy tales” of blind Homer. This civilization was distributed throughout the eastern coast of Greece and the islands of the Aegean Sea, and its center was probably on the island of Crete. Schliemann discovered only the first traces of it, but Arthur Evans was destined to discover its true extent.
Troy, judging by the descriptions of Homer, was a very rich city. Mycenae were even richer. It was here that Agamemnon and his warriors delivered rich Trojan booty. 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 "master of men" Agamemnon, one of the most powerful and wealthy rulers of ancient Greece, never faded. The great Aeschylus dedicated his famous tragedy to him. About 170 B.C. e. Mycenae was visited by the Greek geographer Pausanias, who described the majestic ruins of the city. Now Heinrich Schliemann stood at the ruins of Agamemnon's palace.
Unlike Troy, here his task was greatly facilitated by the fact that Mycenae did not need to be searched. The place where the ancient city was located was quite clearly visible: the remains of huge structures loomed on top of the hill dominating the surrounding area.
The Greeks believed that this tomb was the repository of the untold riches of the Mycenaean kings: Pelops, Atreus and Agamemnon. However, Schliemann's searches showed that all nine tombs in Mycenae were plundered in ancient times. Where are the treasures of Agamemnon hidden?
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 mistranslated and misinterpreted. And it was this indication that became the starting point of the search
“I started 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.”
The so-called "grave circle A", where the main treasures of Mycenae were found
"Good results" Schliemann calls five shaft tombs dating back to the 16th century BC. e. and located outside the fortress walls. Already the first finds made here far surpassed in their elegance and beauty similar finds by Schliemann in Troy: fragments of sculptural friezes, painted vases, terracotta figurines of the goddess Hera, molds for casting jewelry, glazed ceramics, glass beads, gems ...
Another golden mask found during excavations in Mycenae
Schliemann's last doubts disappeared. 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 charioteer Eurymedon, Cassandra and their companions are buried in them.”
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.
Their remains were literally covered with jewels and gold, expensive weapons. At the same time, there were quite clear signs of the hasty burning of the bodies. Those who buried them did not even bother to wait for the fire to do its full work: they simply threw earth and pebbles on the half-burned 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 murderer who hated her could prepare for his victim.
“I opened up a completely new world for archeology, which no one even suspected,” Schliemann wrote. The treasure he found in the tombs of the Mycenaean rulers was huge. Only much later, already in the 20th century, was it surpassed by the famous discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt.
In the first grave, Schliemann counted fifteen golden diadems - five on each of the deceased; gold was also found there. laurel wreaths. In another grave, where the remains of three women lay, Schliemann collected more than 700 gold plates with magnificent ornaments of animals, jellyfish, octopuses, gold decorations depicting lions and other animals, fighting warriors, decorations in the form of lions and vultures, lying deer and women with doves. One of the skeletons had a golden crown with 36 golden leaves. Nearby lay another magnificent diadem with the remains of a skull adhering to it.
In the tombs he discovered, Schliemann found countless gold jewelry, jewelry made of rock crystal and agate, gems from sardonyx and amethyst, axes made of gilded silver with rock crystal handles, goblets and caskets made 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, he found the golden masks of the Mycenaean kings and golden chest plates that were supposed to protect the dead from enemies in the other world.
Golden masks captured the features of the faces 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 the "treasure of Priam", Schlimann's dating of the finds turned out to be incorrect: it was not the remains of Agamemnon that ended up in the Mycenaean tombs - people who lived about 400 years earlier were buried there.
Thanks to A. Khutorsky for photos -
Disappeared and previously unknown ancient civilization was found in Mycenae in 1874 by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann quite by accident. Hoping to find evidence of the Trojan War era, the archaeologist found the famous golden mask of King Agamemnon.
Today it has been established that the shaft tombs of the Mycenaean acropolis were built in the 16th century BC, a couple of centuries before the events that served as the theme of Homer's Iliad. This civilization was called Mycenaean, after its main center.
It is believed that one hundred initially the inhabitants of Mycenae supported a good relationship with the inhabitants of Crete. But, in 1450 BC, their lands were seized. This happened after a strong volcanic eruption on the island of Thira. The eruption was so strong that the entire Aegean Sea basin felt the consequences. Lava destroyed the palaces on the island of Crete and the Minoan civilization began to fade. Mycenae began to dominate.
The Tomb of Agamemnon, also known as the Treasury of Atreus, is the largest of the nine excavated today in Mycenae. The structure, resembling a beehive, dates back to 1250 BC. It is domed, has amazing acoustics, and was built without the use of masonry mortar.
Treasures of the king of Mycenae Agamemnon or the golden mask of Atreus.
In Mycenae, two types of tombs are distinguished, which are attributed to different eras. Scientists consider this division to be indirect evidence of ancient myths about two different dynasties that ruled in Mycenae: the Perseids and the Atrids cursed by the gods. The curse sent to the Atrids became the main theme of most Greek tragedies. See more about tombs.
The entrance to the Mycenaean acropolis is the Lion Gate, on which two proud and graceful lions rest their paws on the plinth. They are dated to the 13th century BC.
"Agamemnon! he whispered, "It's Agamemnon!"
So said December 6, 1876, Heinrich Schliemann. The German archaeologist, who had found Troy a few years earlier, was sure that he had won again.
Homer, who described the greatness of Troy and the leaders of antiquity in his Iliad, has until now been considered only a myth. Schliemann was not a professional archaeologist and the story of Ilion captivated him. But the search for Troy was over and he was obsessed with a new idea. Agamemnon - the Greek king described in the Iliad.
So, based on the legendary poem and notes of the Greek geographer Pausanias, on August 7, 1876, Heinrich Schliemann began excavations. He took 63 workers, later increasing them to 125. But the first grave was unearthed only after 4 months.
The so-called "grave circle A" of the ancient Greek city of Mycenae is the area where burials were found. Near the Lion Gate - the entrance to Mycenae. In the 25 days since the discovery of the first one, 5 more graves were unearthed. In which the remains of 15 people were found. On the head of one of them rested a golden mask.
“With the greatest joy I inform Your Majesty that I managed to find the burial in which Agamemnon, Cassandra, Eurymedon and their friends were buried, killed during the meal by Clytemnestra and her lover Egistus.” This telegram was sent by Schliemann to the King of Greece on the day the graves were discovered.
The golden death mask that covered the skull was covered in age-old growth. Schliemann picked it up along with the skull. In his hands, the remains turned to dust. Sophia, Schliemann's wife, is the only one besides Heinrich who has seen the bones. Only the mask remained. Purified, she turned out to be a person of the Indo-European type. On the sides of a broad, with delicate features, cast whiskers curled. The mustache curled upward over the lip. Holes were attached to the sides of the mask for attachment to the head. Obsessed with his myth, Schliemann dreamed that this was King Agamemnon.
The mask was not the only one. There were also other remains in the burial, covered with posthumous honor. But Schliemann believed.
The age of the mask dates back to about 1600 BC. But whether it belonged to the leader who destroyed Troy is still not known. According to historical data, the Trojan War dates back to 1200 BC. Hence - the mask is older.
V. A. Chudinov also comes to a similar conclusion. He is a doctor philological sciences, Professor. However, his studies of antiquities and the theory of "cryptographic heritage" are not recognized by academic science. Having studied epigraphy (the content and form of inscriptions on hard materials) and paleography (the history of writing), he also analyzed the “mask of Agamemnon”. After analyzing the letters he found on the mask, he came to an original conclusion.
According to him, the inscriptions on the eyebrows, sideburns, eyes, mustache and near the lips contain one meaning. "The mask belonged to Yar's mime (...) the priest of Mary's temple." (V. A. Chudinov "The Golden Mask of Agamemnon") it is difficult to take his research seriously, but the conclusion is the same - the mask did not belong to the leader of the Atrids.
Today the mask is kept in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Below it is the inscription “Mask of Agamemnon, 1550-1500. BC. Gold."
"I made a mistake. But the first one was Agamemnon. Agamemnon must be here!”
Heinrich Schliemann.
