The Mycenaeans: Was Agamemnon Real?

They built the great fortresses of the Bronze Age, developed a mysterious writing system and, according to Homer, led the Greek assault on Troy. But how much of the legend is rooted in reality? Was Agamemnon a real Mycenaean king? Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Steve Kershaw to explore the world of the Mycenaeans. Who were these formidable Bronze Age Greeks, and what do their extraordinary palaces, tombs and undeciphered history reveal about the civilisation behind the legends? MORE The Trojan War Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000774343254 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6h7S2EHc8gtyscsCo4iT1O?si=sE_RZYlxTRyRnNAD12ATig Bronze Age Cataclysm: The Minoan Eruption Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000724974044 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/1UvgKKNqKke1D0nblaT8Hq?si=Pf8t6UOdQNasA9CNv78aMQ The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch HERE https://www.youtube.com/@TheAncientsPodcast Presented by Tristan Hughes. Editor is Aidan Lonergan. Produced by Joseph Knight and McKenna Fernandez. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Want even MORE Ancients? Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, PLUS ad-free, early access podcasts AND exclusive subscriber-only Ancients episodes. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 2:08Tristan Hughes?

  They besieged Troy. Their mysterious writing remained undeciphered until the 1950s. They built citadels from boulders so big that the ancient Greeks thought the giant cyclops must have made them. Thanks to Homer's epic, The Iliad, their leader Agamemnon became a legend. But was he real? Who were these Mycenaeans? Where did they come from? And why did they disappear? Today, I'm pleased to welcome Dr. Steve Kershaw to lift the veil on the mystery of the Mycenaeans in Bronze Age Greeks. I'm Tristan Hughes. Welcome to the ancients.

• 2:59Tristan Hughes?

  Steve, what a pleasure to have you on the show.

• 3:01Speaker 04

  Oh, it's a pleasure to be on the show. Thank you very much for having me here.

• 3:05Tristan Hughes?

  You're more than welcome. And last time we saw each other, we were bestriding the sites of central Greece, including a site which will be key to our chat today, the site of Mycenae. I mean, what a site it is.

• 3:18Speaker 04

  Absolutely, utterly resplendent place. It really was. And such a joy that we had the place to ourselves as the sun was rising at the back of the mountains and there were the odd stray dog, but we could wander free across the site and just make the absolute most of it. It was wonderful.

• 3:39Tristan Hughes?

  I don't know about you, but I know Greece has got its fair share of pretty incredible ancient sites, but for me at least, I think it's the age of Mycenae and it's the links to mythology as well and the amazing remains that are there. I think it is my favorite place in all of Greece. I don't know if you're similar.

• 3:54Speaker 04

  Absolutely. It's certainly really high on the list. It is. It's such an atmospheric place and it has so much resonance, as you say, across the mythology, but also across, I think, the history as much as you can tease things out of that and just the general culture. And then simply the nature of the place, the natural setting that it has, sitting on that sort of saddle between the two pointed mountains with the views across the plain and down to the sea. And you stand there and you kind of pretend that you are Agamemnon, the lord of men who can survey that all everything. You are the lord of all you survey from there. It's full of resonance, a wonderful place to go.

• 4:39Tristan Hughes?

  I always love that on one of those mountains looking above, there's like a beacon or something like that.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 4:44Tristan Hughes?

  There's like a Mycenaean beacon as well, which is amazing to think like the beacons of Mycenaean.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  That's right. And utterly so. And you think it takes you straight back to Aeschylus's plays there where the beacon fires bring the message of the fall of Troy home. At the start of that mighty play, the Agamemnon, and the watchman sees it and all the horror is then unleashed.

• 5:07Tristan Hughes?

  And so today we're talking about, you know, the Bronze Age people that are known as the Mycenaeans. First of all, do they call themselves Mycenaeans or is that the name we've given to them because of the site of Mycenae?

• 5:17Speaker 04

  It's exactly that. It's the name that we have given them because of that Mycenae is such a central site within that culture. We really don't know what they would have called themselves. I mean, they, in Homer's poetry, those general people are called Achaeans or Danaeans. But precisely what names they gave to themselves is actually hard to tell. We know some place names from these wonderful Linear B tablets that they found that give us place names and so on. So we know how they called some of the places. But in terms of themselves as people, we're less sure.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  So Mycenaeans is really a modern name for a people and a culture, I think.

• 6:07Tristan Hughes?

  And how long ago are we talking about with the Mycenaeans in the story of ancient Greece?

• 6:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you're back in the second millennium B.C. Or BCE, if you prefer. So roughly, yes, so from roughly, let's say, sort of coming a major culture around 1600 B.C. through to 1200 ish. These things never have definitive start and end dates, but if you think of that 500 year period roughly, or it's 400 years.

• 6:44Tristan Hughes?

  Yes.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  But yeah, if you think of that, that sort of 400 year period, that's roughly that.

• 6:49Tristan Hughes?

  So the period of Mycenae in Greece where you have great centers like Mycenae, that doesn't equate with the entirety of the Bronze Age. This is very much just the late Bronze Age.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  That's right. It is indeed. And there are other wonderful Bronze Age cultures that the Mycenaeans are in contact with and plugged into. They overlap with the Minoans of Crete, with the Hittites. They've got connections with Egypt. So this is a very interconnected world in the Bronze Age. And we have a tendency, I think, to want to divide it up into little compartments of Mycenaeans and Minoans and Egyptians. But in fact, they're highly interconnected in terms of time and in terms of cultural interaction, I think, too.

• 7:38Tristan Hughes?

  And how far and wide does kind of Mycenaean Greece spread? It's like a million dollar question, isn't it?

• 7:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:44Tristan Hughes?

  Because you've got Mycenae and Argos nearby, but that's just one small part of Greece.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  It is indeed. I mean, that's a really important central element of the culture. But yes, it moves out to the west. You've got centers at Pylos. You've got centers on the mainland as well at Ochomenos and at Thebes. As you say, you've got Mycenae, you've got Argos, you've got Tiryns, which is close by there. Athens, of course, is part of that process. Sparta, indeed. And with it spreading out into the islands too, the islands of Greece. And eventually there's a heavy Mycenaean presence on Crete and also on the coastline, I think of Asia Minor, what is now the coastline of Turkey.

• 8:33Speaker 04

  There certainly is a presence and interaction in those areas too. So it's fundamentally, we think of it, I think, as a mainland Greek culture, but it has extensions across the Aegean and indeed, you know, interactions with Egypt as far away as the south that way too.

• 8:53Tristan Hughes?

  And to learn more about the Mycenaeans, whether it's about their trading contacts, warfare, religion, society and so on. What types of source material do we have surviving? Do we have any history surviving from Mycenaean times?

• 9:09Speaker 04

  This is the problem. The answer is not really. Really, what you might think of Mycenaean history is actually Greek mythology and Mycenaean archaeology. And the mythology, I think, is helpful up to a point, but mythology is not history. So it can give us clues. And indeed, I think the mythology was the key to the finding of the culture really by Heinrich Schliemann, who went out excavating in the later part of the 19th century, trying to prove that Homer was true and unearthing the sites and making extraordinary finds in his excavations.

• 9:52Tristan Hughes?

  The story of the Trojan War and the Odyssey, I guess.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And the, yeah, and the Agamemnon story, the return of Agamemnon and all of those tales that he wanted to be almost like truth. And whether or not that's the case, it led him to these sites. So the mythology drove the discovery of many of these sites, I think. And it is very helpful in many ways, but it can also be misleading. But then you have the archaeology, which gives you a huge amount of artifacts from, if you like, the sites themselves, these palatial sites with extraordinary fortifications,

• 10:32Speaker 04

  down to the tiniest pieces of, little pieces of jewelry and sort of little religious artifacts. And in the case of this culture as well, a lot of writing, which is really, really valuable to us. It's not narrative. It doesn't tell us stories. Fundamentally, it's lists of stuff.

• 10:54Tristan Hughes?

  This is the boring administrative stuff, isn't it?

• 10:56Speaker 04

  This is the boring administrative thing.

• 10:58Tristan Hughes?

  And we say boring is in just like, I mean, it's fascinating to us.

• 11:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. So they have to, they're a two sided culture, this, in a way. It's often seen as being a warrior culture, very heavy warrior culture, because... As I say, essentially, Greek mythology is located in that period. The Greeks think of their mythology as happening at that time. Uh, so, and there, and there's an awful lot of fighting in terms of fundamentally the Trojan War, but lots of warrior goings on. But yet, at the same time, these people are really, really good bureaucrats. They're, they're, they organise their society in an incredibly, um, incredibly organised way.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  Uh, and they record how they do that, and, and which gives us extraordinary information, I think, that we can, we can use to try to get a handle on who these people are and, and what's like what they do on a day-to-day basis.

• 12:00Tristan Hughes?

  Can I hark on that mythology for one more moment? So when you mean that, you know, the use of mythology, how so many of these myths that we know of now seem to have kind of been roughly in Greek memory, based on what we now associate with Mycenaean times, what the Greeks know is the age of heroes, right?

• 12:19Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yes.

• 12:20Tristan Hughes?

  So it's this idea that ancient Greeks believed that heroes like Hercules or Heracles existed and walked the earth of central Greece at the time that the Mycenaeans existed.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  Yes, that's pretty much how they locate it. And there are, oh, there's really interesting documents, I, I think. There's a, a wonderful one that's called the Perian Chronicle, which is a, that's an inscription that was found on the island of Paros. That was engraved in the, actually in the Hellenistic period, much later on, marble. Um, but dating every event in Greek history that they could possibly think of to this baseline date of when it was recorded. And it includes things like, um, well, like the fall of Troy and, um, or the invention of corn by Demeter and the, and the great flood, all, all dated within a Greek system. So they're, they're thinking of things as happening in what we would call the, that late Bronze Age.

• 13:14Tristan Hughes?

  And of course, who does Heracles do his twelve labours for in a few versions of the myth?

• 13:18Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. For Eurystheus.

• 13:21Tristan Hughes?

  The king of?

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Mycenae.

• 13:23Tristan Hughes?

  Of Mycenae, exactly. The Nemean lion, very close by.

• 13:26Speaker 04

  Very close by.

• 13:27Tristan Hughes?

  We've talked about that in the past.

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Lots of stuff going on at Tiryns as well.

• 13:30Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. So. Strong-walled Tiryns.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 13:35Tristan Hughes?

  Well, I mean, first of kind of an overarching picture of the Mycenaean states, should we say? Should we be imagining like the make-up of Mycenaean Greece, given how you mentioned kind of the, the large geographical area of Mycenaean culture? Is it one kingdom or what should we be thinking of?

• 13:53Speaker 04

  I think we're, we're thinking in terms of multiple kingdoms here with an overarching binding culture.

• 13:59Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  If you like, they're speaking the same language, they're probably worshiping the same gods, uh, behaving in, in very similar ways. But the, yeah, their world is one of, of individual states, uh, in different places. So like Pylos and Mycenae and Argos and Athens and Thebes or Comenos and wherever else you like to go. But, uh, so it's not, uh, if you like, it's not an empire controlled from one central place, but it's a series of different, uh, states, often quite powerful and flourishing in their own right.

• 14:31Tristan Hughes?

  So it's like politically separate, but culturally similar.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Yes, I think, yeah, that would be a good, a really good way of putting it, I think.

• 14:39Tristan Hughes?

  And of course, I mean, with Agamemnon, we'll explore his historicity at a later date. But maybe, maybe not him particularly, but the king of Mycenae. We always like to give credit of Mycenae being almost like an exceptional, like an even bigger city and more powerful city than the rest. Could there be any possibility in this idea that maybe the most powerful king did live in Mycenae? I mean, there was almost a king of kings perhaps?

• 15:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's conceivable. I, I think that because, as I say, Mycenae is very close to, to other sites, to, as, as you said, to Argos and to, and to Tiryns, both of which you can pretty much see from Mycenae. And very likely that they had at least some level of regional dominance, I think. And the, I mean, the, the mythical tradition makes Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, the lord of men, uh, who, who is the dominant power, who can bring together all of the different Greek states in a, in a mission to go to Troy. Um, quite how accurate that is as a picture of, of, of Mycenaean,

• 15:45Speaker 04

  uh, quite how accurate that is as a picture of Mycenaean culture in general, I, I think is, is not necessarily true, but I, I think, um, certainly there are, there are centres that are powerful without question. And, you know, we know, for instance, that, you know, Mycenae has direct connections with Egypt. There are Egyptian artefacts that are found at Mycenae. So, so there are, they are important enough to, uh, be able to communicate with, uh, with, with other mighty and powerful cultures.

• 16:24Tristan Hughes?

  We're talking about one close by mighty and powerful culture that they certainly seem to interact with. Maybe the nicest way to put it is one you've already mentioned, the Minoans or the Minoans on Crete.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 16:36Tristan Hughes?

  So do we know much about the interactions between Mycenaeans and Minoans? I mean, how distinct were they? What, what's the story between the, the?

• 16:44Speaker 04

  This is interesting, I think. Yes, there, there's a lot of interaction. Um, I think one of the, the big differences is going to be linguistic. I think we, we know for a fact that the Mycenaeans spoke Greek. What we don't know is what the Minoans spoke. So we have with the Mycenaeans, we, we have these Linear B tablets that have been, Linear B, it's called, uh, that have been deciphered and can be read, and they are a very early form of Greek. There is another writing form on Crete, which is known as Linear A, which looks quite similar, but that has not been deciphered.

• 17:23Speaker 04

  And it is by no means sure that those people were speaking Greek. In fact, it's quite likely that they weren't. They were speaking something else. So there may be a linguistic difference between these people, between the island people of Crete and the, the mainland, if you like, Mycenaean culture. But they are in contact with each other all the time. The, the cultures overlap. In terms of time and, and, and they, there are a lot of, if you like, cross pollinations of culture between them. They, there are artistic transferences from one to the next, for instance. You know, the Mycenaeans really like Minoan art and probably used Minoan artists to, um, in, in, in their,

• 18:08Speaker 04

  you know, to be in their decorations and, and things to create frescoes and, um, and, and jewellery and that, and that kind of thing. So the, the two cultures are, are hooked into each other, um, very closely. And then there comes a moment at which the Mycenaean culture becomes dominant on Crete.

• 18:27Tristan Hughes?

  Do we think it's quite a sudden takeover? What do we know about that?

• 18:30Speaker 04

  It's interesting that we know how it works from, uh, a number of things really. One is the language changes. So the Linear B becomes the dominant language on Crete. It takes over. Also burial, um, habits change. So you get what they call warrior graves now with, um, with really quite militaristic looking, um, tombs that, that have lots of sort of military hardware. They have swords and, and helmets and, uh, and that kind of thing. They, they, they certainly appear more aggressive and, and they are buried in the style of the mainland. So you, you have these features of mainland Greece coming into Crete.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  And people are going to argue like crazy over dates, but let's say about fourteen fifty B.C. Um, so you get this, this cultural shift on, on Crete. The, which raises the question that the, the sort of default position is that this is an invasion by,

• 19:29Tristan Hughes?

  Yes.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  by the Mycenaeans.

• 19:31Tristan Hughes?

  The more warrior culture against the more peaceful Minoans, right?

• 19:34Speaker 04

  That's right, yes. And I'm, I'm not entirely buying into the idea that the Minoans are a bunch of, uh, sort of hippie peaceniks. Because, because they can be, I mean, they have a, in, in mythology, King Minos is the first to have a sea empire for a start. And he can extort tribute off the Athenians to feed his Minotaur. So, you know, is, so that, I'm sure the, the Minoans can look after themselves, but the, but the Mycenaeans certainly, there's a lot of militarism in their, in their culture. So it may be, uh, that they have, you know, taken advantage of, of some kind of weakness on, on Crete and, and moved in and, and taken over.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Um, you know, it could be, if you like, uh, it could be more nuanced than that, I think. It could be a more of a, if you like, a cultural dominance. It could be an elite on Crete adopting the, the, if you like, the Minoan way of doing things and, and, and taking over.

• 20:34Tristan Hughes?

  The Mycenaean way, okay.

• 20:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's what you certainly see is a, a takeover by Mycenaean culture. And then you, you will find a lot of scholarly argument about whether that equals a takeover by Mycenaean warriors, if you, if you like, uh, uh, which is always lovely and enigmatic. And the problem, as, as we started out with, is that we don't have a history. There is no, there are no historical documents saying this is what happened, you know, that, that nothing from the, um, uh, Mycenaean side, some sort of wonderful historical epic of, of, of the conquest of Crete by the, by some mighty king.

• 21:18Tristan Hughes?

  Imagine, imagine if so, um, a Theseus-like figure, I guess, right? Something like that.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 21:23Tristan Hughes?

  But it, it does beg the question though, you mentioned earlier, one of the big things surrounding the Mycenaeans is this portrayal as a warrior culture. And then exploring the, the truth behind that.

• 21:33Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 21:34Tristan Hughes?

  Um, archaeologically, do we have much evidence surviving which gives us an insight into how they fought? How they viewed, well, I mean, even hunting to an extent, you know, kind of showing,

• 21:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:47Tristan Hughes?

  virile men, quite frankly, with weapons going out and fighting?

• 21:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's, there's a lot of that. And, and those, if you, yes, if you like, those, those, those manly pursuits of uh, hunting and, and fighting and feasting, uh, and that kind of thing. So yes, they, they hunt. There are wonderful things in the, in the burials of, of daggers, for instance, with, with beautiful inlay, uh, gold and yellow inlay, um, daggers on, on bronze daggers.

• 22:18Tristan Hughes?

  Yellow is black kind of colour.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  Yes, a kind of black alloy that show hunting scenes of, of Minoan and, and hunting lions and, you know, you know, proper hunting.

• 22:27Tristan Hughes?

  There are lions in Greece back then.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  There are lions in Greece at that point. So, yeah, so there's, there's a, there's a hunting culture. For sure. And, and, and, and indeed a warrior culture because the, again, the, the graves are are very much our prime source of information. And there is a lot of weaponry. And, and we can, we can see this, you know, the, how these people would have gone out to fight. We see, and we also see it on frescoes. Actually, there are illustrations of them on frescoes. Um, in armed to the teeth and, and going out. So they're wearing a very, fantastic helmets that they've got, these, these.

• 23:07Tristan Hughes?

  Let's talk about these helmets. I mean, these helmets that survive from Bronze Age Greeks, made of boar tusks.

• 23:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:14Tristan Hughes?

  Are absolutely extraordinary. When you see an image of them, you can't help but be blown away that someone wore this.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. They, they are an extraordinary thing on so many levels, actually. So we, we talked about hunting. So if you're going to have a boar's tusk helmet, you've got to hunt fifty boars, right? Because there's about fifty pairs of boar's tusks. They're about, you know, that size. Uh, that they, that they, they attach to a sort of leather cap, uh, and so, or felt cap and, and sew them together with, with earpieces. And they are, so that they're, they're an item of status, which is wondrous. And, and there's, they get special notice in Homer, you know, the, the teeth of a tusk shining boar sewn clothe, close with craftsmanship and skill.

• 24:02Tristan Hughes?

  So should we be imagining Agamemnon wearing a boar's tusk helmet?

• 24:05Speaker 04

  I think we want a boar's tusk helmet on Agamemnon and, and, and on all the rest of them as well. It's, uh, the, the, the Homeric descriptions are slightly, slightly different. They're slightly anachronistic in a way. Because the Homer imagines the warriors as a bit like the warriors of his own day, rather than the, uh, so the boar's tusk helmet he describes is really unusual. Whereas actually in Mycenaean times, there, there's lots and lots and lots of these things. But it's, but they're, so they're a wonderful piece of status, but they're incredibly effective. Because the boar's tusk helmets are a bit like the, uh, the sort of kevlar things that you put in a bulletproof vest. You know, that they, they, they work in a similar sort of way. They sort of, so it's, it's, it's a fine piece of, of equipment.

• 24:49Tristan Hughes?

  And shall we go down the body? So what else do we know about how they wore?

• 24:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, because there's a, one of the great finds is they found a thing called the Dendropanoply, which is a, a complete suit. It's the oldest complete suit of armour that we found in, in Europe. And it's an extraordinary assemblage of a thing. So it's, it's a sort of cuirass, which has a very high collar.

• 25:11Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, it's half the faces kind of.

• 25:15Speaker 04

  Uh, and you've got your boar's tusk helmet on top. Um, and, and, and sort of huge, sort of, almost like shoulder pads, they look like. That, that sort of restrict you from putting your arms up. But if you're wielding weapons underhand, they're, they're fine. And then this sort of hinged cuirass that's in, that's in sort of bands of bronze that, that, that cover the body. And then a, a kind of skirt underneath and greaves and sort of arm protectors, um, and so on. And, and it's a really distinct thing. And, and what's, what's lovely about it as well is it matches the ideograms in the, in the Linear B tablets. So when you get a, a suit of armour that they call toraka, a thorax.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Um, it looks exactly like this thing that they found in, in the tomb at Dendro. So, so, so this, this wonderful, sort of heavy armed, um, quite clumsy and hot, but, but, but well protected.

• 26:12Tristan Hughes?

  I think until the catafacts or maybe even the Roman legionary much later, that's the definition of a heavy armed infantryman.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  Absolutely. It really is. It really is. And, and then, you know, and, and that's just, that's just the defensive stuff. And you've got a shield as well. So they either, they use these oxhide shields, sort of big rectangular things made of, of oxhide. Um, or ones that are sort of figure of eight shaped as well. So you can sort of wield your, your spear.

• 26:37Tristan Hughes?

  We think a spear, do we? That's the, that's the classic weapon.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  We've got, they're definitely using spears. They're using swords, um, which develop over time. And you, you can see them sort of perfecting the technology of their swords, about different ways of, they start with almost like rapier-like swords, and then they, they switch to sort of more slashing type swords. And they spend a lot of time working out how to make the join between the handle and the blade perfect. So, and you can track these through in, in, in developments and, and helpful in dating things, actually. The, the typology of the sword, which is how they, they sort of increase its effectiveness, which is interesting. So they, yeah, so they have swords and they have, yes, spears, long spears.

• 27:23Speaker 04

  Um, lots of evidence for arrows, bows and arrows, um, arrowheads of all sorts of bronze and stone and, and, and, and what have you. So they, yeah, they, they've got everything they need. And chariots. They like, they like a chariot.

• 27:37Tristan Hughes?

  They like a chariot. They like a boat as well.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  They do, yeah, absolutely.

• 27:40Tristan Hughes?

  Trade or for raiding, you know, trade or raid.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 27:44Tristan Hughes?

  Define what you're going to do. But I'd like to kind of explore more about Mycenaean society. We can start at the top, but then we should explore one everyday Mycenaean, what we know about them. But let's start at the top because we mentioned kind of kings.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:58Tristan Hughes?

  And one of the classic pieces of architecture associated with the Mycenaeans is the palace, the havens of the citadels. So do we know much about, apart from presumably being a warrior figure, do we know much about these figures at the top? These royal kings or queens as well?

• 28:13Speaker 04

  I think we, I think we do. We, the, the, the, the guy at the top in, in the, in the Linear B tablets, his name is Wanaka, which comes into Greece as, as Anax, which means lord. And in Homer, Agamemnon is Anax Agamemnon. He's the lord of men. So the guy at the very top, if you like, the, the king is, is the Anax. And, and, yeah, so, and, and, and carries out kingly roles, some of them religious too. I don't think he's a priest king, but he's, uh, there. Um, and, and he's very much at the top. Underneath him, you have other kinds of lords who are in the, in the tablets, they're called Cassireu, which comes out as Basilios.

• 28:57Tristan Hughes?

  Basilios, okay.

• 28:58Speaker 04

  Which is the, which is, which is the Greek word for a king, actually. But it's a, it's a kind of slightly one down king from a, um, uh,

• 29:07Tristan Hughes?

  A sub-king.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  From an Anax sub-king, absolutely. And, and so there are many of those, um, within the, um, areas. And then further hierarchies coming down. So you have people called Hecate, who are kind of followers. Um, and, and almost like companions to them, you know, who will, yeah, will, will fight and they'll feast. And they'll, um, accompany the, um, the, the king. So you've got all sorts of different hierarchies right down. Also, you've got a, a military leader as well, who's called the Laugetas. Who is, the, the Laus is the people as an army. And he is the leader of, of, of those.

• 29:48Speaker 04

  So you have military leaders. You have a king, you've got your military leader, you've got your sort of sub-kings, you've got your followers. Um, and keep coming down the hierarchies. You've got then priests and priestesses. Um, also of incredibly high status there, sort of dealing with your interactions with divinity, which is crucial to life because their religion is like the air they breathe. It's, you know, that's. So you have the priests and then you come further down and you then fundamentally, you then get to what you would call the demos. The, the, the, the people, you know, the, the people themselves of the, um, uh, if you like, the ordinary workaday Mycenaean.

• 30:30Speaker 04

  Um, and that's an interesting word that, that, that comes out as demos. It's, it's like the English word village where it can be the, the, all the buildings, all the people who live in it. You know, it's that kind. So it's that kind of word. So it's, so they, so you have your ordinary people. And what's lovely in this is that we know the names of some of these people.

• 30:52Tristan Hughes?

  Do they, do they?

• 30:53Speaker 04

  So because they, again, they appear on these, on these tablets with what they do for their living.

• 30:58Tristan Hughes?

  So that's, because, so I was going to ask, it was like, with the nature of the tablets that survive, you know, from the palaces.

• 31:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:05Tristan Hughes?

  Probably, probably not surprising that they mentioned those higher up figures, you know? You've got to give two goats to the Laugetas for the army.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:13Tristan Hughes?

  Or to the priest or the Basilios. So it's no surprise that their titles survive in these administrative texts. But to also have names, you know, to have everyday Mycenaeans and their trades also mentioned in these administrative texts as well. I wasn't expecting that.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  That's right, because yes, they're recording specifically who it is that owes twenty-five goats to the palace.

• 31:36Tristan Hughes?

  Right, okay.

• 31:37Speaker 04

  So, um, and these come out very often as the names of the mighty heroes. So you, you have, you know, sort of, I don't know, Etiochles and, you know, Fesius and, and Achilles and.

• 31:49Tristan Hughes?

  We have their names surviving.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, their names. And they come out in these, in these tablets, which is wondrous. So these, in fact, the names of the mighty heroes of, of Homer are, are, are not, you know, names of mighty heroes. They're, they're the names of ordinary, ordinary guys like you and me.

• 32:05Tristan Hughes?

  So the real Achilles was actually just a potter, maybe in the lower town of Mycenae or something like that.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  And, and they, they have, yeah, they have great names. But I mean, Potter is probably a name, but certainly Smith is. There, there is definitely a Mr. Smith, you know, in, who was making bronze there at, at Mycenae.

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• 35:56Tristan Hughes?

  So do we know much then? Let's focus on everyday Mycenae. So people who didn't live in the palace, but would have seen the citadel up above and the great cyclopean walls and stuff like that, but lived outside that area. Everyday life for these figures, what should we be thinking? Should we be thinking that most Mycenaeans were farmers? Or were they like, was it like a middle class, which did those kind of crafts we were talking about? What do we know?

• 36:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, all of those. This is where these tablets really come into their own, because they record the work and the produce, and sometimes the value of this. So absolutely that. So there are people farming. And we know what they farm. They farm olives and corn, and by which I mean wheat and barley, and those sort of staple crops that they absolutely need, and herbs and all that kind of thing. Coriander is there on the tablets, you know, and all that kind of thing. So yeah, so they're making agricultural produce.

• 37:04Speaker 04

  So they are farming, without question. They are herding as well. So there is a lot of sheep and goats in these tablets as well.

• 37:15Tristan Hughes?

  Hence, maybe the worry about lions and the like.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 37:18Tristan Hughes?

  You get the nobles needing to go into hunt lines. You're also helping your community, your farmer.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So lots and lots of, yeah, lots and lots of goat and sheep and pigs and what have you. And then, yeah, and then the production of things. So as I say, there are smiths producing bronze goods. There are people producing textiles as well. Very often, that being women who are producing textiles, which are high-value, important things. And indeed, a slave class, of course. There's a slave-owning society as well, who are, again, we know are producing those kind of things. So yes, if you like, all the things that you need

• 38:05Speaker 04

  for day-to-day, everyday interaction and your wants and needs for a normal life are being catered for. And I think because they're so valuable in this particular culture, they are being, they're highly regulated, and they're being recorded forensically by the palaces, because you want to know. There's a fabulous, one of my favorite Linear B tablets is a guy called Atimor. It was probably, and Artimon or something like that would be his name.

• 38:36Tristan Hughes?

  Without Tuna or something.

• 38:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, something like that. And we know where he's, and there's different lines. It says where he's herding his sheep and so on. And then there's a list of all these animals, and which, and he's got ewes, and he's got weathers, and he's got all this kind of thing, a big flock. And then there's a line underneath where there's a symbol, which is, it's actually just the letter O, but it means to owe, to be in debt. 50 sheep.

• 39:08Tristan Hughes?

  50 sheep.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  This guy is, he's that bo peep. He's lost a whole flock, 50 sheep, you know? So you get these wonderful little insights into, you know, and obviously, this guy's in trouble. And there it is. So yeah, that's how they're operating.

• 39:26Tristan Hughes?

  You've also touched on something there that I was going to ask about. If you were in any of these kind of towns next to a citadel, these great centers of Bronze Age Greeks, like in Athens or Mycenae or Pylos or wherever, you know, whether you'd see many foreign faces if you're walking through the town?

• 39:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:42Tristan Hughes?

  I was primarily going to ask about traders and how well-traveled people could be. But of course, also, you mentioned slaves, raiding of the Anatolian coastline or elsewhere. You know, we talked about the warrior class already. Well, this idea that there are fighters, soldiers, kind of thing like that. So you would probably see quite a few foreign faces, whether they're enslaved people or they're traders and so on.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  Yes, I think you would. As I say, I think this is a geographically quite fluid world that they have. So I think you are interacting with other people. And as seafarers in particular, there's a good deal of interaction, I think, there. So yeah, these people are plugged into, yes, important networks of communication, which are not just in goods, but they're in ideas as well and other cultural things.

• 40:34Tristan Hughes?

  Very much so. That kind of amazing Eastern Mediterranean connected world of the late Bronze Age, where you mentioned the Egyptians, the Hittites, even go to the Babylonians, but then Cyprus and Crete and so on. What about women? Do we know much about the prominence? Because we talked about the kings and the Huanaxes, and it seems to be very kind of male-dominated. But do we know much about the role of women in Mycenaean society?

• 40:58Speaker 04

  Yes, this is a tricky one, I think, because the evidence is male-dominated, I think, in that way. So I think the answer is that we don't know enough about women that we would certainly nowhere near as much as we would like to know, because they're not as prominent within these tablets, for instance. And what we see is almost like a complete split between quite elite, in terms of priestesses, who clearly have huge status within society, I think. They are incredibly important.

• 41:40Speaker 04

  We know that they can own land and property and so on. So they are crucial. We don't really see much in the evidence then down to, until you get down to almost like to the slave class of producing textiles or whatever. So it's, if you like, the female world is quite elusive there. We see them in the art, and we see them in the religion. You know, there are goddesses. So we have goddesses. And you know, women appear on frescoes and in images on jewelry, on ceilings and seals

• 42:22Speaker 04

  and rings and that kind of thing. So we can, you know, we can see how they dress and that kind of thing. So the clothes that they wear are available to us in a way. And it looks like, presumably, the ones who can afford it anyway, the Mycenaean ladies like. They like to look a bit Minoan, they like these sort of big flouncy skirts and they

• 42:48Tristan Hughes?

  Or like you see on Minoan frescoes.

• 42:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So but then they've obviously, they get to know about this kind of thing. And I says, and I wanna, you know, so the Minoan images that we have of women are sort of, if you like, the Mycenaeans are taking Minoan styles and making them their own.

• 43:08Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting to talk about the Mycenaean kind of cultural takeover of Minoan creed, but as you say, actually, the culture goes both ways.

• 43:14Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. Yeah, very much so.

• 43:17Tristan Hughes?

  And so I'm guessing it's probably similar with with children as well. There's we just don't have that information really.

• 43:23Speaker 04

  Very, very little information. I mean, you do find, you know, there are infant burials in some of the tombs. So in the in the great grave circle at Mycenae, there are infant burials, again, highly elite. I think covered in gold leaf. Very, very moving, I think, these these things. And we know that some of the some of the tablets say that the slave women that they have are allowed to have their children with them as, you know, as in their in their daily life. So we we have these sort of little insights, but again, children, not so much. And the children, almost absent from the art, they're not really interested.

• 44:03Speaker 04

  That we not a hundred percent absent, because there are some images of of children too. But but but very relatively few.

• 44:13Tristan Hughes?

  I'd like to kind of talk about some of their architecture and engineering of the Mycenaeans. Because Mycenae is a great example of it because of the impressive remains that survive. But you see it elsewhere as well, again and again, they have almost kind of trademark

• 44:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 44:27Tristan Hughes?

  architecture and engineering, which we got to talk about.

• 44:32Tristan Hughes?

  Let's talk about the palace first of all.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:34Tristan Hughes?

  So a Mycenaean palace, how elaborate should we be thinking with its design? Give us a picture of a Mycenaean palace.

• 44:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is an elaborate space. And and a lot of them have a very similar kind of layout. So you would, and and if you imagine you're approaching a Mycenaean palace, and it works, it works at Mycenae, it works at Pylos, it works at Tiryns,

• 45:02Speaker 04

  that you would sort of, you would sort of undergo a sort of buildup of tension and tension and tension before it lets go when you get right into the heart of it. So, you know, you would go through a, you know, it's if you like, an entrance portal. And then, you know, down a corridor, you'd go down into another portal. And then you'd go through a gateway that would then, with pretty much all of them, would put you in a courtyard, sort of big, open courtyard.

• 45:33Speaker 04

  Through and beyond that, you would then go through a porchway and perhaps another one before you would be sort of landed in the main room of the palace. So you're constantly going through through controlled spaces from dark into light and dark into light until you finally end up in the the throne room. And and all of these seem to work, that you you make the entrance and there's a central hearth, a big, round hearth, sometimes with columns and, you know, sort of open to the open to the sky, but everything else covered over. But with the throne room on the right, and so it's not beyond the flames.

• 46:17Speaker 04

  It's it's to your right as you come in. So with the with the ruler on a throne there. So it's a very elaborate, carefully controlled space that can be guarded and creates ceremony and and impresses and creates, you know, fear perhaps and and respect. Highly decorated frescoes everywhere, beautifully decorated floors there. So, you know, very elaborate, very, yeah, making statements of of wealth and prestige, I think.

• 46:56Tristan Hughes?

  And talking about making statements before you would reach the palace, if you're an everyday person, you'd have to first go through the fortifications.

• 47:02Speaker 04

  You would indeed, yeah.

• 47:03Tristan Hughes?

  And like, Mycenae is the great example, but you have them at Tiryns.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely.

• 47:07Tristan Hughes?

  Parts found in the Acropolis of Athens as well, which are these so-called cyclopean walls.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. I mean, these are astonishing, astonishing walls. There's a lovely writer, a Greek writer of later period called Pausanias, who's given descriptions of a number of these sites. And and he he he sort of saw these walls and he said, people talked about the pyramids, but there just has nothing to this, you know. And and they are mightily impressive. So the cyclopean walls, they the the the stones are so huge and so beautifully cut as well that the later Greeks just couldn't believe that mere mortals could do it. They had to be made by cyclops, you know, mythic, only a mythical monster could produce this

• 47:58Speaker 04

  this kind of thing, these huge, beautifully cut and trimmed blocks that that form these massive and mighty fortifications. In many ways, they're far too big, you know, you don't you don't need your fortifications to be that big.

• 48:14Tristan Hughes?

  Well, but that's the point in itself.

• 48:15Speaker 04

  But which is the, in many ways, it is the point that you, yes, you're overbuilding to to impress and intimidate. And so these are walls that you cannot knock down. I mean, they're, you know, they're, you know, seven or eight meters wide and similar in height and more. So they're incredibly impressive.

• 48:36Tristan Hughes?

  And when you walk through, as we've done together recently, the main entrance of Mycenae, the lion gates and that beautiful, those two lionesses on the pillar, right? Which is another stunning piece of architecture, symbol of Mycenaean culture. You've got walls on three sides.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:52Tristan Hughes?

  In front, to your right, it's a killing zone. There's the practical defence part as well.

• 48:57Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, these walls, if you want to get to the main gate, you are channeled into what is effectively a killing zone. Particularly, you've got, as you go in, on your right hand side, which is your unprotected, shieldless side, there's a bastion there. And and there are your Mycenaean warriors with their bows and arrows and spears and and what have you. So, yeah, so the these fortifications are incredibly well thought out. It's exactly the same at Tiryns and and for instance, so you you get channeled into these areas. It would be incredibly difficult to fight your way in.

• 49:34Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. Well, let's talk about sometimes an easily overlooked part of the architectural engineering. I know that the Minoan palace on Knossos, I don't know how accurate it is, but it's like the first flushing toilet, right?

• 49:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's great.

• 49:47Tristan Hughes?

  I'm sure there are others in Bronze Age cities as well that contest with that.

• 49:51Speaker 04

  There's a very, there's a very good one.

• 49:53Tristan Hughes?

  Record.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  Yes, at Akrotiri on Santorini, there's a fantastic one in there.

• 49:59Tristan Hughes?

  But Mycenaeans as well, flushing toilets in the palace is probably.

• 50:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, you know, this, I think, I mean, I often think that the skill in water management is a really great indicator of your one's level of civilisation, if you like. And the the Mycenaeans are really, really good at this, really good at this. They at almost like at micro level and at macro level. Because they, even within the vicinity of Mycenae itself, they're building dams to, you know, to to catch and contain and distribute water. And and there's just one extraordinary engineering project, which happened in in Boeotia,

• 50:44Speaker 04

  in sort of central Greece, where they they drained a lake. So Lake Kapais was drained in order to to create agricultural land.

• 50:52Tristan Hughes?

  And we know that from just exploring the kind of the water levels.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

• 50:59Tristan Hughes?

  And and then maintain like cisterns as well. There's that amazing cistern at Mycenae, which is down into the earth for a long, long way.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Because water is everything. Interesting, I think, because those those fortifications, if you, without water in the citadel, those fortifications are completely meaningless. So they have aqueducts that they can bring water in and and just the, you know, the collection of rainwater. You know, it does rain in Greece, you know, and it's and it's a precious commodity that they that they that they store as much as they possibly can. So it's absolutely essential thing to them, I think.

• 51:39Tristan Hughes?

  And the other key part of engineering, I mean, there's so many different ways you can go down. But because we visited one as well, is to remember the road network. You know, roads don't come with the Romans, they're for so.

• 51:50Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 51:51Tristan Hughes?

  And the Mycenaeans from Mycenae to other key centres and elsewhere.

• 51:56Tristan Hughes?

  Crisscross the Mycenaean world and they build brilliant bridges as well.

• 52:00Speaker 04

  Superb bridges.

• 52:01Tristan Hughes?

  They are master masons, stonemasons in every, whether it's walls, whether it's palaces, whether it's tombs, whether it's bridges.

• 52:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 52:09Tristan Hughes?

  They build all of that stuff.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I think one of the, one of the great things that they have, they use this technique called corbeleding. So just, just to putting one, one layer just ever so slightly above the next. And they, they create almost like proto archers.

• 52:21Tristan Hughes?

  They are proto archers. That's a great way to describe it.

• 52:23Speaker 04

  Which are, you know, just incredibly beautifully functional. They, they, they're, they're strong, they're resilient. They can span greater spaces, really, really expert engineers and, and, and stonemasons particularly.

• 52:38Tristan Hughes?

  And you can go to not far from Margos today, I think, the Kazama Bridge, you know, a Mycenaean bridge with that corbeleding kind of vault in the middle that you can go to today, that it wasn't long too long ago that cars still went over it. I think there's a picture of a car on top. And you can be, stand on top of it. And that bridge was made some 3,000 years ago.

• 52:57Speaker 04

  It's astonishing. Yeah. Astonishing. Yeah. Yeah.

• 53:00Tristan Hughes?

  So let's talk about tombs and religion.

• 53:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:04Tristan Hughes?

  And tombs in the Mycenaean world come in all shapes and sizes, depending on how rich you are.

• 53:09Speaker 04

  They do.

• 53:10Tristan Hughes?

  But in regards to the stonework, I mean, we have to start with those great beehive shaped tombs at Mycenae, don't we? They're the best of the best.

• 53:16Speaker 04

  Oh, they're utterly extraordinary. These, the Tholos tombs, they're sometimes called as well, but these sort of, with a long passageway that you go down to start with, which often has great cyclopean blocks as you go into beautiful corbeled entrance as well. And then you, you're in this sort of circular, not quite domed, but sort of pointy domed.

• 53:36Tristan Hughes?

  It's an amazing space.

• 53:38Speaker 04

  Space of beautifully dressed masonry that's perfectly put together and would have been encased in clay to stop water damage as well. But, but huge, vast, just impressive and beautifully done, you know, curved in all dimensions and, and, and the, the blocks put together absolutely perfect. They are absolutely extraordinary structures, those. And, and which were used as, as, as tombs. I mean, all of them been robbed pretty much because it's quite obvious what they are. But, but yes, impressive, high status burials that they, that they were using.

• 54:20Tristan Hughes?

  And those, those are the top of the top. That's why they, at Mycenae, they've become like linked to mythical figures like Clytemnestra, the queen.

• 54:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 54:28Tristan Hughes?

  Tomb of Agamemnon, Atrius and the like. But then you kind of go down another level and, and like outside the kind of the, the elitist tombs, you get lots of these shaft graves at places as well.

• 54:39Speaker 04

  Yes, you do. You do. And then, I mean, their burial habits change over time, of course as well. But yes, I mean, there are, you know, equally quite, quite simple graves and, and again, sometimes they have passageways and, and then sort of less, just less elaborate chambers on the inside with little sarcophagi on the, or, or places to place the, the, the burials. And, and so, yeah, so you have a complete repertoire of everything from, from the, almost the elite of the elite to, yeah, to very simple, very, very simple shaft graves. And then maybe almost like a hybrid thing between the two, because again, at Mycenae,

• 55:18Speaker 04

  you've got these two grave circles, they're called, which are big circular spaces, defined, certainly one of them by walls, that then have shaft graves within them, where you, where you have, simply a shaft grave is, is what it says on the tin, really. It's a shaft that you dig down with a chamber at the bottom that you then cover over with sort of wooden twigs and then fill it in, having buried the body with the grave goods and then mark it with a stone at the top.

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• 57:16Tristan Hughes?

  I always look out for when any, if any new kind of Mycenaean cemeteries have been discovered, because more and more will be found.

• 57:21Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 57:22Tristan Hughes?

  One that I wish we'd have gone to near the Mea, we didn't get the chance to, was Idonia.

• 57:25Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely.

• 57:26Tristan Hughes?

  Looks amazing. Just if you look on Google Maps and you find it, you just see kind of these little slits.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 57:31Tristan Hughes?

  That you can even see from above on the satellites and they're like little passages into all together. So it's very cramped, but lots of shaft graves onto this inside.

• 57:40Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So, so, yeah. So, you know, I guess you, you, you know, you are buried in the way that you can afford.

• 57:49Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 57:49Speaker 04

  Or that your people can afford. But these, but these are still, yeah, obviously incredibly important to the, to the people who construct them and, and occupy them, I guess.

• 58:00Tristan Hughes?

  So it's a burial, is it exclamation, cremation? Do we know anything about that?

• 58:03Speaker 04

  That's interesting. It's cremation, it seems, no. And that's one of those anachronisms between Homer and the Mycenaean world is that Homer's heroes are cremated. But actually, it seems that the, the Mycenaean elite were buried. They were interred. So it's a different way of doing it. So generally speaking, it's interments.

• 58:25Tristan Hughes?

  And the gods themselves, the ones who they prayed to and made sacrifices and so on. You mentioned how it's an early form of Greek, liniebi. So are there mentions of gods like Zeus and Poseidon and so on?

• 58:37Speaker 04

  They're, yes, I think in, in a sense there are, that there's, there's definite pathways of connection. I mean, and, and they're doing all the usual things. So they're, they're making sacrifices and processions and singing and, and, and dedications and, and, and everything else. But they, they certainly have some really important deities, some of whom seem to have names that you could transfer into, into classical Greek. There's, there's one, again, particular tablet that, that has a, a names of, of a number of different deities on it, but one of whom, for instance, is Atana Potinia. So Atana is Athena.

• 59:22Tristan Hughes?

  Athena, yeah.

• 59:22Speaker 04

  Potnia is the other one. And in Homer, Athena is often called Athena Potnia, Mistress Athena. And other names is you can probably get Dionysus out of it. You can certainly get Poseidon. There's one, Enuarius, who is, Enualios is a sort of epithet of Ares, the god of war. So you, you certainly have these, these sort of, yeah, connections that, that are going to move through, I think, into, into classical times.

• 59:54Tristan Hughes?

  Any Mycenaean gods that might fall, have fallen out of fashion, do you think?

• 59:58Speaker 04

  Possibly. I think the, the, the, the Potnia one is a really interesting one. What they don't know is whether sort of Potnia is several deities or, or different aspects of the same one. But, but, but she sort of falls out, you know, she becomes, you know, Athena can have an aspect of Athena, Mistress Athena, but, but you, you kind of lose. But Pot, and Potnia might have been a, almost like a kind of mother goddess there. And, and you see, certainly you see some really strange and wondrous religious scenes on, on little rings where you see.

• 1:00:37Tristan Hughes?

  The great goddess ring.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Great goddess things where you get, you know, people bringing amongst other things, poppies, which is opium poppies. So I think there's a lot of, there's probably a lot of people getting out of their heads in, you know, in, in, on a kind of opium based things as part of religious ceremonies as well. Poppies are everywhere in the religious aspect of it. And they use them medicinally as well, we think as well. But, but, yeah, sort of chemically enhanced religion going on there. And that, that you, that you see. And then you see sort of manifestations of different deities and priestesses interacting

• 1:01:18Speaker 04

  and, and the sun and the moon and, and, and strange figure of eight shields with legs and, you know, really, really strange going on. But they, yeah, they're, they're, they're making these offerings. And clearly I think the mother goddess is a, is a, a key element of, of all of that.

• 1:01:37Tristan Hughes?

  Kind of Demeter, maybe like figure or hero.

• 1:01:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:01:41Tristan Hughes?

  Quick fire question before we get to the end. Agamemnon. I'm not going to talk about the mask of Agamemnon. That's for another day. Any chance he was real?

• 1:01:50Speaker 04

  I, I think not. I think not. Disappointingly not. Disappointingly not. I think, yes, I think. Trying to, I'm not prepared to push the mythology that far, I think. It's, yeah, we, it would be, it would be lovely, it would be lovely. And, but sadly, I'll say no.

• 1:02:14Tristan Hughes?

  He might be based on a memory of how powerful the leaders.

• 1:02:17Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 1:02:18Tristan Hughes?

  Like Eurystheus as well.

• 1:02:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yes, I think, I think, I think that's right. And, yeah, as I said, I think that one thing that mythology isn't is history. But it can have a relationship with, with history. And I think what it, what it doesn't record is, is history, but it, or the past. But it records a version of the past that justifies the present. And, and I think there's a lot of that going on with, with Agamemnon and the, and the Trojan War particularly. So much as I would love to, like Heinrich Schliemann didn't say, gaze upon the face of Agamemnon.

• 1:02:58Tristan Hughes?

  And whether that artifact is actually Mycenaean at all, or whether it predates Mycenaean culture.

• 1:03:02Speaker 04

  This is interesting, yes, with, with Schliemann, who made all these discoveries, there's always kind of a huge question mark over his, his head and his discoveries. But, no, it's none the worse for that.

• 1:03:13Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. Well, we could cover so much more with the Mycenaeans. But let's wrap up by talking about what may well have happened to them. The end of Mycenaean times, which seems to always be, to quote a recent Hollywood blockbuster, aligned with when an age of bronze was collapsing.

• 1:03:36Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:03:36Tristan Hughes?

  So what, I mean, give us a context, what do we think happens to the Mycenaeans?

• 1:03:41Speaker 04

  There is so much argument about that. So in a sense, this, this, this, this culture seems to disappear from the record. And, and, and we, we enter a, a period sort of around 1200 BCE that has in the past been called the Greek Dark Age. You should never, ever, ever use that term with an archaeologist who works in that period these days.

• 1:04:07Tristan Hughes?

  I want to do an episode on the Greek Dark Age.

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  You've got to do that. Because it's certainly not dark, it's very interesting. But, but certainly you, you have, we see destructions in, in these, in these palaces. And we have a lot of change, a lot of change. And it's not that, that the places are completely destroyed, because actually, you know, Mycenae is, is, is still populated. And, and in the fifth century B.C., when the Persians invade Greece, the Mycenaeans will send their warriors to fight the Persians.

• 1:04:40Tristan Hughes?

  Really?

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  And so will the people of Tiryns. So, you know, so the, these places are not eradicated off, off the map. But they, you know, they, they lose their, their great prominence. And there are, oh, there's, I mean, there are hundreds of theories about what, what may have, have, have brought this, this down. One of the things they, they made quite a big deal about in the movie was this, these people, the sea people, who were a sort of bunch of raiding people who made a real pest of themselves, particularly to the Egyptians, until Ramses III saw them off.

• 1:05:19Tristan Hughes?

  But what do the Egyptians call part of the groups? The ek question, the denouna, right?

• 1:05:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:05:24Tristan Hughes?

  So actually, some of them might have been Mycenaeans.

• 1:05:25Speaker 04

  That's right. So maybe, you know, so on the one hand, were the sea peoples coming to Greece? There's Pylos, there's a lot of the tablets are worried about seaborne invasion. But it's a long way from elsewhere where the sea peoples are. Or indeed whether the Mycenaeans were part of the sea peoples. So what you're seeing is perhaps not people coming in and, and taking over, but a diaspora of, of people. It's an interesting theory, I think. There's been, there's things have been made about the return of the Heracles and the Dorian invasion. I, I don't think that works now.

• 1:06:09Speaker 04

  That's the, the idea that the, these people called the Dorian's, who were fundamentally become the Spartans, come in and invade Greece just after the Trojan War and, and, and take over. Which is quite a popular theory, probably about a hundred years ago. But it's, I don't think you can find convincing archaeology evidence for, for that kind of takeover. And it's, other things that have been suggested include possibly climate change, the effects of climate change.

• 1:06:46Speaker 04

  So, you know, were there some kind of natural disasters or, or, you know, famines or, or bad harvests? Or, or that kind of thing in a very precarious agricultural economy? And then you look at the tablets and, well, actually, there's thousands and thousands of sheep. So that, so then are they over-exploiting their land to, to bring that, to bring those things upon themselves? There's other things that have been thought about. Other things, earthquakes as well have been suggested, earthquakes, you know, damaging. Not necessarily one mighty earthquake taking them all out, but there's, there's evidence of earthquake damage.

• 1:07:30Speaker 04

  But there again, Greek is, Greece is very seismic and they're, they're used to that. So one of the things that, that may be, you know, an earthquake could change the underwater aquifers. So if you lost your water, then you would lose your citadel. But all of those things are, in, in many ways, quite attractive ideas. You know, plague as well as another possibility. But none of these things are archaeologically identifiable. So then you, you, you then start looking for an archaeologically invisible thing. So are the palaces brought down from within?

• 1:08:11Tristan Hughes?

  And, and this is the thing, like the end of Mycenaean culture, it's not like the people are completely destroyed. Because as we already said.

• 1:08:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:17Tristan Hughes?

  It's an early form of Greek.

• 1:08:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Tristan Hughes?

  So they speak, the language continues, right?

• 1:08:20Speaker 04

  There's continuity between.

• 1:08:22Tristan Hughes?

  But the, the administrative system, the palaces, that's what falls out of use. And that's what kind of people say is the end of Mycenaean culture. It's the palaces, it's not actually the people disappearing.

• 1:08:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that's a really good point. The, the, yes, you're, you're, you're losing that elite palace culture in a sense. And you lose the literacy.

• 1:08:43Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, that's the thing, isn't it?

• 1:08:45Speaker 04

  So there's, there's, once that goes, there's no need to write anything down. And, and so of course you get the poems of Homer, which are created by illiterate bard's to start with, and just passed on from, by word of mouth. So, so you, you, you do get that, that sort of sea change of things. So you, you perhaps lose the, you certainly, I mean, you do, I think, lose the culture at, at the, at the, what you might call the high end. But there, there is then that, that still that cultural continuity that, that maintains of all these people. Still, they're still there, they're still speaking Greek, they're still sheeping their sheep and goating their goats.

• 1:09:22Tristan Hughes?

  And that's an everyday person, yes, apart from the palace not long, no longer being in use. I mean, how different was it? I mean, how much an essay question ready, I'm sure, for many to, to answer and debate is how much of a societal collapse really was there?

• 1:09:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:37Tristan Hughes?

  At the Bronze Age in Mycenaean Greece.

• 1:09:39Speaker 04

  That's right. And, you know, I mean, people, it's one of those things that, that, that people like to have. They, they, they want a collapse, preferably cataclysmic and all hordes of invading barbarians. Or, you know, huge tsunamis or, or, or whatever. Usually it's, it's, I think this idea perhaps of systems collapse is, is something like that. Everything, you've had a system where everything is dependent on everything else. And, and there's, there's probably just one piece, it's like a Jenga stack, you just pull it out and, and it all comes down.

• 1:10:16Tristan Hughes?

  And it all comes down. And Steve, this has been absolutely brilliant. I mean, the Mycenaeans, they hold a place close to your heart and I, I, I love them as well. But if you had to pick one area of Mycenaean archaeology or the Mycenaean story that you love above all else, what would it be?

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  I think it would be those beehive tombs. I, I think just the, the, the first experience of, of, of walking into that space. As you, you walk down the, the thing they call the drumos, this long corridor. And it's 30 yards long with these incredible stones. And then this massive ornamental gateway, doorway with, with a huge threshold. And you can see where columns were on either side of, of, you know, elaborate stone. And you can see the, the holes where the doorposts were and the, the, the sort of corbelled arch above it

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  to take the stress off this massive, so 100 tonnes worth of lintel stone over the doorway. And then into this beautifully put together thing that, that, that combines, I think, what's so great. It combines, if you like, might and majesty with, with attention to detail and finesse at the smallest level. It's, it's everything from the, from the small to the, to the great, from the, from the micro to the macro. And I just think, wow.

• 1:11:50Tristan Hughes?

  Fair enough. I think for me, it would, it's got to be the bridges. It's got to be the roads and the bridges, because you get the sense of the corbling and the architecture. You get a sense, I just love envisaging, you're walking on a thing and thinking whether it was a trader with their mule or an everyday farmer walking up to Mycenae, a shepherd or a bunch of warriors going out to raid. Or, you know, all those different people that would have walked along that road or crossed that bridge. As you are doing 3000 years later, I just love that stuff so much.

• 1:12:23Speaker 04

  It's a beautiful image.

• 1:12:24Tristan Hughes?

  As mentioned, this has been absolutely fantastic. And you have written a couple of books that do cover the story of the Mycenaeans.

• 1:12:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, indeed, yeah. So yes, I have, there's, there's, there's parts in my Brief Guide to Classical Civilization, which has, it's about Minoans and Mycenaeans and, and about Homer and all sorts of other things. There's other, other Greeks and, and Romans too. And yeah, and I guess my Brief Guide to the Greek Myths publication as well, which, which covers all, yes, all of those, those wondrous mythical tales that, that form the background to so much of the Mycenaean culture.

• 1:13:02Tristan Hughes?

  So much of it. It just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show.

• 1:13:07Speaker 04

  Absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me back.

• 1:13:14Tristan Hughes?

  Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Ancients with our guest, Dr. Steve Kerschel. Now, if you want to learn more about the Mycenaeans and the Trojan War, do check out our episode with Dr. Eric Klein, either on a podcast platform of your choice or on our YouTube channel. Please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps and you'll be doing us a big favour. And if you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. And don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Plus, you also get ad-free podcasts before everyone else, as well as exclusive subscriber-only episodes of The Ancients.

• 1:13:58Tristan Hughes?

  Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.