Cycladic and Minoan Art
Introduction to Greek Art

Mycenæan Art 1450 - 1200

The splendid Mycenæan culture, with its vast fortified palace-settlements, dominates the Aegean region in the last half of the 14th and the 13th centuries BC. Trade-oriented expansionism results in Mycenæan pre-colonial trading posts in the western Mediterranean, while the Trojan War presumably establishes Achaean control over the Dardanelles.

Cup 1 Recto	Cup 1 Verso	Cup 2
Laconia Gold Cups from Vaphio about 1600 BC Archaeological Museum Athens, Greece
Agamemnon's Death Mask from the 5th Royal Tomb 1700 BC Archaeological Museum Athens, Greece	Gold Death Mask from the 4th Royal Tomb about 1600 BC Archaeological Museum Athens, Greece	Gold Death Mask from 4th Royal Tomb about 1600 BC Archaeological Museum Athens, Greece
Gold Cup from Mycenæ Shaft Grave 4 about 1600 BC Archaeological Museum Athens, Greece	Silver Rhyton with Siege Scenes Shaft Grave 4 Mycenæ about 1600 BC Archaeological Museum Athens, Greece	Nestor's Gold Goblet from the Royal Tombs at Mycenæ 1600 BC
Bronze Dagger with Silver and Gold Inlay from the Royal Tombs 1600 BC Archaeological Museum Athens, Greece	Daggers from the Royal Tombs 1600 BC Archaeological Museum Athens, Greece	Palace Vase about 1400 BC

The Greek war against Troy should be dated about 1250 to 1240 if it happened at all. The story that Homer tells is problematic as history. The details of the story, the religion, and the society it describes represent a culture that was closer to what Homer was living in than a late Mycenæan one. On the other hand, archeologists are pretty sure that such a war did not occur in Homer's day, and from the text Homer distances himself from the conflict putting it in the distant past. If the story represents history, it is history dressed in clothes of a different culture. Of course it is still a wonderful story with real people and the all encompassing theme of the transient glory and innate stupidity of war. Something that people for thousands of years have not yet taken to heart. A summary of the Greek war against Troy. His two epics The Illiad, covering the last year of the ten year long war, and The Odyssey, covering the ten year long return of Odysseus to his home on the isle of Ithica, became the bible for the Greek Olympian religion and an inspiration for authors, artists, and composers for nearly three thousand years.

Continue with the Greek Dark Age and Early Greek Archaic Art

Cycladic and Minoan Art
Introduction to Greek Art

2003-04-19