Pictures & images & photos of the archaeological site of Mycenae, Greece in the north-eastern Peloponnese, Greece. Photos by photographer Paul E Williams. In the second millennium BC Mycenae was one of the major centres of Greek civilisation, a military stronghold which dominated much of southern Greece. A settlement has existed at Mycenae since 2000 B.C and in the period of Greek history from about 1600 BC to about 1100 BC it is called Mycenaean in reference to Mycenae. The Mycenae city walls are typified by the huge blocks of stone that make them. This style known as cyclopean because the blocks of stone used were so massive that they were thought in later ages to be the work of the one-eyed giants known as the cyclopes. With an average weight of 10 tons the outer walls of Mycenae are still preserved up to 12.5M. The lintels over the Lions gate weighs over 20 tons and the lintel over the entrance of the Tholos treasury of Arteus is estimated at 100 tons. To move stoners of this size today would be a monumental engineering task so perhaps over 3500 years ago the ancient Mycenaeans did have the help of a Cyclops !. Mycenaeans were famous in the ancient world for their pottery and this was exported from cities like Mycenae all over the ancient world as far as the middle Danube. Mycenaean pottery spans all of the styles of Greek pottery from the earliest geometric style to the later pictorial styles. Mycenae was excavated in 1874 by Heinrich Schliemann who discovered the ancient shaft graves of Grave Circle A with their royal skeletons and spectacular grave goods. Upon discovering a human skull beneath a gold death mask in one of the tombs, he declared: "I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon". In our photography collection of Mycenae we have photos of 3 of the gold masks found by Schliemann from the Athens Archaeological Museum.

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