A day in the Iliad July 8, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Travel , trackbackGold-filled Mycenae, strong-walled Tirins, Argos all are within a few miles of each other, and an easy day-trip from Nauplion. From the top of the citadel at Mycenae, you can just see Argos through the haze of the heat-filled afternoon. Tirins is a little further beyond, and only a few kilometers from Nauplion.
Of course, the gold from Mycenae is now in the archaeological museum in Athens or the smaller one on the site, and all that remains are the ruins of the walls and citadel, destroyed by fire in the late 13th century and never properly rebuilt. The tombs, shaped and buried to resemble hills, were probably completely forgotten for most of the time from that destruction until they were opened in the late 19th / early 20th centuries.
Mycenae is very different from the classical architecture the tourist in Greece is more familiar with. There are no elegant columns or wide spaces such as those at the Asklepios at Epidaurus or in the Acropolis at Athens. This is a tiny city built in heavy stone at the top of a hill, and must have been a tight mass of buildings with tiny narrow streets, perhaps similar to Greek hill villages even today. If the upper parts were built of wood, fire must have spread through very quickly.
It sits on a small hill, with high mountains immediately behind, facing down towards the sea and Argos. The natural barrier behind, and good visibility in other directions, must have made it easy to defend. Even today, walking up to the entrance alongside the walls is impressive. The blocks themselves are huge and, because of the way its built around the hilltop, the natural landscape enhances its sturdieness.
We’ll probably never know whether the tombs are really those of Agamemmnon and Klytemnestra (shown above), but it’s nice to imagine the possibility, and better than just calling them ‘beehive shaped grave A’. The so-called treasury of Atreus is much larger than the others, with a sideroom that was blocked off, and smelt very musty. These tombs look like they were built by digging away a lot of a small hill, then building up the beehive shaped tomb within the dugout earth before covering it again. They’re much larger than, say, the long barrow at West Kennet, and particularly much much higher.
Its surprising just how dry and hot this climate is. By the time I decided to walk down to the village for lunch, it was easily in the mid-thirties, and would get much hotter in August. I found I was drinking huge amounts, with the humidity very low indeed. Like many places in Greece, this would not be much fun in the high summer, so its hard to see why the tourist hordes flock to these sites at that time. I think I’d struggle to do more than move from shady spot to sea and back again. The thought of building this city in that weather is appalling.
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Often when I vist your blog I find I can’t reach the most recent posts. Does this happen to any other visitors? For instance today, this is the latest post showing, but I know there’s a more recent one about the coffee place at Mornington Crescent station. I tried going to your July archives, because sometimes that will bring up the latest message, but not today. Maybe the London heatwave is affecting cyberspace?
If anyone else sees this, do let me know. I can’t reproduce it on any of the PCs I have access to (home, work, a friends)
“Often when I vist your blog I find I can’t reach the most recent posts”
Have you tried refreshing the main page? CTRL+F5 to clear the cache? I’ve found the same thing happens with my own site.
I wasn’t aware you could see Argos from Mycenae! I’ll have to look at some maps of the area and refresh my memory. By the way, the technical term for a ‘beehive shaped tomb’ is a tholos (θολος).