And in the west, on the southern tip of the Greek mainland and
Across the Aegean islands, a third great Bronze Age civilization
Was reaching its peak. Mycenaean Greece.
Named for Mycenae,
The citadel on a hill in the Argolid whose massive "Cyclopean"
Walls of unmortared limestone blocks, some weighing over twenty tons,
Dominated the landscape. Mycenae was the political and cultural
Center of the Bronze Age Greek world. Other major centers were
At Tiryns, Pylos, Athens (already a settled site, though
Not yet the city it would become), Thebes, Orchomenos, and
Several others. The Mycenaean civilization emerged around sixteen
Hundred BCE—roughly contemporary with the New Kingdom beginning
In Egypt and the Hittite kingdom consolidating in Anatolia—
And flourished until the Bronze Age Collapse around twelve hundred BCE.
The Mycenaeans were R1b-haplogroup Indo-European-speakers—
Descendants of the Yamnaya expansion that had reached Greece in
The early Bronze Age. Their language was an archaic form of Greek,
Written in a syllabic script called Linear B—adapted from the
Minoan Linear A script that preceded it. Unlike Linear A,
Linear B has been successfully deciphered. In nineteen-fifty-two,
Michael Ventris, a young English architect with a passion for
Ancient scripts, demonstrated that Linear B was used to write
Early Greek. The achievement is one of the most celebrated in
The history of decipherment. It opened up an entire Bronze Age
Civilization to modern understanding. We can read the Linear B
Tablets recovered from Pylos, Knossos, Mycenae, and other
Mycenaean sites, and they reveal a palace-centered economic and
Administrative system managing vast agricultural, craft, and
Commercial operations. Linear B tablets are administrative
Records—inventories of livestock, lists of workers, tax collections,
Distributions of rations, inventories of military equipment. They
Are not literature. But they provide a detailed picture of the
Bureaucratic machinery of a Mycenaean palace, managing the economic
Life of its region down to the number of bronze arrowheads in the
Armory and the ration of wheat allocated to each category of worker.
And above the bureaucratic record, the Mycenaean world was also
A warrior society. The Mycenaean elite warriors—depicted in
Frescoes, buried with bronze swords and boar's-tusk helmets and
Gold-masked faces—were an Indo-European warrior aristocracy of the
Type that the Yamnaya expansion had produced across the
Indo-European world. The shaft-graves at Mycenae, excavated by
Heinrich Schliemann in eighteen-seventy-six, contained gold funerary
Masks (including the famous "Mask of Agamemnon," though the
Mask actually predates any possible historical Agamemnon by
Several centuries), bronze weapons, elaborate jewelry, and other
Signs of an extraordinarily wealthy warrior elite. The Mycenaeans
Were, in their cultural self-conception, the heroes who would later
Be memorialized in Homer's poetry. They valued combat, loot,
Honor, and the gift-exchange diplomacy of aristocratic warrior
Bands. They were the original Greek aristocracy whose memory
Fueled the later Iron Age reconstruction of the "heroic age."
And their relationship with the Minoan civilization is complex.
The Mycenaeans had originally been the junior partners of the
Minoans—culturally influenced by the island civilization, less
Wealthy, less sophisticated. But around fourteen-fifty BCE, after
The Thera eruption had weakened the Minoan civilization, the
Mycenaeans invaded Crete, occupied the major palace centers,
And took over the Minoan administrative and cultural system. The
Linear B tablets found at Knossos date to this Mycenaean
Occupation period. The Mycenaeans adopted Minoan artistic
Styles, religious iconography, and palace architecture—but adapted
Them to their own Indo-European warrior ethos. Mycenaean frescoes,
Unlike the peaceful nature scenes of Minoan art, often depict
Warriors, hunts, and battle scenes. The serenity of Minoan
Civilization was replaced by the martial vigor of the Mycenaean
Overlay. But many Minoan elements survived: goddess-worship, the
Labyrinthine palace-plan, the bull-symbolism. The Mycenaean
Civilization was a hybrid of Indo-European warrior aristocracy
And Minoan palace sophistication. The combination was potent.
And it was wealthy. Mycenaean trade networks extended across the
Eastern Mediterranean. Mycenaean pottery has been found in Egypt,
The Levant, Anatolia, Cyprus, and as far west as Sardinia and
Sicily. The Mycenaeans imported copper from Cyprus, tin from
Distant sources (possibly Cornwall or Afghanistan), gold from
Egypt, ivory from Syria, cedar from Lebanon. They exported
Olive oil, wine, textiles, and their distinctive pottery. The
Aegean was a trading lake in which Mycenaean ships sailed in
Every direction, moving goods that the palaces redistributed and
Taxed. The palatial economy was in the middle of the trade network,
And the wealth that flowed through it made Mycenae and its
Sister-cities genuinely rich by Bronze Age standards.
And one episode from this period—probably around the end of the
Thirteenth century BCE, shortly before the Bronze Age Collapse—
Would become the greatest memorial narrative in Western literature.
The Trojan War.
The historicity of the Trojan War is
Debated but, the Gaiad accepts, broadly real. There was a city
At Troy (the site called Hisarlik in northwestern Turkey),
And it was destroyed by violence, and the destruction can be dated
To roughly the right period. The site shows evidence of siege and
Burning in its Troy VIIa level, which is usually identified
With the Homeric Troy. Whether the war was fought by a single
Coalition of Mycenaean kings led by Agamemnon, whether the
Participants had the names Homer would give them six centuries
Later, whether Achilles and Hector and Odysseus and Helen and
Paris were historical individuals—these are uncertain. But a war
Between Mycenaean Greeks and the kingdom of Wilusa (Troy's
Hittite name, which is cognate with "Ilios," Homer's term) is
Attested in Hittite diplomatic correspondence. There was a real
Conflict over this real city between real Mycenaean forces and
Real Anatolian defenders. Homer's later epic dressed the event
In the heroic costume of the oral tradition, compressing and
Elaborating and fictionalizing, but the historical kernel was there.
And
The Mycenaean civilization is, the Gaiad argues, the Greek
Contribution to the Bronze Age Collapse chapter. Within a
Generation or two after the Trojan War, the Mycenaean palaces
Themselves were destroyed. Mycenae was burned. Tiryns was
Sacked. Pylos was burned (which is why its Linear B tablets
Survive—they were baked hard by the fire instead of being allowed
To dissolve in the normal way). The entire palatial civilization
Collapsed in a generation around twelve-hundred BCE. The cause was
The general Bronze Age Collapse—Sea Peoples raids, possibly
Internal rebellions by the servile population, climate pressures,
And the systemic failure of the Bronze Age international trade
Network. The Mycenaean palaces went down in a coordinated wave
Of destructions that archaeologists can date, across many sites,
To the same twenty-year window. The civilization did not recover.
After the collapse, Greece entered a "Dark Age" that lasted
Approximately three centuries. Linear B writing was forgotten.
The palace economies vanished. Population collapsed. Monumental
Architecture ceased. Trade networks shrank to local exchange.
The Greeks of the Dark Age lived in small villages, farmed at
Subsistence levels, and preserved the memory of the Mycenaean
Heroic age only in oral tradition. When writing finally returned—
Via the Phoenician alphabet, around the eighth century BCE—the
Greeks were a completely different civilization from what the
Mycenaeans had been. They had forgotten Linear B entirely. They
Had forgotten the palace economies. They had forgotten, in most
Cases, the specific historical geography of their Bronze Age
Predecessors. What they remembered was the heroic poetry—the songs
About Achilles and Odysseus and Agamemnon that had been
Transmitted orally through three or four centuries of illiterate
Dark Age. When Homer (whoever he was, whenever exactly he
Lived—probably the eighth century BCE, probably a single poet but
Possibly a tradition) composed the Iliad and the Odyssey, he
Was working from this oral tradition. The poems preserve fragments
Of Mycenaean material culture (the boar's-tusk helmet, the
Catalog of ships, certain personal names, certain geographical
References) that must have been transmitted from the Bronze Age
Without being archaeologically rediscovered until the nineteenth
Century. Homer knew things about the Mycenaean world that he
Could only have known through oral tradition stretching back
Centuries. The poetry is a time-capsule. The Mycenaean civilization
Lives, in attenuated and elaborated form, in the Homeric epics.
And this chapter, before it concludes, gestures toward one other
Thing. The Dionysiaca—the mythological cycle about the god
Dionysus's campaigns into India. In later Greek mythology,
Dionysus (god of wine, ecstasy, and the irrational) is said to
Have invaded India at the head of an army and established his
Worship there before returning to Greece. This myth is preserved
In Nonnus of Panopolis's late antique epic Dionysiaca—a
Forty-eight-book epic that is the longest surviving poem of
Classical antiquity. The story is historically fantastical. But
The Gaiad takes it as an eastward gesture, a pointing toward the
Connection between the Mediterranean and Indian worlds that will
Become increasingly important in later chapters. Dionysus into
India prefigures the Ramayana's expansion westward toward
Troy and Egypt. The mythological cycles of the two civilizations,
Separated by thousands of miles, include cross-pointing gestures
That suggest deeper awareness of each other than the strict
Archaeological record demonstrates. The Mycenaean world, at its
Height, was in communication with Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, and
Probably indirectly with Mesopotamia and beyond. The cultural
Connections of the late Bronze Age were real and extensive. And
The myths preserve traces of those connections, even after the
Archaeological and documentary evidence has fragmented.
The
Mycenaeans. Mycenae. Tiryns. Pylos. The Linear B tablets.
Ventris's decipherment. Schliemann's excavations. The Trojan War.
The heroic age that would be remembered by Homer. The Bronze
Age civilization of the Aegean at its peak. The palace economies,
The warrior aristocracy, the syncretic absorption of Minoan
Culture. And then—in a generation—the collapse.
Mycenaean Greece. The warrior civilization. The Bronze Age peak.
The foundation of Greek identity that would be preserved through
The Dark Age in oral poetry and recovered, in attenuated form,
When Homer sang the songs that became the Iliad and Odyssey.
Mycenaeans. Agamemnon's kingdom. Troy's rival. Stand.