Mycenaean is the term used by modern scholars to describe the earliest flowering of mainland Greek culture, ca. 1600–1200 BCE. The Mycenaeans were Greeks whose warlike society rose and fell long before the era of classical Greece. The classical Greeks of ca. 400 BCE half remembered their Mycenaean forebears as a race of heroes, celebrated in Myth and Epic Poetry.
In world prehistory, the Mycenaeans comprised the last of several great civilizations to emerge in the eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze age. The Mycenaeans' urban building, military organization, and Trade seem to have been partly copied from a few preexisting, non-Greek, Bronze Age cultures—namely, the Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt, the Hittite kingdom of Asia Minor, and especially, the Minoan Civilization of Crete.
The Mycenaeans lived before the era of history-writing, and thus most details of their story—such as their rulers' names or the reasons why their entire society collapsed in fiery ruin around 1200 BCE—remain unknown. Modern knowledge relies mostly on artifacts uncovered by Archaeology at a few sites, such as Mycenae, Tiryns, and Pylos (in the Peloponnese) and Thebes, Orchomenus, and Athens (in central Greece). The artifacts include Pottery, stone carvings, jewelry, and armor—most of it found in the tombs of rulers—as well as the remnants of Mycenaean stone palaces and defenses. Particularly, the sites of Mycenae and Tiryns still show huge fortifications built by Mycenaean inhabitants in the 1300s and 1200s BCE
In addition, a few sites have yielded primitive Mycenaean written records, inscribed on clay tablets that seem to date from about 1400 BCE or 1200 BCE, depending on the site. Written in a script that modern scholars call Linear B, the records have been deciphered mainly as lists of inventory—produce, livestock, military equipment—and accounts of goods-distribution, religious rites, and similar daily events. The tablets provide precious information on the social structure, economy, and Religion of the Mycenaeans, as well as on the early-stage Greek Language that they spoke.
Aside from archaeology, some insight into the Mycenaeans has been gained from a cautious reading of Homer's epic poems, the Illiad and Odyssey. Although written ca. 750 BCE, more than 400 years after the Mycenaeans' disappearance, these poems derive from oral tradition that stretches back to the Mycenaeans. It is believed that the poems faithfully record certain aspects of Mycenaean upper-class life—such as the warrior code and the network of local kings—amid distortions and overlays.
The first Greek-speaking tribes arrived in mainland Greece ca. 2100 BCE, from the Danube region. But 500 years went by before the emergence of the culture that we call Mycenaean: The remarkable social and technological changes of these intervening centuries can only be guessed at. No doubt the Greeks were deeply influenced by the non-Greek people they had conquered, and from them the Greeks probably learned skills such as stone masonry, shipbuilding, navigation, the cultivation of the olive and certain other crops, and the worship of certain female deities (with associated, new spiritual concepts). Similarly, the Greeks were inspired by the palace society of Minoan Crete.
The Mycenaean era began around 1600 BCE, as archaeology reveals. Several sites in Greece came under control of powerful rulers who were buried in elaborate tombs, unlike the simple graves of prior centuries. And within a few generations the tomb designs altered again, suggesting further dynastic changes and evolving organization. The six treasure-filled tombs at Mycenae known as Grave Circle A—built in the era 1550–1500 BCE and discovered intact by Schliemann—provide clear proof of the rulers' wealth and overseas contacts. For example, the tombs contain items of Gold that were shaped by Greek smiths, but the raw metal probably came from Asia Minor or Egypt. The warlike nature of these leaders is suggested by the many weapons left as offerings in the tombs.
In Greece's terrain, where mountain ranges separate the flatlands, the Mycenaeans apparently emerged as four or so major kingdoms, each based at a large farming plain. Two of these domains were in the Peloponnese: the plain of Argos (with its capital at Mycenae) and the plain of Messenia (capital at Pylos). One was in central Greece: the plain of Boeotia (with the cities Thebes and Orchomenus vying for supremacy). And one was in the north, on the great plain of Thessaly (capital at Iolcus). Lesser kingdoms probably existed as well. But the greatest domain was Mycenae, as indicated by its signs of superior wealth and by the testimony of Greek myth. In Homer's Illiad, the Mycenaean king Agamemnon is the supreme commander, to whom all other kings, such as Odysseus and Nestor, owe obedience.
One event of the Mycenaean era that modern scholars are sure of is that by around 1450 BCE Mycenaeans had taken over the Cretan palace at Cnossus—probably as the result of a Mycenaean naval invasion of Crete. Mysteriously, the Mycenaeans seem to have abandoned Crete soon thereafter, ca. 1400 BCE But the years of occupation there taught Mycenaean rulers certain organizational skills—such as improved architectural techniques and the use of Cretan Writing (adapted at this time, as the Linear B script)—that ushered in 200 years of the Mycenaean heyday in mainland Greece, ca. 1400–1200 BCE
It was now that the Mycenaeans built their own palaces, adapted from the Minoan palaces on Crete. Mycenae and Tiryns were turned into elaborate, high-walled castles; other palaces, such as at Pylos, arose without huge defenses. The social and economic structure of these centers is partly revealed by the Linear B tablets. The palace was the seat of the king (wanax in Mycenaean Greek); beyond the capital city, a network of outlying villages paid taxes, obeyed the king's laws, and relied on him for defense against other rulers. Tha palace was also a center of industry, where metalworkers, weavers, perfumers, and many other crafts people turned out finished goods, to enrich the king or to be distributed by him. Raw materials came from local taxes (sheep's wool, for example) and from overseas trade.
The premier metal for war and industry was Bronze (the use of Iron being introduced to the Greek world only later). The search for bronze's two components—copper and tin—led Mycenaean sea traders far and wide. Large remains of Mycenaean pottery in Cyprus show that parts of that copper-rich island were colonized by Mycenaeans. On the western Asia Minor coast, the site of Miletus probably became a Mycenaean trading colony, mainly for the acquisition of raw metals. Toward the other end of the Mediterranean, extant pottery suggests a Mycenaean presence in western Italy, where tin could be found.
The Mycenaean rulers commanded armies of heavy infantry. The soldiers' standardized equipment, including bronze breastplates and helmets, is recorded on Linear B tablets. Various evidence paints a picture of Mycenaean kings or princes leading Viking-like raids overseas, of which the biggest were the (presumed) invasions of Crete and Cyprus. On certain Linear B tablets, Slaves are mentioned by names that suggest they came from Asia Minor; probably they were captured in Mycenaean raids there. The Greek myth of Jason (1) and the Argonauts may distortedly commemorate such an overseas expedition. But the Mycenaean kingdoms fought also against each other: the legend of the Seven Against Thebes seems clearly based on actual warfare between Mycenae and Thebes.
By about 1250 BCE the Mycenaean world had come under pressure, due partly to upheavals in the Near East. The decline of the Hittite kingdom in Asia Minor probably brought a gradual closing of the Mycenaeans' eastern trade routes. Deprived of raw metals for industry and conquest, Mycenaean society began to whither. The Greek legend of the Trojan War may recall the Mycenaeans' attempt to keep trade routes open by removing the interfering, non-Greek, Hellespontine city Troy, ca. 1220 BCE
Finally, it seems, the Mycenaean kingdoms turned against each other and destroyed each other, in a desperate bid for survival. Archaeology clearly reveals the fiery ruin of Thebes, Mycenae, and other centers in the 50 years leading down to 1200 BCE At Pylos, the final days are dramatically indicated in emergency troop movements and religious sacrifices recorded on Linear B tablets.
Modern historians used to believe that this wholesale destruction was the work of outsiders—specifically, Dorian Greeks invading from the northwest. But more recent scholarship concludes that the Dorian invasion, ca. 1100 BCE, was merely opportunistic: The Mycenaeans had already exhausted themselves through internal war.
In the villages outside of the wrecked palaces, Mycenaean society survived on an improverished scale during the 1100s BCE Social change in these rural areas can be glimpsed in the development of a certain Greek word: The official title quasireu, which during the Mycenaean heyday had indicated a local sheriff (a relatively low position), gradually changed to basileus and took on a new meaning, "king." These men became the new local rulers within the disintegrated Mycenaean kingdoms.
David Sacks
Ancient Greece: Minoan civilization. Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World.
New York: Facts On File, Inc., 1995
we got brehs walking from Norway and crossing the Mediterranean
