Funeral mask of Agamemnon. Treasures of great civilizations: Mask of Agamemnon Myths and reality

MASK WITH CHLOROFORM “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon,” written by Boris Pilnyak, shook up all of Moscow in the second half of the 1920s. The fate and image of the hero of this work, Army Commander Gavrilov, who was stabbed to death on the operating table, were very similar to the real character,

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"Mask of normality!" “The Mask of Normality” is the title of a research paper on the psychopathic personality (1976), authored by psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley. This term characterizes one of the most frightening properties of a psychopath - the ability to seem like an absolutely normal person,

MASK OF SHAME For the nationwide humiliation of those who used to disturb public peace, there were such forms of punishment as stocks, pillory, brank, but nothing was more terrible than the mask of shame. Like brank, these masks made those whom

Mask of Agamemnon, 1550-1500. BC Gold. National Archaeological Museum, Athens “The Mask of Agamemnon” is a golden funerary mask from the mid-second millennium BC, found in 1876 in Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann. It got its name from the legendary King Agamemnon, since Schliemann was sure that he had found his grave. However, in terms of the time of creation, the mask is more ancient.

The mask was found during excavations near the Lion Gate, on the western side of the Mycenaean fortifications. Schliemann discovered a group of burials (grave circle A) consisting of five shaft tombs. 19 skeletons were found in them (8 male, 9 female, 2 children). Some of the men's faces were covered with gold masks. In addition to them, gold tiaras, buckles, earrings and gold scales for “weighing souls” were found in the burials. The total weight of the gold treasures was 15 kilograms.

Schliemann was sure that he had found the tomb of the legendary king. He wrote to the King of Greece: “With the greatest joy I inform Your Majesty that I managed to find the burials in which Agamemnon, Cassandra, Eurymedon and their friends were buried, killed during a meal by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.” 5 golden funeral masks were found in the tombs, the last of which, at the time of discovery, was associated by Schliemann with the legendary king of Mycenae.

The mask depicts the face of an elderly bearded man with a thin nose, close-set eyes and a large mouth. The face corresponds to the Indo-European type. The tips of the mustache are raised upward in the shape of a crescent, and sideburns are visible near the ears. The mask has holes for the thread with which it was attached to the face of the deceased.

The bulk of the treasure is now in the Athens Museum, but there are also some interesting items in the local exhibition hall.
These are hedgehog grandmothers.

All the artifacts found in the tombs, including the mask of Agamemnon, are on display at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. A replica of the mask is on display at the Mycenae Archaeological Museum.

“Gold-abundant” Mycenae... The legendary city where the conqueror of the Trojans, the “lord of men” King Agamemnon, ruled. It was here, following the instructions of Homer, that Heinrich Schliemann went after he excavated the ruins of the ancient Throne on the Hissarlik Hill. And again Ariadne's thread of legends did not let him down

Mycenae is an ancient fortified city on the Peloponnese peninsula, 90 km from Athens and about 40 km from Nafplio. Mycenae is perhaps the most famous city in Greece, the kingdom of Agamemnon, the leader of the Achaean campaign against Troy, a city that dominated Greek history for 400 years, the acropolis that gave Schliemann a golden mask, history textbooks - the megaron, architecture - the Lion Gate, literature - Homeric characters. Situated between two squat mountains, the ruins of Mycenae look hardly less majestic. Red poppies add aesthetic touches to landscapes

According to legend, Mycenae was founded by the slayer of the Gorgon Medusa, Perseus, the son of Zeus, and Danaë, watered with golden rain ("fear the Danaans who bring gifts"). The dynasty of the descendants of the Perseus was replaced by the family of Pelops, cursed by a little-known charioteer for all sorts of meanness and greed, which ultimately resulted in complete ruin.

The bathroom in which Clytemnestra and her lover killed her husband Agamemnon, who brought from Troy not only the gold that Schliemann received, but also Apollo’s beloved, the soothsayer Cassandra, has been preserved. The act of the jealous queen, who, by the way, was not embarrassed by her lover, was avenged by her son, Orestes. The gate through which he escaped from Mycenae after killing his mother is still there today

The ruins of Agamemnon's palace offer a regal view of the entire Argolid Valley.

On the way to Mycenae is the famous treasury of Atreus - a monumental domed tomb of the 13th century. BC e. King Atreus, the parent of the legendary Agamemnon, very sophisticatedly tricked his brother Thyestes, feeding the latter with his own children. In horror, Thyestes jumped out from the table, cursing Atreus and his entire family. The gods supported the unfortunate man, and the punishment was not slow to be fulfilled. Atreus was stabbed to death. His son Agamemnon was beheaded in the bathroom by his wife Clytemnestra.

The tomb was built in the 13th century BC. and consists of a long (36 meters) corridor, a round room covered with a dome, and another small, rectangular chamber located to the right of the entrance. The slab above the main entrance to the tomb weighs about 120 tons, immediately above it there is an empty space in the form of a triangle, the so-called “relieving triangle”.

The tomb is deeply cut into the hillside, leading to it is an open corridor - a “dromos” 36 m long and 6 m wide. The ten-meter high entrance to the tomb was once decorated with green limestone columns and red porphyry lining. Inside there is a round tomb room with a diameter of 14.5 m, covered with a dome with a diameter of 13.2 m. The “Treasury of Atreus” was the largest domed structure of the ancient world until the construction of the Roman Pantheon (2nd century AD).

No traces of burial were found in the tomb, and although its existence has been known since antiquity - it was first described by Pausanias in the 2nd century AD. - it is obvious that even then it was completely empty. The tomb was probably plundered in ancient times.

The inside of Atreus's treasury was lined with bronze, silver and gold sheets. A few words should be said about Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890), who was a German merchant who became rich supplying food to the Russian army during the Crimean War of 1853-56. Having no special education, based only on the descriptions of Homer and Pausanias, in 1874-1876 he discovered the ruins of Homeric Troy on the coast of Asia Minor, and two years later he excavated at Mycenae in the hope of finding the tomb of Agamemnon himself.

In Mycenae, G. Schliemann discovered five royal burials with the remains of nineteen dead, numerous objects made of gold and silver (vases, various jewelry, funeral masks, etc.). The discoveries dazzled the entire scientific world with their artistic merits. G. Schliemann himself later wrote: “All the museums of the world taken together do not possess even one fifth of these riches.”

The graves were literally filled with gold. But for G. Schliemann it was not the gold that was important, although there was almost 30 kilograms of it. After all, these are the graves of the Atrides that Pausanias spoke about! These are masks of Agamemnon and his loved ones, everything speaks for this: the number of graves, the number of buried people (17 people - 12 men, 3 women and two children), and the wealth of things placed in them... After all, it is so huge that it is impossible to collect it Only the royal family could. Schliemann had no doubt that the mask of a man with a beard covered Agamemnon’s face.

Later research showed that the mask was made almost three centuries before the birth of Agamemnon, but it is still associated with the famous Mycenaean king and is called: “The Mask of Agamemnon.”

Here it is, the famous golden mask found by Schliemann (copy).

In 1876, at the age of 54, Schliemann began excavations in Mycenae.
In 1880, he opened the treasury of King Minia in Orchomen. In 1884, he began excavations in Tiryns... So, step by step, from the depths of time, an ancient civilization began to emerge and take shape, which until then had been known only from the “fairy tales” of the blind Homer. This civilization was spread throughout the eastern coast of Greece and the islands of the Aegean Sea, and its center was probably located on the island of Crete. Schliemann discovered only its first traces, but it was Arthur Evans who was destined to discover its true extent.

Troy, judging by Homer's descriptions, was a very rich city. Mycenae was even richer. It was here that Agamemnon and his warriors delivered rich Trojan booty. And somewhere here, according to some ancient writers, was the tomb of Agamemnon and his friends, killed with him.

The memory of the “lord of men” Agamemnon, one of the most powerful and wealthy rulers of Ancient Greece, has never faded. The great Aeschylus dedicated his famous tragedy to him. Around 170 BC e. The Greek geographer Pausanias visited Mycenae and described the majestic ruins of the city. Now Heinrich Schliemann stood at the ruins of Agamemnon's palace.

Unlike Troy, his task here was greatly facilitated by the fact that Mycenae did not need to be found. The place where the ancient city was located was clearly visible: the remains of huge structures loomed on the top of a hill dominating the surrounding area.

The Greeks believed that this tomb was a repository of the untold riches of the Mycenaean kings: Pelops, Atreus and Agamemnon. However, Schliemann's searches showed that all nine tombs in Mycenae were plundered in ancient times. Where are Agamemnon's treasures hidden?

The already mentioned ancient Greek geographer Pausanias, author of the Description of Hellas, helped Schliemann find these treasures. In his text, Schliemann found one place that he considered incorrectly translated and incorrectly interpreted. And it was this indication that became the starting point of the search

“I began this great work on August 7, 1876, together with 63 workers,” Schliemann wrote. “Since August 19, I had an average of 125 people and four carts at my disposal, and I managed to achieve good results.”

The so-called "grave circle A", where the main treasures of Mycenae were found
Schliemann calls five shaft tombs dating back to the 16th century BC “not bad results.” e. and located outside the fortress walls. Already the first finds made here far surpassed in their elegance and beauty similar finds by Schliemann in Troy: fragments of sculptural friezes, painted vases, terracotta figurines of the goddess Hera, molds for casting jewelry, glazed ceramics, glass beads, gems...

Another gold mask found during excavations in Mycenae
Schliemann's last doubts disappeared. He wrote: “I have no doubt that I managed to find the very tombs about which Pausanias writes that Atreus, the Greek king Agamemnon, his charioteer Eurymedon, Cassandra and their companions are buried in them.”
On December 6, 1876, the first grave was opened. For twenty-five days, Schliemann's wife Sophia, his tireless assistant, loosened the earth with a knife and sifted it with her hands. The remains of fifteen people were found in the graves.

Their remains were literally covered with jewelry and gold, expensive weapons. At the same time, there were absolutely clear traces of the hasty burning of the bodies. Those who buried them did not even bother to wait until the fire had completely done its job: they simply threw earth and pebbles over the half-burnt corpses with the haste of murderers who want to cover their tracks. And although precious jewelry testified to the observance of the funeral ritual of that time, the graves had such an openly indecent appearance that only a murderer who hated her could have prepared for his victim

“I discovered a completely new world for archeology, which no one even suspected,” wrote Schliemann. The treasure he found in the tombs of the Mycenaean rulers was enormous. Only much later, already in the 20th century, it was surpassed by the famous discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt.

In the first grave, Schliemann counted fifteen gold tiaras - five on each of the deceased; Golden laurel wreaths were also discovered there. In another grave, where the remains of three women lay, Schliemann collected more than 700 gold plates with magnificent patterns of animals, jellyfish, octopuses, gold jewelry depicting lions and other animals, fighting warriors, jewelry in the shape of lions and vultures, lying deer and women with pigeons. One of the skeletons wore a golden crown with 36 golden leaves. Nearby lay another magnificent diadem with the remains of a skull attached to it.

In the tombs he discovered, Schliemann found countless gold jewelry, jewelry made of rock crystal and agate, gems made of sardonyx and amethyst, axes made of gilded silver with handles made of rock crystal, cups and caskets made of pure gold, a model of a temple made of gold, a golden octopus, gold signet rings, bracelets, tiaras and belts, 110 gold flowers, about three hundred gold buttons. But most importantly, he found golden masks of the Mycenaean kings and golden breastplates, which were supposed to protect the deceased from enemies in the other world.
Golden masks captured the facial features of the ancient rulers of Mycenae. The most magnificent of these masks was later called the “mask of Agamemnon.” However, as in the case of the “Priam’s treasure,” Schliemann’s dating of the finds turned out to be incorrect: it was not the remains of Agamemnon that ended up in the Mycenaean tombs—people who lived about 400 years earlier were buried there.
Thanks to A. Khutorsky for the photographs -

Golden Mask of Agamemnon

V.A. Chudinov

The so-called “Golden Mask of Agamemnon” has long attracted the attention of researchers. It was found by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876 in Mycenae, and surprised the public by the fact that it resembled Egyptian ones. Later, some scientists were delighted with this find, others believed that the mask was taken from the treasuries of Russia and had nothing to do with ancient Greece.

My task was either to confirm the local origin of the mask, or, on the contrary, to indicate the place from which it may have been borrowed.

Rice. 1. The so-called “Mask of Agamemnon”

How did G. Schliemann attribute this mask? In the novel-archeology by K.V. Kerama “Gods, Tombs, Scientists” has a chapter entirely devoted to this problem - chapter 5. It’s called: “ The Mask of Agamemnon”, from which the figure is also borrowed. 1 with signature (“Golden mask from a dynastic burial in Mycenae. Athens. National Museum") (KER, insert). The chapter says that Heinrich Schliemann began a big job on August 7, 1876 with 63 workers, then the number of workers increased to 125 people, the first grave was opened on December 6, 1876, and in 25 days 5 more graves were opened; In total, the remains of 15 people were found. A telegram was sent to the King of Greece: “ With the greatest joy I inform Your Majesty that I managed to find the burials in which Agamemnon, Cassandra, Eurymedon and their friends were buried, killed during a meal by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus" Kerram comments on this message as follows: “ One can imagine the shock Schliemann felt when he tore away the remains of those who, as it seemed to him, lived in passions and hatred more than two thousand years ago. Schliemann had no doubt that he was right"(KER, p. 46).

Rice. 2. My reading of the inscriptions on the eyebrows of the mask

However, Keram does not have a description of the mask itself. But it was reproduced by the artist on the cover of F. Vandenberg’s book “Schliemann’s Gold”. Vandenberg conveys the moment of excavation this way: “ And Schliemann was already clearing the skull of the buried man. Tools touching it made a metallic sound. Ugly, it had a strange shape. Thick eyelids showed through, a narrow bridge of the nose protruded, high cheekbones - all this was not at all like ordinary skull bones. Some time passed before Schliemann realized: on the face of the dead man lay a golden mask, deformed by the multi-ton weight of stones.

- Agamemnon! - he whispered. This is Agamemnon!

Schliemann spent the entire long sleepless night harboring illusions and thinking that he had found the tomb of Agamemnon. But the next day somewhat cooled his childish delight. A second skeleton appeared in the tomb shaft, then a third, a fourth, and - a day later, another greater depth - the fifth. The last one had the richest of the three golden masks. Two skulls remained open.

But Schliemann is not sure; he is close to despair. Homer didn't mention anything about the custom of burying the dead wearing gold masks!

Diary entry: “Unfortunately, the skulls of these five were badly damaged and could not be saved. The two lying with their heads to the north have their faces covered with large golden masks; one of them was very badly damaged by soil and stones, and the ashes stuck to it so tightly that it was impossible to take a good photograph. If you look at the mask for a long time, you can distinguish facial features. This is a large, oval face of a young man with a high forehead, a long straight nose and a small mouth with narrow lips. Eyes closed. Eyelashes and eyebrows are clearly visible.”

Rice. 3. My reading of inscriptions before my eyes

The second mask is very different from this one: a wide face with large cheeks, a small forehead, a small mouth too, full lips, eyes closed. The third one is also not like the other two. According to Schliemann, “the mask covering the face of one of the deceased, with his head facing east, was made of thicker gold. The facial features are different. The wrinkles around the large mouth with narrow lips show that he was an elderly man. He has a high forehead and large eyes. The eyes are open, there are no eyelashes or eyebrows. Unfortunately, the nose on the mask was flattened by a stone.”

Under the influence of myths, Schliemann had a different idea of ​​Homer's heroes. Those he found here were ordinary people, without any divine radiance that was attributed to Agamemnon and his entourage. Idealized heroes were not hidden behind the masks found - these were mere mortals who looked different"(VAN, pp. 496-498). From this remark by Philip Vandenberg it can be understood that the images found did not correspond to the mythological heroes. But were they really masks of the very faces that stood before Schliemann’s gaze? Why did he decide that the third mask, the mask of an elderly man, was a portrait of Agamemnon?

But Vandenberg did not decide so, for he described the discovery of the last mask in the next chapter. " In excitement, Schliemann knelt before the remains of the tall man. The earth pressing from above flattened the skeleton by 3-4 centimeters. But all the features could be recognized. Only the skull protruded powerfully from the ground, like a stone. He was covered with a golden mask, thick and skillfully made. And it was preserved better than all the others. Henry called Sophia for help, and together they tried to cleanse her. Having finished his work, Schliemann sat staring at the mask and could not utter a word.

- We... - Sophia began slowly after some time, - we are thinking about the same thing...

Heinrich looked at her:

- What are you thinking about, Sofidon?

- About the fact that we have just now found Agamemnon. This is Agamemnon!

Another gold mask found during excavations in Mycenae

During excavations in 1874 at the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Mycenae, the famous amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered several burial grounds with human remains and gold jewelry and weapons lying next to them. But his most important find was a unique hammered gold mask, which he mistook for the death mask of King Agamemnon, leader of the Greek army in the Trojan War.

It is known from history that Agamemnon was a Mycenaean king, and in the ancient Greek epic - Homer's famous Iliad - he became one of the main characters, distinguished by his courage and glorifying himself with many exploits.

The reason for the Trojan War was the abduction by Paris of the beautiful Helen, the wife of King Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon. And then Menelaus, together with Agamemnon, persuaded the Greek kings to participate in the campaign against the Trojans. The army was led by Agamemnon. The Trojans were defeated, but fate turned away from the hero. His wife Clytemnestra was not waiting for her husband, moreover, she planned to kill him, since she had a lover, Aegisthus. They managed to fulfill their plan, and Agamemnon was killed. His sad fate served as a theme for many ancient tragedies.

The city of Mycenae, ruled by Agamemnon, was the center of a great civilization that lasted about 500 years, from 1600 to 1100 BC. Traces of it - many pottery pieces - have been found in southern Italy, Egypt, Cyprus, Syria and Palestine.

Schliemann’s confidence that he had discovered the mask of the Mycenaean king Agamemnon was based precisely on Homer’s tale in the Iliad about the Trojan War and on the works of the Greek geographer Pausanias, who lived in the 2nd century AD.

Pausanias, for example, argued that Agamemnon was buried in the city itself, and his murderers, his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, were buried outside the city wall as unworthy people.

Schliemann, when starting excavations in Mycenae, was guided precisely by these data; he was confident that inside the city walls he would be able to find the remains of the ancient Greek heroes that Homer spoke about. And his instincts did not deceive him - inside the city walls, in several open graves, he found golden masks. The total weight of these gold items was 14 kg, but not all of them were well preserved. The most valuable was the one that Schliemann called “the mask of Agamemnon.”

Modern archaeologists do not agree with Schliemann on everything. They determined the age of the cemetery at Mycenae, discovered by Schliemann, to be 1600 years old. The Trojan War, which Homer wrote about, if it was not a figment of his imagination, took place around 1200 BC. Consequently, the gold chased mask found by Schliemann could not have belonged to the king of Mycenae, Agamemnon.

But in Schliemann's time this issue was not discussed. Schliemann was too much of an authority in archeology, and no one objected to him. The archaeologist himself did not even admit the thought that he had found something else. He really liked his own version and did not take any others into account. From that time on, the name “mask of Agamemnon” was assigned to the golden mask he found.

Thanks to the dedication of archaeologists, who are ready to give up comfort for a while in order to search for ancient artifacts, today we know for sure that, for example, Troy is not a fiction of Homer, as was long believed. The excavations of Schliemann, an amateur archaeologist, not only confirmed the story of the Trojan War, but also revealed to the world the treasures of the ancient Mycenaean civilization. Among these archaeological finds was a gold mask, often called the mask of Agamemnon.

Homer's Iliad

We know little about the creator of one of the oldest literary works - Homer. No one knows either the exact date of his birth or the place of his birth. Until the 70s of the 19th century, it was believed that the events described by Homer in the Odyssey and the Iliad were nothing more than part of ancient Greek mythology, because along with people, gods and demigods participate in the epics.

However, Troy, and then Mycenae, prompted scholars to take a new look at Homer's works. In particular, the Iliad tells about the events of the Trojan War, the historicity of which no one doubts today. The Greek army was commanded by Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. At that time, this city was the most significant in the south of the Balkan Peninsula.

In the Iliad, Agamemnon appears as a valiant warrior, but his shortcomings - intransigence and arrogance - later brought many disasters to the Greek army. How the life of the Mycenaean king ended, the Iliad is silent, however, later epic works of the Greeks tell about it. Interest in them was revived with renewed vigor after the mask of Agamemnon was discovered as a result of excavations of ancient Mycenae.

Myths and reality

Other ancient authors also wrote about the Mycenaean king and the tragic fate of his family: Stesichorus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, etc. Documentary evidence of his existence has not yet been found, therefore Agamemnon in history is considered a mythical figure, although it is believed that he had the prototype is the Greek king Akagamunas, reported by Hittite sources of the 14th century. BC. Thus, the golden mask found in the 19th century could not possibly belong to the legendary Mycenaean king.

According to Greek mythology, Agamemnon, after killing his father, the king of Mycenae, fled with his brother to Aetolia. The ruler of Sparta came to their aid and helped them return to their hometown. When Agamemnon established himself in Mycenae, he expanded the boundaries of his possessions, becoming a powerful king. He later married the daughter of the king of Sparta, Clytemnestra, who bore him a son, Orestes, and three daughters.

An unfading memory

After the end of the Trojan War, Agamemnon returned to Mycenae with rich booty. What was his future fate? There are several versions set out in Greek myths. According to one of them, he fell at the hands of his cousin Aegisthus, who seduced Agamemnon’s wife. According to another, he was killed by Clytemnestra herself, who did not forgive him for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis. In any case, death awaited Agamemnon in Mycenae.

The plot in which evil fate haunts the family of the Mycenaean king formed the basis not only of ancient tragedies. It was also developed in the works of later authors, for example, the German playwright and poet of the 16th century. Sachs G., founder of the Italian tragedy Alfieri V. (XVIII century).

The murder of the ruler of Mycenae again attracted the attention of playwrights when Schliemann G. discovered the royal tombs. Among the ancient artifacts was, as the archaeologist believed, a mask of Agamemnon. After this discovery, the death of the king was played out in almost three dozen plays and several operas.

Archaeological expedition

One hundred and fifty years ago, scholars were skeptical about the historicity of Homer's writings. In contrast, the German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann believed that the great Greek was not mistaken and that Troy really existed. Based on the epic of Homer and the notes of Pausanias, a Greek geographer who visited Asia Minor in the 2nd century AD, he went in search of the disappeared city.

No one could have imagined that in 1873 he would actually be able to find ancient Troy. Encouraged by the success, three years later Schliemann began excavations at Mycenae in Greece. Much of what we know today about the Mycenaean civilization is the merit of this enthusiastic archaeologist. The finds he made confirmed Homer's message about the extraordinary wealth of the kings of Mycenae.

The mask of Agamemnon alone made a huge impression on the scientific world of the 19th century, and it was not the only gold object discovered by Schliemann’s expedition. Excavations began in August 1876 and continued until the end of the year, but already in September it became obvious that archaeologists had found a civilization that flourished here in the 2nd millennium BC.

Royal Tombs

Despite the fact that the artifacts discovered were more magnificent than those he was able to excavate in Troy, Schliemann was dissatisfied. Obsessed with the idea of ​​finding the tomb of Agamemnon, which many ancient Greek authors wrote about, he continued to work, despite the difficulties.

In the end, Schliemann excavated where the golden mask of King Agamemnon was found. Five of them were located inside the fortress and were shaft graves, and four later ones were located outside the fortress walls. The burials turned out to be untouched, so all the funeral decorations, and there were a lot of them, were preserved.

Schliemann had no doubt that in front of him was the tomb of Agamemnon and his comrades, killed by Clytamestra and her lover Aegisthus. The golden funerary mask he found in one of the tombs is known today as the mask of King Agamemnon.

Ancient custom

Among different peoples, rituals associated with belief in the afterlife vary. Nevertheless, you can always find something in common in them. For example, the production of funeral masks was characteristic of the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, Indians, and the peoples of Siberia.

The golden mask of Agamemnon, found by Schliemann, indicates that the Mycenaeans also believed that the image of the deceased was very important for his well-being in the afterlife, even in the absence of a portrait likeness. Of course, these ritual objects were made from gold only for rulers; ordinary people were content with clay or wood.

Mysteries of ancient Mycenae: the mask of Agamemnon

More than a hundred years have passed since the discovery made by Heinrich Schliemann, but much still remains a mystery. What did the lions represent on the gate of the same name, what tools did the Mycenaeans use to build structures from Cyclopean stones, why the city was abandoned - these and other questions remain unanswered.

The mask also keeps its secret. The only thing that could be established with absolute accuracy was that it belonged to another person, since it was made 400 years before the Trojan War, of which the Mycenaean king was a contemporary. Scientists came to this conclusion after Schliemann’s death. The archaeologist himself never doubted that the artifact he found was nothing more than the mask of the legendary Agamemnon.