City of the Peloponnese perched on a rock acropolis dominating the plain of Argolide, Mycènes gave its name to the brilliant civilization which Greece with the Bronze Age knew.

Mycenaean called “the Achaens” by Homère in Iliade are, at the origin, of the Indo-European tribes which invade the peninsula of Balkans towards 2000 av. J. - C. warlike and feudal People, they settle in Argos, Mycènes, and Tirynthe where they build strengthened enclosures.

Through Cyclades, the Mycenaean ones discover towards 1600 av. J. - C. the Minoan culture, as the lost property office in the burials to them known as “tombs testify to the circle B”, dug in the rock outside the walls of Mycènes. The Mycenaean ones are not long in launching maritime forwardings against the Cretan ones and it is with them that one allots towards 1400/1450 the disappearance of Minoan civilization. Nevertheless, it is probable that the great volcanic eruption which devastates at the same time the island of Santorin also had to contribute to this decline. With the ruin of Cretan civilization and the rise of Mycenaean, the center of activities of the Aegean Sea moves towards the palates of continental Greece.  
 

The writing
To establish their inventories and to hold their accountancy, the Mycenaean kings make use of a called syllabic writing “linear B”. Many clay shelves using this language were found in a store of the palate of Pylos, right before the First World War; others were put at the day at Cnossos, Mycènes, Tirynthe and Thèbes. This writing, deciphered in 1953 by the British Michael Ventris, is in fact the old shape of the Greek.  

A city thrives

Mycenes, “especially rich in gold” according to Homère, is an economic and artistic center very active. Heinrich Schliemann put at the day, in 1876, in a set of tombs called “to pit” (“tombs of the circle has”), built by the Mycenaean lords inside the walls, an archaeological treasure composed of bracelets and gold masks, tables of play out of ivory, swords encrusted and other invaluable objects; never in the Aegean era one had not discovered as many richnesses.  

An active craft industry
The richness of Mycènes also comes from the work of its farmers and its craftsmen, as abundance testifies some to their productions. The archeologists found potteries Mycenaean in Egypt, in many localities of the Syrian coast, in the south of Italy, in Sicily, and of the objects out of metal in places as far away from Greece as Wessex, in England. The Mycenaean tombs, for their part, delivered important quantities of amber, which was conveyed, through the Central Europe, of the littoral of the Baltic to the Adriatic.

People of warriors

The prosperity of Mycenaean Greece as undoubtedly rests on the raids as carry out the Mycenaean warriors abroad. One of these forwardings, directed against the fortress of Troy, will constitute the screen of the Homeric poems. It is difficult to trust the accounts - paid centuries later - of the heroes of the Trojan time to obtain precise information over the Mycenaean time, but the archaeological data show that the Mycenaean warriors were well equipped out of weapons, armours and the tanks. According to certain Hittite chronicles of Minor Asia, the Aegean ones would have often come to disturb the life of the coastal regions.

Brilliant architectural achievements

After 1440, the two great types of architectural achievements of Mycenaean civilization are the palates and the tholoï, tombs with cupola built out of squared stones and which one reaches by a corridor. Most famous of them, known as “treasure of Atrée”, is in Mycènes. The Greek palates, as for them, are organized - contrary to the Cretan buildings - around a “mégaron”, large part with central hearth comprising a porch with colonnade. This provision is undoubtedly at the origin of the plan of the Greek temple.

End of Mycenaean civilization

After 1300, the Mycenaean power knows a certain decline. The palate of Pylos, destroyed before the year 1200, will never be rebuilt. The lords of Mycènes, Athens and other cities consolidate in haste their enclosures and build secrete ways to reach the sources of drinking water. One even tries to strengthen the isthmus of Corinth, but this defense appears vain, because Mycènes falls around 1150. The complex writing and arts which had developed in the orbit of the Mycenaean palates disappear. Greece depopulates itself: the men hide in the villages of mountain or nomadisent themselves; only some villages remain inhabited.  

According to the most probable assumption, this collapse would be explained by a succession of incursions and the forwardings carried out by the cruel people hellénophones which lived on the Balkan fringe of the Mycenaean world. These invaders, whom one will call later the Dorian ones, push back part of Mycenaean towards the coasts of Asia Mineure and to Cyprus. They occupy then most of Crete and close islands, gaining even Rhodos and the south-east of Asia Mineure.  

The Mycenaean heritage
With the end of the world Mycenaean, Greece falls down in a state of cruelty close to that which she had known around the year 2000 av. J. - C. But, she does not lose therefore all the asset of this civilization. Ceramics, for example, after one period of decline, evolves of the Mycenaean style to thegeometrical one which announces traditional Greek art. The shelves in linear B teach us that the Mycenaean time dedicated already a worship with the principal gods who will form the Greek Pantheon: Poséidon, Dionysos or Athéna. They also mention slaves of the name of Hector, like the character of Iliade, but the epic tradition is probably still only with its first stammerings.  

Thus, the upheavals which intervene at the end of recent bronze make disappear from Greece the most worked out forms of artistic expression, but there remains a base on which the Greeks will build their culture: without Mycenaean civilization, the traditional Greek world would probably never have been born.