Mycenaean Art and Craftsmanship

In the Late Bronze Age, Mycenaean communities in southern Greece and the Aegean made images and objects for tombs, palaces, shrines and administration. Mycenae stood in the northeastern Peloponnese; Pylos lay in the southwest of the same peninsula. From about 1700 to 1050 BCE, artisans worked in many media, including the gold and silver vessels of Mycenae’s shaft graves, palace wall paintings and fired-clay figures in ritual buildings. At Knossos on Crete, scribes used Linear B, an early Greek writing system, during a phase around 1450–1200 BCE. Together these Mycenaean arts show how making served distinct settings and connected mainland communities with wider Aegean practice.

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Gold and vessels in the shaft graves

At Mycenae, the Shaft Graves of Grave Circles A and B were used in the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries BCE. These deep tombs were reopened for successive burials. When a new person was placed inside, earlier remains could be moved aside; bodies were sometimes wrapped in shrouds decorated with small pieces of gold foil sewn on through holes in the sheet. Gold masks accompanied several other burials.

The vessels buried with the dead show how local work met Aegean connections. The assemblage included gold, silver and bronze, with two-handled goblets alongside forms familiar from Minoan Crete, an earlier palace culture on the island. Some gold vessels show traits of local craftsmanship, while many silver pieces reflect Cretan techniques: they may have been imported or made by Cretan craftspeople for mainland patrons at Mycenae. The grave goods included pottery as well as metalwork, connecting different crafts within the same burial settings.

Painting designed for palace rooms

These wall paintings, often called frescoes, put pigment on plastered walls. At Pylos, palace murals belong mainly to about 1250–1200 BCE. Smaller scenes show hunting, battle or preparation for battle, offerings and feasting; life-size figures appear in processions. These processions decorated the porch and vestibule, the entry room before the throne room. Large lions and wingless griffins appear in rooms with large ceremonial hearths. A griffin is a mythical creature with a lion’s body and a bird’s head; at Pylos, the painted griffins lacked wings. The placement tied particular images to important rooms and approaches within the palace.

Ivory components and clay sealings

At Mycenae’s House with the Fresco, excavators found a small ivory lion, a carved human head and other objects in fill inside a stone-slab bench. The head has small holes through its neck and a larger opening running vertically through it; it may have been attached to a scepter or piece of furniture. The same bench fill held pottery, crushed lead vessels, a stone macehead and an ivory sword pommel, a striking group of crafted objects from a single deposit.

A different craft joined carved imagery to administration. At Thebes, a small clay lump was molded around a knotted string and impressed with a carved seal. These sealings helped authenticate or verify individual transactions involving animals destined for ritual slaughter and shared ceremonial meals, linking a crafted mark to a specific transfer of goods within palace records.

Terracotta figures and worship

Mycenae’s Cult Centre was a group of ritual buildings used in the thirteenth century BCE. Its large fired-clay figures stood in annexes and rooms with platforms and offering equipment. Some raise their arms; others hold objects, including a hammer-axe. Makers built the bodies from coils of clay and shaped the heads on a potter’s wheel. Small holes may have helped gases escape during firing and could also have held added ornaments or clothing.

Images after the palaces

Palatial destruction around 1200 BCE did not end Mycenaean image-making. A large twelfth-century BCE vessel found at Mycenae, the Warrior Krater, has warriors marching on one side and fighting on the other. A krater was a large bowl for mixing wine and water. The National Archaeological Museum’s Warrior Krater was found in fragments in a house on the citadel; the museum considers it either part of a household drinking set or a possible grave marker after the building had been abandoned.