
The Mycenaeans A Civilization of Bronze Age Greece
The Mycenaeans are considered the earliest Greeks, and were a prosperous civilization of the Late Bronze Age on the Greek mainland. This video is an introduction into the history of the Mycenaean civilization, and takes you through the rise, fall and legacy of the first Greeks.
The great city of Mycenae was discovered by Heinrich Schliemann, who has a preoccupation for mythology, and believed he had found the home of the legendary Agamemnon. Schliemann went so far as to name a death mask, the mask of Agamemnon and a tholos or beehive tomb the Tomb of Agamemnon, even though it dated 400 years too early.
The Mycenaeans are best known through Greek Mythology and the Trojan war, known to us through Homer's Iliad. The legendary Greek heroes Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and Menelaus, king of Sparta were Mycenaeans, who led the Achaeans to the ten year Trojan war to retrieve the abducted Helen of Troy, Menelaus' wife. Agamemnon is known through multiple Greek tragedies including The Oresteia by Aeschylus and Iphigeneia at Aulis by Euripides.
This video will take you through the history and mythology of the Mycenaeans, and ask how much of the history of the Mycenaeans is really true?
