Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization, known contemporarily as Ahhiyawa) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC.[1] It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland Greece with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art, and writing system.[2][3] The Mycenaeans were mainland Greek peoples who were likely stimulated by their contact with insular Minoan Crete and other Mediterranean cultures to develop a more sophisticated sociopolitical culture of their own.[4] The most prominent site was Mycenae, after which the culture of this era is named. Other centers of power that emerged included Pylos, Tiryns, and Midea in the Peloponnese, Orchomenos, Thebes, and Athens in Central Greece, and Iolcos in Thessaly. Mycenaean settlements also appeared in Epirus,[5] Macedonia,[6] on islands in the Aegean Sea,[7] on the south-west coast of Asia Minor, [7] and on Cyprus,[8] while Mycenaean-influenced settlements appeared in the Levant[9] and Italy.[10]
The Mycenaean Greeks introduced several innovations in the fields of engineering, architecture and military infrastructure, while trade over vast areas of the Mediterranean was essential for the Mycenaean economy. Their syllabic script, Linear B, offers the first written records of the Greek language, and their religion already included several deities that can also be found in the Olympic pantheon. Mycenaean Greece was dominated by a warrior elite society and consisted of a network of palace-centered states that developed rigid hierarchical, political, social, and economic systems. At the head of this society was the king, known as a wanax.
Mycenaean Greece perished with the collapse of Bronze Age culture in the eastern Mediterranean, to be followed by the Greek Dark Ages, a recordless transitional period leading to Archaic Greece where significant shifts occurred from palace-centralized to decentralized forms of socio-economic organization (including the extensive use of iron).[11] Various theories have been proposed for the end of this civilization, among them the Dorian invasion or activities connected to the "Sea Peoples". Additional theories such as natural disasters and climatic changes have also been suggested. The Mycenaean period became the historical setting of much ancient Greek literature and mythology, including the Trojan Epic Cycle.[12]
^Knodell 2021, Table 1, pp. 7, 65.
^Lazaridis et al. 2017, Supplementary Information: pp. 2–3
^Fields 2004, pp. 10–11.
^"Mycenaean Civilization". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 29 July 2021.
^Hammond 1976, p. 139: "Moreover, in this area a small tholos-tomb with Mycenaean pottery of III B style and a Mycenaean acropolis have been reported at Kiperi near Parga, and another Mycenaean acropolis lay above the Oracle of the Dead on the hill called Xylokastro"; Tandy 2001, p. xii (Fig. 1); p. 2: "The strongest evidence for Mycenaean presence in Epirus is found in the coastal zone of the lower Acheron River, which in antiquity emptied into a bay on the Ionian coast known from ancient sources as Glykys Limin (Figure 2-A)."
^Hatzopoulos 2011, p. 53: "There is one illusion that ought to be first dispelled—that Mt Olympus and the Kambounian mountains constituted an impassable barrier between Thessaly and Macedonia. In fact recent archaeological discoveries have established that already in the second millennium bc the Mycenaean world extended well beyond Thessaly and included at least the southern part of Macedonia. Abundant Mycenaean pottery, both imported and locally produced, weapons, pins, brooches and syllabic script have been found in tombs of Orestis, Elimeia and Pieria"; Borza 1992, p. 64: "The existence of a Late Bronze Age Mycenaean settlement in the Petra not only confirms its importance as a route from an early period, but also extends the limits of Mycenaean settlement to the Macedonian frontier."
^ abCastleden 2005, p. 192.
^van Wijngaarden 2002, Part III: Cyprus, pp. 125–202.
^van Wijngaarden 2002, Part II: The Levant, pp. 31–124; Bietak & Czerny 2007, Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy, "Mycenaeans and Philistines in the Levant", pp. 501–629.
^Peruzzi 1980; van Wijngaarden 2002, Part IV: The Central Mediterranean, pp. 203–260.
^Morris 1996, "Greece: Dark Age Greece", pp. 253–256.
^The extent to which Homer attempted to or succeeded in recreating a "Mycenaean" setting is examined in Moses I. Finley, The World of Odysseus, 1954.
MycenaeanGreece (or the Mycenaean civilization, known contemporarily as Ahhiyawa) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece, spanning the...
other symbols. MycenaeanGreek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, on the Greek mainland and Crete in MycenaeanGreece (16th to 12th...
The military nature of MycenaeanGreece (c. 1600–1100 BC) in the Late Bronze Age is evident by the numerous weapons unearthed, warrior and combat representations...
in MycenaeanGreek, written in Linear B. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols. Many of the Greek deities...
The religious element is difficult to identify in MycenaeanGreece (c. 1600–1100 BC), especially as regards archaeological sites, where it remains very...
depopulation. In Greece, the Linear B script used by Mycenaean bureaucrats to write the Greek language ceased to be used, and the Greek alphabet did not...
period. Three centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse of MycenaeanGreece, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the...
Peloponnese in GreeceMycenaeanGreece, the Greek-speaking regions of the Aegean Sea as of the Late Bronze Age Mycenaean language, an ancient form of Greek Helladic...
under the cultural and perhaps political domination of the mainland MycenaeanGreeks, forming a hybrid culture which lasted until around 1100 BC. Minoan...
fall of the MycenaeanGreek palace culture (c. 1750 – c. 1050 BC) in the Late Bronze Age collapse. Ancient Greece usually encompasses Greek antiquity,...
MycenaeanGreece. For later times see Roman Greece, Byzantine Empire and Ottoman Greece. For modern Greece after 1820, see Timeline of modern Greek history...
peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age. MycenaeanGreek: the language of the Mycenaean civilization. It is recorded in the Linear B script...
tombs was a widespread phenomenon with prominent examples found in MycenaeanGreece; in Bronze Age China; and in Mesoamerican Western Mexico. In the Neolithic...
Egyptian winemaking methods, an influence most likely imparted to MycenaeanGreece. The Minoan palaces had their associated vineyards, as Spyridon Marinatos...
literary Greek. Likewise, Modern Greek is divided into several dialects, most derived from Koine Greek. The earliest known Greek dialect is MycenaeanGreek, the...
Greece in the Roman era describes the Roman conquest of the territory of the modern nation-state of Greece as well as that of the Greek people and the...
the other being basileus, and is inherited from MycenaeanGreece. It is notably used in Homeric Greek, e.g. for Agamemnon. The feminine form is anassa...
including Attis, Adonis, and Osiris, and in Minoan Crete. In a Linear B MycenaeanGreek inscription on a tablet found at Pylos dated 1400–1200 BC, John Chadwick...
earliest attestation is the MycenaeanGreek dative form 𐀇𐀺𐀝𐀰 (di-wo-nu-so), featured on two tablets that had been found at Mycenaean Pylos and dated to the...
some of the oldest water wells in the world. Cyprus was settled by MycenaeanGreeks in two waves in the 2nd millennium BC. As a strategic location in the...
is the MycenaeanGreek *hermāhās, written 𐀁𐀔𐁀 e-ma-a2 (e-ma-ha) in the Linear B syllabic script. Most scholars derive "Hermes" from Greek ἕρμα (herma)...
parts of southwest Anatolia. The period of Greek history from about 1600 BC to about 1100 BC is called Mycenaean in reference to Mycenae. At its peak in...
that was used for writing in MycenaeanGreek, the earliest attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries...
Poseidon Gods found in MycenaeanGreece; a table drawn up from Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, Documents in MycenaeanGreek second edition (Cambridge...
it is first attested in the Bronze Age as MycenaeanGreek. During the Archaic and Classical eras, Greek speakers wrote numerous texts in a variety of...
to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: MycenaeanGreek (c. 1400–1200 BC), Dark Ages (c. 1200–800 BC), the Archaic or Epic...
Hellenistic Greece is the historical period of the country following Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the annexation...
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