You are here: Home / History / Mycenaean Civilization

Mycenaean Civilization

27 June, 2008 By

The Mycenaean Civilization was an ancient culture which began to develop in the 16th century BC with the arrival of the Acheans in Greece.

By the end of the Minoan civilization Greece was invaded by one of the four Hellenic tribes, the Acheans, giving rise to the Mycenaean civilization, which flourished between 1600 BC and the collapse of their Bronze-Age civilization around 1100 BC. The collapse is commonly attributed to the Dorian invasion, although several other theories have been advanced as well (natural disasters, climate change).

The major Mycenaean city-sites were Mycenae and Tiryns in Argolis, Pylos in Messenia, Athens in Attica, Thebes and Orchomenos in Boeotia, and Iolkos in Thessaly. In Crete, Mycenaeans occupied the ruins of Knossos. In addition there were some sites of importance for cults, such as Lerna, typically in the form of house sanctuaries. Mycenaean settlement sites also appeared in Epirus, Macedonia, on islands in the Aegean, on the coast of Asia Minor, and then in Cyprus. Mycenaean artifacts with Linear B inscriptions have been also found as far away as Germany and Mycenaean swords as far away as Georgia.

Mycenaean civilization was dominated by a warrior aristocracy. Around 1400 BC, the Mycenaeans extended their control to Crete, center of the Minoan civilization, and adopted a form of the Minoan script called Linear A to write their early form of Greek.

Not only did the Mycenaeans defeat the Minoans, but according to legend they twice defeated Troy, a powerful city-state that rivaled Mycenae in power. Because the only evidence for them is the Iliad of Homer and other texts riddled with mythology, the existence of Troy and the Trojan War is uncertain. In 1876, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann uncovered ruins in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) that he claimed were those of Troy.

Mycenaean society appears to have been divided into two groups of free men: the king’s entourage, who conducted administrative duties at the palace, and the people, da-mo (demos), who lived at the commune level, and represented by craftsmen, farmers, and perhaps merchants, to name a few. As has been described above, these last were watched over by royal agents; the people were obliged to perform duties for and pay taxes to the palace. On a lower rung of the social ladder were found the slaves. These are recorded in the texts as working either for the palace or for specific deities.

The religious element is difficult to identify in Mycenaean civilization, especially as regards archaeological sites, where it remains problematic to pick out a place of worship with certainty. As for the texts, only a few lists of offerings give names of gods, and they teach us nothing about religious practices. The Mycenaean pantheon already included numerous divinities that can be found in Classical Greece. Poseidon seems to have occupied a place of privilege, notably in the texts of Knossos.

Around 1100 BC, the Mycenaean civilization collapsed. Numerous cities were sacked, and the region entered what historians see as a dark age with some Mycenaeans fleeing to Cyprus as well as other Greek islands and parts of Anatolia. During this period Greece experienced decreasing population and fell into illiteracy. Historians have traditionally blamed this decline on an invasion by another wave of Hellenic people, the Dorians.

Filed Under: History