The Mycenaeans

The Mycenaean World was the world of the heroes who conquered Troy. Those heroes stood at the heart of Greek self-perception for centuries after the fall of their civilization. Since the rediscovery of the remains of the civilization of Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s, knowledge of these Greeks of the bronze age has increased steadily. Stepping into the place of the collapsed civilization of Minoan Crete and the Peloponnese (the subject of Castleden's earlier bestselling study, Minoans), the Mycenaeans dominated mainland Greece and the Greek islands from about 1600 to 1200BC. Their exploits became the subject of the legends that were immortalized by Homer.

List of illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgements and preface	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Cities and kingdoms	p. 6
Fragmentation	p. 6
Sandy Pylos and Messenia	p. 23
The roads	p. 29
Mycenae and the Argolid	p. 37
The 'palace' at Mycenae	p. 42
The cities of the Argive Plain	p. 48
The kingdoms of the north	p. 54
The people	p. 66
Physical characteristics	p. 66
Clothing and jewellery	p. 70
The nature of Mycenaean society	p. 78
Language - Linear B	p. 85
Tombs of the kings	p. 91
Everyday life in the countryside	p. 104
A rural economy	p. 104
Stock-rearing	p. 108
Hunting	p. 111
Everyday life in the towns	p. 114
Houses	p. 114
Furniture	p. 116
Metalwork and armour	p. 118
Arts and crafts	p. 125
The 'palaces'	p. 140
Religion	p. 141
Problems in interpretation	p. 141
Shrines	p. 144
Ceremonies	p. 151
Rediscovering the temples	p. 161
A Mycenaean sea-empire?	p. 183
Long-distance trade routes	p. 183
Ships and ports	p. 186
Reaching out	p. 188
The collapse of the Minoan sea-empire	p. 191
The Trojan War	p. 197
Homer's view of the war	p. 197
Greeks and Trojans according to the Hittite texts	p. 201
Mycenaeans and Egyptians	p. 212
The Trojan War: a twenty-first-century reconstruction	p. 213
The fall of Mycenae	p. 218
And live in song for generations	p. 226
The Mycenaean personality	p. 226
What was the Mycenaean achievement?	p. 228
The Mycenaean inheritance	p. 230
Anatolian chronology	p. 238
The kings of Mycenae	p. 239
The kings of Orchomenos	p. 240
King list for Argos	p. 241
The Epic Cycle	p. 242
Notes	p. 249
Bibliography	p. 264
Index	p. 274
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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