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Ancient Mediterranean + Europe
Course: Ancient Mediterranean + Europe > Unit 5
Lesson 4: MycenaeanThe Treasury of Atreus
Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Beth Harris. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- How were those large stones moved into place, so high above the door and inside the dome?(7 votes)
- I do not think we have discovered how they did it actually(2 votes)
- How high is the door? How high is the peak of the roof compared to the Pantheon? Also, how large would the average stone used be?(6 votes)
- Wikipedia says, "interior height of 13.5m and a diameter of 14.5m,"(2 votes)
- Was the structure built on flat ground and later covered with earth?.....or was it actually cut and excavated into the side of an existing hill..........either way it is truly mind blowing!(6 votes)
- They keep talking about how heavy the stones are. How did they build up these walls without the technology or machinery we have today? Surely humans couldn't have lifted these stones. Also, how did they get the stones to stay together? Did they use a cement-like substance?(3 votes)
- There are a number of different approaches that have been used over the years to rise large stones and set them in place in these types of structures. One of them is by building a wooden platform of logs and guiding the stones in place then removing the logs. Though a different region, the making of stonehenge shows a similar process here:
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/stonehenge/discover/building-stonehenge/(4 votes)
- How do you know that this is really the Tomb of Agamemnon?(1 vote)
- From the author:Its not his tomb. This was stated in the video.(2 votes)
- Was this made for one person or more? Do we know some of the things that used to sit in that tomb?(1 vote)
- There's an Aegean and Ancient Greece set of videos. What is the difference when Aegean art is also in Greece?(1 vote)
- The ancient Aegean cultures, Minoan, Cycladic, and Mycenaean all came before ancient Greece.(1 vote)
- Does the Greek govt. have possession of most all items discovered at Mycenae ?(1 vote)
- Yes. Most of them are at the Archaeological Museum in Athens, but some are in the museum at Mycenae itself. However, it's impossible to know how much has been lost to looters and grave robbers in the past 3000 years.(1 vote)
- They said that the stones were built perfectly shaped squares but how did they cut them or carve then down?(1 vote)
- The similarities are so comparable to Peruvian stone architecture, although somewhat less refined when compared to the finest stonework in Peru, down to the the same trapezoidal doors. What do we know about the movement of these people? Has there been any DNA studies to track where the ancestors of these great builders are extant and to which countries?(0 votes)
- I agree that there are many similarities between civilizations supposedly long seperated. Mostly in myths and legends, but also in architecture: Door shapes as you mentioned, and also pyramids. Egyptian pyramids, Babalonian ziggurats, Mayan/Aztec temples, all of these are incredibly similar in design and proportion.(1 vote)
Video transcript
(piano music) Voiceover: Just down the hill from Mycenae the great Citadel of the Mycenaeans. The Bronze Age Greek mainland people that traded as far away as Italy and north Africa. There is, in a hill, an enormous tomb which is sometimes known as the Treasury of Atreus. Voiceover: Or the tomb of Agamemnon. Voiceover: The type of
tomb that we're looking at is called a tholos or a beehive tomb. And this is one of two
types of tombs at Mycenae. These are the larger of the two types. The other are shaft graves
within a larger circle. But the tholos are truly monumental and this is the largest of them all. Voiceover: And these date to a slightly later period of Mycenaean history and they are clearly expressions of power the ruling elite
were buried in tholos tombs. Voiceover: We're going
to walk in, walking along a passageway that's built into the side of the hill with huge blocks of stone that have been cut quite finely and fit together very closely. Some of the stones are
just of such a large scale that it's hard to imagine people being able to move them. Voiceover: Right now it looks very spare but this had carvings ... Voiceover: It may have
had relief sculpture. And there was also finer kinds of more decorative stone. Okay, I can't wait. Let's go in. We're now entering the dromos which is the entrance pathway. (stones crunching underfoot) Voiceover: The walls on
either side rise above us giving an unmistakable impression of a grand monumental space. Voiceover: It's ceremonial and it feels as if we are entering the earth. There's a slight grade upward. Voiceover: The entranceway,
it tapers inward as it moves up. Look at that deep and heavy lintel stone that moves back through that doorway. Voiceover: It's made out of two pieces and we estimate that it
weighs over 100 tons. Voiceover: So the kind of
vaulting that we see above the lintel is called corbeling. Where the stones are cut and placed so that each one, as it moves
up, moves slightly inward, creating this triangular
space above the lintel known as the relieving triangle. The Lion Gate in Mycenae,
that space is filled with a relief sculpture. Voiceover: We don't think
this was, but again, there were complex stones
that would have faced this rougher masonry and
we know that at least some of it was imported from Egypt. Voiceover: Right. There were columns on either side that were decorated. Some of these are located now in the Archaeological Museum in Athens. Voiceover: And there were
very complex patterns. There were zig-zags,
there were spirals ... Voiceover: Chevrons. Voiceover: It was a really ornate space. An enormous amount of treasure was expended to make this. Voiceover: And we know
that the Mycenaean people buried considerable
treasure with their dead. These tombs, though, have been robbed. Voiceover: We're now at the threshold and we can feel the coolness
of the interior space. It's empty, it's dark, and it's massive. Voiceover: And it's long. This entryway is 10 or 15 feet deep. Voiceover: As we enter into
the domical space itself, we are in a round chamber, which beside the entranceway and the
actual burial chamber to the right, is completely circular. Some architectural
historians have hypothesized that there may have been carved bulls around the bottom, but it rises to an
enormous height above us. Voiceover: So this is a
real engineering achievement to create a domical-vaulted space this high and this wide. This is not Post and Lintel archetecture but the creating of round, arched spaces. Voiceover: In fact,
this will be the largest domical space until the Pantheon in Rome. Voiceover: More than 1,000 years later. Voiceover: And it it is using
that corbeling technique. So each of these stones pushes inward at ever-so-slightly and is cut at an angle so that you have this smooth transition up to the apex with a cap stone. The width and height of
the space are almost equal. and so there really is a
sense of perfection here. A sense of the ideal. Voiceover: It's obvious
that this circular space, this enormous vault has symbolic meaning for the powerful person
who is buried here. (piano music)