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Mycenae

1,601 BCE – 1,101 BCE

Warrior kings behind cyclopean walls — and Homer's raw material

In depth

Linear B was deciphered in 1952 and turned out to be Greek — five hundred years older than anyone thought Greek writing could be. The tablets are not literature but inventories: so many sheep, so much oil, so many rowers. They give an unusually sober view of a world we otherwise know only through heroic poetry.

For children

The Mycenaeans built citadels with walls so thick that later Greeks believed giants had made them. They kept accounts on clay tablets and buried their kings in gold masks. Homer's stories of Troy are about this world.

Connects to

The Minoans on Crete2,001 BCE – 1,451 BCE
The Bronze Age collapse1,178 BCE
The Iliad and the Odyssey751 BCE

Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org