Hey #CLST6! For this #finallookcloser, I’ll be diving back into my #lookcloser8 on the tombs of the Mycenaean elite.
#lookcloser10

*note: I am no longer exploring this topic for my #project4, but in my initial research for it, I found some pretty cool and interesting info that I’ll be exploring here https://twitter.com/KlaraCLST6/status/1325680261200277505

As we learned from Dibble (a), and as I covered in #lookcloser8, these elite graves held immense amounts of wealth in gold grave goods, displaying a Myceneaen focus on legacies in status, wealth, power and war.

Looking into the grave circles at the Citadel of Mycenae, I was really interested in the Mask of Agamemnon, an artifact that is quite famous in many areas outside of archaeology.

The excavator, Heinrich Schliemann, names this mask based on his association of Mycenae with Homer’s tales, but not actual evidence.(b) Schliemann is rumored to have fabricated a bit more than the mask’s name, and the authenticity of the mask is a topic of controversy.

According to Graziadio and Pezzi (c), much of Schliemann’s personal notes and accounts of the graves are considered fraudulent, displaying too much of his own desires and personality (similar to the influence of Schliemann’s obsession with Homer on the mask).

The authenticity of the mask is now known (c), but the differences between Agamemnon’s and the other burial masks is significant in the debate, and is supported by Schliemann’s ‘enrichments’ to his accounts (c).

(a)Flint Dibble's video lecture "Elite Mycenean Tombs"
(b) Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris "The "Palace" and Grave Circle A, Mycenae, c. 1600-1100 B.C.E.”

(c) Giampaolo Graziadio and Elisabetta Pezzi, “Schliemann and the so-called ‘Agamemnon’s mask’ pg 116-118