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Monday, June 11, 2012

So was the Trojan war historical?

The Mask of Agamemnon is an artifact discovered in Mycenae in 1876 by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann. This mask is made of gold and is a funeral mask found over the face of a dead body in a burial place at Mycenae. Schliemann thought that the body and the mask are of the legendary King Agamemnon.
According to the Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus of Mycenae and Queen Aerope. He was the leader of the Greeks during the Trojan War, as Mycenae was the most powerful Greek town that time. He was also the brother of Menelaus and the husband of Clytemnestra. Agamemnon had three daughters and one son. One of his daughters, Iphigenia, was sacrificed to goddess Artemis so that the wind blows and the Greek ships could set sail to Troy. When Agamemnon returned to his kingdom after the end of the Trojan War, he was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, in revenge for the sacrifice of Iphigenia.

Of all the masks discovered at the site, the Mask of Agamemnon from grave V is the most famous. "I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon," Schliemann is said to have telegrammed a Greek newspaper on first seeing the mask. In fact, he himself never identified it as belonging to Agamemnon, but since it was the finest of the specimens it became associated with the hero. Nor did Schliemann ever note in writing the obvious stylistic differences--facial hair, ears cut out from the body of the mask--that set it apart from the others. In any case, the masks and gold jewelry Schliemann found at Mycenae brought him world fame; he was henceforth known as the Father of Mycenaean Archaeology.


 
In the ancient world it was the almost uniform belief
that the Trojan War was an historical event...But then,
as now, everyone knew there was no primary source
for the war; equally they knew that it had happened!

1 comment:

  1. Very Interesting Story,so in hindsight you are saying the story was invented, basically taken out of context, by the greek news paper,which lead to a whole new set of circumstances, surrounding the mask, which did not come from Heinrich Schliemann, the truth seem to actually be twisted, in to a lie, which became the uniform way of the people looking at this story from the newspaper, perspective, rather than the actual source, the story came from, and the illusion, was created, Very Interesting, Thanks For Sharing, I Love How The Truth, Keep Finding It's Way, Love You

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