Photos-Mycenae! (Tiryns and Lerna)

Our first view of Mycenae.

What a view!

The secret cistern. We were all given candles and we climbed down inside. There were many, many stairs leading down to a basin from which the water was taken. I wondered to myself, "How did they manage to take large amounts of water from here? It's too cramped for a person to carry very much water at once." Then I realized, "The elite didn't care. I'm sure some poor (literally) servant was assigned this duty...for life."

The biggest tholos tomb. Mycenae had other tombs, but none compared to this magnitude. An example of cyclopean architecture: here is a single block (with me to scale) laid as part of the wall. ONE PIECE OF ROCK!

From inside the tholos tomb, one can see the largest single cut stone block in the Aegean. It is the lintel for the doorway and weighs...120 tons. Although my photo is a bit dusty, maybe you can see that the lintel extends to the edges of the picture. You can certainly see the underside of it.

Tiryns-A Mycenaean city that acted as a port to Mycenae proper. I don't have a very good photo, so you'll just have to trust me that the entryway to this citadel was monumental in size.

Lerna-The largest "town" in the Aegean during its time. Here is the House of Tiles, the largest building in the Aegean at that time. Compare that to this domestic house, measuring about 8x10 feet. One of the amazing features of this site (other than the orange farmers reclaiming over half of it) is the spectacular preservation of early Aegean mudbrick. Miraculously, it was preserved and has been analyzed to determine what materials were used to create it. (Thank you Prof. Diamant for scale)