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Mycenaean civilization could be re-examined in light of a shocking discovery, which could help redraw the boundaries of Agamemnon's reign in the Late Bronze Age Peloponnese. A discovery that will confirm the story of Homer's Iliad.
It is the discovery of three swords, characteristic shapes of the Mycenaean palace producers, dating to the fourteenth century BC. or in the period of the full splendor of the Mycenaean palaces of Mycenae, Tiryns and Pylos. The artefacts were brought to light by the archaeologists of the University of Udine, coordinated by Elisabetta Borgna, last August, during the tenth annual excavation of the necropolis, in the western Peloponnese, where the Udine team has been collaborating since 2010 in a larger project of the Greek Ministry Culture.
Mycenaean civilization: shocking archaeological discovery in the Peloponnese
Adnkronos is responsible for this breakthrough. Found during the investigation of one of the apparently simpler and more modest graves, the swords probably belonged to warriors who lived in a community located in the mountainous foothills of eastern Achaia, from which they controlled the center of the Aegean, the coastal plain and its sea Corinth.
This year's discoveries add to those of previous ones, when the investigation of another tomb - tomb 6, much wider and deeper, in which rich ceramics, jewelry, as well as a deposit of bronze objects including a monumental spearhead, tentatively interpreted as the endowment of a officer, inspector or local governor – connected to the central authority of Mycenae.
The discovery confirms Homer's narration
Last August, archaeologists also conducted research in the ancient village discovered in 2015, a few hundred meters south of the necropolis, which was founded in the pre-Mycenaean era, at the beginning of the second millennium BC. This year, an imposing building with a central hearth type was revealed "mansion", characteristic of Mycenaean architecture.
In the research, the team of the University of Udine is invited to cooperate by the director of the museum of Aegis, Andreas Vordos, in the context of a major project of the Hellenic Archaeological Service for the Ministry of Culture in the archaeological area of the ancient city of Rypo.
Excavations that began in 2010 and focused since 2012 on burial contexts – a core of graves dug into the cohesive sand of a hill substrate and supported not only by the University of Udine, but by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Institute of Aegean Prehistory Philadelphia.
