The Tomb of Agamemnon (Wonders of the World) [Hardcover]

Cathy Gere (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wonders of the World | Publication Date: April 24, 2006

Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series (Part I and Part II)

Mycenae, the fabled city of Homer's King Agamemnon, still stands in a remote corner of mainland Greece. Revered in antiquity as the pagan world's most tangible connection to the heroes of the Trojan War, Mycenae leapt into the headlines in the late nineteenth century when Heinrich Schliemann announced that he had opened the Tomb of Agamemnon and found the body of the hero smothered in gold treasure. Now Mycenae is one of the most haunting and impressive archaeological sites in Europe, visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists every year.

From Homer to Himmler, from Thucydides to Freud, Mycenae has occupied a singular place in the western imagination. As the backdrop to one of the most famous military campaigns of all time, Agamemnon's city has served for generation after generation as a symbol of the human appetite for war. As an archaeological site, it has given its name to the splendors of one of Europe's earliest civilizations: the Mycenaean Age. In this book, historian of science Cathy Gere tells the story of these extraordinary ruins--from the Cult of the Hero that sprung up in the shadow of the great burned walls in the eighth century bc, to the time after Schliemann's excavations when the Homeric warriors were resurrected to play their part in the political tragedies of the twentieth century.

(20060220)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Heinrich Schliemann incorrectly identified in 1876 one of the shaft graves at Mycenae as the "tomb of Agamemnon," he revived a myth first created by the eighth-century B.C. inhabitants of the Argive plain who looked upon Mycenae's ruins as the place where Agamemnon gathered the Greek armies for an assault on Troy. It was not until the 20th century that archaeologists accurately dated the Mycenaean tombs to a period 300 to 400 years before any possible date of a Trojan War. This tangled history of remaking and unmaking the myths of Mycenae is the subject of Gere's fascinating book. It offers a compact and richly informative cultural history that ranges from Aeschylus's Oresteia and Pausanias's Description of Greece, a second-century A.D. travelogue, to the spectacular discoveries of Schliemann and the overturning of his conclusions by his more careful successors. Throughout, Mycenae emerges as a place "that seemed to belong to everyone except itself," serving the purposes of cultures far removed from its own. The arc is decidedly downward, as much of it involves the stripping away of Mycenae's affiliations with the Homeric epics. Gere concludes with an inspiring guide to the citadel of Mycenae and the Mycenaean treasures in Athens. Apart from an unnecessarily long detour into Schliemann's life, this book will be welcomed and consulted by all philhellenes. 24 halftones, 2 maps.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Agamemnon was the king of Mycenae and leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War, who was killed by his wife upon his return from Troy. In the late nineteenth century, archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann opened his tomb, believed to be 3,000 years old. Schliemann identified the body of Agamemnon, whom he said was buried with 16 other victims. The Greek Archaeological Society and the British School of Archaeology carried on where Schliemann had left off, clearing the acropolis, excavating the town outside the citadel walls, and analyzing the artifacts. They found that most of what Schliemann had claimed was false. But one thing is certain, Gere writes: the mask of Agamemnon is made from a sheet of pure gold that attracts tourists to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Gere traces the history of this archaeological site and finds that "progressively a less and less heroic picture of Mycenae has emerged in the years since 1945." This meticulously researched book, with 24 halftones, is a comprehensive work of scholarship that nevertheless will have nonscholarly appeal as well. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (April 24, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674021703
• ISBN-13: 978-0674021709
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,005,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Short History of Mycenae, July 2, 2008

By 

G. Poirier (Orleans, ON, Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Tomb of Agamemnon (Wonders of the World) (Hardcover)

The author of this fascinating book has produced a brief yet wide-ranging history of Mycenae. Throughout the ages, Homer's Iliad is shown to have had a tremendous influence on both ancient and more recent thought on the origin of the Mycenaean ruins and the legendary inhabitants. The influence of Heinrich Schliemann - his excavations, his findings and his interpretation of those findings - in more recent times plays an extremely important role in this story. But ultimately, with the advent of modern archaeological techniques, the mythical aura surrounding Mycenae was gradually laid to rest, as explained particularly in the last chapter - although there is still debate about the ways of interpreting some of the physical evidence. The book also includes a chapter on the effects that Mycenae has had on culture and on the literary and performing arts. There is even a section (at the end) devoted to those intending on visiting the site. Although the subject matter of this book is absolutely captivating for a history buff like me, I must admit that I found the writing style to be a bit awkward and not as easy-flowing as I would have liked. But despite that, I could not bring myself to give this book anything less than five stars, mainly because of the wealth of spellbinding information that it contains. The ancient history in this book is quite gripping and can be enjoyed by anyone.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best of a great series, February 7, 2008

By 

Robert C. Ross (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Tomb of Agamemnon (Wonders of the World) (Hardcover)

Mary Beard is a Professor of Classics at Cambridge University, and the editor of "The Wonders of the World" which is "a small series of books that will focus on some of the world's most famous sites or monuments."

Like the other books in the series, Beard writes that this book reveals the architectural and cultural implications of its subject. It is aimed at the general inquisitive reader ("the intelligent ignorant," as Beard often refers to herself). Cathy Gere's contribution may be the best of the lot, which includes Beard's The Parthenon (Wonders of the World), Beard's and Keith Hopkins' The Colosseum (Wonders of the World) and Keith Miller's St. Peter's (Wonders of the World).

Gere has written a book about something that doesn't actually exist. Heinrich Schliemann electrified the world in 1876 when he found the "tomb of Agamemnon" in Mycenae. 2500 years earlier people living on the Argive plain thought Mycenae was where Agamemnon gathered the Greeks to attack Troy. We now know that the tombs were created at least 300 years before the Trojan War.

Gere has written an account of the physical and cultural history of this place and especially "Agamemnon's" golden mask that graces the cover of the book. (She touches on the possibility that Schliemann salted the site with the mask.) She starts with Aeschylus's "Oresteia" and Pausanias's "Description of Greece", an 1800 year old travelouge, Schliemann's texts, and the texts of more careful archaeologists. She touches on the interpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, the glorifications of the Nazis, and others. She also provides a short visitor's guide, a good list of further reading, and an excellent Index.

Gere's extract from her book is a bit hidden: click on the "See all Editorial Reviews" button on the Product Page. The URL appears just after the author's biography. One sample of her writing:

"This is a story about the power of stories: for twenty-eight centuries the Iliad has peopled the ruins of Bronze Age Mycenae with the ghosts of the House of Atreus. Agamemnon was Homer's Lord of Warlords, and the questions that were asked of him, century upon century, were always about the meaning of war, about hatred and anger and revenge, about murderous competitiveness for resources, about the human spilling of human blood"

Mary Beard reinforces Gere's theme: "Bronze Age Mycenae...was to classical Greece what classical Greece would eventually become to nineteenth-century Europe, a place whose ancient history, legendary reputation and symbolic importance stood in poignant contrast to its present political impotence, a place that sometimes seemed to belong to everyone except itself"

When I visited Mycenae, I was struck by the vistas of the plains, the immense olive groves, the nearby tholos tombs, the stony path, the Lion's Gate, the circle of tombs. But permeating everything I saw were my memories of other voices describing the place, not only Homer, Schliemann, Freud, the Nazis, but for me most of all T.S. Eliot:

The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,

And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid siftings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

Read this excellent description of Mycenae, and see what memories Cathy Gere evokes for you.

Robert C. Ross 2008

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great introduction, September 24, 2008

By 

John Nordin (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Tomb of Agamemnon (Wonders of the World) (Hardcover)

Part of the Wonders of the World Series of small format books on famous sites.

"The Mask of Agamemnon is the Mona Lisa of prehistory." That is her beginning to an impressionistic essay about the site of Mycenae. So this is not a site guide, however, it is great background reading before you visit the site.

She describes the history of the site. But, she also describes the modern history of the site's recovery and how views of Mycenae have changed over time. And so her title, "Tomb of Agamemnon" is intentionally chosen. Of course, there is no tomb of Agamemnon, or so we now understand. But that was what launched a thousand fantasies including the reputation of the funeral mask mislabeled the "mask of Agamemnon."

So a good chunk of the book is about 19th and 20th centuries views of and uses of Mycenae. We get discussions of Schliemann (and his swastika adorned house in Athens), reactions of various other philhellenes, but also some Greek perspective. While this is not a picture book, it does reproduce some of the other grave masks found and provide a side profile shot of the Agamemnon mask - both things seldom seen. Nice bibliography.