Discovery of the Mask of Agamemnon
Descubrimiento de la Máscara de Agamenón
- Date
- 1876 · confidence high
- Place
- Mycenae, Greece
- Credited to
- Heinrich Schliemann
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Schliemann found this gold funerary mask in a shaft grave at Mycenae and identified it, without basis, with the legendary King Agamemnon; modern analysis dates the object to around the 16th century BC, some three centuries before the Trojan War of legend. The find established Mycenae as the archaeological cradle of heroic Greece.
Wikidata flagged a "date incompatible with the person": the object (c. 1550-1500 BC) is far older than the legendary Agamemnon and than Schliemann himself; the hito recorded here is the year of the archaeological find (1876), not the mask's manufacture. Some researchers have even questioned the authenticity of certain details of the piece, though this has not been confirmed.
What it led to
- Mycenaean archaeology as a discipline
- Historiographical debate over Schliemann's reliability
Built on
- Schliemann's excavations at Troy