Last Day in the Peloponnese

On Sunday, our second day in the Peloponnese, we got up early, had breakfast at the hotel and took a hour-long bus ride to the Mycenaean citadel "Mycenae." I know I keep saying this for just about every site we go to but this was most definitely one of my favorite sites thus far. There was a lot to see at Mycenae. First, we saw the "Treasure of Atreus" which is a tholos ("beehive") tomb. It's name really doesn't pertain to anything in regards to whom the tomb belonged to (no one actually knows since looters took pretty much everything from the tomb shortly after it was built).

Tholoi (pl. of tholos) or "beehive" tombs, as they are accurately called, are deemed as such because of their beehive shape. They are tombs built completely above ground, unlike previous burial methods at the time, and are absolutely fantastic. They are strictly Mycenaean; before the Mycenaeans adopted this unique burial practice, they had been using shaft/circle graves like the Minoans had done before them. These tholoi look like something out of the Lord of the Rings movies. They are made completely out of  local limestone and there originally would have been a large wooden door covering the entranceway as well as wooden columns outside, decorated and painted of course.

From afar, it looks like a large mound, but when you go inside you see how complicated the building technique is, especially for this era, considering they used no adhesive or anything- just simply manipulating the force of gravity in order to create a spiral of limestone block after block up to the very top as you can see in the picture below which shoes the ceiling.

This one, the "Treasure of Atreus," is the most well-preserved example of a tholos that we have today. It clearly was built for someone of great wealth and social status. It is so amazing to actually go inside it. The thing is massive, to say the least.

Afterwards, we went inside the citadel walls of Mycenae and went through the famous "Lions Gate," the main entranceway into the citadel. Another example of cyclopian masonry- notice the size of those boulders!

When you walk beyond the city walls and make your way into the citadel itself, you find Grave Circle B, an example of a shaft/circle grave, in which the infamous "Death Mask of Agamemnon" was found along with other gold Mycenaean death masks, ceremonial weaponry and other precious materials.

At the top of the citadel, there is an underground cistern. The corbelled passage is just wide enough for two people to stand side by side and it leads to the underwater cistern, 18 meters below the surface through a steep, descending path paved with stone. The cistern itself at the end of the path is a quadrilateral roofed shaft and collected water through clay pipes from the natural spring that lay outside the citadel walls.

When John, our Art History teacher (and not to mention an attractive, Greek/American, world-renowned archaeologist... don't even get me started), said that we were allowed to go all the way down if we wanted, I was the first to jump up and start heading down. Kurt and I lead the way with a flashlight while the rest of the group went behind us. It was a little scary and kind of insane but definitely SO worth it!! When we finally go to the end, we took a few candids and of course I had to write my name on the wall :) the rest followed suit before making our way back up out of the deep, dark tunnel. The light was blinding when we got out at first.

Afterwards, we got back on the bus and headed back to Nafplion for a quick lunch and then back on the road for Epidaurus where we saw the most amazing ancient Greek theater. See for yourself!

It is completely still in tact and its acoustics are incredible (we tried it out). If you drop a coin in the center of the stage, the people all the way at the very top of the theater can hear it as clear as day.

It started to rain right as we were getting back on the bus for the two-and-a-half hour ride back home to Athens.

It's Monday now, and it is raining again :'( It didn't start until around 3 o'clock this afternoon which was fortunate in my case because I was able to get a nice long run in beforehand. We had our Art History midterm this morning. It was fairly challenging, a lot of information to remember and write down in a short amount of time, but it was all fair game. Most of the class thought it was too hard, but most of them aren't Classics majors as I am.

After class and my run, Sami and I walked into downtown Athens even though it was raining and had some filtered coffee; Sami had fresh, homemade, hot chocolate. Even though the walk back was pretty miserable, it was nice to go out and do something rather than just sit in our apartment for the rest of the day since we don't have anymore studying to do or papers to write at this point in time.

Tomorrow morning we meet at the Athens Centre at 10 to go to the Byzantine Museum. It's supposed to be really great.

That's all for now! Time to get into my jams, do a bit of laundry, and perhaps write my postcard to Meeshi (she specifically asked for one) :-) xoxo