Mycenae - 2014

Mycenae. Christofilis Maggidis (Dickinson College) and Nikolaos Lianos (Democritus University of Thrace) report the following:

The recent discovery of a large fragment belonging to the massive stone throne of the palace at Mycenae—the only Mycenaean throne found so far on the Greek mainland—triggered an intriguing process of identification and reconstruction that involved several interrelated criteria, including its findspot, taphonomy, context, type, shape, morphological features, size, proportions, material, construction, comparanda and the undeniable similarities with the throne at Knossos and the throne base at Tiryns. The throne is a tangible symbol of power ideology, portraying royal and, often, divine status, serving as a visual manifestation of the ruler’s power and sovereignty. The choice of material and decoration for the Mycenaean throne echoes the ‘royal’ combination of conglomerate (throne) and green marble/serpentine (throne base), a feature of Mycenaean palatial architecture employed for the decoration of facades on contemporary royal tholos tombs at Mycenae. Unlike the Knossos throne that was made of alabaster, an imported material alluding to Minoan ties with Egypt, the choice of local material for the Mycenae throne may have been intended to convey political symbolisms of indigenous power and to construct collective memory upon a visual image of autochthony, stability, antiquity, and tradition, as the massive stone throne must have stood inside the palace like a solid outcrop of the natural bedrock of the rocky hill on which Mycenae stands. The experience of the sudden destruction of the palace and violent crash of the throne into the ravine below during a massive earthquake in c. 1200 BC was vividly preserved in collective memory as a visual manifestation of the gods’ wrath and may have given rise to the transformation of historical memory to cultural memory through mythology and poetry.