Destructions On The Greek Mainland

If the Mycenaeans were not involved in the destruction of Troy VIIA, it may have been because they were also under attack at approximately the same time. It is universally accepted by scholars that Mycenae, Tiryns, Midea, Pylos, Thebes, and many other Mycenaean sites on the Greek mainland suffered destructions at this same approximate time, at the end of the thirteenth century BC, and early in the twelfth.94

In fact, a recent survey published in 2010 by British archaeologist Guy Middleton presents a stark picture of the devastation on the Greek mainland during the period from 1225 to 1190 BC: “In the Argolid and Corinthia there were destructions at Mycenae, Tiryns, Katsingri, Korakou and Iria … in Lakonia at the Menelaion; in Messenia, at Pylos; in Achaea, at Teikhos Dymaion; in Boeotia and Phokis, at Thebes, Orchomenos, Gla … and Krisa, while the following sites appear to have been abandoned without destructions: Argolid and Corinthia: Berbati, Prosymna, Zygouries, Gonia, Tsoungiza; Lakonia: Ayios Stephanos; Messenia: Nichoria; Attica: Brauron; Boeotia and Phokis: Eutresis.”95 As Middleton further notes, there were additional destructions during the period from 1190 to 1130 BC at Mycenae, Tiryns, Lefkandi, and Kynos.

As Carl Blegen and Mabel Lang, of Bryn Mawr College, wrote back in 1960, this seems to have been “a stormy period of Mycenaean history. Widespread destruction by fire was visited on Mycenae, both inside and outside the acropolis. Tiryns, too, was subjected to a catastrophe of the same kind. The palace at Thebes was probably likewise looted and burned down in the same general period. Many other settlements were overthrown, abandoned altogether, and never reinhabited: among the better known examples may be mentioned Berbati … Prosymna … Zygouries … and other smaller places.”96

Something tumultuous occurred, although some scholars see this as merely the final stages of a dissolution or collapse that had begun as early as 1250 BC. Jeremy Rutter of Dartmouth College, for example, believes that “the destruction of the palaces was anything but an unforeseen catastrophe which precipitated a century of crisis in the Aegean, but was instead the culmination of an extended period of unrest which afflicted the Mycenaean world from the midthirteenth century onwards.”97

Pylos At Pylos, the destruction of the palace, originally thought by the excavator to date to ca. 1200 BC, is now usually dated to about 1180 BC, for the same reasons that the destruction of Troy VIIA has been down-dated, that is, on the basis of the redating of the pottery found in the remains.98

Its destruction is generally assumed to have been caused by violence, in part because there is much burning associated with the final levels at the site, after which it was apparently abandoned. In 1939, during the first season of excavations at the palace, Blegen noted, “It must have been a conflagration of great intensity, for the interior walls have in many places been fused into shapeless masses, stones converted into lime, and, resting on the blackened carbonized rubbish and ashes covering the floors, is a thick layer of fine dry red-burnt earth, presumably the disintegrated debris of crude bricks that once formed the material of the superstructure.”99

The later excavations further confirmed his initial impressions; as Jack Davis of the University of Cincinnati and the former director of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, later noted, “the Main Building burned with such intensity that the Linear B tablets in its Archive Room were fired, and jars in some of the storerooms even melted.”100 Blegen himself wrote in 1955 that “everywhere … vivid evidence of devastation by fire was brought to light. The abundant, not to say extravagant, use of massive wooden timbers in the construction of the stone walls provided almost unlimited fuel for the flames, and the entire structure was reduced to a heap of crumbling ruins in a conflagration hot enough to calcine stone and even to melt ornaments of gold.”

Earlier scholars occasionally pointed to mentions in the Linear B tablets found at the site which suggest that there were “watchers of the sea” in place during the final year(s) of the site’s occupation, and have hypothesized that they were waiting and watching for the Sea Peoples. However, it is not clear what these tablets are documenting, and, even if the inhabitants of Pylos were watching the sea, we do not know why or for what they were watching.

In short, the palace at Pylos was destroyed in a cataclysmic fire ca. 1180 BC, but it is not clear who (or what) caused the fire. As with the other sites that were devastated at this time, we are uncertain as to whether it was human perpetrators or an act of nature.

Mycenae

Mycenae suffered a major destruction during the middle of the thirteenth century BC, ca. 1250, which was probably caused by an earthquake. There was also a second destruction, ca. 1190 BC or shortly thereafter, whose cause is unknown but which spelled the end of the city as a major power.

This latter destruction was marked by fire. One of the principal directors of the Mycenae excavations, the late Spyros Iakovidis of the University of Pennsylvania, noted that “locally limited and not necessarily simultaneous fires broke out in the Cult Centre, Tsountas’ House, part of the Southwest Building, Panagia House II … and perhaps the palace.”103 In the Cult Center, for instance, “the intensity of the fire has served to preserve these walls in their original state, though off axis.”

In a nearby deposit, found on the causeway within the citadel, the excavators found a mass of rubble, which included “calcined stone, burnt mud-brick, patches of ash, and carbonized beams,” and which “blocked the doorways of the rooms to the southeast, and lay nearly 2 m. deep against the terrace wall to the northeast.” The terrace wall itself “was contorted by the intense heat generated by the destruction fire, and in many places had achieved the consistency of concrete.” The excavators concluded that the rubble came from the mud-brick walls associated with buildings on the terrace above, which collapsed “in a blazing mass.”105 However, there is no indication of the cause of any of this, whether it was invaders, internal rebellion, or an accident.

One senior researcher and excavator of Mycenae, Elizabeth French of Cambridge University, has remarked: “Immediately after the ‘1200 Destruction,’ however it may have been caused, the citadel of Mycenae was a mess. As far as we can tell almost all structures were unusable. Both fire and collapse were widespread and we have evidence of a layer of mud wash covering large areas of the west slope which we surmise was the result of heavy rain on the debris.”

However, both French and Iakovidis note that this did not mark the end of Mycenae, for it was reoccupied, albeit on a smaller scale, immediately afterward. As Iakovidis said, this “was a period of retrenchment and of accelerating regression but not one of danger and distress.”

Interestingly, Iakovidis further remarked that “the archaeological context … offers no evidence for migrations or invasions on any scale or for local disturbances during the 12th and the 11th century B.C. Mycenae did not meet with a violent end. The area was never … deserted but by then, due to external and faraway causes, the citadel had lost its political and economic significance.

The complex centralized system which it housed and represented had broken down, the authority which had created it could maintain no longer and a general decline set in, during which the site fell slowly and gradually into ruins.”

In other words, it is unclear, according to Iakovidis, what caused the fires that destroyed large portions of Mycenae just after 1200 BC, but he eschews the notion of invasions or other dramatic events, preferring to attribute the gradual decline of the site during the following decades to the collapse of the palatial system and of long-distance trade. Recent research by other archaeologists may prove his thesis to be correct.