The mythology Mycenaean describes the myths and legends of the Mycenaean civilization. It is an Aegean civilization of the Late Helladic (end of the Bronze Age) extending from 1650 to approximately, whose peak was approximately between 1400 and It gradually spread from southern mainland Greece to the Aegean world as a whole, which experienced a certain cultural unity for the first time. This civilization is particularly characterized by its palace-fortresses, its different types of painted pottery found all around the Aegean Sea, as well as its writing, Linear B, the oldest known writing transcribing Greek.
The past of the Greeks has long been known only through the legends of epics and tragedies. The material existence of the Mycenaean civilization was revealed by the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae in 1876 and at Tiryns in 1886. He believed he had found the world described by the epics of Homer, theIliad and theOdyssey. In a tomb in Mycenae, he found a golden mask which he called the “Mask of Agamemnon”. Likewise, we baptize "Palace of Nestor" a palace excavated in Pylos. We must wait for the research of Arthur Evans, at the beginning of the XXe century, for the Mycenaean world to acquire autonomy from the Minoan world which chronologically precedes it.
