With great joy I announce to Your Majesty that I have discovered the tombs which the tradition proclaimed by Pausanias indicates to be the graves of Agamemnon, Cassandra, Eurymedon and their companions, all slain at a banquet by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthos.

-Schliemann to King George of Greece.

The most famous Mycenaean mask, the mask of Agamemnon, was discovered in 1876 by Heinrich Schliemann during the excavation of the shaft graves in Mycenae. The excavation took place between the months of August and December. The mask was located in burial shaft grave V in the Grave Circle A, and was one of five gold masks discovered. It was still on the corpse when it was discovered.

This mask was believed to be from the time of the Trojan War. However, much controversy has arisen due to many accounts that Schliemann was a fraud. Recent evidence has proved the grave sites to predate the Trojan War by nearly 300 years, making it impossible for this to be the mask of Agamemnon. Some even question if the ruler, Agamemnon, existed. The mask dates to around 1600 BC, with the Trojan War being around 1200 BC.

Many say that Schliemann never really identified the mask as being of the leader Agamemnon. He supposedly never wrote any accounts of this in his journal. One reason why it was believed to be of the leader was because of how well it was preserved, and its many differences from the other masks discovered.

This however, opened a new controversy, that the mask itself was a fraud for being so different from the other Mycenaean masks.

The mask of Agamemnon now resides in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

How Were They Created?

The Mask of Agamemnon, and other Mycenaean masks, were created by hammering gold into a thin leaf. The leaf would be lying over a wooden form. These three-dimensional masks were to be the exact faces of the buried. They included details in facial hair, ears, and eyelids which seemed to appear open at one moment, closed at another.

Mask of Agamemnon