Archaeologists have unearthed a 10-room palace believed to date back to the Mycenaean civilization in southern Greece, located not far from the former home of the warrior society Sparta, officials with the country’s culture ministry announced last week.
According to AFP, UPI, and Huffington Post, the palace is believed to have been built in the 17th or 16th century BC and destroyed by a fire in the late 14th or early 13th century BC. It was discovered near the ancient village of Xirokambi, and includes key archaic inscriptions that reportedly date back to the Mycenaean Age.
“The palace complex of Aghios Vassilios provides us with a unique opportunity to investigate, with the use of modern excavation and analysis methods, the creation and evolution of a Mycenaean palatial center in order to reconstruct the political, administrative, economic and social organization of the region,” Culture Ministry officials said in a statement.
“Alongside, it is estimated that new evidence on Mycenaean religion, linguistics and paleography will also be brought to light,” they added. Archaeologists also discovered religious icons and objects of worship, clay figurines, a cup adorned with a bull’s head, bronze swords and fragments of murals at the site, published reports indicate.
New discovery “hugely significant”
Since so much of the building was destroyed by the fire, the researchers are not certain exactly what it looked like. However, the remnants suggested that it contained 10 rooms made from stone, and Torsten Meissner, a classicist at the University of Cambridge, told Live Science that the find was “hugely significant” as Bronze Age Sparta is “the last ‘big prize’” for archaeologists.
More than 150 archaeological excavations conducted at the Aghios Vassilios location since 2009 have unearthed a wealth of artifacts, including tablets detailing religious ceremonies, as well as a number of names and places in a script called Linear B, the oldest script ever found in Europe. It initially appeared in Crete in 1375 BC and was only first deciphered in the mid-20th century.
The new discovery will allow for additional research into the “political, administrative, economic and societal organization of the region” and will also provide “new information on the beliefs and language systems of the Mycenean people,” according to AFP.
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Feature image: Hellenic Ministry of Culture
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