King of Mycenae and Argos, and perhaps also the chief of the rulers of Mycenaean territory, Agamemnon is considered to be the most important among ancient Greek Kings and commander-in-chief of the campaign against Troy. He had an adventurous life and a horrible humiliating death. He is considered to be a mythic figure, but an archaeologist claims to have found his throne, proving that mythic King existed.

The… bloody throne of Agamemnon

The family history of Agamemnon had been tarnished by rapes, murders, incest, and betrayal, the consequences of the abominable crime committed by his ancestor, Tadalos, and then due to a curse imposed on Pelopas, son of Tadalos, by Myrtilos, who had been murdered. So misfortune hunted successive generations of the House of Atreides until they were cleansed by Orestes in a tribunal jointly held by humans and gods.

During the Trojan War, Agamemnon attacked Achilles, the greatest hero of the Achaeans, claiming his slave, Vrisiida. Achilles’ anger about Agamemnon was the subject of the epic of Homer’s Iliad. With the fall of Troy, Agamemnon took Kassandra, the daughter of King of Troy Priamus, with him as a slave. Together they returned to Mycenae but were murdered by Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aigisto, who then went to the throne. The son of Agamemnon, Orestes, later avenged the murder of his father, killing his mother and Aigisto.

Has the throne of Agamemnon been found?

The throne was found by accident. on June 12, 2014, during the past-hydrological measurements on the bed and the banks of the Havoc river,  in the framework of systematic geophysical research in the Lower City of Mycenae, a large fragment of a massive stone seat was identified by members of the scientific group, which was photographed and measured on the spot was immediately transferred to the Museum of Mycenae to be saved and studied, where it was introduced to the list of the Lower City excavation as a superficial find.

This important finding was examined by a multidisciplinary team of scholars for two years, was recognized and documented as part of the throne of the Mycenae palace. The find is officially presented in Athens first and will be presented at international scientific conferences, and in detail in an extensive scientific article in an international archaeological journal according to professor Christofilis Maggidis
“There are many arguments that combine to show that the finding can be nothing more than a seat and even a throne. There are morphological arguments of the type of shape, amazing similarities with the throne of Knossos and other Minoan and Mycenaean seating. It is the material of construction and its semiology, it is the place to find, is the study of damage and fragments in the fragment that indicates where it fell and how it was drifting into Havoc. There are 10-12 different criteria, which combined with the point of finding, I categorically state, that they can be nothing more than the throne of Mycenae ”

The part of the royal throne was just a few meters from the Acropolis of Mycenae. Its weight exceeds 50 kilos and dates back to the 13th century BC.

The throne section, which has been hidden for half a year in the warehouses of the Archaeological Museum of Mycenae, was accidentally found in June 2014 on the sidelines of the Lower Mycenae excavation. The significance of the find is invaluable because it is the first throne of a Mycenaean palace that has been discovered to date on the mainland of Greece.

The opponents say it isn’t the King’s throne

The Secretary-General of the Archaeological Society sent a letter to the Ministry of Culture stating that the part of a stone that appeared to belong to the “throne of Agamemnon” refers to … a basin rather than a throne.

As mentioned in Mr. Vasileios Petrakos’s announcement to the Ministry of Culture, “the Commission went to Mycenae and thoroughly examined the stone which, supposedly always, belongs to the” throne of Agamemnon “” concluding that “this is a part of a house or craft, basin, as it appears from the depth of the hollow, commonly found as a find in settlements, camps, workshops”.

As he also writes:
“It is worth mentioning that Mr. Magnidis in his letter says that” the large dimensions of the stone and its point of finding suggest that it is probably the throne of the last phase of the Mycenaean palace of Mycenae. ” In other parts of his letter, he says that ‘it is probably a part of a large seat’ and always yields ‘probably’ fragments of ancient Mycenae, which have been found in distant parts of the palace, on the hypothetical throne, whose only element is a hollow its depth only excludes belonging to the throne”.

What he also mentions is that Agamemnon has been more a mythical rather an historical King, and he points out that his existence is still questioned.

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