Greek graves 3,500 years ago with gold -lined walls
Archeology
Researchers from the University of Cincinnati find two princely graves near where they found the ‘Griffin Warrior’ in 2015
David Ruiz Marull
They were shaped like a hive and inside it smelled like land and luxury.3.500 years, in the middle of the Bronze age, two people were buried in Pylos (Greece).The treasure that accompanied the other world was abundant in jewels and other artifacts.And the walls of the tombs were totally lined with gold.
The archaeologists of the University of Cincinnati found the graves, called Tholos VI and VII, in 2018 while they excavated the surroundings of the burial of the Griffin Warrior, a Mycenaean warrior discovered in 2015 and who had a plaque of ivory adorned with a tap,A mythical beast with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle.
The results of the investigation were carried out on Tuesday and experts Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker explained that both princely tombs had views of the Mediterranean Sea and contained a large number of objects that could help historians fill the gaps in the knowledge of civilizationPrimitive Greek.
The team of archaeologists spent more than 18 months excavating and documenting the finding, surprised because these family graves were full of gold bread flakes that once wallpaper the walls."As with the tomb of the Warrior Griffin, at the end of the first week we knew we had something that was really important," says Stocker in a statement.
"We soon became clear that a ray had fallen again," said Davis.The artifacts found tell stories about life throughout the Mediterranean 3.500 years, he added.A gold ring, for example, represented two bulls flanked by horses (set of branches tied by its center) of grain, identified as barley by a paleobotanic consulted during studies.
”It is an interesting animal breeding scene: cattle mixed with grain production.It is the basis of agriculture, ”recalled Jack Davis."As far as we know, it is the only representation of the grain in the art of Cretan or Minoan civilization," he concluded.
In the tomb of the Warrior Griffin there was a very well preserved skeleton with more than 3.000 objects, including four rings of solid gold, silver glasses, precious stones, ivory combing armor and a bronze sword with ivory and gold handle, among other weapons.Among these incalculable value objects was also a carved gem.
This work shows a fierce melee battle between three soldiers that puts light on the most common legends of the origins of Greek civilization, in addition to rewriting the entire history of the art of ancient Greece.The level of detail of this drawing had not been seen until artifacts of the classical period, made about 1.000 years later.
