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| A group of small islands between Greece and Asia Minor that produced some notable Neolithic idols and figurines and which flourished simultaneous to the third-millennium Egyptian civilization. |
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| The adjective derived from the Cyclops, a one-eyed mythical race of Greek giants who could foresee the time of their death. It refers to the huge boulders, which were used to construct the Mycenaean citadels ("Cyclopean walled construction") because later Greeks, upon seeing the size of the stones and citadels, speculated that only the Cyclops could have built them. |
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| The great Greek epic poet who in the 8th century BC recorded the legends of Odysseus (The Odyssey) and recounted the exploits of the Greek (or more accurately Mycenaean) heroes who fought against Troy to release Helen from the amorous clutches of Paris, Prince of Troy (recorded inThe Iliad). |
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| Minos was the name or the title, which Homer records, of the ruler of Minos on Crete and from which the Minoan civilization was given its name by the English archeologist Arthur Evans. According to Homer, Theseus, a prince of Athens, dispatched the monstrous half-man/half-bull to save his compatriots in the labyrinthine palace of Minos at Knossos. Minoan art has a preference for bull themes. |
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| Originally of wood, painted red, with a plain shaft (without fluting) and topped by a simple rounded capital or echinus. Its most distinctive feature is that it tapers in reverse to the custom of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans with a narrow base widening toward the top. |
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| Mycenae was a city in Greece of the second millennium BC mentioned by Homer. Heinrich Schliemann proved it a reality in the 19th century. The Mycenaeans were archaic Greeks who built huge citadels of large boulders utilizing a primitive corbelled arch. Examples are Tiryns and Mycenae, the chief city from which the culture takes its name. |
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| Sometimes called "painting in metals." Gold and silver are cold-hammered out into designs, such as animals. The details are etched into and around them and the negative spaces are filled with a copper, sulfur, and lead compounds, which leaves a black deposit. This was a medium in which the Mycenaeans excelled, an example of which is the inlaid dagger with a Lion Hunt. |
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| A tholos is also called a beehive tomb because of its tapering beehive shape. It creates, in reality, a kind of primitive dome where the stones are laid without mortar but remain interlocked in place by their weight, size, and placement. The dromos is the long processional way, which leads to the tholos. After the interment of a Mycenaean king the dromos and tholos would be filled in or covered by earth to be forever hidden. |
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