National Archaeological Museum and Tour Guide Kriton

The Museum building, a protected monument in itself, was founded in 1866 and has been expanded into west and east wings. In its galleries can be traced the long evolution of ancient Greek culture. The Museum's Collections - prehistoric sculpture, vases and the Minor Arts, Bronze and Egyptian antiquities - are amongst the most comprehensive in the world and contain finds dating from the 7th millennium BC to the 5th century AD.

The Pre-historic Collection (such as Mycenae, its myth and art, 16th - 11th centuries BC below) consists of unique works of art representing the major civilizations that flourished in the Aegean from the 7th millennium to about 1050 BC. It includes objects from the Neolithic period and the
Bronze Age, from mainland Greece, the Aegean islands and Troy. The most important exhibits are the treasures from the royal tombs at Mycenae, the famous Cycladic marble figures and wall paintings:



Legend and history of Mycenae. Homer wrote of Agamemnom, Greece's most powerful king during the Trojan War (maybe not over Helen but certainly a war) and a powerful civilization based in Mycenae. The evidence came together when Heinrich Schliemann discovered the palace at Mycenae in 1874, much of which accords with Homer's descriptions, including the wealth of gold and the supposed death mask of Agamemnom:



Koroi (statutes of youths and maidens used at temples and graves - the Kritios Boy sculpture shown at the end of the video below dates to 480 BC) were the first monumental works in Greek art. The earliest are stiff and stylized, but through the centuries the artist learned to depict the body more naturalistically as Kriton explains:



Statue of Zeus, 470 BC and explanation by Kriton of classic Greek Art after war:



Another famous sculpture and description of boy on a horse:



As Kriton describes below, this marble statute has a very touching story in addition to the fine detail of this funeral scene of a father morning his son: