Lion Gate, Mycenae

Interesting facts

The lionesses' missing heads were made of a different material from their bodies and were turned outward to gaze at people approaching the gate.

Because the heads were separate, some scholars suspect the animals were composite creatures, probably sphinxes, in a Near Eastern tradition.

A row of four discs on top of the central column seems to represent roof rafters, which once carried a further piece of sculpture now lost.

The doorway is 3.10 metres wide at the threshold and narrows slightly as it rises, to 2.78 metres beneath the lintel.

The opening was shut by a double door fixed to a vertical beam that served as the pivot on which it turned.

Just inside the gate lay a covered court with a small room, probably a guard post controlling everyone who entered the citadel.

Scholars have compared the gate with the gates of Hattusa, the Bronze Age Hittite citadel in Asia Minor.

The travel writer Pausanias saw and described the gate in the 2nd century AD, roughly 1,400 years after it was built.

Some scholars read the lionesses as emblems of the goddess Hera, guarding the citadel and its king.

The Greek Archaeological Society cleared the gate in 1840, more than three decades before Schliemann arrived.

Why it is worth it

The Lion Gate was the main entrance to the citadel of Mycenae in the Argolid, the fortress that gave its name to the late Bronze Age civilisation of mainland Greece. It was built around 1250 BC, when the circuit of walls was extended to enclose more of the hill, and it has never been buried: it has stood in view for more than three thousand years. Above it is the only surviving monumental sculpture of Mycenaean Greece and the largest sculpture from the Bronze Age Aegean.

The relief fills a triangular limestone slab about 3.6 metres wide at the base and more than 3 metres high, set into the gap left by a corbelled arch that relieves the weight on the lintel. Two lionesses stand facing each other with their forepaws on an altar-like base, flanking a column of Minoan type. Their heads were carved separately and are lost; only the necks remain. The lintel beneath is a single block about 4.5 metres long, 2 metres deep and 0.8 metres high.

The approach is as deliberate as the sculpture. The gate sits at the end of a narrow courtyard between the citadel wall and a projecting bastion of conglomerate masonry, so that attackers would be exposed on their unshielded side, and the walls on either hand are built of huge blocks of the kind later Greeks attributed to the Cyclopes. The site was identified in 1700 from the description of Pausanias, and Heinrich Schliemann excavated the area just inside the gate in 1876.

Getting there

The gate is part of the archaeological site of Mycenae, about 12 km north of Argos and about 25 km north of Nafplio, with local buses from Nafplio. Athens is roughly 120 km away by motorway. The nearest airport by straight line is Kalamata (KLX), about 98 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

The Lion Gate is the popular modern name for the main entrance of the Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae in Southern Greece. It was erected during the thirteenth century BC, around 1250 BC, in the northwestern side of the acropolis. In modern times, it was named after the relief sculpture of two lions or lionesses in a heraldic pose that stands above the entrance.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Lion Gate, Mycenae

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia