Before the celebrated gold masks of Circle A, another cemetery— Grave Circle B in Mycenae —held the first royal dead of the citadel. Cut into limestone bedrock 117 m west of the Lion Gate and dating to c. 1675-1550 BCE, its 26 graves chart Mycenae’s leap from local chiefdom to trade-rich warrior kingdom.
For today’s traveller the site offers a rare, unplundered glimpse of life and death at the dawn of Greek pre-history.
Workmen clearing debris around the tholos known as the “Tomb of Clytemnestra” in 1951 struck dressed stone.
Archaeologists Ioannis Papadimitriou and George Mylonas soon revealed the full circle, labelling each shaft with a Greek letter for clarity (Alpha, Beta, Gamma and so on). Because the graves were never robbed, every object lay where mourners placed it 3,500 years ago—an archaeologist’s dream and a textbook for students of early Mycenaean culture.
Excavators recovered the remains of at least 24 individuals—predominantly adults aged 20-35. Ancient-DNA work on the Gamma grave showed a brother and sister buried together, confirming that birthright, rather than gender alone, conferred elite status. Healed blade cuts on several male tibias hint at battlefield experience, while isotopic tests reveal diets rich in meat and imported wine—luxuries beyond the reach of ordinary mainlanders.
Male burials dazzled with long bronze swords, gilt hilts, daggers inlaid with running lions and rows of arrowheads. In grave Nu, plates from a boars’-tusk helmet lay beside an electrum death mask—the earliest metal portrait in Greece, though it rested in a wooden box rather than on the corpse’s face. Women wore spiralling gold diadems, amber beads from the Baltic, faïence rosettes in Minoan style and silver pins as long as daggers. Imports from the Cyclades and Crete rise sharply through successive burials, signalling widening maritime networks.
Double-axe and bull motifs echo Cretan religion, yet newly popular scenes of lion hunts and chariot racing speak a mainland dialect of power. Drinking sets of silver “delta” cups suggest feasting traditions that later bloom in Homeric epic. Scholars call the mix an “international style”: craftsmen borrowed exotic technologies but customised imagery to broadcast distinctly Mycenaean values—bravery, weapon skill and noble lineage.
Circle B predates Circle A by one or two generations. Its richest graves contain perhaps one-third the gold unearthed in Circle A, yet already display dynastic ambition: imported jewellery, precious masks, piles of weapons.
As Mycenae prospered, burials shifted inside the walls and became even more ostentatious, culminating in the tholos “Treasury of Atreus.” Viewed in sequence, the two circles chart a dramatic escalation of wealth, trade and political centralisation.
By c. 1500 BCE the shaft-grave custom waned. Elite families adopted monumental beehive tombs—freestanding symbols of permanent, hereditary authority. The weapon-packed graves of Circle B foreshadow this shift: they celebrate martial prowess and far-flung exchange, foundations of the palace-economy that would dominate Late Bronze-Age Greece.
Long before Homer sang of Agamemnon, the princes of Grave Circle B in Mycenae carved out a new social order—one ruled by seaborne trade, conspicuous gold and spear-won status.
Unplundered shafts and intact skeletons give modern visitors a frontline report on that transformation, while the circle’s modest tourist crowds offer a quieter, more contemplative counterpoint to its famous neighbour. Stand beside those hunting stelae and you stand at the threshold of Greek history, watching a warrior aristocracy rise from stone to legend.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grave_circle_B_4.JPGhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pottery_from_Grave_Circle_B_2.JPG
