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The period from around 1450 BC to 1300 BC was a time of momentous change in Messenia. At the beginning of this era, a complex mosaic of independent settlements, led by powerful families, controlled the region. Back then, in the Late Bronze Age, Messenia formed a core part of the Mycenaean world. This was the time of the so-called warrior-princes, whose martial accoutrements and showy accessories are such a feature of the elite funerary record. Their era of dominance, though, was drawing to a close. A century and a half later, by around 1300 BC, if not much earlier, the authority of those leading families had been eclipsed by that of a single figure ruling over a vast territory – ultimately spanning some 2,000km² – from a great palace at Pylos. In Messenia, as elsewhere in the Mycenaean world, the scale and sophistication of this new political and administrative system is such that it can be seen as the dawn of early state formation on mainland Greece.
Today, scholars studying Messenia can draw on the results of a century of excavations in the region. As an extraordinary exhibition at the Getty is currently showcasing (see ‘Further information’ box), some of these finds display a beauty and technical virtuosity that is simply unparalleled for the era. What this exhibition also reveals is the extent to which cutting-edge scientific methods, including DNA analysis, are shedding new light on life during this pivotal period of change. If this latest chapter in the story is being written by the high-tech suite of tools and techniques available to modern archaeologists, the very first was composed by Homer.
Archaeology and myth
‘Pylos is mentioned in both the Iliad and the Odyssey as the homeland of King Nestor, the wise elder statesman of the Trojan War’, says Claire Lyons, curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum, who organised the exhibition at the Getty Villa. ‘Several of the most important sites that we know from the Mycenaean era were excavated in the later 19th century as a result of the efforts of the German entrepreneur Heinrich Schliemann. He is, of course, famous in archaeological circles for his passion for ancient history and Homer. Schliemann was convinced that there were more than seeds of truth in the texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and that one could find actual historical events within their pages, alongside poetry and myth. So he set out to find some of the famous sites that appear in Homeric epics, including Troy and then Mycenae – in the Greek Peloponnese – which gave its name to the Mycenaean civilisation.’ Schliemann enjoyed a great deal of success in the 1870s and 1880s while seeking, exploring, and excavating Late Bronze Age sites. He wanted Pylos to be among them and looked for it in 1874 and 1888. Because Homer describes the place as ‘sandy Pylos’, it seemed logical that it would be somewhere on the coast. When Schliemann failed to find it, he thought that the site had been lost to erosion. ‘There was a different explanation’, Claire noted, ‘Pylos lay inland.’
Schliemann set out to find some of the famous sites that appear in Homeric epics.
Jack Davis, co-director with Sharon Stocker of the University of Cincinnati Palace of Nestor Excavations at Pylos, mentions: ‘It wasn’t until several decades later that the American archaeologist Carl Blegen, at the University of Cincinnati, and Konstantinos Kourouniotis, the Greek former director of the National Museum in Athens, uncovered the site of ancient Pylos. Blegen examined a ridge known as Epano Englianos and on the very first day of excavation – on 4 April 1939 – unearthed tablets inscribed with writing, in the script that we call Linear B. He had come down on top of the archive rooms of a palace. That set off the excavation of a vast palatial complex that Blegen named the Palace of Nestor. In total, about 800 tablets were found in the archive. When they were first discovered, Linear B had yet to be deciphered; that would take another 13 years, with the famous work of Michael Ventris and colleagues such as Alice Kober. Once they could be read, though, it was found that several of the tablets name Pylos, which in that script appears as two symbols representing in English pu-ro. Although Nestor is not named, a wanax – their term for a lord – is mentioned. Thanks to the tablets, the location of ancient Pylos was confirmed with certainty.’
Blegen continued digging at Pylos until two years before his death in 1971. Afterwards, there was a lull in activity, as it was widely accepted that he had found all that the palace had to offer. In the 1990s, interest grew in the web of sites that existed within the orbit of Pylos, including the Mycenaean community that developed around the palace itself, which may once have been home to some 3,000 or so inhabitants. A desire to understand life in this settlement culminated in a campaign of excavations that commenced in 2015. This was undertaken by a University of Cincinnati team, which was led by Stocker and Davis. Much like Blegen before them, fortune smiled on their endeavours, although it did not initially seem that way. Their preferred place to begin their investigations of the former Mycenaean town was a plot of land where currant grapes were growing. This field, however, was subject to legal proceedings. Instead, they turned their attention to a nearby olive grove, where three stones forming a corner could be seen among the trees. Opening a trench revealed that this masonry formed part of a shaft grave. Excavation proceeded gradually and – as with Blegen’s earlier work on the palace – the results were momentous. After ten days, it became clear that the grave goods were still in place, demonstrating that the burial had not been looted.
Princely finds
Today, the elite occupant of this shaft grave is known as the Griffin Warrior, a name inspired by the decoration on an ivory cosmetic container found among the material in his tomb. This was just one part of an extraordinary wealth of artefacts that had been carefully arranged around the deceased, who was a man roughly 35 years of age, with powerfully developed arm bones. All told, the contents of the tomb are such that it has been lauded as one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in Greece in more than half a century. Yet rather than providing us with a glimpse of an elite resident of the palace or town, the Griffin Warrior entered the earth around 150 years before the Palace of Nestor was built. His burial, then, opens a window on to a preceding era of warrior-princes.
‘To find an absolutely intact burial of an individual, with all of the artefacts that were deposited around the body undisturbed, is a rather rare occasion in many areas of the world, but especially so for this period in Greece’, says Claire. ‘Jack called me during the excavation to discuss the finds and conservation issues. The next year, in 2016, he and Sharon came to the Getty to give a lecture on their discoveries. It was immediately obvious to me that we needed to do an exhibition.’
Sharon and Jack emphasise that: ‘The burial allows us to see not only how the objects were placed, but also their relationship to each other. There are various types of material: weapons, armour, precious metal vessels, jewellery, sealstones, and all kinds of implements. The individual objects are themselves of the finest quality and include some unusual pieces. Being able to see this range and understand them relative to each other helps us consider how this man saw himself, and how he was seen by his community – as a warrior, a political leader, and religious authority. Alongside artefacts expressing these roles, there are also many objects that relate to personal grooming: elegant necklaces, five combs, a mirror, a razor, and small cosmetic boxes. This is a widespread phenomenon among warrior burials in Bronze Age Europe, and clearly it was very important to be a beautiful, exemplary person.’
When it comes to masculine beauty, no finer depiction exists from this period than that engraved on a sealstone that is called the Pylos Combat Agate. This extraordinary artefact was found at the Griffin Warrior’s side and measures only 3.6cm by 2.2cm in size. It bears a scene capturing the dramatic denouement of a melee involving three warriors. One lies fallen on the ground, while a second is receiving what was surely a fatal sword thrust, delivered by a third man: lithe and muscular, he is the clear victor in this struggle. Despite the minute size of this sealstone, the quality of the engraving is such that enlarging the scene to full-page size reveals rewarding detail, rather than imagery that becomes crude and clumsy with magnification.
‘The sealstone was specially lit for the image that we use in the exhibition, which was taken using microphotography’, says Claire. ‘In reality, when you hold the artefact in your hand in regular daylight, it’s essentially a beige-and-white stone, with very little of the scene visible to the eye. In the exhibition, we have illuminated it so that visitors can make out the figures. An enlarged line drawing superimposed on a projected microphotograph highlights in sequence the three combatants, their weapons, and their costumes, so that the viewer can observe key elements of the narrative. There’s also an iPad, because you need to be able to zoom in to appreciate the minute details. For example, the heroic lunging warrior is wearing a bracelet with a sealstone on his wrist. And that sealstone even has a tiny little indication of decoration on it… a detail that is less than a millimetre in size.’
Sharon explains that ‘it’s suggestive that, within the burial, the Combat Agate was found near the wrist of the skeleton. The typology of the sword found in the burial is also similar to the ones depicted on the sealstone, while the heroic warrior is shown wearing a necklace and has long, flowing locks, which may mirror the presence of the gold chain necklace and the ivory combs in the grave. So there are a number of parallels with the actual finds. We can speculate about the degree to which the deceased individual emulated such a heroic warrior.’
‘Another intriguing question is how this scene was carved’, points out Claire. ‘The attention to detail, for example the life-like anatomy of the fallen warrior – shown with his back twisting and limp hand extended behind – is remarkable. Several contributors to our catalogue – Nikolas Papadimitriou, Eleni Konstantinidi-Syvridi, and Akis Goumas – are going to be here at UCLA next month, to present their ideas on how it was done. They have been experimenting with engraving sealstones and mechanisms for cutting them. From that, they can demonstrate that the process is not just about seeing – and certainly not about using magnification or some sort of lens – but as much about the touch and feel of an artist who had mastered the use of a lathe and drills to cut hard stone. There can be no doubt that the Combat Agate was made by someone who excelled in the glyptic arts and – in this case – created an unparalleled masterpiece.’
Making connections
While the finds from the Griffin Warrior burial tell us much about his roles, it is less clear where this man was from. His mode of burial is intriguing, because while shaft graves are known from this period, a much more common form of elite burial, especially in the Pylos region, was interment in a tholos tomb. These sizable monuments served as family tombs and formed prominent features in the landscape, where ancestors could be honoured. Within, circular vaulted stone chambers would receive multiple burials over generations. Could it be that the unusual, solitary burial of the Griffin Warrior marks him as an outsider? If so, he does not seem to have travelled far. Recent DNA analysis of the body does not suggest that he was a foreign invader from distant lands. Instead, he is a good fit for someone who grew up in the Aegean area, including Messenia. There is no support for imagining he came from Crete. As is well known, that island was home to the Minoan civilisation. The relationship between Minoan Crete and the Mycenaean mainland is perhaps best remembered today from the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In that tale, young men and women were sent from the mainland to be slaughtered in the Minoan labyrinth. The Griffin Warrior burial, on the other hand, illustrates how Cretan concepts were also travelling in the opposite direction.
Jack and Sharon say that ‘Many of the objects in the burial – especially the ornaments, jewellery, rings, and some sealstones are works of Minoan art, meaning that they were created in a Minoan workshop, whether on Crete or perhaps on the Greek mainland by itinerant artisans. But while many of the objects are Minoan, others are purely Mycenaean, and stem from a long tradition of Mycenaean material culture and social practices. The result is a very interesting mix. So how do we interpret that? Was the Griffin Warrior someone who admired this form of art, as many others from his era did? Which objects are imported? The exact relationship is something that the archaeologists continue to debate.’
Overseas connections are also in evidence among the contents of two collapsed tholos tombs that were discovered by Sharon and Jack in 2018. These also belong to this early period and, unlike the Griffin Warrior’s shaft grave, had been plundered in antiquity. Even so, a selection of artefacts escaped the looters’ attention, with some representing the fruits of long-distance trade around the Aegean at this time. Sharon and Jack describe the finds: ‘A striking pair of gold pendants with cloisonné decoration that are most closely paralleled in the Levant, for example, bear engravings depicting the Egyptian goddess Hathor. She was not the only foreign deity to reach Messenia, though. Another find from the tholos tombs was a blue glass pendant bearing the eight-pointed star symbol of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. Such cross-cultural connections position Pylos in the midst of lively international exchange networks. Indeed, it is clear that links had been forged in many directions, with amber coming from northern Europe, lapis lazuli most likely originating in Afghanistan, and amethyst from Egypt. The resulting medley of material testifies to an early globalising era, and all the complex, hybrid identities that came with it.’
Further out in the hinterland of Pylos, at a place called Psari, another tholos tomb was excavated between 2018 and 2020. Those within had been interred during the period from roughly 1520 BC to 1400 BC, with the grave goods once again including sealstones and necklaces, as well as weapons and armour. While the weaponry ranged from arrowheads to swords, perhaps the most evocative item was a fine boar’s-tusk helmet. Such objects are described by Homer and, as the name suggests, were made using boar tusks that had been split and then stitched onto a leather or felt cap. As well as protecting a warrior’s head, the number of boars that needed to be slain to fashion such protective headgear would mark the wearer as a skilled hunter and dangerous opponent.
Palace life
Moving on to the era of the great palace at Pylos brings us into a world where a remarkable degree of coordination of economic production and political organisation is evident. By the time it was built around 1300 BC, the independent settlements that would have been familiar to the Griffin Warrior had been consolidated into a kingdom, ruled over by the wanax at Pylos. Written records from the royal archive disclose the ordinary but exceptionally important workings of a palace society. The survival of these tablets came about entirely by chance. In their original form, they were intended to serve as daily and weekly records, which were written on a soft clay surface, so that they could be erased in due course. In around 1180 BC, however, the palace complex was destroyed in a conflagration so fierce that it inadvertently fired the tablets stored in the archive.
‘For scholars, the Linear B tablets are a gold mine’, says Claire ‘We have been able to display five original tablets, which is significant because they are rarely, if ever, loaned outside of Athens. It’s a real privilege to have them, and we are grateful to our collaborators in Greece. The tablets describe all sorts of activities, such as the economic relations between the palace and the wider region that it controlled. Religious practices and festivals are described, and some tablets name gods that are familiar to us, such as the Greek god Poseidon. There is also information about the quantities of food, wine, and equipment that were needed for communal feasts.’ The importance of these events is reflected, too, in the archaeological record. Material that was inside the palace when it was destroyed provides copious evidence for banqueting and also the production of wine and olive oil. Great quantities of pottery, including bowls and drinking cups, were found in the pantries, which would have been enough to serve many hundreds of people at a time. So feasting was clearly one of the primary activities of the leaders in the palace and the surrounding community. Claire singles out one tablet on display that ‘documents the furniture and vessels to be used in a ritual feast and refers to tripod cauldrons. It has become known as the “Tripod Tablet”, and is a sort of “Rosetta Stone” for Linear B. When Michael Ventris deciphered this text in 1952, it was evident from the combination of a pictogram of a tripod vessel and the accompanying syllables ti-ri-po-de that Linear B was written in an early form of the Greek language.’
The Linear B tablets provide information about the role of women, as well. Sometimes they appear among teams of workers, but in other cases they could wield considerable power as authority figures. One example is the priestess Eritha, who appears in several of the tablets. The most remarkable of these concerns her legal dispute with the community over a plot of land. The tablet records that Eritha ‘claims that she holds for the deity, [special] land, but the community says that she holds a beneficial [regular] plot of land’. This disagreement about whether the land is religious or communal presumably has its roots in the extent to which it was taxable, giving the matter a rather contemporary flavour. Sadly, the archive does not record whether Eritha was successful in her case, but it clearly demonstrates her willingness to fight for her rights by taking on the community.
Traces of another powerful woman can be found amid the remnants of the vibrant wall paintings that once adorned the palace. These depict numerous subjects, ranging from hunting dogs to Mycenaean warriors locked in combat with enemies dressed in sheep skins. Two surviving fragments from another composition show a single outstretched arm holding a bow. Its significance was not fully appreciated until the pieces were rediscovered in a storeroom by Sharon. Thanks to a Mycenaean tradition – borrowed from the Minoans – of showing women with white skin, while males were depicted with a ruddier complexion, it is plausible that the archer is female. This makes the scene distinctly unusual, and it has been conjectured that the subject is a goddess like the huntress Artemis, who is also named in the Linear B tablets.
The use of white to depict women is far from being the only Minoan-style influence evident at the palace. Instead, the degree of emulation is such that, while the Griffin Warrior might have been taken aback by the political organisation of the palace era, he would surely have found the liberal use of Cretan inspirations familiar. An example of just how far this debt extended can be found in the epicentre of authority at Pylos – the throne room – which contained wall paintings of griffins and lions, just like Minoan Knossos on Crete. As well as this overlap in how royal power itself was conceived and expressed, Cretan know-how laid rather more literal foundations for some of the buildings themselves, too, as Minoan masons’ marks have been found at mainland sites. One example is the double-axe sign incised on an ashlar block found under the Pylos archive. Even when it came to spheres such as day-to-day dress, the styles of women’s clothing and some personal artefacts were very similar and, in many aspects of palace life, Minoan influence was pervasive.
We can be certain that the catastrophe at Pylos was not an isolated event.
The wall paintings from Pylos are another area where deploying modern scientific techniques is presenting fresh insights. ‘I wanted to highlight the latest work that is being done on these murals’, notes Claire. ‘Pigment analysis reveals how the colours were formulated, while generative AI is starting to be applied to the study of the paintings. That might help us to reconstruct ancient brushstrokes, which would offer interesting insights into artistic practice. Emerging technologies enable contemporary audiences to look at the paintings and understand that the colours one sees in reconstructions were probably not quite so intense, on the basis of the pigment composition, as those used in the Late Bronze Age.’ One example of this can be found in the wall painting of a naval scene. It is now known that the backdrop was a purple-mauve colour, a choice perhaps intended to evoke the impression of a ‘wine-dark sea’ in the evening, as Homer later described it.
Whether violence played a part in the fire that ultimately consumed the palace in 1180 BC is unknown. We can be certain, though, that the catastrophe at Pylos was not an isolated event. In fact, disaster overtook other centres at around this time, both on the Mycenaean mainland and in the wider Aegean region. The disruption and its consequences were so profound that this period has become known as the Late Bronze Age collapse. It also brought a near-complete end to activity at Pylos. While other ruined centres, such as Mycenae, went on to became a focus for Classical Greek interest in their heroic past, the remains of Pylos achieved no such renown. Instead, the inland ridge once crowned by the palace drifted into an obscurity that endured until Blegen and Kourouniotis opened their trenches in April 1939.
Further Information:
• The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Mycenaean Greece exhibition was co-organised with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and will run at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles until 12 January 2026. It will then travel to the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum in Athens in spring 2026.
• S R Stocker, C L Lyons, J L Davis, and E Militsi-Kechagia (2025) The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Mycenaean Greece (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, ISBN 978-1606069677).
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