Reply To: Myth Becomes History

[Lucas Warthen]

The biggest example that jumps out to me as to how these two men have affected how we look at art of the ancient Aegean world is that of the Mask of Agamemnon, discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in Mycenae. Today, scholars have ‘debunked’ that the mask is not a representation of King Agamemnon, due to all the differences with other representations of Agamemnon and the inconsistencies of Mycenaean fashion (the handlebar mustache). His personal agenda of wanting to find stuff belonging and fashioned toward Agamemnon and his achievements blurred what the mask (among other things in Mycenae) meant, and that lead to what we believe today as the mask being tampered with. Even so, we still call it ‘The Mask of Agamemnon’ today, despite it (most likely) not belonging to the old king.
Sir Arthur Evans has blurred (though not as major) our view of ‘The Palace Complex at Knossos.’ Today it is thought that the complex was not actually a palace for a king, but instead a sort of communal home for aristocrats, yet the name still stands. This is far from Schliemann’s tampering with the mask, but the coloring of our perception is still displayed in the common name for the architecture.