1/ #Christmas#Monday and excursion to Mount Cyllene in Mountainous Corinthia. The first stop was in Lake Stymphalia, one of the most important habitats for migratory birds in Helladic area and for this reason it has been designated as a Natura 2000 protected area.
2/ Seeing the arcane setting of the morning fog that had covered the lake, I am reminded of the mythological Labour of Hercules, who using his krotala killed with his poisonous arrows the dreadful Stymphalian Birds, which were terrorizing the surrounding area.
3/ The next stop is Ancient Feneos, which due to the extensive fog, it was not possible to visit the archaeological site, ending up at the wonderful nearby artificial lake Doxa. Another Natura 2000 area... Amazing alpine landscape!
4/ However, the most important monument of today's excursion was the visit to the chapel of Holy Mary of the Rock in Kato Tarsos. The chapel is located in the middle of a cluster of vertical rocks, almost smooth, with vertical irregular fissures, like at Meteora.
5/ The amazing thing is that between the rocks, in some cases and from their top, water runs!
6/ In a large crevice, the church of Holy Mary of the Rock is built, which, according to tradition, was founded to fulfill the oblation of a woman from Tarsos, who was miraculously saved during the fall of Byzantine Tarsos by Mohammed II in 1458.
7/ Mohammed II besieged the castle of Tarsos and forced the besieged to surrender, while afterwards he killed many of them and captured others. Few managed to escape. ➡️
➡️ Of the women, some were taken with them as slaves and others were thrown from the rock of Tarsos (according to others, some women of Tarsos jumped off the rock themselves to avoid becoming slaves of the Turks), where the church of Holy Mary is today.
8/ A young mother with the baby in her arms begged for pity for her child. The Turks, however, were not moved and threw her off the cliff together with the baby. ➡️
➡️ However, she invoked the help of the Holy Mary and miraculously, the woman was found safe and unharmed at the base of the vertical rock.
9/ Out of gratitude for her salvation, this woman shaped the cleft of the rock into a temple, placing some images. Inside the church is the portable icon of Virgin and Child (18th century).
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1/ The causes of the collapse are more complex than theories about the existence of successive earthquakes and periods of intense drought. Recent researches in the Aegean have revised the magnitude of the effectiveness of the above causes by deconstructing their importance.
2/ For example, in Messinia intense drought is observed after the mid-12th century BC, i.e. much later than the period when the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces took place. At the same time, the inhabitants of the Aegean were particularly adapted to earthquakes aftereffects.
3/ So, we could look for the main causes of the collapse in the dysfunctional bureaucratic palatial system, in the overexploitation of natural resources, in the dependence of the Mycenaean economy on international trade, in dynastic quarrels and in social inequalities.
1️⃣ In the 16th cent BC a warlike elite appeared in the southern Helladic area whose members were thirsty for conquest and demonstration of mastery,and their exploits changed the Aegean forever, reaching to be recorded even in the Hittite textual records (end of the 15th cent BC).
2️⃣Early Mycenaean warlords carried powerful weaponry: long swords, spears,composite bows, tower and figure-of-eight shields. All the above Mycenaean weapons were futher developing or adoption of Minoan examples,being distillations of Aegean traditions and Near Eastern borrowings.
3️⃣ However, the Mycenaeans possessed two types of weapons that appear for the first time in the Aegean area: the armour and the chariot. In the second half of the 16th century BC Mycenaean warriors wore armour, as evidenced by the discovery of a right shoulder protection 👉
1️⃣ In 1950, during excavations in the prehistoric settlement of Grotta, a very interesting small-sized stone head of a male figure was discovered, which received the name acrolith mycenaean "kouros", identifying in it a crucial role in the evolution of Aegean figurine art.
2️⃣ The stone head was found inside House A, the most important and well-built house of LH IIIA Grotta, in which there are indications of storage, food preparation, possibly handling or control of products and possibly domestic worship (marble platform of domestic altar).
3️⃣ The stone head of Grotta is made of blue-green ophite, it has a highly polished surface and coarse engravings of facial features. An elongated triangular embolus was forming at the point of the sternum, which was adapting to a wooden core.
1/ The Mycenaean presence in the Iberian Peninsula has been found only in southern Spain (Montoro, Llanete de los Moros) and has the character of non-regular visits. However, this fact is not proof that the Mycenaeans had not advanced further west without leaving visible traces.
2/The myths of Perseus and Herakles indicate direct contacts of the Mycenaeans beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Various writers of classical times refer to areas or islands that were further west of the Pillars of Hercules: Makárōn Nêsoi or Fortunate Isles or Isles of the Blessed.
3/The Isles of the Blessed are mentioned by Hesiod and Pindar as a remote location inhabited after death by mythical heroes,without however being precisely specified geographically,although it is implied that they were somewhere in the West Mediterranean or in the Atlantic Ocean.
1/ The basis of the Mycenaean diet was cereals, mainly barley and then emmer wheat. They were ground to produce flour from which they made bread, while in other cases they were used coarsely ground in soups and porridges. Beer production was also possible.
#Mycenaean_diet
2/ The consumption of legumes, such as the lentil, the pea, the common and the bitter vetch, the chickpea, the broad bean and the lupine, was of great importance in the daily diet. Legumes were ground to make bread flour, made into soups and purees, or eaten raw.
3/ However, the main components of the Mycenaean diet were olives, figs and grapes. The olives were pickled or processed to produce olive oil, while the figs were dried. Grapes were mainly used to produce wine, which was flavored with resin, herbs or honey.
1/ According to textual evidence the Hittites called the Mycenaeans by the ethnonym Ahhiyawa, while the Egyptians called them Tanaju, two words that refer to the Homeric Achaeans and Danaans. However, what did the Minoan Cretans call the Mycenaeans? #Ionians
2/ The KN C 914 tablet mentions the sending of several sacrificed animals to A-ka-wi-ja-de, which may have been some local celebration of the Mycenaeans who settled in Crete after 1450 BC in memory of their common homeland on the mainland (Achaea).
3/ Of extreme interest are two fragmentary tablets from the Room of the Chariot Tablets (KN B 164 and Xd 146.4) which refer to a group called i-ja-wo-ne. Several scholars associate the i-ja-wo-ne with the historical Ionians and indeed within a military context.