Facts about Athens Bronze Age

With the introduction of metallurgy, the Bronze Age began, and along with it the beginningsof a recognizable, distinct history of Athens. The early Bronze Age (3000–2000B.C.) was an island and coastal civilization, and the clearest evidence for human activity hasbeen found largely in excavations of cemeteries and settlements by the sea (see fig. 7):Aghios Kosmas (near Hellenikon Airport) on the west coast, Thorikos, Raphina (Askitario),Brauron, and Marathon on the east. The objects recovered from these sites, includingmarble figurines and clay pans with incised decoration, show close affinities with therich civilization f lourishing at this time in the Cycladic Islands of the Aegean. The housewalls are built in the characteristic herringbone style of masonry, with cobbled areas infront. Except for a modest attempt at Askitario, the Attic sites lack the substantial fortificationsfound at Lerna, on the island of Aigina, and at Chalandriani on Syros.

The early cemetery at Tsepi, near Marathon, consists of well-built large family tombs,each with a slab roof and small doorway, marked off as a private plot by rows of largerounded stones. As each member of the family was buried in the stone-lined chamber, thebones of those interred earlier were somewhat unceremoniously piled up in a corner. Thearea of Athens, in particular the Acropolis, which had been attractive to Neolithic cave12 PREHISTORIC PERIOD88. Early Bronze Age tombs at Tsepi (Marathon), ca. 2500 b.c.[To view this image, refer tothe print version of this title.]dwellers, seems to have been less appealing to the seafarers of the early Bronze Age. Thesepeople were probably not Greek speakers, for one of the most enduring and conservativeaspects of the countryside—the toponyms—are not, linguistically speaking, Greek. Wordsending in -ssos, -ttos, and -nthos are pre-Greek and must have been adopted from the earlyindigenous people who occupied the land, remembered in later myth as Pelasgians, Lelegians,or Carians. Just as many Native American names survive today to remind us of theindigenous population of North America before European colonization, so too for Athens.The very names of the mountains (Hymettos, Lykabettos) and rivers (Kephisos, Ilissos)take us back to the earliest memories of Athens and Attica, a time before the arrival of theGreeks.

In around 2000 B.C. new people came into Greece and Attica, apparently by land andfrom the north: the word for sea (thalassa) is also pre-Greek and must have been borrowedfrom the seafarers of early Bronze Age times. The newcomers brought with them five innovationswhich allow us to recognize them as a different and distinct culture: a new styleof architecture, making use of houses with curved or apsidal ends; new burial customs,with individual rather than communal graves; new pottery: of a gray fabric, sharply angled,and made on a potter’s wheel; the horse; and the Greek language.There are no written records from this period(2000–1600), so we are dependent onthe archaeological evidence, which suggeststhat Attica was extensively occupied.Athens, too, was settled, andnumerous graves and wells havebeen found, both on the Acropolisand around the citadel.

With these newcomers cametheir gods, presumably theOlympian deities that are familiarfrom the historical period.

Athens became the city of Athena, daughter of Zeus, warrior goddess and protector of thecity. When depicted in later times she is usually shown full-armed with helmet, shield, andspear. Her breastplate was a goatskin (aegis) with snakes along the edges and the head ofthe gorgon Medusa set in the middle. She was chosen as patron of Athens after a contestwith her uncle Poseidon. Athena was thought to have had a hand in building the Acropolis;one tradition explains Lykabettos as a piece intended to further fortify the citadel butdropped by the goddess. She also gave the olive tree to Athens, and both the olive sprig andher favorite bird, the owl, were used in later times to decorate the coinage of the city.

The succeeding period, known as the Late Bronze Age (1600–1100), is the great ageof Greek myth and legend, the Heroic Age. To this period the Classical Greeks assigned theLabors of Herakles, the Trojan War, the voyage of the Argo, the story of Oedipus, and the expeditionof the Seven against Thebes, to name but a few. Numerous Athenian myths are attributedto this period as well. Attica was thought to have been organized in early times byKing Kekrops into twelve cities:

According to Philochoros, because the country was raided from the sea by Cariansand from the land by Boiotians (then called Aones), Kekrops was the first tobring the population together in twelve cities. These were Kekropia, Tetrapolis,Tetrakomoi, Epakria, Dekeleia, Eleusis, Aphidna, Thorikos, Brauron, Kytheros,Sphettos, and Kephisia. (Strabo 397C)

Of the sites on the list which are securely located (Tetrapolis, Eleusis, Aphidna, Thorikos,Brauron), all have significant Late Bronze Age remains, whereas two sites which are notlisted, though they were important in later times (Rhamnous, Sounion), have minimalBronze Age material. Archaeology would therefore seem to indicate that there is a core oftruth in these early legends which permits us to regard them with some confidence as partof the history of the city. In addition to Kekrops, Athenian legend preserves the names oftwo other significant early Athenian kings: Erechtheus and Theseus.

Erechtheus is one of the earliest legendary kings of Athens and was regarded as thefounder of the Panathenaic festival. A warrior king, he fought King Eumolpos of neighboringEleusis, a contest he eventually won, though it took the sacrifice of one of his daughtersto ensure success. Euripides’ play Erechtheus has Athena herself foretelling the constructionof a temple in his honor.

Theseus, a generation or solater than Erechtheus, was theson of the king of Athens,Aigeus, though he was broughtup in Troizen, the ancestralhome of his mother. As a youngman he made his way to Athensto claim his inheritance, havingmany adventures en route as hecleared the road of assorted brigands.These youthful deeds make up asort of parallel to the Labors of Heraklesand were a favorite theme for Athenian sculptorsand pot painters in later times. When he arrived inAthens, Theseus was sent to Crete for his most renowned exploit, the slaying of the Minotaurin the labyrinth. When he later assumed the kingship of Athens, Theseus is thought tohave carried out a crucial political reform, the unification of Attica (synoikismos), withAthens as the capital. The procedure is described by Thucydides (2.15):

For in the time of Kekrops and the earliest kings down to Theseus, Attica hadbeen divided into separate towns, each with its town hall and magistrates, andso long as they had nothing to fear, they did not come together to consult withthe king, but separately administered their own affairs and took counsel forthemselves. Sometimes they even made war upon the king, as, for example,the Eleusinians with Eumolpos did upon Erechtheus. But when Theseus becameking and proved himself a powerful as well as a prudent ruler, he notonly reorganized the country in other respects but abolished the councils andmagistracies of the minor towns and brought all their inhabitants into unionwith what is now the city, establishing a single council and town hall, andcompelled them, while continuing to occupy each his own lands as before, touse Athens as the sole capital. This became a great city, since all were now payingtheir taxes to it, and it was such when Theseus handed it down to his successors.

The archaeologicalevidence seemsto confirm this traditionin broad outline.In the years around1400 B.C. the LateBronze Age settlementsare well scatteredthroughout Atticaand were equallywealthy, to judge fromthe finds. Most significant,perhaps, theelaborately constructedtholos, or “beehive,”tombs, which denotea substantial degreeof wealth and authority,are also found scatteredthroughout Attica:at Menidhi, Marathon(see fig. 259),and Thorikos (thoughnone are yet reportedfrom Athens itself ).Largely plundered inantiquity, these tombshave nonetheless producedsigns of richgrave goods: a goldcup (Marathon), anivory lyre (Menidhi), and carved gemstones (Thorikos). By 1250, however, we find theAcropolis of Athens massively fortified—also a probable indicator of wealth and power—whereas none of the other Attic Bronze Age sites, though several are f lourishing, is fortified.It appears, in short, as though the scattered and equally wealthy settlements of 1400had by 1250 become part of a single political unit with Athens and the Acropolis as its dominantcenter. The synoikismos was an essential step in the development of later Athens;

The city itself, according to Thucydides, lay south of the Acropolis in the early period.This is in marked contrast to his own day, when the Agora was the focal point and center ofthe city, northwest of the Acropolis. Once again, we have reason to place some trust in theselater accounts of early Athens, for excavation has revealed far more early material south andsoutheast of the Acropolis than the cemeteries and limited occupation encountered in thedeep layers beneath the Classical Agora to the north. The graves of the Agora area are ofmore modest construction than their contemporaries in Attica, being rock-cut chambertombs rather than built tholos tombs. The richest, however, like the tholos tombs containremnants of considerable wealth, in the form of ivory vessels, gold adornments, andbronze weapons.

As noted, the citadel of the Acropolis was defended by a huge circuit wall, built of immensestones and rising as much as 8 meters in height. So massive was this wall that it wasbelieved by Classical Greeks to have been built by Cyclopes, or giants. The assumption isthat this wall protected a palace like the ones referred to in the Homeric epics and knownfrom archaeological work at Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, and Thebes. Later occupation and extensiveuse of the Acropolis as a sanctuary in the Archaic and Classical periods have removedall but the slightest traces of such a palace at Athens. A few short stretches of retainingwalls and a single limestone column base are all that survive.

Like the citadels at Mycenae and Tiryns, however, the Acropolis of Athens was providedwith a secret water-supply system which allowed defenders within the walls to withstanda long siege. This takes the form of a staircase consisting of eight f lights of stepswhich led from the north edge of the Acropolis deep down into the rock to a hidden spring.The staircase, which collapsed and was filled up at the end of the Bronze Age, was excavatedin the 1930s; it descends 25 meters into the fissure. A secondary line of fortificationapparently ran around the lower slopes of the Acropolis, probably bringing other sources ofwater within safe reach of the citadel. Known from several literary sources and inscriptionsas either the Pelargikon or Pelasgikon, no part of this early lower wall has ever been found,and it may not have survived, though the area it enclosed was a recognizable entity in thesixth and fifth centuries B.C.

The loss of the palace has also removed possible contemporary written accounts ofAthens in the Bronze Age. At other palace sites—Mycenae, Pylos, Thebes, Knossos—archives written in a primitive form of Greek known as Linear B are preserved on claytablets, carrying records of various administrative transactions. The Homeric epics, how-Late Bronze Age 191213, 1415ever, do preserve a memory of both the palace and the early worship of Athena on theAcropolis:

And she [Athena] made him [Erechtheus] to dwell in Athens, in her own richsanctuary, and there the youths of the Athenians, as the years roll on, seek to winhis favor with sacrifices of bulls and rams. (Iliad 2.546–551)

And:

So saying, f lashing-eyed Athena departed over the barren sea and left lovelyScheria. She came to Marathon and broad-wayed Athens, and entered the wellbuilthouse of Erechtheus. (Odyssey 7.78–81)

The great palaces of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Pylos all show signs of violent destructionand burning, attributed in antiquity to the arrival of the Dorian Greeks from the north. Thecollapse of the Late Bronze Age, or Mycenaean, civilization led to several centuries of whatare referred to as the Dark Ages, a time when the level of material culture fell dramatically.There are no more palaces with ornate frescoes, nor any other monumental buildings, nomassive fortifications, and few examples of the extraordinary objects of gold, silver, ivory,bronze, ostrich egg, lapis lazuli, and other precious materials which were deposited inBronze Age tombs. Also lost was the ability to write: Linear B texts cease and there are nosigns of literacy for almost five hundred years. The tradition for Athens is that the Dorianspassed by Attica, turning aside to enter the Peloponnese. Because later activity has obliteratedall traces of a palace on the Acropolis, we do not know how or when it came to an end.

Whatever the case, it is clear that the city shared fully in the Dark Ages which followedthe destruction of the Bronze Age palaces elsewhere. Cemeteries from the end of theBronze Age have been found on the nearby island of Salamis and at Perati, on the east coastof Attica. Six hundred individuals were buried at Perati in 279 graves in a cemetery used forabout a century between 1200 and 1100 B.C. In Athens itself a handful of wells and somevery poor graves are all that survive from the years around 1100 to 1000. To this period canbe dated the first use of the area later known as the Kerameikos, northwest of the Agora, asa burial ground; in the historical period the Kerameikos developed into the premier cemeteryof Athens.