Overview of the Essays

The eight essays in this volume deal with different aspects of Mycenaean religion, synchronically and diachronically, and on the three different levels of philology, iconography and archaeology.

They analyse the Mycenaean texts in their contexts and examine diachronically both the iconography of the Minoan-Mycenaean glyptic, whose images have been interpreted as representations of the gods, and the differences in the use of writing in religious contexts between the Minoans and the Mycenaeans.

It also discusses, from the same diachronic perspective, the decline and demise of Mycenaean religion after the fall of the palaces, drawing parallels between certain Mycenaean and other rituals attested in Greece in the 1st millennium BCE.

The dialogue between philology, iconography and archaeology proves to be a fundamental perspective for a better understanding of Mycenaean Greece, its religion and its legacy on the Greek religion of the following centuries.