Mycenaean-Era Cyclades Exhibition Opens at Benaki Museum

The archaeological exhibition “From Homer’s World: Tenos and the Cyclades in the Mycenaean Age” will open to the public at 8 PM on Monday, December 16 at the new Benaki Museum building located at 138 Piraeus Street in Athens.
A total of 151 artifacts will be displayed, which when seen all together, reveal a complete picture of Mycenaean civilization in the Cyclades archipelago.
Pride of place in the new show is given to artifacts discovered in the Mycenaean-era tholos tomb at Agia Thecla on the island of Tinos, a rare funerary monument for the entire Aegean area, which was excavated by Georgios Despinis in 1979.
The relatively diminutive monument was unearthed during works to build a provincial road.
It is one of only three such Mycenaean tombs known in the Cyclades and constitutes the only confirmed Mycenaean presence on the island of Tinos.
The burial place of an aristocratic clan, the tomb of Aghia Thecla, which dates from between the 13th and 12th century BC, was used for multiple burials.
In addition to Tinos, the exhibition will display finds from other prehistoric sites in the Aegean, specifically from the islands of Naxos, Delos, Paros, Milos, Sifnos and Kea.
Among them, the “Kyra of Fylakopi,” dating approximately to mid-14th century BC, is one of the masterpieces of Mycenaean figurine sculpture found at the sanctuary of Fylakopi on the island of Melos.
The exhibition, organized by the Antiquities Ephorate of the Cyclades, the Cultural Institute of Piraeus Group and the Benaki Museum, was initially presented in the summer of 2019 in Tinos at the Marblework Museum of the Cultural Institute of Piraeus Group.
The exhibit attracted more than 23,000 Greek and foreign visitors at this first showing.
With information from AMNA