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The religious element is difficult to identify in Mycenaean Greece (c. 1600–1100 BC), especially as regards archaeological sites, where it remains very problematic to pick out a place of worship with certainty.
Many of the Greek deities are known from as early as Mycenaean (Late Bronze Age) civilization. This is an incomplete list of these deities [n 1] and of the way their names, epithets, or titles are spelled and attested in Mycenaean Greek, written in the Linear B [n 2] syllabary, along with some reconstructions and equivalent forms in later Greek.
The Mycenaeans perhaps treated Poseidon, to them a god of earthquakes as well as the sea, as their chief deity, and forms of his name along with several other Olympians are recognizable in records in Linear B, while Apollo and Aphrodite are absent. Only about half of the Mycenaean pantheon seems to survive the Greek Dark Ages.
It is possible that water divination was an important aspect of worship within the cult. [ 2 ] The cult of Dionysus traces back to at least Mycenaean Greece , since his name is found on Mycenean Linear B tablets as ππΊππ° (di-wo-nu-so) .
Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC. [1] It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland Greece with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art, and writing system.
The Mycenaean megaron (15th to the 13th century BC) was the precursor for later Archaic and Classical Greek temples, but during the Greek Dark Age the buildings became smaller and less monumental. [5] [6] The basic principles for the development of Greek temple architecture have their roots between the 10th century BC and the 7th century BC.
Other Mycenaean records from Pylos record the worship of a god named Eleuther, who was the son of Zeus, and to whom oxen were sacrificed. The link to both Zeus and oxen, as well as etymological links between the name Eleuther or Eleutheros with the Latin name Liber Pater, indicates that this may have been another name for Dionysus.
Since eighth century BC, there is a small and scattered group of sanctuaries, associated with epic or mythical heroes and identified by inscribed dedications, in most cases after the foundation of worship. Such heroes are Helen and Menelaus to Sparta, Odysseus in Cave of Loizos at beach Polis to Ithaca and Agamemnon at Mycenae. [4]