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Mask, Funerary, Electrotype, E75.10

Physical Description

Electroformed reproduction of a mask depicting the face of a bearded man; often known as “The Mask of Agamemnon”. The original was made of a gold sheet with repousse details. There are two holes near the ears.
This mask was one of several excavated from Grave Circle A, but it is unusually detailed by comparison with other masks of the period.

Research Notes

The original was found at Mycenae in 1876 by the archaeologist "Heinrich Schliemann; one of several gold funeral masks found laid over the faces of the dead buried in the shaft graves of a royal cemetery. The most detailed and stylistically distinct mask came to be known as the Mask of Agamemnon, named after the famous king of ancient Mycenae whose triumphs and tribulations are celebrated in Homer’s epic poems and in the tragic plays of Euripides... In antiquity, the original mask was most likely raised from a single sheet of gold, just thick enough to hold its form without any waste of the precious metal."
Recent research suggests that this is not in fact the funeral mask of the Greek king of the Trojan War (The Iliad, Homer), but dates from an earlier period. —Dr Daniel Osland

Provenance

Locality of original: Shaft Graves


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