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Virtue & Power

Museum

National Archaeological Museum

The principal collection of Greek antiquities, from the Mycenaean shaft-grave gold to the great bronzes recovered from the sea.

Athens, Greece · founded 1829, in its earliest form

Scope

Greek antiquities of all periods from across Greece.

History of the collection

The collection began with the founding of the modern Greek state and moved into its present building in the 1880s. It absorbed the finds of the state's own excavations, including Schliemann's at Mycenae.

Collection notes

The gold funerary mask from Grave Circle A is displayed under the name Schliemann gave it. It is some three centuries earlier than any traditional dating of the Trojan War and nothing connects it to any named person; the platform captions it by what it is.

The boar's-tusk helmet is the single most important object for the question of what the Homeric poems preserve: a type described in Iliad 10 and out of use for centuries before the poem.

Objects in this catalogue