8 January ’05, Saturday. Yesterday was still fresh in our mind as we started out to see another spectacular ruin that has been put before us through a prior visit to a museum. This morning we headed off to see “Ancient Mycenae”. In our visit to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, we saw a tremendous amount of a unbelievable collection from a find at the Ancient Mycenae ruins… We saw the Mask of Agamemnon, the Warrior Vase, the Vaphio gold cups and much, much more, which were found by Heinrich Schliemann in the late 1800’s. I believe Schliemann got in touch with the King of Greece at the time of his discoveries and said something like “I have gazed upon the face of Agamemon”… Schliemann was an amateur archeologist and did not receive a lot of confidence from the “professional” archeologists around the world. In fact, they tried to convince the government of Greece and Turkey that he was nothing but a “Grave Robber”… Their concerns may have had some merit, as his digs were “a little rough”. He wasn’t too concerned about what he “went through” to get to the area of the dig that he was after. There were some who said that he would dig right through “cities” without any care as to what he was damaging. Some of the history books have been good to him and others… Today we saw and were able to get into, the burial tombs of some of those that Schliemann found. The tomb of Agamemon was a huge “Bee Hive” design that was entered through a long walkway to a large stone arch. Once inside, it was just like standing in a “Giant Rock Bee Hive”… We actually visited 3 such tombs. There were others throughout the site that also had many wonderful finds for Schliemann. It seems that at this time in history the bodies of the royals were buried in a vertical shaft (otherwise, standing up). What we saw today and yesterday, dates back 2 to 5 THOUSAND YEARS !!! The official name for this site was “The Citadel of Mycenae”. This “Citadel” was a city of about 10 thousand people with a “Palace” located at the top of the hill inside the walls for the fortification. It had an underground fresh water system that came from an aquifer that they “tapped” into and piped underground back to the Citadel. We were able to walk down the stairs (for a short distance only because it got too dark to see any further without a flashlight) and get a feel of were the underground water was coming from and how. We saw quite a number of the foundations of the houses that they had. We visited the “Palace”… Again, we walked, climbed, and enjoyed another great “ruin” from a life many, many years ago.