@artemiscollective: The Mycenaeans Part 3: Religion 🏺 | The Mycenaean gods are strange because some of them are instantly familiar, and others disappear completely after the Bronze Age. Linear B tablets name Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Artemis, Ares, Dionysus, and more centuries before Homer. But they also name deities like Posidaeia, Drimios, Marineus, and tri-se-ro-e, figures who seem to vanish after the collapse of the palace system around 1200 BC. And Potnia, “the Mistress,” is one of the most important divine titles in the entire Linear B corpus. The frustrating part is that the tablets tell us exactly what these gods were given: oil, wine, grain, honey, animals, even gold vessels. They name priestesses, priests, sanctuaries, and cult officials. But no theology survives. No literature, prayers, or beliefs. So we can reconstruct the administration of Mycenaean religion in incredible detail while knowing almost nothing about what worship actually felt like. Sources: Nilsson, Martin P. The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion. 2nd ed. Lund: Gleerup, 1950. Lupack, Susan. The Role of the Religious Sector in the Economy of Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece. BAR International Series 1858. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2008. Lupack, Susan. "Mycenaean Religion." In The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean, edited by Eric H. Cline. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Taylour, William. "New Light on Mycenaean Religion." Antiquity 44 (1970): 270–280. Ventris, Michael, and John Chadwick. Documents in Mycenaean Greek. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Chadwick, John. The Mycenaean World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Hägg, Robin, and Nanno Marinatos, eds. Sanctuaries and Cults in the Aegean Bronze Age. Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen, 1981. Shelmerdine, Cynthia W., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Linear B. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Rutter, Jeremy B. "Lesson 26: Mycenaean and Late Cycladic Religion and Religious Architecture." Aegean Prehistoric Archaeology. Dartmouth College. Accessed 2026. #LearnHistoryonTikTok #ancienthistory #ancientgreece #bronzeage #historytok

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Friday 16 October 2026 23:22:14 GMT