Pylos (Palace of Nestor)
A Mycenaean palace in southwest Greece that burned at the end of the Bronze Age, baking its Linear B archive into durable clay.
- Location
- Epano Englianos hill, Messenia
- Modern country
- Greece
- Type
- Mycenaean palace
- Destroyed
- By fire, late 13th century BCE
- Excavated by
- Carl Blegen, from 1939
- Finds
- About 1,000 Linear B tablets
What is Pylos known for?
The Palace of Nestor stands on the hill of Epano Englianos, about 17 kilometres north of the modern town of Pylos. It is named after Nestor, the aged king of Pylos in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. A Greek-American team led by Carl Blegen began excavating on 4 April 1939 and resumed after the Second World War in 1952.
In the first season the team found about 1,000 clay tablets in Linear B script. In 1952 Michael Ventris showed that Linear B was an early form of Greek, and the Pylos tablets became a key archive of a Mycenaean kingdom's administration.
The palace was destroyed by fire in the late 13th century BCE (Wikipedia gives c. 1250 BCE; other studies place it nearer 1200 BCE). The fire baked the tablets hard, which is why they survived. Its fall is one of many palace destructions in the Bronze Age collapse, after which writing disappeared from Greece for centuries.
Pylos is named as one of the Mycenaean palaces that went up in flames during the Bronze Age collapse.
Mentioned on these pages
- Rabbit holeBronze Age collapse
Sources
- Wikipedia, 'Palace of Nestor'Reference
- Wikipedia, 'Pylos'Reference
- University of Cincinnati, "Archive tells of cracking ancient Greek language" (EurekAlert, 2024)Reference
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