Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 469 The Destruction of Mycenae
After realizing the importance of this relic, the Greek archaeologist who came with Liang En and the others immediately contacted the higher authorities, and then called in a lot of security personnel and some archaeological excavators.

The biggest advantage of this approach is that the already fast excavation speed has been raised to a higher level. They can even use the advantage of a large number of people to adopt multi-point excavation tactics to greatly shorten the excavation time.

So they excavated 34 exploration squares in one breath within the ancient city at one breath, to detect the underground situation and determine the target of the next excavation.

Since Liang En had previous experience in excavating the ruins of Crete, he was in charge of the excavation work at the present stage, so he quickly delineated a place on the inside of the Lion Gate less than 12 meters away from the gate as the first place. excavation site.

In less than a week, they dug up a piece of land of more than 30 square meters, and dug out fragments of stone carvings carved with warriors and hunting scenes from below.

"This thing should be the tombstone of ancient people." The Chinese archaeologist who had been in charge of excavating the ruins of Crete before immediately judged what it was, "But why did this group of people put the tombstone on Where is the entrance to the city gate?"

Under normal circumstances, all civilizations habitually place their tombs far away from human habitation, so the layout of the cemetery as soon as you enter the city gate looks very strange.

"I think these tombs should have been outside the city at first." Liang En took out a tablet computer and showed the archaeologist the simple map drawn by ground penetrating radar before, and then said.

"However, with the expansion of the city, they built another city wall outside the earliest city wall, so it is very likely that the ancient cemetery was enclosed in the new city wall."

"Your analysis is very likely." The old man pushed his glasses on the bridge of his nose and said, "At least according to the current situation, the closer the building is, the older it is, so the possibility you mentioned is not considered a possibility." Small."

"Fortunately, we now have the opportunity to verify this conjecture. As long as we dig down the area and find enough cultural relics, we should be able to confirm or deny our conjecture."

Because the importance of this relic was confirmed before, people came to reinforce it continuously during this period. Some of these personnel were ordinary workers, and the other were professional archaeologists.

The support of these people greatly accelerated Liang En's excavation progress, and they soon found a circle of graves around the tombstone fragments.

From the current situation, it can be seen that the tomb under this pit should have buried many people of high status in ancient times. Unfortunately, digging a tomb is different from digging other things, and requires professional personnel and equipment, so it cannot be completed in a short time. work.

Fortunately, Liang En and the others have many places to dig besides the tomb, such as the ruins of the royal palace at the highest point of the mountain, and the ruins of the altar that was used to burn sacrifices in ancient times with raging flames.

By consuming three [Detection (N)] cards, Liang En found some very valuable things in the excavation project of the royal palace ruins, such as some walls with red, yellow and blue paint on them, and then Like a pile of clay tablets with engraved characters.

The writing on the clay tablets is linear b, which is the kind of writing that Liang En has just translated and published in this world, so he quickly sorted out the contents of these clay tablets.

Most of the clay tablets are simple records of the types and quantities of various goods brought in or out of the palace, but a small number of clay tablets have the names of some gods written on them.Including Zeus, Hera, Poseidon and a series of names that are familiar to modern people.

From this point, it can also be judged that after the end of the Mycenaean civilization until the advent of the Greek city-state era, the era known as the Dark Ages in history has erased many things, but the beliefs have been passed down in one continuous line.

As for the third explorer, it was an ash pit, that is, a garbage pit, which was full of garbage left by ancient people, but valuable things could also be found in the garbage.

For example, Liang En found a fragment of a faience plate from ancient Egypt, with the name of Amenhotep III (Amenhotep III) written in hieroglyphs on it.

Chronologically, these faience plates are likely to be the product of ancient trade in the eastern Mediterranean, but they may also be left behind by the Egyptian mission to Mycenae in the mid-14th century BC.

In addition, they also found the entrance of an underground tunnel. Although the tunnel has collapsed, it can be seen from the outside of the tunnel that this should be a tunnel leading to the underground water storage cellar, which explains the water problem of the castle.

This also shows that people at that time were in a state of anxiety and had a premonition that a war might break out.Because the only purpose of this kind of underground water cellar is to provide water for the guards during the siege, not a daily facility.

The same is true of the actual situation. Around 1200 BC, there was an earthquake in this place, followed by drought, famine, and subsequent internal rebellions and foreign invasions completely destroyed this prosperous city-state.

Excavation work also confirmed this, for example, except for some obvious traces of war in the city.On the ruins of the ancient palace at the top of the mountain they found the ruins of a small temple of Athena.

However, this ruin obviously comes from the later ancient Greek city-state era, which is more than 300 years after the end of the Mycenaean era.

The two ruins with such a large span from the same spatial location can only show one thing, that is, this place has experienced a long period of darkness, and even interrupted civilization.

For example, they found an ancient cemetery outside the city wall, but these cemeteries were all looted, leaving only a huge underground space.

This is the huge ancient cemetery known as the Necropolis of Agamemnon or the Treasury of Atreus in another world. It was built between 1350 BC and 1250 BC, all using high-quality stone masonry.

The tomb passage is about 6m wide and 36m long. The side wall at the entrance of the mausoleum is up to 13.7m high, 14.5m in diameter and 13.2m high. It is composed of 34 layers of stone rings. A boulder tops it off.

Before the ancient Romans built the Pantheon, the stone dome on this mausoleum was the largest known dome in the world. Judging from the age, the person who was buried here was probably the legendary Agamemnon .

According to previous archaeological discoveries, the ancient Mycenaeans had the habit of burying the dead richly, so under normal circumstances, the tomb should be full of treasures.

But now the situation in the tomb is obviously too clean. Everyone used metal detectors to detect for a long time before and found that there was nothing in the largest tomb.

Obviously, this cannot be something that grave robbers can do. Instead, it is like what the victorious party did after the war when they plundered the spoils in an organized way. It proves from the side that this civilization was finally destroyed by man-made disasters, not natural disasters.

(End of this chapter)