History buffs and culture vultures, mark your calendars for an exhibition that promises to whisk you away to Ancient Greece without even leaving California. The Getty Villa Museum, bouncing back after the January Palisades fire, is showcasing "The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Ancient Greece." This is where more than 230 works of art and artifacts from Messenia will tell the tale of the Mycenaean civilization, which thrived some 3,500 years ago.
Among the stunners on display, you'll find items unearthed from a find some have called the most significant Greek archaeological discovery in half a century. This is not just a bunch of old stuff in cases, people. We're talking the tomb of a Mycenaean bigwig who lived circa 1450 B.C.E., known as the "Griffin Warrior" due to an intricately carved ivory container found alongside him. According to a University of Cincinnati statement, Sharon Stocker and Jack Davis led the team that stumbled upon the tomb back in 2015, which included striking weapons, armor, and even a sealstone that depicts mortal combat with such precision that it's been dubbed “a Bronze Age masterpiece” by Archaeology magazine.
It's been a hot minute since the Getty Villa has hosted an exhibition, thanks to Mother Nature's fiery temper. But things are looking up with this premier event. Expect to be wowed not just by the artifacts but by the sheer level of detail these Mycenaean artisans achieved. As Stocker, who co-directed the excavation, put it, according to the UC News, "Tension built the closer we got to the burial deposit. We hardly dared to hope that we had found an unplundered tomb." The payoff was certainly worth the suspense, and now museum-goers have the rare chance to peer into a past that's often shrouded in mystery and legend.
