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Bathing at the Mycenaean Palace of Tiryns

Bathing at the Mycenaean Palace of Tiryns

Among Heinrich Schliemann’s discoveries of architecture at Mycenaean Tiryns in the Argolid Plain in southern Greece, one of the most impressive was a single huge rectangular stone slab that covered the floor of a relatively small square room. The slab’s surface was smoothed down and provided with drilled sockets to anchor a wooden dado. The slab was tilted slightly to provide a slope for water to run off through a carved trough and surely served as an unusual floor for a room devoted to bathing, not far from the Throne Room of the palace. This article deals with the bathing room and, in particular, a proposed wooden bench built along its side walls. It also investigates what we know about bathing in the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age.

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Bathing at the Mycenaean Palace of Tiryns

By Joseph W. Shaw

American Journal of Archaeology Vol. 116, No. 4 (October 2012), pp. 555–571

DOI: 10.3764/aja.116.4.0555

© 2012 Archaeological Institute of America