Speaking of Western Greeks, we have only covered half of our story.
Who were these Greeks who launched the offensive in the Trojan War?

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Mycenae
For the answer, we return to our old friend Schliemann. After initiating the excavations at Troy, Schliemann looked around for his next conquest. He settled on Mycenae, the kingdom of Agamemnon, leader of the Greek forces. Finding Mycenae was not the problem. Everyone knew where it was.  Tthe ruins of the city still stuck up above the ground, as you see on the left here:

Left: 1810 painting of covered Lion Gate Right: recent photo of Lion Gate
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This is the entrance to the citadel, the high urban center of Mycenae. Because of the two figures over the top, it is known as the "Lion Gate."

Left: entrance to "Treasury of Atreus"  Right: drawing of interior of "Treasury of Atreus"
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Near the area of the ruins of Myceanae was also the so-called "Treasury of Atreus," which you see here. Although originally identified as a treasure house belonging to Atreus, father of Agamemnon, it more likely was a royal tomb for some unidentified Mycenaeans.

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Schliemann's first major finds were huge grave circles, which you can see here from a couple of different angles. The circle you see is sort of a massive crypt, which would have contained graves along with assorted offerings for the dead.

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Among the amazing finds were grave masks like these. The Mycenaeans made individualized portrait masks of solid gold to be worn by the corpses in their tombs.

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This is the most famous of the masks. Schliemann declared that this was the face of Agamemnon himself and that the very skull of Agamemnon was still in it when he found it, but disintegrated when touched. He even wired the King of Greece to say he had looked into the face of the king's ancestor. More good storytelling on Schliemann's part. The mask is too old to be Agamemnon and the sitting king of Greece at the time was in fact Dutch, so any genealogical line would be convoluted at best. But the mystique has stuck, and this remains among the most recognizable of all archaeological finds.

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These are more treasures from Mycenae. The cup on the right Schliemann is labeled as belonging to Nestor. On the left are some pieces of gold covering for a dead baby. You can even make out the fingers and toes.

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The city of Mycenae overall proved once again to be another huge site. In the arial photo on the left you can see the enormity of the site. On the right is a general reconstruction from roughly the same perspective. Toward the bottom you can see the grave circle where the masks and other items were found. Up and back you can see the remains of the royal place. Notice also the protective walls which encircle the entire acropolis and would have, along with the city's strategic position, allowed for protection against invading enemies. And as amazing as this discovery was, it was only the tip of the iceberg.

The Mycenaean World: the Bronze Age

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Mycenae was really our first look at the Greeks in the second millenium BC. Archaeologists have subsequently explored other sites around Greece. They discovered a huge number of settlements from this period and a vast network of trade and cultural interchange. You get an idea of these sites from the map above. Although the Greeks of this period identified themselves by the particular city-state they were from, and rarely if ever as Greeks-- as in the Iliad the Greek forces are known by the particular regions and cities they are from rather than as Greeks-- anyway, it is customary to refer to the Greeks of this time period, the second millenium BC, as the Mycenaeans and this entire network as the Mycenaean world. Broadly speaking, these were the people and places behind the Greek forces in the Trojan War.

Crete

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After the astonishing discoveries at Troy and Mycenae, it became the challenge to make the next big find. The island of Crete was the logical place because it was situated where travellers between Greece and Africa would stop. The hope was to find out about the cultural interchange between Greece, the Near East, and ancient Africa and Egypt.

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The "Minoans"
Now the British finally got into the act. This is Sir Arthur Evans, who led the excavations on Crete. And once again, the revelations exceeded expectations. Expecting to find another Mycenaean site, Evans uncovered the remains of an untirely unknown people and civilization. We call these people the Minoans, named for the legendary king of Crete, Minos, although we do not know what these people were called in their own time. The Minoans occupied Crete and other areas before and during the time of the Mycenaeans. In the painting of Evans, you can see some samples of Minoan art. There is a brightly colored fresco behind him known as the "cupbearer" The Minoans are famous now for their bright, energetically flowing painted walls. Around Evans are several different types of decorated pottery.

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The two most enduring Minoan motifs are these. On the right is a sort of double-ax important to the Minoans known as a "labys." Our modern word "labyrinth" comes from this word, labyrinth originally meaning something like "house of the double-ax." Our word labyrinth, of course, means a complicated maze, named for the most famous of all mazes, the one in which lived the Minotaur --a creature with a man's body and a bull's head-- a head like the sculpted Minoan bull you see on the left. The Minotaur was the son of the great king Minos, for whom the Minoans are now named. Note and remember the shape of the horns on this bull.

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Evans' greatest achievement was the Palace of Knossos. Evans not only uncovered but reconstructed a huge ancient Minoan palace. You can visit and walk around inside it, including parts that are four stories high. He made some errors that have since been discovered, but it remains a remarkable monument to high Minoan culture. On the right slide back to the left notice the large horn shaped altar. You can recognize this altar as shaped like the bull's horns from the picture above.

The Rediscovery of Writing

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An equally if not more important discovery by Evans were tablets like these. This was the first writing discovered from the period. At least three writing systems have been found. The disk in the left picture is called the Phaistos disk for the place it was found. It contains the only known specimen of one of the Minoans' writing systems. It is indecipherable, although periodically someone comes along with some wild theory about what it says. The three tablets on the right contain a script simply labeled Linear A, which so far is also undeciphered. But the last tablet, all the way to the left, was the grand prize:

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When Evans found it and thousands more with this same writing, it was referred to simply as Linear B, but after several decades of work, two British scholars, Michael Ventris (picture below) and John Chadwick, decoded it in 1952and learned it was an early form of Greek. John Chadwick was a very modest man, by the way.  When Ventris died shortly after their discovery, Chadwick went on to attribute most of the work to Ventris although he himself deserved much of the credit.  The discovery was significant for several reasons, including that with this discovery we have a longer written record for Greek than we have for any other Western language, from roughly 1500BC to modern day Greek. The tablets are mostly accounting records, sort of as if an accounting office were dug up in 3,000 years, so no early Homeric poems here, but we learn a lot about the daily mechanism of ancient Mycenaean life from them. Linear B also told archaeologists something they could not know or confirm before: the Mycenaeans were Greek and the Minoans were not.