{"it":{"id":"EUR-012","kind":"site","sub":"Europe and the Mediterranean","name":"Tiryns","place":"Greece","lat":37.599,"lon":22.8,"date":"It reached its height of importance between 1400 and 1200 BC, when it became one of the…","mat":"clay","nfacts":17,"tags":["Europe"],"sum":"The walls of Tiryns in Greece are usually 6 m thick and reach 17 m where passages run through them, built of rough blocks so huge that later Greeks said only the giant Cyclopes could have lifted them.","src":[398],"nsrc":3,"why":"Walls up to 8 m thick that later Greeks thought only giants could have raised.","yt":"The Greeks credited the walls to the Cyclopes. What made people centuries later unable to picture human builders?","rel":["EUR-009"],"hook":"Tiryns' walls run 8 m thick and 13 m high. The Greeks said only giants could have built them."},"S":{"398":["Wikipedia: Tiryns","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiryns"]},"rec":{"id":"EUR-012","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"It lies","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"20","u":"km","o":"It lies 20 km south of Mycenae.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1414"},{"f":"had a population of 10 000 people covering","a":"area","v":"20-25","u":"hectares","o":"In 1300 BC, the citadel and lower town had a population of 10,000 people covering 20–25 hectares.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1415"},{"f":"was a flourishing early pre-Hellenic settlement located about","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"15","u":"km","o":"In the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, it was a flourishing early pre-Hellenic settlement located about 15 km southeast of Mycenae, on a hill 300 m long, 45 - 100 m wide, and no more than 18 m high.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1416"},{"f":"15 km southeast of Mycenae on a hill","a":"length","v":"300","u":"m","o":"In the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, it was a flourishing early pre-Hellenic settlement located about 15 km southeast of Mycenae, on a hill 300 m long, 45 - 100 m wide, and no more than 18 m high.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1417"},{"f":"of Mycenae on a hill 300 m long","a":"width","v":"45-100","u":"m","o":"In the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, it was a flourishing early pre-Hellenic settlement located about 15 km southeast of Mycenae, on a hill 300 m long, 45 - 100 m wide, and no more than 18 m high.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1418"},{"f":"- 100 m wide and no more than","a":"height","v":"18","u":"m","o":"In the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, it was a flourishing early pre-Hellenic settlement located about 15 km southeast of Mycenae, on a hill 300 m long, 45 - 100 m wide, and no more than 18 m high.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1419"},{"f":"It was","a":"diameter","v":"28","u":"m","o":"It was 28 m in diameter.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1420"},{"f":"were others cross-cutting so that the thickness reached","a":"thickness","v":"45","u":"m","o":"Its base was powerful, and was constructed from two concentric stone walls, among which there were others cross-cutting, so that the thickness reached 45 m.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1421"},{"f":"length and their height in some places reaching","a":"height","v":"7","u":"meters","o":"Their bases survive throughout all of their length, and their height in some places reaching 7 meters, slightly below the original height, which is estimated at 9–10 m.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1422"},{"f":"below the original height which is estimated at","a":"height","v":"9-10","u":"m","o":"Their bases survive throughout all of their length, and their height in some places reaching 7 meters, slightly below the original height, which is estimated at 9–10 m.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1423"},{"f":"The walls are quite thick usually","a":"thickness","v":"6","u":"meters","o":"The walls are quite thick, usually 6 meters, and up to 17 m at the points where the tunnels pass through.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1424"},{"f":"quite thick usually 6 meters and up to","a":"dimension (unspecified)","v":"17","u":"m","o":"The walls are quite thick, usually 6 meters, and up to 17 m at the points where the tunnels pass through.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1425"},{"f":"similar to that of Mycenae dimensions 11 8","a":"plan dimension (pair)","v":"9.8","u":"m","o":"The palace of the king, inside the citadel, similar to that of Mycenae (dimensions 11.8 × 9.8 m) consists of three areas: the outer portico with the two columns, the prodomos (anteroom) and the domos (main room) with the cyclical fireplace that was surrounded by four wooden columns.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371814750 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1426"},{"f":"Tiryns cyclopean walls","a":"thickness / block mass","v":"5-8 m / up to ~3 t (reported)","u":"m; t","o":"","unc":"","by":"cmarch.ca magazine (secondary)","yr":"2024","m":"as stated","c":"cmarch.ca magazine (secondary)","pg":"","url":"https://cmarch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/V3-N3-Summer-2024.pdf","b":"S","bb":"secondary","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2702"},{"f":"acropolis hill","a":"length / width / height","v":"300; 45-100; <=18","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Tiryns","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Tiryns","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3625"},{"f":"peak","a":"period","v":"1400-1200 BC","u":"text","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Tiryns","yr":"2026","m":"derived","c":"Wikipedia Tiryns","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M3626"},{"f":"round building","a":"diameter","v":"28","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Tiryns","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Tiryns","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3627"}],"lab":[],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"It reached its height of importance between 1400 and 1200 BC, when it became one of the most important centers of the Mycenaean world, and in particular in Argolis.","dm":"[see dating_excerpt; method not extracted]","lab":"NO: inference only (style/context/king list/textual)","weak":"no direct lab result on the structure in our records; date from stylistic, contextual or textual inference","unesco":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/941","dens":"CENSUS"},"co":{"lat":"37.59944444","lon":"22.8","src":"Wikidata P625 + UNESCO WHC list XML (agree ≤0.05°)","agree":"agree","b":"V","note":"two independent sources agree; max delta 0.0002 deg (~0.03 km)","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/281222021"},"src":[{"id":"S0397","t":"no inline ref in article","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiryns&oldid=1371814750"},{"id":null,"t":"cmarch.ca magazine (secondary)","u":"https://cmarch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/V3-N3-Summer-2024.pdf"},{"id":"S0619","t":"Wikipedia: Tiryns","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiryns"},{"id":"VEUR-012-4","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/941/"},{"id":null,"t":"Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports (Odysseus), Tiryns, by Alkistis Papadimitriou","u":"https://web.archive.org/web/2025/http://odysseus.culture.gr/h/3/eh351.jsp?obj_id=2382"},{"id":null,"t":"Reichert Verlag, Tiryns vol. 17.2: Kilian excavations in the Lower Citadel 1976–1983 (publisher summary)","u":"https://reichert-verlag.de/en/9783895008498_baubefunde_und_stratigraphie_der_unterburg_und_des_nordwestlichen_stadtgebiets_kampagnen_1976_bis_1983-detail/"}],"sum":"\"Two mules pulling together could not move even the smaller stones.\" The geographer Pausanias wrote that after seeing the walls of Tiryns in the second century AD, and by then the citadel was already deserted, a ruin on a low hill in southern Greece. He was repeating, in his own way, what Greeks had said for centuries. These walls could not have been built by men. They were the work of the Cyclopes, the giants of myth, and the name stuck to the whole style of building. Archaeologists still call it cyclopean masonry.\n\nTiryns lies in the Argolid, in the north-east Peloponnese, about 20 kilometres from Mycenae, near the Argolic Gulf. The hill is not dramatic: about 300 metres long, between 45 and 100 metres wide, and no more than 18 metres high. What makes it extraordinary is the ring of stone wrapped around it. The walls enclose an Upper, Middle and Lower Citadel in a circuit of about 750 metres, and their bases survive along their entire length. They are built of huge, largely unworked boulders fitted closely without mortar, the gaps packed with smaller stones, around a core of rubble. Sources disagree on how big they are, perhaps because they measure different stretches in different states of ruin. UNESCO says up to 8 metres thick and 13 metres high. Greece's Ministry of Culture gives a width of 4.5 to 7 metres. Another account says they are usually 6 metres thick, swelling to 17 metres where tunnels run through them, and stand up to 7 metres today, a little below an original height estimated at 9 to 10. Either way, a wall as thick as a two-lane road and taller than a three-storey house, built of rough boulders that one modern estimate puts at up to 3 tonnes each. UNESCO says the stones are larger even than those of Mycenae, and that the walls go \"beyond the human scale.\" Homer called the place \"mighty-walled Tiryns.\"\n\nThe hill had a long life before the walls. People lived on it in the Neolithic, around 5000 BC. In the Early Bronze Age, about 2500 to 2000 BC, houses ringed an imposing round building on the summit, 28 metres across, built on two concentric stone walls joined by cross-walls, with a clay superstructure and a roof of fired tiles. It may have been a refuge for the town in war, or a ruler's house, or both. The Mycenaean builders who came later destroyed most of these older layers, though the round building survived beneath the courtyard of their palace.\n\nThe Mycenaean citadel went up in three phases, the first around 1500 to 1400 BC, the last at the end of the thirteenth century, and the ruins visible today belong to that final phase. Tiryns was at its height between 1400 and 1200 BC, one of the great centres of the Mycenaean world, which UNESCO lists with Mycenae as the two greatest cities of that civilisation. Around 1300 BC the citadel and the lower town held some 10,000 people on 20 to 25 hectares. On the upper citadel stood the palace: courtyards, a colonnade, formal gateways, and a great hall, the megaron, with a throne against one wall and a round hearth framed by four wooden columns in the Minoan style. Its outer porch was faced with alabaster slabs carved with rosettes and flowers, and the rest was painted.\n\nEverything about the design speaks of control. The entrance was always on the east, and in its middle phase the gate took the form of the Lion Gate at Mycenae, with a tower on one side and the arm of the wall on the other, so that attackers had to squeeze down a narrow corridor while defenders struck from above and from both sides. Rooms with corbelled ceilings, built by stepping each course of stone inward until the two sides met, were hidden inside the thickness of the walls, perhaps for storage. In the northern section, tunnels with triangular roofs offered refuge to the people of the lower town in times of danger. And the builders planned for siege. Three springs fed the compound, one reached by a secret entrance, two by tunnels through the wall.\n\nThe mainstream explanation is not mysterious, and it is persuasive. Ramps, levers, ropes and many workers are enough to move blocks of a few tonnes. What such walls really measure is power: a ruler able to feed and direct large crews for years. That is the real lesson of Tiryns. A wall of this size was a weapon even when no enemy came, because everyone who saw it understood who had built it and what he could command.\n\nYet the walls did not save the palace. The palace system collapsed around 1200 BC. Strangely, Tiryns did not empty. The excavator Klaus Kilian, who dug the Lower Citadel from 1976 to 1983, found the twelfth and eleventh centuries BC there \"by no means a dark age,\" with a series of cult buildings, and the population of the town may have grown to around 15,000 by 1150 BC. About 1180 BC someone buried a cauldron in the foundations of a house in the lower town, packed with gold and silver objects and a Minoan signet ring that was already centuries old. The palace area stayed in use into the eighth century BC, and a temple, linked to Hera, rose in the ruins of the great hall.\n\nThen came the politics of memory. Greek legend gave Tiryns to the hero Proetus, who fled from his brother Acrisius, king of Argos, and returned to fortify the city with the help of the Cyclopes. It made Tiryns the home of Heracles during his Twelve Labours. But that web of tradition, one modern account notes, was spun when the rising city of Argos needed a glorious past to compete with its neighbours. The old fortresses unsettled the Argives even in decline. Tiryns sent 400 heavy infantry to fight the Persians at Plataea in 480 BC. In 468 BC Argos destroyed both Mycenae and Tiryns and, by Pausanias's account, moved their people to Argos.\n\nThe modern rediscovery nearly ended in disaster. Heinrich Schliemann made trial digs in 1876 and decided the palace was medieval, and he came close to tearing it out to dig deeper for Mycenaean treasure. He returned in 1884, and under Wilhelm Dörpfeld the ruins were finally read correctly.\n\nNo source gives the size of the crews, the years of work, or the weight of the heaviest stone. The scale stays an impression rather than a calculation, which is exactly how it struck the Greeks who came after. Stand below the eastern entrance in the late afternoon and look up: rough boulders stacked into a cliff, the gaps chinked with small stones, and the shadow of the wall falling across the road the way it fell on every traveller who ever wondered whose hands had done it.","qs":["The Greeks credited the walls to the Cyclopes. What made people centuries later unable to picture human builders?","How would you lift a rough boulder of many tonnes onto a wall 13 m high with ropes, levers and ramps?","Mycenae and Tiryns both have giant walls. Did the same crews build both?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Tiryns_-_Cyclopean_masonry.jpg/1280px-Tiryns_-_Cyclopean_masonry.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tiryns_-_Cyclopean_masonry.jpg","title":"Tiryns - Cyclopean masonry.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0","by":"Nick Stenning","cap":"Cyclopean masonry at Tiryns walls, Greece."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Facade_of_Philip_II_tomb_Vergina_Greece.jpg/1280px-Facade_of_Philip_II_tomb_Vergina_Greece.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Facade_of_Philip_II_tomb_Vergina_Greece.jpg","title":"Facade of Philip II tomb Vergina Greece.jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Panegyrics of Granovetter (Sarah Murray)","cap":"Facade of Philip II of Macedon tomb in Vergina, Greece. The door is made of marble and the order is doric."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Mystras_palace.JPG/1280px-Mystras_palace.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mystras_palace.JPG","title":"Mystras palace.JPG","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"Aeleftherios","cap":"General view of the Palace of Mystras"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Parthenon_%2830276156187%29.jpg/1280px-Parthenon_%2830276156187%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parthenon_(30276156187).jpg","title":"Parthenon (30276156187).jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0","by":"Phanatic","cap":"Parthenon"},{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Passageway_of_the_galleries_within_the_walls_of_Tiryns.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Passageway_of_the_galleries_within_the_walls_of_Tiryns.jpg","title":"Passageway of the galleries within the walls of Tiryns.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0","by":"Alun Salt","cap":"Tiryns, Greece. Photo of a tunnel in the castle."}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"1400 BC","h":"Mycenae was one of the major centres of the Mycenaean world","s":[137]},{"v":"1200 BC","h":"It reached its height of importance between 1400 and 1200 BC","s":[137]},{"v":"Clay","h":"Made of","s":[137]}],"hs":{"137":["Wikipedia: Tiryns (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiryns"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/EUR-012.webp","w":1280,"h":960,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Tiryns_-_Cyclopean_masonry.jpg/1280px-Tiryns_-_Cyclopean_masonry.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}