However, as early as the 19th century, detailed archaeological studies of the northwest of Asia Minor discovered traces of a large city for ancient times with powerful defensive structures. Excavations have shown that during the seemingly mythical Trojan War, the city of Troy really existed and was one of the most developed centers of the Mediterranean. In addition, traces of destruction dating back to approximately the same period were also found - it seems that the Greeks defeated their enemy, as described in the Iliad.
The leader of the Greek army was the Mycenaean king Agamemnon. Being one of the main characters of the work, Agamemnon was a real-life character. In the Hittite chronicles, for example, he bore the name Akagamunas.
The German enthusiastic archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who was interested in the events of the Trojan War, set out to find the burial places of the legendary Agamemnon, who managed to conquer Troy and unite almost all of Greece.
In 1876, Schliemann excavated the Mycenaean acropolis. The archaeologist discovered several graves of noble people, next to which were gold earrings and other jewelry, apparently belonging to them during their lifetime. On the male skeletons were golden masks, which the Greeks, according to custom, placed on the faces of the dead before burial.
One of the discovered masks, in its dating, corresponded to the historical period of the reign of Agamemnon, so Schliemann quite naturally considered it the mask of the legendary king. Interestingly, the mask itself is posthumous, that is, it tries to convey the facial features of a person. If this is true, then we now have a vague idea of ​​what Agamemnon looked like. However, not everyone agrees with Schliemann's conclusions. Modern research on the mask has shown that it may be several centuries older than the German archaeologist thought. At the moment, the question of whether the mask really belongs to the tamer of Troy remains open, but the name of Agamemnon will already remain firmly associated with it.