A celebrated Bronze Age warrior is coming to Athens. The National Archaeological Museum opens “The Pylos of Nestor: A Mycenaean Kingdom Revealed” on Monday, presenting the “Griffin Warrior” to Athenian audiences for the first time.
Discovered in 2015 by archaeologists Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker on the hill of Ano Englianos in Pylos, his undisturbed tomb yielded hundreds of luxury grave goods. Several remain in the museum’s metals laboratory for final conservation, among them an exquisitely carved agate seal depicting combat, an ivory jewelry box lid showing a griffin wrestling a lion, and a gold-inlaid sword handle.
Developed with the Getty Museum and the University of Cincinnati, the exhibition traces Mycenaean civilization in Messinia from the 17th to the 14th century BC. Its design aims to give visitors, in the words of deputy director Konstantinos Nikolentzos, the sensation of being “up close, like the conservator and the archaeologist.”
