The exhibition “The kingdom of Ahhijawa. The Mycenaeans and Sicily”. Divided into eight sections, it was born as a deepening of knowledge of the extraordinary civilization, remembered in the Hittite texts with the name of Ahhijawa, which, around the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, took shape in continental Greece, defined as Mycenaean from the name of the most important site of this phase , Mycenae in Argolis. It will occupy the entire span of the Late Bronze Age in Greece, between the 17th/16th and 11th centuries. BC, defined as Late Helladic.
The themes into which the project is divided are dedicated to the characteristic aspects of Mycenaean society through evidence of material culture that could better reflect the richness and social complexity in this phase of the history of the Mediterranean.
The chosen artefacts come from representative contexts in tombs, palaces and settlements as well as from storerooms and serve to illustrate the characteristics of Mycenaean palatial society; the different types of work conducted by the population under the administrative control of the palaces and their daily lives; the specific sector of women’s work, as powerful priestesses or as workers in the production of textiles, as well as the lives of children; the mechanisms of administration and application of power through the army; religion, which provides the ideological framework for the functioning of society and the state apparatus; the impact on material culture resulting from trans-Mediterranean contacts on both shores of the Ionian Sea, with particular attention to south-eastern Sicily; the post-palatial society with its martial expression which finds surprising parallels in 12th and 11th century Sicily in warrior burials.
The works on display, over 180, come from various Greek museums, the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, Patras, Mycenae and from prestigious Italian museum institutions, the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto, Cagliari, the Superintendency of Brindisi and Lecce. Also present are Sicilian artefacts from Agrigento and from the Caltanissetta museum and from Paolo Orsi himself of Syracuse.
The exhibition, entirely financed by the Archaeological Park of Syracuse, Eloro villa del Tellaro and Akrai, is the result of the collaboration between the Sicilian institution and the Austrian Archaeological Institute of Vienna and is curated by Anita Crispino, official archaeologist of the Park and Reinhard Jung, researcher at the Austrian Archaeological Institute. A catalog published by “L’Erma di Bretschneider” is also planned. Free entry.
