In the late eighth century, dedications to Agamemnon were begun to be offered up about a kilometer south of the citadel at Mycenae, next to a Mycenaean bridge that still survives.  There is hardly anything left of this sanctuary, but excavations in the 1950's have revealed the outlines of a precinct and traces of internal cross walls.  There were also archaic and Hellenistic roofing tiles which suggest the presence of buildings during those periods.  During the early archaic period, the vases were comparable to the best offerings at other sanctuaries throughout the Argolid so we know that the sanctuary here was of some importance.  Much of the archaic dedications and votive objects were found packed together in a dense layer that formed a bedding for the Hellenistic paving that covered the area.  The shrine was still in use until 468 BCE, when the Argives finally destroyed the small town of Mycenae.
    Dedications to Agamemnon have been found at the site.  Among these there are a number of bath water basins; a dedication which would have been painfully embarrassing to Agamemnon, who was slain in his bath by his wife Clytemnestra.
    The reason behind the location of the building remains a mystery, but its distance from the grave circles and tholos tombs compels us to suppose that in early Greek times, the place of Agamemnon’s burial was not indicated and that the cult at the Agamemnoneion was independent of a tomb of any sort.  In later periods Pausanias claimed that Agamemnon was buried inside the fortifications, but that statement is most likely the result of the “creation” of a later tomb (i.e., reuse of another tomb) for the laudable purpose of satisfying the desire of western tourists for instruction in the history and monuments of Greece.
    Another archaic epic hero cult has been found at Therapnae near Sparta.  This one was dedicated to Menelaos and Helen and is usually referred to as the Menelaion.

Archaic Epic Hero Cult
    (Just a few brief words) In the Late Geometric period, numerous epic-hero cults and cults in tholos and chamber tombs began to spring up.  Some scholars, even the famous Carl Blegen, tried to convince themselves that these cult practices at Bronze Age sites indicated an uninterrupted survival of cults of the dead from Mycenaean times into classical.  But the evidence for intervening centuries has been lacking.  To quote J.M. Cook, “In the absence of such traces, as also of any comparable hero cults in Homer, we must reject the idea of a survival (or even, properly speaking, of a revival) of heroic cults, and assume that these Hellenic cults were instituted by people who preserved no continuity of memory (and little enough of blood) some centuries after the occupants of the tombs had passed into oblivion.”
    L.R. Farnell wrote, way back in 1921, that “we so often hear how saga reflects cult that we are in danger of ignoring the reverse truth that cult may reflect saga.”  He contended at that early date that the cults of epic heroes springing up ca. 700 BCE were directly inspired by the Homeric epics.  In addition, the spread of epic, particularly Homer, but also Hesiod, fits well with the appearance in early Greek painting of scenes derived from the epic.  We can at least state that the tomb cults and the sanctuaries of Agamemnon and Menelaos were founded under the influence of epic poetry.
 

    Archaic Greek Hero Cults
     Forthcoming!