Mask of Agamemnon by Maker unknown (between circa 1550 and circa 1500 BC)

Catalogue identity

The Mask of Agamemnon is catalogued as an archaeological find and death mask from Mycenaean Greece, with an anonymous maker: no individual craftsman is named in the record. The mask is assigned to the sixteenth century BC, circa 1550 to circa 1500 BC, a dating of the object itself and not of its documentation or publication. The recorded dimensions describe a small, light object: 0.025 metres in height, 0.017 metres in width, and a mass of 168.5 grams, about 5.9 ounces. Its supported medium is gold, and it belongs to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens collection in Athens, Greece. The catalogue's use of the title 'Mask of Agamemnon' is a naming convention of the record and not an attribution: the mask is a death mask placed over a face, and no maker is named for it.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Object type; Artist: anonymous; Summary; Date; Summary; Dimensions; Summary; Object history; Place of discovery: Mycenae)

Interpretation

Because the object date (circa 1550 to circa 1500 BC) and the documented discovery at Mycenae on 30 November 1876 are established independently of one another, the research account can separate the date of manufacture from the nineteenth-century events that produced the surviving record. Documentation of the object also includes the modern photograph taken by Gleb Simonov on 23 January 2024 and released into the public domain, which is a twenty-first-century act of documentation and not part of the object's ancient history. The photograph is the visual source through which the mask's chased and punched details are currently described, while its accession identifiers, recorded title variants, and the inscriptions carried on the object are not established by the supplied units and remain open in this account.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Date; Summary; Object history; Place of discovery: Mycenae; Photograph; Licensing)

The Mask of Agamemnon is an archaeological find and death mask from Mycenaean Greece, catalogued with an anonymous maker.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

The mask is dated to the sixteenth century BC, between circa 1550 and circa 1500 BC.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

The recorded height is 0.025 metres, the recorded width is 0.017 metres, and the mass is 168.5 grams (about 5.9 ounces).(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

Composition and facial conventions

Visual observation

The mask presents a bearded male face in the calm, closed stillness expected of a death mask. Its eyes are two almond-shaped forms with closed lids, their edges rendered sharply, and above them sit arched eyebrows finished by fine chasing. This combination of closed lids and worked brows establishes the restrained facial expression that the object's recorded function, a mask placed over a face for the tomb, requires. The visible detailing is not merely a description of a face but evidence of deliberate metalworking: the brows and lids are cut and modelled into the surface rather than left as plain sheet.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Semantic focus, lidded eyes and arched brows)

Below the eyes, the face carries an upturned handlebar moustache above a broad beard. The beard is not painted or applied; it is formed from dense parallel strokes of chased or punched gold extending around the chin and jaw. The hair therefore reads as texture worked directly into the metal, so that the moustache and beard are both a visual convention of mature masculinity and a record of the punches and chasing tools used to articulate the sheet. The upper forehead and crown preserve a different kind of evidence: heavily crinkled and torn gold along the top edge. Those creases and tears document both the working of the sheet metal during manufacture and the damage the object has sustained since. The mask is made of gold, a material whose thinness and ductility explain why it could be shaped by hand and why its top edge has deformed over time.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Semantic focus, handlebar moustache and beard; Summary; Medium)

Interpretation

The two descriptions of the face and the top edge belong to a single object whose recorded physical attributes include a gold medium and dimensions and mass, and whose preservation state is inseparable from its manufacture. The crinkled, torn crown and the chased beard are not competing accounts of different things: they are the same sheet gold showing two histories at once, the shaping of features into the metal and the later deformation of its upper edge. Read together, the observations establish that the mask was made by working a thin gold sheet rather than by casting a solid face, and that its current appearance includes both intentional chased detail and accidental damage. The calm expression that survives is therefore partly what the maker chased and partly what time has left of the sheet.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Semantic focus, lidded eyes and arched brows; Semantic focus, handlebar moustache and beard; Summary; Medium)

Visual observation

The mask shows two almond-shaped closed eyes with sharp lids and finely chased arched eyebrows, creating a calm, death-mask expression.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

The mask shows an upturned handlebar moustache and a broad beard rendered as dense parallel strokes of chased or punched gold around the chin and jaw.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

Documented material and dimensions

The mask is recorded as being made of gold, and this single material fact anchors every other technical observation about the object. The evidence describes it as a gold death mask from Mycenaean Greece, dated to the sixteenth century BC, between circa 1550 and circa 1500 BC, and catalogued with an anonymous maker. Its recorded dimensions are 0.025 metres in height and 0.017 metres in width, with a mass of 168.5 grams, about 5.9 ounces, and it belongs to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens collection in Athens, Greece. These recorded measurements and the collection attribution come from the object summary supplied for the mask, and they establish the physical parameters within which any discussion of its sheet-metal working must operate.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Medium)

What the evidence establishes

Interpretation

Taken together, the evidence establishes a thin sheet-gold object whose facial features were shaped and then chased or punched, with the beard formed from dense parallel strokes and the eyebrows finely chased above closed, almond-shaped eyes. The recorded mass of 168.5 grams and the recorded height and width give a sense of the sheet's scale, while the crinkled and torn top edge shows that this sheet was worked by hand and has since suffered damage. What the evidence does not supply is any documented account of the specific tools, alloy composition, number of layers, or preparation of the gold beyond the working of the sheet itself, and those gaps should remain explicit rather than filled by inference.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Medium; Semantic focus, handlebar moustache and beard; Semantic focus, forehead sheet creases and tears)

The mask is made of gold.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

Condition observations and damage

The upper forehead and crown of the mask show heavily crinkled and torn gold along the top edge. This condition record has two distinct components. The crinkling documents the working of the sheet metal, that is, the deformation produced when the thin gold was shaped by hand. The tearing documents later damage sustained by the object. Read together, the top edge preserves evidence of both manufacture and subsequent history in the same gold surface, and it is the clearest physical trace of the sheet-metal technique on which the mask's form depends.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Semantic focus, forehead sheet creases and tears)

Interpretation

The visual evidence establishes the mask as a worked sheet rather than a cast: its features were pressed and chased into the gold, and the beard is rendered as dense parallel strokes of chased or punched gold around the chin and jaw. This matters for condition because the same thin, worked sheet that carries the chased eyebrows, almond-shaped closed eyes with sharp lids, upturned handlebar moustache and broad beard is also the material whose top edge is crinkled and torn. The calm, death-mask expression visible in the closed eyes and chased features is therefore inseparable from a surface that records both deliberate shaping and later injury.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Semantic focus, forehead sheet creases and tears)

The upper forehead and crown of the mask show heavily crinkled and torn gold along the top edge, recording working of the sheet metal and later damage.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

Documented Provenance

The documented provenance of the mask begins at Mycenae, where the object was discovered on 30 November 1876. That date is the earliest fixed point in the record supplied here, and it is the moment at which the find entered documented history. The mask itself carries no maker's name, so its creation is recorded as anonymous; the object is identified by findspot, material and date rather than by authorship. Nothing in the evidence establishes who lifted the mask from the tomb, which tomb it came from, or who held it before it reached the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, where it is now kept in Athens, Greece. The interval between the 1876 discovery and the mask's present museum setting is therefore an unrecorded interval in this evidence, not a proven change of ownership. The mask is dated to the sixteenth century BC, about 1550 to 1500 BC, which places its making roughly three and a half centuries before the Trojan War stories with which it would later be connected.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Object history; Place of discovery: Mycenae; Photograph; Licensing)

The name by which the object is now known is not part of its ancient record. The mask is anonymous: no maker is named, and the evidence describes it as a death mask placed over a face. The association with Agamemnon is a later attachment to the Homeric king rather than an identification the object itself records. That distinction matters for provenance because a find's name can shape how it is catalogued, displayed and studied, even when the name rests on association rather than on documentation. The mask's physical character, a bearded male face in gold with closed eyes, is what the evidence can actually establish about the object; the royal name is a cultural overlay added after discovery.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Object history; Place of discovery: Mycenae)

The most recent stage in the object's documented history is photographic rather than custodial. The supplied photograph of the mask was taken by Gleb Simonov on 23 January 2024 and released into the public domain. This gives a precise, late date for one image of the object and a clear licensing status for its reproduction, but it does not by itself document any movement, loan or change of custody. It records the mask as it appeared in 2024, long after the 1876 discovery, and it is the basis on which the visible features described below can be examined.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Photograph; Licensing)

Material Record

The mask is a gold death mask from Mycenaean Greece, dated to about 1550 to 1500 BC. Its recorded dimensions are 0.025 metres in height, 0.017 metres in width, and its mass is 168.5 grams, about 5.9 ounces. It belongs to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens collection, in Athens, Greece. These recorded measurements and the collection attribution sit alongside the findspot at Mycenae and the 1876 discovery date, giving the object a material profile as well as a provenance. The mask is catalogued with an anonymous maker.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Object history; Place of discovery: Mycenae)

The face is worked rather than cast. Two almond-shaped closed eyes are set with sharp lids, and finely chased arched eyebrows arc above them, producing the calm expression associated with a death mask. An upturned handlebar moustache sits over a broad beard rendered as dense parallel strokes of chased or punched gold around the chin and jaw, so the hair reads as worked texture in the metal. The upper forehead and crown show heavily crinkled and torn gold along the top edge. Those creases and tears record the working of the sheet metal and also later damage, so the same surface carries both the making and the subsequent history of the object. The features were pressed and chased into thin sheet gold, and the mask fixes a face for the tomb rather than depicting a living one.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Photograph; Licensing)

Interpretation

Reading the mask's calm, closed expression together with its damaged top edge shows why the object holds a double record. The arched brows, closed lids and chased beard support its funerary function as a death mask, while the crinkled and torn gold records hand shaping and later wear. The later name links the mask to Agamemnon, yet the object is anonymous, and that gap between the physical object and its famous name is itself part of what the mask now means, alongside the association with the Homeric king that the discovery at Mycenae attached to it.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Photograph; Licensing; Summary; Object history; Place of discovery: Mycenae)

The mask was discovered at Mycenae on 30 November 1876.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

The supplied photograph of the mask was taken by Gleb Simonov on 23 January 2024 and released into the public domain.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

Object record and collection

The Mask of Agamemnon is held in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, in Athens, Greece. Within the museum's collection it is catalogued as a Mycenaean gold death mask dated to the sixteenth century BC, between approximately 1550 and approximately 1500 BC, and it is recorded without an attributed maker, so that the object enters the archive as an anonymous work even though it carries one of the most recognisable names in Aegean archaeology. The recorded dimensions are a height of 0.025 metres and a width of 0.017 metres, with a mass of 168.5 grams, roughly 5.9 ounces. Those figures describe a small, relatively light object, and they belong to the same documentary record that supplies the material, gold, and the broad cultural placement in Mycenaean Greece. The name by which the mask is generally known is a later association with the Homeric king Agamemnon rather than an identification recorded by the object itself, a distinction the collection summary preserves alongside the physical description.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Collection: National Archaeological Museum of Athens)

The mask was discovered at Mycenae on 30 November 1876. That date, preserved in the object's documentation, is the point at which the find entered historical notice and, in the accounts that followed, the point at which the name Agamemnon became attached to it. The association with the Homeric king is thus subsequent to the discovery and external to the object: the documentation records a sixteenth-century BC burial object recovered in 1876, and separately records the later name. Keeping those two facts distinct matters because the mask's modern identity as a named royal portrait depends on the later association, while its archaeological identity as an anonymous Mycenaean death mask rests on the recorded date, findspot and medium.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Collection: National Archaeological Museum of Athens)

The photograph through which the mask is documented in the supplied record was taken by Gleb Simonov on 23 January 2024 and released into the public domain; the file page presents the object summary, date, medium, dimensions, collection, discovery history and observations on the visual focus of the image. This means that the visual evidence available here is a twenty-first-century photograph of a museum object, not a record made at the moment of excavation, and the observations about the mask's features are tied to what that photograph and its accompanying description establish. The publication year 2024 and the photographer's name belong to the documentation of the image, while the mask's own dating and find date remain those recorded in the object summary. Separating the photographic record from the object record is important for reading the visual claims that follow, since the photograph is the immediate source of the described surface details.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Collection: National Archaeological Museum of Athens)

Visual conventions and surface

In the documented visual description, the mask shows two almond-shaped closed eyes with sharp lids and finely chased arched eyebrows, producing a calm, death-mask expression. Below the eyes an upturned handlebar moustache sits above a broad beard rendered as dense parallel strokes of chased or punched gold around the chin and jaw, so that the hair is described as texture worked into the metal rather than as colour or pigment. Along the upper forehead and crown the gold is heavily crinkled and torn at the top edge, which the record reads as evidence both of the working of the sheet metal and of later damage. Read together, these observations describe a face formed from thin sheet gold, its features pressed and chased into the surface rather than cast, with the top edge preserving the marks of manufacture and the marks of subsequent wear and injury in the same material.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Collection: National Archaeological Museum of Athens)

Interpretation

The combination of a serene closed-eyed face with a damaged and crinkled upper edge is what allows the object to hold its making and its history in one gold surface. The calm expression belongs to the funerary function of a death mask, which fixes a face for the tomb rather than portraying a living person, and the chased eyebrows, closed lids and worked beard all support that reading. The tears and creases at the crown qualify any account that treats the mask as a pristine image: the surviving surface records the manipulation of sheet metal and the damage incurred afterwards, so the object's present appearance is the product of both intentional shaping and subsequent history. This is a qualified synthesis of the documented description rather than a claim about the mask's original ritual use beyond what the evidence states.(Gleb Simonov, 2024, Summary; Collection: National Archaeological Museum of Athens)

The mask belongs to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens collection, located in Athens, Greece.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

Object Record and Working Valuation

Interpretation

The supply of object-specific evidence for this entry is narrow, and it centers on a single working calculation rather than on documented market activity. The calculation records an estimated value range of US$1,000,000 to US$5,000,000, generated on 2026-10-16 as a working insurance estimate. Its stated methodology is expressly conservative: it takes the confirmed artwork context and the supplied Wikimedia Commons record as its only inputs. The object is described in that record as an anonymous Mycenaean gold death mask dated between circa 1550 and circa 1500 BC, with a mass of 168.5 g of gold, held by the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, and discovered at Mycenae on 30 November 1876. Within the logic of the calculation, the range is a function of four things: the intrinsic gold value at a conservative elevated rate, the object's extreme rarity as a large, well-preserved Mycenaean gold funerary mask, its canonical prominence in Mycenaean archaeology and world museum collections, and the practical insurance difficulty surrounding an irreplaceable, non-market, state-held archaeological treasure.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

The number's evidentiary status deserves as much weight as the number itself. The calculation was deliberately widened and set for manual review rather than presented as a precise sum, and it is described as model-generated. It is not an official insurance value, not an appraisal, not an auction result, and not a sale price. No comparable sales, auction records, or private insurance data were used, and the calculation states that none were provided or located in the supplied excerpts. The absence of a maker, a provenance chain, a condition report, and any public market transaction is given as the reason the range is broad in the first place. The record also notes that the object is held by the National Archaeological Museum of Athens and is not known to be on the market, and that actual coverage for a unique archaeological treasure would require expert appraisal together with museum or sovereign collection considerations and specialist review.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

The factual inputs that feed the valuation come from the Wikimedia Commons record for the object, which the calculation treats as its confirmed context. That record catalogues the mask as an archaeological find and death mask from Mycenaean Greece with an anonymous maker; dates it to the sixteenth century BC, between circa 1550 and circa 1500 BC; describes it as made of gold; and gives a recorded height of 0.025 metres, a recorded width of 0.017 metres, and a mass of 168.5 grams, about 5.9 ounces. It places the mask in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens collection, in Athens, Greece, and records discovery at Mycenae on 30 November 1876. The same record describes the mask's appearance in detail: two almond-shaped closed eyes with sharp lids and finely chased arched eyebrows producing a calm, death-mask expression; an upturned handlebar moustache; and a broad beard rendered as dense parallel strokes of chased or punched gold around the chin and jaw. It also notes that the upper forehead and crown show heavily crinkled and torn gold along the top edge, recording both the working of the sheet metal and later damage. The supplied photograph of the mask was taken by Gleb Simonov on 23 January 2024 and released into the public domain. The Commons file is an open-access resource that was partially consulted, and it is the only source attached to the valuation.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)

Working estimate

Calculated working insurance estimate, not a sale price: Estimated value: US$1M to US$5M Recorded date: Working calculation, generated 2026-10-16. Methodology: This broad working range is a conservative insurance-calculation estimate based solely on the confirmed artwork context and the supplied Wikimedia Commons record. The object is described as an anonymous Mycenaean gold death mask dated between circa 1550 and circa 1500 BC, with a mass of 168.5 g of gold, held by the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, and discovered at Mycenae on 30 November 1876. The calculation considers the intrinsic gold value at a conservative elevated rate, the object's extreme rarity as a large, well-preserved Mycenaean gold funerary mask, its canonical prominence in Mycenaean archaeology and world museum collections, and the practical insurance difficulty surrounding an irreplaceable, non-market, state-held archaeological treasure. Because no maker, provenance chain, condition report, or public market transaction is supplied, the range is deliberately widened and set for manual review rather than presented as a precise sum. It is not derived from any comparable sale, auction result, or private insurance record, as none were provided or located in the supplied excerpts. Qualification: This is a model-generated working insurance range for manual review only. It is not an official insurance value, not an appraisal, not an auction result, and not a sale price. No comparable sales, auction records, or private insurance data were used. The object is held by the National Archaeological Museum of Athens and is not known to be on the market. Actual insurance coverage for a unique archaeological treasure would require expert appraisal, museum or sovereign collection considerations, and specialist review.(Gleb Simonov, 2024)