Dendra panoply

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Virtually no body armour from the late Mycenaean period has survived. Bronze scales were found at Mycenae and Troy, and this, the oldest form of metal body armour, was used widely throughout the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. Swedish archaeologists, however, discovered the earliest example of a beaten bronze cuirass at Dendra. It forms part of the Dendra Panoply (LH IIIa), which consists of 15 separate pieces of bronze sheet held together with leather thongs, which encased the wearer from neck to knees^[1]^[2]^[3]. The panoply also includes both greaves and lower arm-guards. The arm-guard is unique but greaves, probably made of linen, are often depicted in late Mycenaean art. A few bronze examples have been found, and these only covered the shins and may have been worn over linen ones. Although we have only one complete panoply to date, the Dendra Panoply appears often as an ideogram on Linear B tablets from Knossos (Sc series), Pylos (Sh series) and Tiryns (Si series).

The panoply’s cuirass consists of two pieces for the chest and back. These are joined on the left side by a hinge. There is a bronze loop on the right side of the front-plate and a similar loop on each shoulder. Large shoulder-guards fit over the cuirass. Two triangular plates are attached to the shoulder-guards and gave protection to the wearer’s armpits when his arms were in the raised position. There is also a deep neck-guard. The Linear B ideogram depicting armour of this type makes the neck-guard clearly discernible, and protection by a high bronze collar was a typical feature of Near Eastern body armour. Three pairs of curved plates hang from the waist to protect the groin and the thighs. All these pieces are made of beaten bronze sheet and are backed with leather and loosely fastened by ox-hide thongs to allow some degree of movement. The complete panoply thus forms a cumbersome tubular suit of armour, which not only fully protects the neck, but also extends down to the knees. It appears that lower arm-guards and a set of greaves further protected the warrior, all made of bronze, as fragments of these were also found in the grave at Dendra. Slivers of boars’ tusks were also discovered, which once made up a boars’-tusk helmet.

As previously mentioned, the figures on the Warrior Vase are wearing body armour. However this is an embossed waist-length leather corselet with a fringed leather apron that reaches to mid-thigh and possible shoulder-guards, very much like that worn by the ‘Peoples of the Sea’ depicted on the mortuary temple of Rameses III (d. c. 1155 bc) at Medinet Habu, Lower Egypt. Alternatively, the body armour was a ‘bell’ corselet of beaten bronze sheet, a type also found in central Europe at this time.

Quoted from Mycenaean Citadels c. 1350–1200 BC (Fortress 22) An extract from ‘The Mycenaeans’ [4]