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Archaeology Museum of Athens, Greece

In Book III of the Odyssey, King Nestor serves wine to his guests, and offers wine to the goddess Athena, in a two-handled golden cup. The delicate gold chalice shown below was discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876 at Mycenae, in burial shaft IV of Grave Circle A (see photo of large grave circle).

Schliemann immediately compared it to the Cup of Nestor. But Homer’s Nestor, unless he also went by the name Methuselah, never drank from this exquisite two-handled cup, now in the Archaeology Museum of Athens—it dates to 1500 to 1550 B.C., but the destruction of the mighty-walled Bronze Age city of Troy came about 300 years later.