In the aegean world, Mycenaean art is a new art. Unlike Minoan art, which developed over several centuries in the context of a palatial civilisation, it appeared suddenly c.1600 bc, in a Helladic world where works of art were previously extremely rare. Who were the artists and what were their sources of inspiration? How did it differ from contemporary Minoan (and Cycladic) art? The earliest works, the funerary riches from the period of the shaft graves of Mycenae, were displays of status on the part of elites with rapidly new-found wealth. Admittedly, such desire for status was already apparent since the Early Bronze Age in the jewellery from Minoan, Cycladic, or Helladic tombs.