The Aegisthus tomb is one of the three earliest tholoi known at Mycenae, dating to 1600-1500 BC. A. J. B. Wace and his team cleared the dromos, the doorway and two thirds of the chamber in 1922. (The remaining third of the tholos was deemed too dangerous to complete its clearance in 1923.)
The tomb receives its name in reference to its proximity to the ‘tomb of Clytemnestra’, equally imaginatively named in reference to Homeric epic. In the Odyssey Aegisthus features as the lover of queen Clytemnestra, her co-conspirator in the murder of her husband Agamemnon, and lastly as king of Mycenae.