Homeric Archaeology was a paper that I sat for my Classical Moderations, health problems impeded my work for the majority of Michelmas Term and I had to play catch up in the run up to the exams in Hilary Term. My tutor very kindly made the time to give me some tutorials and all went well in the exam. It was an immensely enjoyable subject and one that I should like to keep up with, this is one of my less red-penned-to-hell essays (and believe me it was well deserved red-penning) which discuses some of the historicity issues regarding the Homeric texts and the historical event of the Trojan War.
Introduction
In the figure of Heinrich Schliemann we are presented with an intriguing meeting between the fanciful and the factual, a cross-junction bisected by myth and science, by literature and archaeology, by genius and not a little dissemblance. As the man who excavated the hill of Hisarlik and uncovered what he believed to be the ancient city of Troy, Schliemann has a credible claim to being the man who began the study of prehistoric archaeology in the Aegean region thereby thrusting the well known literary epics of Homer into the historical sphere and providing the world with a rich new line of thought, namely embodied in the questions ‘Did the Trojan war actually happen?’ and ‘Does the Homeric epics describe real events?’
If we accept Schliemann’s romanticism in that it was Homer that led him to Troy we can see how, paradoxically, his imagination was both a help and a hindrance in his search for the Trojan War. His eagerness to discover the world of the poems provided him with the enthusiasm and the determination to carry out the large-scale operation at Hisarlik but it was also a factor which prevented a more sober analysis of the evidence, and in the ‘Jewels of Helen’ and the ‘Treasure of Priam’ it may have been a case that Schliemann’s imagination ran riot.
One hundred and forty one years after Schliemann’s team began work at Hisarlik in April, 1870, the field of Prehistoric Aegean Archaeology has been responsible for a great many intriguing historical discoveries, from Schliemann at Hisarlik and Mycenae, Evans at Knossos, and Blegan at Pylos, to the decipherment of Linear B by Ventris and the latest excavations of ‘Troy’ by Korfmann and Pernicka, each successive discovery has widened and deepened our understanding of the Late Bronze Age Aegean to which the heroes of Homer were thought to have belonged. As such we have a larger knowledge base by which to judge the question of whether the Homeric poems describe this world and what we may learn about either the Late Bronze Age or the Early Iron Age-indeed if we may learn anything at all-from a reading of Homer.
Issues of Dating.
To begin with it is helpful to try and arrange a timeline of sorts, the two most important elements of this being the date of the Trojan War, if one took place, and the date when Homer or many Homers composed the epics we know as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Historical dating of the Trojan War varies; Herodotus records it as 1250BCE, the Parian Marble dates it to 1209BCE and Eratosthenes of Cyrene puts it at 1183BCE.[1] The methodology used in these cases is counting backwards by generation, or by king lists or by the system of scientific chronology invented by Eratosthenes; Herodotus seems to have felt that the Trojan War took place about 800 years before his own time[2] and also sees it as being an historical event rather a literary creation. In our own estimates for a chronology of the Trojan War we are greatly aided by several sources, namely the archaeological remains of what may be Troy, Hittite texts of the Late Bronze Age, Linear B evidence from mainland Greece, and pottery sequences. There is of course a wealth of information here which it will be necessary to briefly summarize in order to find a workable estimated date with which to work.
Within the stratifications of the Hisarlik site Troy VI is thought by Blegan to have been destroyed by one of the many earthquakes that have plagued the Aegean throughout history while Dorpfeld believes this destruction to have been the result of enemy action pointing to good evidence of fire damage and general structural devastation within the layer.[3] The exactitude of both men’s estimates is of course open to question and whilst the fire and destruction of Troy VI provide good grounds for suspecting that this was the result of human agency, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the later Troy VIIa was destroyed by fire also. It may not be an insurmountable obstacle if we consider that in legend the city of Troy suffered two destructions, the first being at the hands of a vengeful Herakles, the second being total annihilation at the hands of the Achaeans. This would reflect the destruction of the city superstructure but not the foundations of Troy VI[4] (a retributive raid perhaps?) and the continued habitation of the site in Troy VIIa. Mycenaean Pottery sequences found on the site are suggestive of either trade or settlement and in both cases imply contact with Mycenaean culture and that no LHIIIB pottery can safely be judged to belong to the Troy VI stratum is suggestive of its destruction by whatever means in or around the late fourteenth, early thirteenth century BCE, Wood puts it at around 1320-1275BCE. From Hittite sources from around about the reign of Hattusilis III we know that there were hostilities between the Hittites and a land known as Ahhiyawa over a city or area known as Wilusa.
Here it is important to bear in mind the following observation:
“The site of Troy has the misfortune to stand on not one but two academic fault-lines, one on either side of the Aegean: the Homeric problem concerned with the historicity (or otherwise) of the Iliad; and the problem of Anatolian historical geography of the Arzawa lands as reconstructable (or not) from the Hittite texts.”[5]
The major problem with reconstructing the historical geography lies in the fragmentary nature of the Hittite texts and the exact location of the town of Wilusa which was perhaps located in the North West of Asia Minor roughly in the same location as the site of Troy, the immediate assumption here (and entirely arguable) is that Troy and Wilusa are one and the same. This does not entirely help us in trying to pin down a date for such a conflict but if the tangle between Ahhiyawa and Hattusilis III over Wilusa recorded in the Tawagalawa letter is perhaps the historical event that became known as the Trojan War we could roughly estimate 1267-1237BCE as the timescale for our Trojan War, or in relative terms LHIIIB.
So much for the Trojan War we now turn to the issue of when Homer-if indeed he was one man-composed the Iliad and Odyssey. The texts we have today come from the text found in Roman papyri between c.150BCE and the 7th century CE plus medieval codices from 900CE-1550CE[6]. Herodotus again provides us with a little insight in that he felt Homer and Hesiod to have existed four hundred years before him[7], which would place Homer at around 850BCE. Ian Morris dismisses the low dating proposed by Minna Jensen, which suggests a terminus post quem at 650BCE[8], on the grounds that Homer’s anonymity would be highly unlikely if he had existed a century or so before Herodotus; equally he points to a lack of 6th century references within the epics as further evidence against such a late date. Morris establishes that a terminus ante quem ‘must be established well before the sixth century’[9] and then goes on to cite Richard Janko’s chronology which places Homer in the 8th century BCE which gives absolute dates of 750-725BCE for the Iliad and 743-713BCE for the Odyssey.[10] Again there is plenty of discussion to be had as regards the date of Homer and so too in the identity or identities of Homer but for the purposes of this essay we will accept Janko’s dates. Thus we have a rough dating for a conflict at Troy 1267-1237BCE and a rough date for the production of the Homeric poems c.750-713BCE.
An immediate question arises from such a chronology, if the events and their retelling are separated by some five hundred years then how reliable can the poems be in redescribing a world that was dead and gone by the time Homer (let us just assume there was one) put pen to paper?
Homer: Issues of Reliability
With so many varying opinions and perspectives let us first start with a few points of general agreement, Morris outlines the following:
1) The Homeric poems are oral compositions
2) They were substantially formed in the 8th century BCE
3) They purport to describe events in the 13th century BCE[11]
So far so good let us examine some of the considerations that arise when talking about oral composition and tradition. The work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord is invaluable in such a study for their observation of Yugoslavian oral bards has provided us with a remarkable insight into the nature of an oral tradition. Lord’s understanding was that memory came in as runner-up to an ability to recast and ‘free-style’ during performance[12] which suggests that rather than call for the learning of texts verbatim and reproducing exact copies in oral performance and oral tradition remains in a state of flux and allows for a great amount of creativity. Reliance upon stock epithets and phrases that we find littered throughout the Homeric poems, ‘wine-dark sea’ is a particular favorite, enables a bard to construct lines quite freely in order to fit the metrical structure of the song and also to allow him to think, like all good singers, a few lines ahead. The implications of such a model and the five hundred year gap between the Late Bronze Age and Homer raise some serious questions as to how accurate a picture he could be providing of a bygone world if the tradition he had inherited had not transmitted a carbon copy of an older tale but one that had undergone countless, various retellings over half a millennia? Morris quite rightly points out that with no fixed copy or original, canonical text ‘the only criterion is that the poem meets the demands of the singer and audience as it is performed.’[13] As such, elements of plot structure may remain relatively unchanged for decent amounts of time especially if the tale is well known for instance should I retell the Iliad and have Hector kill Menelaus (as certain Hollywood films that shall not be named have done) I may well invite the wrath of my audience who would likely know full well that Hector does not kill Menelaus, however, should I retell the Iliad and arm my warriors with iron weapons and have them fight in hoplite formation I may well get away with it simply because it may not be as integral to the plot or as well known. Hence we are faced with an uncertainty as to how much has been altered and for reason it has been altered.
Davies lists a number of distortions that can affect oral traditions, they are as follows:
1) Individual psychology of the informant, private interests, compunctions. Etc
2) Elimination of archaizing features
3) Feedback of erroneous information into oral accounts
4) Appearances of a cultural hero
5) Distortions to geneology and chronology[14]
These influences are themselves affected by environmental circumstances and historic trends, Davies likens the Iliad and Odyssey to other extended poetic epics such as Chanson de Roland and the Nibelungenlied in that elements of their composition reflect the historical circumstances in which they were produced.[15]If ‘the historical element is often reduced to a mere background…[if] most tales merely express the ideas and ways of life of the present’[16] what then for the historicity of Homer as regards the Late Bronze Age? Furthermore we have to ask the question of why the poems were written down if an oral tradition had sustained itself for at least five hundred years without the necessity of writing; Morris points out that writing down 28’000 verses of poetry in the 8th century BCE was no light task especially if we consider that at that point Greek writing was at an inchoative stage.[17]
These two questions lead us to a point at which we may begin to feel that Homer might tell us a lot more about the Early Iron Age than he does the Late Bronze Age and indeed Finley in 1954 book The World of Odysseus shifts the focus away from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age in an attempt to understand Homeric society.[18]
Homer and the Iron Age
Morris in his The Use and Abuse of Homer makes an excellent case for the Homeric poems being a reflection of Iron Age society and aristocratic, ruling-class values and I shall not simply spend the remainder of the essay paraphrasing his argument but simply pick up on a few points of interest. Morris points out very concisely and, in my view, correctly that throughout the poems the basileis is glorified and the demos sidelined and overruled, the incident in the Iliad of Odysseus and Thersites being an excellent example.[19] As such, Morris argues, The Homeric poems provide a form of legitimization for the aristoi by setting up an historical precedent of strong, individual rule. There is nothing quite like the drab, miserable dampener of the statement ‘this is how things have always been and always will be’ to extinguish the sparks of idealism or progressivism. However, whereas Morris seems to feel that the Homeric poems are in their entirety a reflection of the Iron Age it’s important to ask where this model of individual rule came from and why it should be used a legitimizing tool? One solution is that they were complete fabrications, which seems unlikely since it would fly in the face of an inherited oral tradition and whilst Homer may have been a poet of genius it’s unlikely that he pulled two epic poems out of nowhere. Morris also downplays much of the archaic features of the poems and whilst the idea of ‘epic distancing’ is a sound one it can easily become overworked and Morris does seem to overstate the case somewhat. There should be no doubt that the world of the Mycenaeans had been lost and along with it much of its culture, but the memories are likely to have been preserved, if distorted, through the oral tradition. Homer’s heroes fight with bronze weapons, though the occasional iron arrow sneaks its way into the narrative, and whilst Morris would term this ‘epic distancing’ it nonetheless reflects a reality as countless archaeological finds have attested.
We are also presented with the issue that whilst sumptuous palaces are described in ample detail within the Homeric epics there is absolutely no mention of palatial administration, cultic or burial practices or Linear B terms for specialized workers[20] and nor do we see the scribes who kept everything ticking over. This, I feel, is not a problem at all nor is it evidence that Homer is not describing elements of the Late Bronze Age. What we see in Homer is the end result of what the palatial system could produce, to the scattered and embryonic city states of the 8th century BCE the resources that the command economies of the palace system could call upon must have seemed quite incredible. The political willpower and strength to construct the walls of Mycenae and support a burgeoning international trading ‘empire’ surely would have seemed like part of a golden past but the manner in which it operated would have been something of a mystery. There are several reasons why the finer points of palatial administration may have been left out of the epics and the first is rather obvious in that these are heroic epics; why would anyone want to spend time singing about quotas of chariot wheels or shortfalls in wool gathering when the end result of such a system was so much more interesting?
For example in the scene in Odyssey IV in which Telemachus visits the palace of Menelaus we are presented with an image of feasting:
“A staid housekeeper brought on bread to serve them,
appetizers aplenty too, lavish with bounty.
As a carver lifted platters of meat toward them,
meats of every sort, and set before them golden cups,
the red-haired king Menelaus greeted both guests warmly:
“Help yourselves to food, and welcome…
…They reached for the good things that lay outspread,
and when they’d put aside desire for food and drink,…”[21]
Such an image of bounteous feasting, especially the extravagance of Penelope’s suitors throughout the poem seem reminiscent of the large-scale feasting that is evident from the Un series of Linear B tablets. Regarding the provenance of or the system by which the resources are collected and stored nothing is said, but where in the narrative would it be fit to include such fine details?
This also leads to a second and from the perspective of understanding both the Late Bronze and Early Iron age more important point that, as is seen in Morris’ view, these are ideological poems shoring up aristocratic values in the face of a restless demos. Why therefore would they want to include the systematic manner in which an elite claimed the produce of the many for the use of an exalted few? Far better to gloss over the whole structure with vague ‘gift-giving’[22] or leave out the realities of resource collection and allocation altogether. Depicting an idealized version of a past society is nothing new and has been a steadfast tool of conservative political stances throughout history; Thatcher’s ‘back to Victorian values’ nonsense being a good modern example.
It is worth considering also from a comparative perspective the values and the world depicted upon our television screens and within our magazines and newspapers, for even in this age of mass information, the figures who populate our favorite shows wear branded clothes and use branded accessories, eat and drink well and drive fast cars and little if anything is ever included as regards who produced these items, and what extreme levels of exploitation are utilized to provide the Western World with its unequally distributed high standard of living. Drama does not tend, even if it is critical of Capitalism, to detail the system in academic detail. So too in Homer we may be seeing exactly the same as an aristocratic class gloss over a complicated and potentially exploitative system and embellish it with heroic drama.
Having briefly covered some elements of Homer’s reliability I should like to cover a couple of archaeological issues regarding Hisarlik and the possibility that it may be Homer’s Troy as well as briefly examine some of points of interest regarding Homer, the Hittite texts and the question of the Ahhiyawa.
Troy as a Capital city (Residenzstad[23])
“Troiaque nunc staret, Priamque arx alta maneres”[24]
The high walls of literary Troy provide plenty of fuel for the fires of the imagination. In both Homer and Vergil, Troy is a major city and a seat of Royal power and that it lasts for ten years under a sustained siege is testament to its size and grandeur. A minor settlement with cursory defensive measures could not hold off such an assault for so long. Of course as we have already seen, the literary world of Homer is not an exact description of the Late Bronze Age and aspects of the conflict between Greece and Asia have been distorted. The question is whether or not the Troy at Hisarlik was a city fitting of Aeneas’ lamentations, was it anywhere near as large and important as it is made out to be in the Homeric epics?
The Citadel
Arguments against Troy’s status as the kind of major settlement described within the Iliad, that is a royal seat of power, are conducted along following lines:
(1) the size and character of the walls, gates and surviving buildings
(2) the lack of finds of materials expected of a palatial centre, such as written documents, seals and sealings, luxury goods, traces of wall paintings, sculpture etc[25]
Sherrat notes the destruction of the upper citadel by Classical age architects during a period of rebuilding as being used to support the first proposition of this argument. Of course as regards the size of the site at Hisarlik it may be easy to be disappointed by the scale of the ruins, its small size may be something of a disappointment to visitors who expect to find Cyclopean walls against which Homeric heroes threw themselves in vain. Indeed it’s comparative inferiority when judged against other Late Bronze Age sites both within Anatolia, Bogazkoy and Alaca for example, and outside of Anatolia, Mycenae and Tiryns, is used as evidence against it being the Troy of Homeric Epic.
Additionally we have the second problem of a lack of monumental structures, wall paintings and such aspects found at other Late Bronze Age population centres. Sherrat argues that the inclusion of such criteria in the definition of a settlement that might count as a ‘Residenzstad’ is to cherry pick a “collection of some of the finer recoveries from the Minoan-Mycenaean world on the one hand and the Hittite on the other, put together to deny Troy.”[26] This in itself is a sober reminder that we should not over-extrapolate from one site nor define into existence from a variety of sites a definitional model of what constitutes a ‘Residenzstadt.’ We should also be especially careful not to fudge the issue by blurring sites from Mycenaean-Minoan Greece and Crete with Hittite sites of Anatolia. In addition to these considerations the point still stands that Hisarlik Troy suffered further destruction during the Classical period, which would have erased without trace much of the main citadel area.
The Lower City
The existence of a lower city dating back to Hellenistic and Roman times was discovered by Franz Kauffer in 1793. This area, to the south of the main citadel, has been purported by Korfmann to have been the site of a Bronze Age Settlement contemporaneous with that of the main citadel and housing around 5000-10,000 people[27]-a substantial figure comparable and perhaps exceeding the population of Mycenae and clearly outstripping the population of Pylos. Nonetheless criticisms have been aimed at such estimates by Kolb and Hertel who have argued that the lower city was sparsely populated and that population estimates should be drastically reduced to 3000[28] or even as little as 1000. These objections rely heavily upon the small amount of the site that has actually been excavated (some 2-3%) and come with accusations that Korfmann has deliberately inflated figures in order to secure funding for further research. Given that further research will hopefully shed light on the situation and provide further evidence on which to base more grounded estimates it seems a peculiar mission to attempt to undermine Korfmann’s work. Schliemann’s speculation in 1884 as to the existence of a ‘Homeric’ town on the southern plateau, Dorpfeld’s 1893-94 investigations, and Blegen’s discovery of evidence of settlement outside the walls of the citadel provide Korfmann with good grounds for investigation[29] and if consider that “wherever excavations have been made here, they have unfailingly revealed a sequence of Late Bronze Age buildings, often substantial and, where the excavated area is wide enough to show it, set closely together”[30] then we too may begin to see a picture of a densely populated, sizable, population centre which to the smaller, more scattered populations of Homer’s own age may well have seemed as high and as mighty as the Troy we find in literature.
Mycenaeans, Ahhiyawa, and Homer
The connection between the land of Ahhiyawa in Hittite texts and the Mycenaeans has often been made, indeed Hope Simpson believes it is now a certainty that the two are one and the same.[31] In Homer, the nexus of the Achaean world was Mycenae and this filters down to Vergil whereby Mycenae becomes a metonym for Hellas or Greece. How far this may have reflected reality is uncertain though in archaeology Mycenae remains a candidate as the centre of Ahhiyawa[32] In determining where Ahhiyawa may have been Hope Simpson outlines a few basic points the first of which is that contact between the Hittites and Ahhiyawa was infrequent, which itself suggests distance. However, on occasion the ruler is addressed as a ‘Great King’ such as TawagalawaL etter, attributed to the reign of Hattusili III, ‘LH III B in Mycenaean terms[33], which suggests that it was of considerable importance to the Hittites.[34] This hypothesis would suggest that Ahhiyawa was a relatively large-scale entity, large enough to warrant consideration and attention despite its peripheral location. Something that seems fairly certain is its location in relation to the Hittites as ‘across the sea’ and importantly that it possessed a form of naval supremacy.[35] The emphasis in Homer on the amphibious military operation launched by the Achaeans against Troy is an integral and well known part of the epic. Book II of the Iliad is almost solely devoted to cataloguing the ships, captains, and troops that made up the armada and while a thousand ships is likely to be an outright exaggeration the point stands that the Achaeans had a naval capability which allowed them to launch an effective seaborne invasion. A developed naval capability would also be something of a necessity for cohesion if Ahhiyawa was a political entity spread across different islands. Hope Simpson points to a process of Mycenaeanization’ within the Dodecanese following the Thera eruption, with ‘LH II B/III A1 chamber tombs on Rhodes and Kos and LH III A1 from the Vathy cave on Kalymnos’[36] An increase in the number of tombs in LH III A1 and LH III B1 points to population growth within the Dodecanese, as was the case on Mainland Greece. The question remains as to whether the Dodecanese was the centre of Ahhiyawan influence or on its periphery but it does not seem impossible that it was an eastern sector of Mycenaean influence, the nucleus of which lay within the power of the wanax figures upon the Greek mainland.
As for the political make up of the Mycenaean or Ahhiyawa world we are able to see that there was not one single overlord but a collection of polities ruled individually.
“There is now strong evidence, especially from the Pylos, Mycenae and Thebes Linear B tablets, that Mycenaean Greece was not united under one rule during the period in question, but was divided into several kingdoms.”[37]
This lack of a central, single ruler is by no means at odds with events within the Iliad for though Agamemnon is described as a king and is very much the commander-in-chief of the Achaean forces it is in no way implied that this is a reflection of his role within Greece itself. Indeed the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon is in part due to the clash between men of near equal status and Achilles’ decision to withdraw from battle is seen as a legitimate, if sulky, act, he is certainly not subject to Agamemnon nor bound by anything more than a military alliance. What may have bound this loose collection of powers together may well have been cultural homogeneity, the similar administrative systems, pottery styles, palatial complexes, and craft items point to a cultural unity if not a political one. In the Odyssey Telemachus travels from Ithaka to Pylos to Sparta and in each case comes across a variance upon the same theme; a palatial complex, and an elite who command and enjoy the luxuries and produce of the land.
Poetic blinkers put aside, the world of Homer seems to chime pleasingly with not only the similarity of the archaeological sites themselves but also with what we know about contact and trade between the palatial elites themselves. This not only seems to have been the case within the Mycenaean sphere itself but also with outside elites. The El-Amarna letter, which details the exchange between the King of Alashiya (Cyprus) and the King of Egpyt, points to a bond or cross-over between the ruling elites of different cultures in which reciprocity played a large role. This may in part shed some light upon the understanding between Priam and Achilles at the end of the Iliad and that the problem of a Greek-centric depiction of the Trojans within Homer may not be so much a problem but in part a reflection of an equality or recognition between the ruling classes of different cultures. A ruling class identity is quite capable of overruling a cultural identity, the case of Hippias and Darius I in Herodotus is a good example[38]. That having been said I should not want to be accused of getting carried away and it may well simply be good poetry and nothing more.
To briefly summarize this discussion of Homer we have seen the time in between what may have been a war at Troy and the date which the Homer poems were transcribed has likely distorted the tale and quite seriously affected its reliability as a source for the social or economic history of the Late Bronze Age and instead provides a more solid source for the Early Iron Age. However, sitting as they do between the transition from the Mycenaean world of the palace and the emergence of the Polis as a political entity, the Homeric poems provide an intriguing glimpse of how the Late Bronze Age might have been understood by the time of the Early Iron Age and in the political values that may have been propagated by the poems we may be able to see certain social realities of Late Mycenaean society possibly even those which contributed to its eventual downfall.
[1] Weiner, M, 7
[2] Herodotus, II, 145
[3] Wood, M, 250
[4] Wood, M, 252
[5] Easton, D.F, 77
[6] Weiner, M, 5
[7] Herodotus, II, 53
[8] Morris, I, 91
[9] Morris, I, 93
[10] Janko, R, 228-231
[11] Morris, I, 81
[12] Lord, A.B, 20-29
[13] Morris, I, 85
[14] Davies, J.K, 90
[15] Davies, J.K, 87
[16] Vansina, J
[17] Morris, I, 121
[18] Nikolaidou, M, 59
[19] Morris, I, 123
[20] Weiner, M, 8
[21] Odyssey, IV 43-76
[22] Morris, I, 123
[23] Royal Seat or Captial, Collins
[24] Vergil, II, 56
[25] Sherrat, J.D in Easton, D.F, 77
[26] Sherrat, J.D in Easton, D.F, 78
[27] Easton, D.F, 82
[28] Kolb 2002b: 19
[29] Easton, D.F, 84
[30] Easton, D.F, 85
[31] Hope Simpson, R, 205
[32] Hope Simpson, R, 207
[33] Mountjoy, 48
[34] Hope Simpson, R, 207
[35] Mee, C.B
[36] Hope Simpson, R, 229
[37] Hope Simpson, R, 205
[38] Herodotus, VI, 102
