015 Transcript

Episode 015 The Advent of the Mycenaean Galley In our last episode we looked at the Amarna letters, dated to around 1350 BCE. They gave us some insight into the devolution of the commercial ties and the balances of power that had existed previously in the Bronze Age. We had a smattering of glimpses of the Mycenaeans, a people who had emerged as a maritime power in the late Bronze Age. Today, we take a closer look at the Mycenaeans and the archaeological and written evidence for their maritime exploits during the latter stages of the Bronze Age. To get the ball rolling today, let’s again set a timeframe on where we are in history. The Minoans began to peter out within a century of the Thera eruption, which has been roughly dated to 1628 BCE. The Mycenaean people, or their predecessors if we’re being technical, had been present in small numbers on mainland Greece since Neolithic times. However, it wasn’t until around 1600 BCE, after the Thera eruption, that the mainland occupant began to expand in earnest. This timeframe marks the transition from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age. In Greece itself, we call this period the Late Helladic Period. As has been the case with the Minoans, the Hittites, and several other civilizations from this period, next to nothing was known about the Mycenaeans until the archaeology boom of the mid 19th Century. We’ll consider the accounts of the Trojan War at some point in our discussion, but for now it suffices to say that the mythos of the Trojan War led first to the discovery of the city of Troy in Anatolia, the famous discovery made by Heinrich Schliemann. After finding the city that had until then been considered mythical, Schliemann turned his attentions toward discovering the opponents of Troy as they were described in the Homeric epics. He began to dig in Mycenae in 1874 and, although other archaeologists had previously unearthed artifacts belonging to the Mycenaean people, Schliemann was the first to uncover the shaft graves whose occupants were buried in golden war armor and lavish decor that could only have belonged to a royal personage. Episode 015 1 Although Schliemann famously mistook those artifacts as belonging to Agamemnon himself, the Mycenae shaft graves are now accepted as dating to the 16th century BCE, making them the first indication of a Mycenaean civilization that had blossomed into a true power. By 1500, the Mycenaeans had begun establishing power centers on the Greek mainland. Their culture was that of a warrior people, but this did not stop them from trading with the other cultures around the Mediterranean, a trend that saw them expand trade throughout the same period that the Minoan influence began to wane. By 1450 BCE, the Mycenaeans had fully supplanted the Minoans on Crete, and had even begun to establish colonies around the Aegean. You could almost say that the Mycenaeans stepped into the shoes of the Minoans. The Minoans had at one time connected the early Mycenaeans to the culture and trade of those around the Mediterranean. This helped the Mycenaeans in their early development. Sadly for the Minoans, the Mycenaeans repaid the favor by kicking the Minoans when they were down and taking control of their cities and their trade routes. Such is the natural order, I suppose. Knowing the extent of Minoan trade and maritime reach, we shouldn’t then be surprised to learn of the extent to which the Mycenaeans were known in the Late Bronze Age world, even though they’d only been on the scene for a relatively short time. To get an idea of the Mycenaean’s reach, lets again return to a name and time we’ve visited a few times already. Amenhotep III ruled in Egypt in the early 14th century BCE, and the Colossi of Memnon bear his image as they stand imposing at the entrance to Amenhotep’s mortuary temple. We’ve talked about these same enormous statues once already, back in Episode 010 where we considered how exactly the Egyptians would have been able to transport 720 ton statues. Anyway, I mention the Colossi of Memnon again for an altogether different reason, that is, because the temple that they overlook also contains evidence of the Mycenaean people. This evidence exists on what was once the base of a smaller statue of the pharaoh, a base that now sits in a row with five other similar bases of stone block. The base we’re interested in is the last in the row, a bearer of two time-beaten stone feet supporting nothing but air. It’s the inscription on the base that we’re focused on, anyway, so the pharaoh’s absence isn’t too important. Episode 015 2 For some help in explaining the purpose and significance of this statue base, I turn to the words of professor Eric H. Cline of George Washington University. In his book ‘1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed,’ Professor Cline says the following: “Each of the five bases is inscribed with a series of topographical names carved into the stone within what the Egyptians called a “fortified oval” – an elongated oval carved standing upright, with a series of small protrusions all along its perimeter. This was meant to depict a fortified city, complete with defensive towers, hence the protrusions. Each fortified oval was placed on, or rather replaced, the lower body of a bound prisoner, portrayed with his arms behind his back and bound together at the elbow, sometimes with a rope tied around his neck attaching him to other prisoners in front of and behind him. This was a traditional New Kingdom Egyptian method of representing foreign cities and countries; even if the Egyptians didn’t actually control these foreign or were not even close to conquering them, they still wrote the names within such “fortified ovals” as an artistic and political convention, perhaps as symbolic domination.” Whether it was intended as a symbolic domination or not, similar New Kingdom “fortified oval” lists mentioned all of the big civilizations and cultures of the time. The Hittites, Canaanites, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Nubians were all on the main landmasses of Africa and the Middle East, up into Asia Minor. These names fill the first four bases found at Amenhotep’s Temple, but base number 5 contains names that were a bit further removed, not by pure distance necessarily, but removed because of the water barrier. I hope you’ll agree with me by now that water wasn’t all that much of a barrier to these ancient peoples, and in many cases it was a tool they used to accomplish things they couldn’t otherwise achieve, but it’s still surprising to see the names that were chiseled into Base number 5. The names are arrayed along two sides of the base: on the front we find the head names, separated by a dividing line. These two main names are Keftiu and Tanaja, the Egyptian terms for Crete and mainland Greece. These names appear in other places from a similar time period, so their correct interpretation is pretty much accepted across the board. After the dividing line, the base lists a handful of specific cities within the main regions of Keftiu and Tanaja: in order, they are Knossos and Amnisos, followed by Phaistos and Kydonia, all cities that were tied to Minoan palaces on the island of Crete. The island of Kythera is then names, an island that lies in the Cyclades, roughly equidistant between Crete and mainland Greece. The list then names Mycenae and a Greek mainland port city, Naupliaon, followed by Messenia and what is possibly a reference to Thebes. The list concluded with more names from Minoan Crete. Episode 015 3 Cline calls this list the Aegean List, and he interprets it as being evidence of an Egyptian voyage during Amenhotep III’s reign. Because the first list of Cretan cities progresses from east to west, and the second list of Cretan cities progresses from west to east, he feels that the list is evidence that Egyptian ships made a round trip voyage to mainland Greece and back to Egypt. If true, the Aegean List would be our oldest indication of a major Egyptian voyage to the Aegean. Although we know that the two civilizations had traded frequently, it’s been generally thought that the Minoans and other merchant classes from coastal cities were responsible for the actual shipping. Anyway, Cline buttresses his argument for the Egyptian round-trip interpretation by pointing to the presence of numerous Egyptian objects at four of the cities mentioned in the Aegean List. These objects, objects like scarabs, seals, and a vase, are important because they all bear the cartouche of either Amenhotep III or that of his queen, an imprint that ties them directly to the temple base inscriptions of the Aegean List. Perhaps even more significant are the presence of nine foundation deposit plaques at Mycenae, all nine bearing the royal title of Amenhotep III. Foundation deposit plaques were likely used as objects to bury inside building foundations as a reminder to the gods of the identity of the builder or the patron who provided the finances, along with a record of the building’s date. Now, these foundation plaques at Mycenae are highly significant, for this reason: no other such plaques bearing Amenhotep III’s title have been found anywhere else outside Egypt. Episode 015 4 Ultimately, we can only draw thin conclusions from the Aegean List and from the foundation deposit plaques at Mycenae.

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