Chapter 2 Lecture- By Mark P. O. Morford, Robert J. Lenardon, and Michael Sham Prepared by Michael Sham

Classical Mythology, New Ninth Edition York. Oxford Oxford University Press 2011

Heinrich Schliemann was responsible for opening up a whole new world for archaeology and history because of his faith in the truth of the stories told by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. Because of his excavations at Troy in the 1870s through the re-examination of the site by subsequent archaeologists (Wilhelm Dörpfeld, Carl Blegen, and most recently Manfred Korfmann), scholarly consensus holds that there was a Trojan War. There remain some skeptics to be sure, but their arguments continue to lose strength as our knowledge increases, although many details in the legendary tradition will remain forever impossible to verify. At Mycenae, traditionally the site of Agamemnon’s kingdom, Schliemann also unearthed significant finds: a magnificent palace with monumental walls and an impressive Lion Gate; a circle of shaft graves containing a wealth of gold objects and precious artifacts; and huge beehive (tholos) tombs built into the hillsides. Other excavations on the mainland of Greece by Schliemann himself and by his successors confirmed the world of the Greek heroes who mounted an expedition against Troy. Carl Blegen, among those who refined the science and the art of archaeology, discovered the palace of King Nestor at Pylos, and in its ruins were such a horde of tablets, inscribed with a script called Linear B, that decipherment of this early form of Greek became possible. Particularly impressive is its well- preserved megaron or central room with an open hearth, a feature found in Mycenaean but not in Minoan palaces. Tiryns, another palace, may be linked to the career of Heracles; and Mycenaean Thebes was once ruled by King Oedipus. Sir Arthur Evans (ca. 1900) discovered at Cnossus in Crete a vast, complex palace and established the identity of Minoan civilization. Thus it became possible to discern links between the ruins and the legends about King Minos and the Athenian hero Theseus, the slayer of the Minotaur in its labyrinth: the importance of the bull motif, especially provocative in the frescoes that depict the bull-leaping ritual or contest; the double-headed axe or labrys, and its connection with the non-Greek word labyrinth; the complexity of the palace of Cnossus, suggesting a labyrinthine structure; the significance of the fertility mother- goddess; and the exaction of tribute by an ascendant Cretan power from lesser Greek states. In the sphere of religion, the Mycenaeans, with their worship of a supreme sky- god Zeus, differed fundamentally from the Minoans, who worshiped a fertility mother-goddess. In many respects, Greek mythology can be seen as the synthesis of the tension between Minoan and Mycenaean culture. Schliemann and Wilhelm Dörpfeld conducted pioneering archaeological campaigns from 1871 to1894 at Troy. The site was re-examined by Blegen from1932 to 1938. In 1988 Manfred Korfmann began new excavations of the site, which are in progress today. Nine successive settlements have been identified on the hill of Hisarlik, the site of Troy. Archaeology places the eclipse of Troy VI and VIIa at 1250–1150 b.c., which would coincide nicely with the traditional date of 1184 b.c. for the fall of Troy. The citadel at Troy VI reveals a place of prestige and power with significant fortification walls. Hittite texts reveal close ties between the Hittites and a city called “Wilusa,” which has plausibly been identified with Ilios or Troy. Another text names the god Appaliunas, almost certainly to be identified with Apollo, one of the principal divine defenders of Troy in the Iliad. Excavations have also tended to confirm Homeric geography. Most tantalizing of all has been the discovery of a Mycenaean cemetery, contemporaneous with late Troy VI or VIIa, on the original seashore at the time of the Trojan War. It surely is more than a romantic notion to identify here the camp of the Greek invaders. Towards the end of the Late Bronze Age, the eastern Mediterranean experienced widespread upheaval. Within a generation, nearly all the centers of Mycenaean civilization suffered devastation. There are signs of siege and internal dissension. The tradition that the destruction of Mycenaean power coincided with an invasion of the Dorians from the north, though widely held, has come under fire. Greece now entered an Age of Iron; there was a decline in population, a loss of literacy, and a much-impoverished material culture. By the eighth century b.c., Greece began to re-emerge from her Dark Age, with the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Through an uninterrupted oral tradition from the Bronze Age to the eighth century b.c. bards transmitted their poetic songs glorifying the earlier epoch. “Homer,” whoever he was, or at least the material of the two epic poems belongs to Asia Minor or one of the coastal islands. The Homeric question or questions, details about the composition and development of the Homeric epics, cannot be finally answered. Both poems convey a Greek point of view and are recorded in an epic language, an amalgamation of Greek dialects created by the bardic tradition. Though the poems glorify the Bronze Age heroes, they also portray the world of the later period, down to the eighth century b.c. At some point the Homeric poems were committed to writing, but when this occurred or to what degree writing itself played a part in their composition is a much-disputed question. The end of the Dark Age sees the development of a much more flexible system of writing than Linear B. By borrowing from the symbols of the Phoenician script, but distinguishing in a new way both vowels and consonants, the Greeks invented the first true alphabet.