Nature of Warfare in the Bronze Age

Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Tutterburg forest? what secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? or what made Alexander truly great with a subscription to History hit You can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War two. Just visit historyhit dot com slash suubbscribe. So how did Rome begin With a throne, a triumph, or a murder between brothers Well, according to legend, the mighty city was founded by the twin sons of Mars, Romulus and Remus abbandoned as infants, suckled by a she wolf and destined for greatness until ambition poisoned their body I'm Tristin Hughes and I cannot wait to get into the explosive story of Romulus and Remus on the ancient live tour in Australia and New Zealand this August I'm going to be joined by the fantastic Jeremy Armstrong. He's a professor of Ancient history and an expert on early Rome. Ketather We'll follow the myth from Divine origins to blood soaked Fing legend teeasing apart what the Romans believe archaeology can actually tell us and How a city built on stories became one of the greatest powers in history. Tickets are on sale now. We're coming to Canberra on the second of August And we're going to be in Auckland on the eighth The tickets they are selling far, so book yours now at fame. com. au. Can't wait to see you there Trojan war It is one of the oldest stories in human history The tale of a grinding ten year siege launched by honor bound Greeks to seize back their beautiful Spartan queen, Helen of Troy. A once glorious city brought to its knees. by the efforts of Agamemnon and Achilles of Ajax and Odysseus of Menelaus and Diomedes all are tragic heroes whose trials have been etched into the world's imagination. Now the war forms the beating heart of Homer's first great literary masterpiece for Iliad and directly informs its sequel, the Odyssey And so, with Christopher Nolan's blockbuster film on the horizon We're exploring the Odyssey's backstory. What do we know about the Trojan War Who was it between When might it have been fought It's most crucialally. Is it just a story or did it really happen What are the kernels of truth findind this app. Welcome to The Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and to dive head first into the ruins of Troy, I'm joined once again by friend of the show, Dror Eric Klein Let's get into it Eric, always a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure to be back Now, first and foremost, the most important question of all, Eric, What tie are you wearing today? Ah G question. I am wearing what I consider to be my Trojan war tie. What it actually depicts, I have no idea, but it is warriors in battle with shields So this is what I wear when I'm lecturing on the Trojan War in class. That's the tie for it today I do love anyone who follows you on social media, Eric, you have your regular posts of the various ties that you wear depending on what lectures you're teaching. It's a great little thing that you have there. But of course, we're talking about the Trojan war today the myth, but of course also the real world that it's set in. and this is one of the things that that I love so much about the story, the myth of the Trojan War, Eric, is it's such an amazing gateway for people to learn more about this fascinating late Bronze Age world that it's set in Yeah, it really is. it's a gateway, if you will. It's almost a gateway drug until the late Bronze Age But yes, the big question that we've got, of course, is The story that's come down to us, how accurate is it? That's what we've got to ask. And that's where the archaeology is going to come in The story itself is an interesting glimpse into a world that has now disappeared and in fact, it had already disappeared by the time that Homer collated everything I mean, absolutely. questions is like could this Trojan war have happened But also another one, which I love Eric, which we'll delve into, could there actually have been more than one real Trojan war Yes I think that there certainly could have been. I actually think that Homer is compiling and amalgamating a couple of them and telescoping them into one grand narrative. But I think from the other side, from the Hittite side, I think we've got evidence of at least four different conflicts. Yes, and to anticipate what you already kind of asked, I will say right up front, I think the Trojan War happened or I think something happened around which everything else was built. So we used to have arguments about this at the dining room table as to whether it took place or not. I was firmly On the side that it happened, others were not so sure. So you know, it made for interesting dinner timee conversations, shall we say Well, absolutely. and that's a great statement to have straightway in this chat, Eric. We're going to be talking hitides, mights and ends and so much more as the chat goes on. But let's start . The Trojan War story, the myth itself. Eric, it is quite the epic. But let's talk through the big main points of the Trojan war myth, of the Trojan war story. Yeah, the way I explain it to my my students, I usually leave all the gods and the goddesses out and I just talk about the human interaction and it boils down to something very simple. You've got Troy, which is somewhere up on the northwestern coast of Anatolia, modern day Turkey, At Troy, you've got a king, Priam He's got a number of sons, among whom is one With the name of Paris, who is also, by the way, known as Alexander, he's got both names. Just like Troy itself is also known as Iliios R, That's where we get the illliad from. At any rate, Paris slash Alexander is sent over to Greece be sent over specifically to The Mycenaean palace in the area of what will later be Sparta And this is where Menelaus is ruling. It's a trade delegation. It's an embassy And we actually know archaeologically that the Mycenaeans and the Trojans are trading at that time. We've got Menan pottery at Troy But so Paris comes over, meets up with Menelaus. Menelaus, by the way, happens to be married to the most beautiful woman in the world, namely Helen But Menelaus himself is not all that bright a bulb. And even while Paris is visiting, he goes over to Crete and visits the king over there, leaving his wife alone with this nice looking young guy from Troy And when Menelaus returns home, he finds his wife is gone, as is Paris The story that the Trojans told is that she went with Paris willingly. The story that the Mycenaeans told is that she was kidnapped It happened that Menelaus had a brother Agamemnon King of kings, he was king up at Mycenae. Alexanderone, his name. Yes. And he basically said, Yo yo bro, literally because it was his brother help me get my wife back And we're told in book two of the Iad, the so called catalog of ships Agamemnon asked all the other Mycenean kings to help him out, they all sent ships with fifty warriors in them and they sailed over to Troy to get Helen back. We of course know exactly how many ships there were we are told this by a later author because we get the saying Helen the face that launched a thousand ships, exactly. But in fact, if you go through the catalog of ships in book two and you count up the ships as I have done when I was very bored on a train This is a true story. I was on a train going from London down to Penzance and Cornwall and I had what was then the new translation by Fgels, Robert Fgels I counted the ships. There are, in fact, one thousand one hundred and sixty seven ships So I've been trying to change this. Helen, the face that launched eleven hundred and sixty seven ships, but it hasn't caught on for some reason. I don't know why.. Anyway, they go over to Troy and they besieged it for ten years. All right? And that's the famous ten year siege there's trials and tribulations, there's actually a failed attempt to begin with, but never mind, the Iliid jumps in It's only the last fifty days of the tenth year that we are told And eventually the Mycenaeans capture Troy through the strategy of using the Trojan horse which by the way, is only mentioned in passing in the Iliad. It's in one of the other epics And They loot the city, pretty much kill everybody and take Helen back home and everybody except for the Trojans lives happily ever after So That's the basic story. Oh, and yeah, by the way, Odysseus, it takes him another ten years to get home. That's where the Odyssey comes from And that's where we have movies being made about this, right I mean, absolutely. and then of course Agamemnon getting home being murdered by his wife and so on and so forth. So all of those stories that emerge out of it Eric, thank you for kind of laying out the story there. hiding of it That narrative, that story that we have today and so many famous parts of it, you mentioned the face that launched Maybe we should say over a thousand ships. there you go Is it all compiled down by one source? I mean What do we know about when this story is collated and how long after when events supposedly took place Excellent, excellent question. In fact, that's part of what's called the Homeric question, which is actually a series of smaller questions, but One question that we've got is first of all, did Homer ever actually exist? And if he did, was he a he or was he a she Or was he a couple of people? or all of these have been suggested that Homer might have been a woman, that there might have been more than one person that wrote the allien the Odyssey My absolute favorite is the suggestion that Homer is not a person but is a profession are a homer. In other words, you're a singing bard And to me, that makes a lot of sense So but we can't prove it And there's all kinds of, you know, places that claim they they're the origin of Homer and all that What we do know is that he, if he existed, he or she or however many, would have been sometime in the eighth century BC. So somewhere between like seven hundred fifty and seven hundred What he is doing also, he's not writing the story down. He's not actually writing it. story is not written down for another hundred, almost two hundred years What he is doing supposedly is compiling it pulling to together everything because this is a story that's been handed down by word of mouth. for Five hundred years I mean, the Trojan War and again, we've got problems there too, when did it happen if it happened? Well, if it happened at sometime between say twelve fifty and eleven fifty BC to give the broadest range possible. If it takes place at twelve fifty and Homer' at seven fifty, that's five hundred years. That's five centuries That's like, what are we now? We're twenty twenty five. That'd be like us trying to put together something happened in the fifteen hundreds or sixteen hundreds. So one of the other questions we've got then is How accurate is the story if you're trying to figure out does it really tell us about the Bronze Age Is it almost kind like if someone was trying to if let's say Shakespeare's plays were being passed down word of mouth, you know for several centuries and only now in the present day they were actually being written down that kind of idea? Yes, exactly, something like that. And then the question would be, how much in that is actually reflective of what it was like in Shakespeare's day? How much of it is actually hour day and how much is somewhere in between So the Trojan War takes place right at the end of the late Bronze Age, I think, right around the time of the collapse. And so that's the Bronze Age. Homer is the Iron Age And so Are the people places, events objects, like chariots and all that? Are they iron age things that Homer would have known Or are they bronze as that were passed down? or Could they be a combination of the two? And there's some Bronze Age and some Iiron Age? And this is what scholars have been fighting about for more than a hundred years, basically. So ye fantastic. One more question before we really delve into that late Bronze Age world, Eric is I the whole story of the Trojan War, you know, including elements like the Trojan horse, like the actual sack of Troy, the homeomecoming afterwards The sources that actually write this down that we have surviving for these various elements of it. It's not all just Homers liad and Odyssey, is it? Right, rightight. We've got something that we as a grand H called the Epic cycle The I and the Odyssey are just two books in that epic cycle And in fact, we've got there's one called the L Iliad, there's one called the Kypria and all that. The problem is All the others are gone. All we have are snippets There is one guy Proclus who does write down and tells us the gist of many of them, including Wh had actually written them? Like it's not Homer, it's so and so And in those other epics, that's where we find out The whole backstory, you know with the golden apple and the goddesses and all that, but it's also where we get the story of the Trojan horse. becausecause as I mentioned, it's only in passing in the Iliad. So you really need the rest of the epics. to flesh out the story. And most people don't realize that when I'm teaching this in class I assign bits and pieces from the epic cycle as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey. So it's a conglomeration And that's why it can be really interesting as to exactly what you think ens and other details which we can get into like what actually was the Trojan horse You know, W it a thing? Was it real But let's start, I mean, the first theme we will cover is the brronze Age world in which the Trojan war is set. So Eric, the late Bronze Age What does this central Eastern Mediterranean world looked like at that time So it's an interconnected world. It's globalized, if you will, but it's localized, It's globalized locally Right. So Susan Sart at Sheffield has said it was a globalized Mediterranean And I think that's a great way to describe it. So from say, The fifteenth century, maybe even the seventeenth century BC, all the way down to the twelfth century, we have connections between the great powers of the day And in geographic terms, that would be basically from Italy on one side to Mesopotamia on the other from Turkey down to Egypt put it in modern terms The societies are Mycenaeans, Minoans, Hittites in Anatolia Cypriots, Canaanites, Assyrians, Babylonians Trojans are in there, but they're not one of the great powers. What they are is controlling the access to the Black Sea So their major ports There are other ones as well like Ugarit in North Syria But Troy is the big one. controlling the Dardanills and everything. So they're all interconnected, they're trading, they're getting Raw materials from each other, silver, gold, tin, copper, but they're also trading finished goods, perfume olive oil, textiles, sandals, things like that. So sandals from Cte, yes, we have one text at Mari in Mesopotamia. about eighteen hundred BC that says have to you that would bereate Minoans leather shoes, which would probably be sandals, that were sent to Hamurabi He returned them And that is the Hamurabi, the low code guy with the eye for an ey tooth for a tooth. And I always wondered why he returned shoes and attck, the book eleven seventy seven that I wrote about the Bronze Age. I wanted to call it Hamurabi shoes. and that title was vetoed. But yeah, so we've got a lot of trade. They are dependent upon each other. That's what brings them up to heights of greatness during the late Bronze Age It's also what helps bring them down when everything collapses because they needed each other and when one went down, there's a domino effect and they eventually all went down to some degree. and that The globalized network of trade just collapses And that rich archaeological record that scholars like yourself use today, Eric to learn more about this period as you mentioned earlier, kind of just repeating what you werere saying It's using that alongside, you know, The epic cycle, alongside these amazing texts that have survived to try and learn more about what is fact, what is fiction, what glimmers of information, what information can we glean from the epic story of the Trojan War? Yeah, absolutely. in a way, actually it's very similar to trying to use the Bible and figure out what history is in that. It's actually very similar. There are some scholars that do both and they look at Homer and they look at the Bible. So yeah again Much like the Bible' not a history book. So Homer is not a history book. Both contain some historical facts What we need to do is tease them out. And so figure out What is believable in Homer. Obviously the gods and goddesses, maybe not so much When he describes a chariot and says, you know, it has four spokes in its wheel or six spokes, Well, is that accurate? For the Bronze Age or for the Iron Age. And so we have entire books and articles that have been written. saying, yeah, okay, this is iron Age. this is bronzees. this is a You know, So So it's a whole cottage industry trying to figure out What is accurate about the Bronze Age in Homer and what could be more of his time period, the Iron Age Well Eric, let's focus on Troy, the place First of all, because you've already mentioned, it seems like we do know some information about it And we should be imagining thriving Trading hub, a trading settleent in the late Bone Age Yes, we should That's what it's known for. It's known as a breeder of horses, according to Homer, but it's also an entrepeu an international ading. Part of the problem though is, and we can get into this, is the site that we have excavated as Troy with nine levels, nine cities, one on top of another There's not actually anything in the Bronze Age levels that says it's Troy The later levels, the later Greeks and Romans, they thought it was Troy, you know, they basically call it new Troy. But as has been pointed out by some people, we could be digging in the wrong place to quote, Indiana Jones. right? So it might be that Hserlick, which is the mound that we've been excavating since the time of Sleeman in the eighteen seventies, it could be that's not Troy That's playing a real devil's advocate. I definitely I think it's Troit because there's no other good contender People have searched that whole area and try to figure out if it's not there, where could it be? But I think There's nothing else it could be. There are people that look for it elsewhere, including people that claim it's in England, which I'm like, yeah not so much. But yeah, go Google it. You can find out. There's entire books on it. So yeah. but I think Northwest Anatolia, I think the site of Hiserk is probably it. But and it's not the only site like that. Meagido, for example There's nothing at Meetido that says it's Meageto But it's gott to be Mageto. There's no other place for it. So You know, we have these situations in archaeology. So I just want to mention Troy and the Trojans first of all, Eric, because really getting a good sense back in the Bronze Age of its strategic position. You mentioned it's glocalized Lots of trade along the well along the seea, the Mediterranean the Aegean, going up to the Black Sea as well. So it is it's primely positioned to take advantage of all Oh, it absolutely is. and in fact, we're told by a number of sources that If you're trying to get up the Dardenells to the Black Sea, you have to put into a port like Troy until the winds are going the right way or you can't get up there So you may be in the port for several weeks waiting for the winds to get, you know to the proper quarter So Troy benefited from all of that. And in fact, that whole area, there have been battles fought. I mean, the Trojan Wars is not the only one there. You go right across the straets and you're at Gallipoli from World War I. So it is a contested periphery for much of its history. And in the Bronze Age, it's in between the Myceneans on one side and the Hittites on the other. And the Trojans are almost collateral damage, I might suggest at some point that the Trojan war is actually between the Mycenaeans and the Hittites. notot the Trojans, but we can get into that We will absolutely. I mean, I must ask about the Trojans themselves. I mean, archeologically, do we actually know much about the people We don't know that much about the people per se. We have their material culture, we have the ceramics, we have the houses, we have various things like that. But trying to reconstruct the Trojans is an effort. You know're going need to use all the tools at our disposal, including now if we were to find any more skeletons, any more bodies which the previous excavators did find We should be able now to do DNA analysis on them and see what we can come up with. But to my knowledge That hasn't been done. Yet. So we know a fair amount about them and yet You know, and this is where it's, well, it's frustrating, but that's archaeology. You know, there's no writing that's been found at Troy in the Bronze Age. There's one little seal with a man's name on one side and a woman's name on the other. But even that is from a level after the Trojan War So where's the archives? whereere are the tablets? Where's the correspondence We don't have it So did Heinrich Llehman throw it out when he excavated in quotes, the palace The one that he was actually looking for that he went right through and throughrew out Is the archive in his back dirt pile So you, inquiring minds need to know. We've got all kinds of questions And Eric, let's just cover Schleeman quickly because it's important in the story of Troy because Who was this figure T was so desperate to find Troy, to find evidence of the Trojan war whose name has become, there I say, I mean famous, but to others infamous in the field of archaeology today. Yes, yes, infamous. He's the man we love to hate. Yes, exactly. An enthusiastic amateur who found all the right things for all the wrong reasons excavated as badly as you can possibly excavate and yet was the luckiest man alive at that time in terms of archaeology He's also the man. it's his fault that I'm an archaeologist. It's all Schleimeman's fault My mother gave me a book when I was seven years old called The Walls of Windy Troy And it was a biography of Schleeman. written for children And it was all about him and his life and his excavations at Troy. And I read it and turned to my parents and announced, I'm going to be an archaeologist Lo and behold, that in fact, what do I specialize in Rroy and the time of the Georgia Wars. So Careful what books you give your kids when they're below the age of ten is what I would say All right, so Sleeman German businessman made not one but two fortunes. millionaire because I think it was indigo and gunpowder he was selling during the Crimean War. Then he came over to the United States, made another fortune in California during the gold rush, eighteen forty nine. He wasn't actually digging for gold. He was the middleman. between the gold miners and the banks He was, you know, buying the nuggets from the miners, selling them to the banks. I think including the Russilds, But apparently he had his thumb on the scale. And so it was basically run out of town. I actually with a student, we found his name on a passenger list of a ship leaving Sacramento. and he was apparently one step ahead of the law, but he had another fortune. He had made another, you, million dollars And so at the age of about forty He retired and spent the rest of his life looking for Troy. The problem is you can't believe anything he says in his personal life For instance, he came to America, said he had been living there for quite a while and therefore wanted a divorce from his first wife He had actually not been there that long He also wanted to become an American citizen, hadn't nearly been in the States for long enough, bribed a person to say he had been and so on And then eventually as he's going around, he marries a young sixteen year old. He's forty. She's sixteen Sophie or Sophia And his apparently his only requirement was that she'd be able to read Homer in the original, which she could So from the age of forty on, he starts looking for Troy, eventually ends up in Northwest Anatolia, Northwest Turkey and is trying to identify the various sites using Homer in one hand, looking for a place that's got hot and cold running water that is small enough that you know they Hector and Achilles can run around a couple of times. Anyway, he eventually hooks up and finds a guy who owns Hserlich you know, and says, I want to find Troy. Can I dig at your site? Yes, let's partner and starts digging and Schleeman eventually claims that he has found Troy, conveniently leaves the partner out of it, and so we go. And then we've got all kinds of stuff that he, I would say it makes up, like finds Priam's treasure, which is neither Priam's nor a treasure. but he says that Sophie helped him excavate it. which she didn't. She was back in Athens. So You know, you can't trust his personal life and I'm not sure you can trust his professional life. So but he is the guy that dug atroy first and found He thought six levels turns out there are nine, but he thought it was city number two down The second one at the bottom, it's actually either city number six or city number seven, which was basically at ground level when he started excavating because the later Greeks and Romans had shaved off the top of the mound. to build a temple to Athena and then a temple to Jupiter So they had taken off like the top thirty feet of the mound And so he started digging. he was at the level that he wanted. But he figured it happened three thousand years ago. It's got to be deep He told his men to go they went down forty five feet or so trench and So you know, probably within the first couple of weeks He dug through and throughrew out exactly the palace that he had come to find. So You can see why we love to hate them. dug through so much, but I wanted to cover that story now in the order because I guess that's the context, Eric, as to why earlier, we were able to kind of not quite pinpoint, but to say the location of Troy with've quite a lot of accuracy. And it seems that, yes, although he excavated unlike any archaeologist, proper archaeologists would do today like he did strike gold in the fact that most do believe that this is the site this was the site of Troy today. Yeah, I would agree. And it turns out now one of the main arguments for the people that said it wasn't Troy is they said it's too small. that it doesn't fit Homer's, you know Homer's description But First and foremost, I think Homer may have been conflating two of the levels. he's describing the beautiful city of Six But the destruction of seven And in the meantime Monfred Kofman when he started excavating at the site in nineteen eighty eight Throughout the nineties, they started doing remote sensing including with a Cesium magnetometer, And they realize that what Sleeman and then Dorortfeld and then Blagen had all been excavating was just the top citadel where the palace had been All the fields around the mound, which today are growing sunflowers There's a whole lower city underneath that which means the city is ten to fifteen times larger than we had thought it was and that whole city. Yeah, there are later Roman and Hellenistic ruins on top, but underneath it We've got the cities ch six, chooy seven. We've got it and there is evidence of destruction including human bodies and arrowheads of a Greek type down there. So fortunately Since Sleiman destroyed everything that he taouchght only was up on the Citadel The whole lower city, nobody has touched it until now the last like So two and a half decades So So that's why I'm pretty convinced that it is Troy. It is a wealthy city. Now we know it is As big as Homer describes it, it fits Eric we'll come back to that because I think that's a lovely area that we'll finish the episode in once we've covered more of the context of that Bronze Age world and these big players, the two major players at the time that the Trojan warar supposedly happened in the late Bronze Age. I will also mention you mentioned those various layers of Troy. We have another episode that we recorded with Brian Rose and we go through each and every one. so if people want to learn more about that, Please do go and check out that episode called Troy B Eric Let's now introduce these two major powers in the Bronze Age world That almost in a kind of way, I guess sandwich Troy in The Hittites and the Mycenaeans. Eric, which one would you like to begin with I thought you were going to ask me which one would I like to be, but which one would I like to begin with? Okay, fine So All right, well, let's start with the Mycenans since we've been with them. Um It's a conglomeration of separate kingdoms. It's not like an empire or anything like that Literally when Agamemnon does call on all the other kings to bring ships to rescue Helen That's the way it looks. It's this conglomeration. So we know there are Mycenaean palaces at Mycaenae Pylos at Tyrons at Orcominos and so on. There's a lot of them. It is a common culture They're all, you know, using the same sorts of ceramics. which we usually call late Hallatic Late Aic three A, three B, three C, fourteenth century, thirteenth, twelfth century, they're all using the same writing system for the palaces. it's mostly used for accounting this many chariot wheels comes in, this much copper goes out, this much textiles are sent. And it turns out linear B which was deciphered by Michael Ventress in nineteen fifty two. It's an early form of Greek So we can actually now read it But only the scribes in the palaces would have used it. And in fact, when the palaces collapse and go down That art of writing linear B is lost. It goes away And they're going to have to adopt the Phoenician alphabet by the eighth century to start writing again So the Mycenaeans are this conglomeration of separate Kingdoms but unified by a similar culture, if you can put it that way And they mycenai, for example, really starts flourishing in about seventeen hundred BC. We've got the shaft graves from that time period which our dear friend, Heinrich Sleemman Also excavated And he you mentioned Agamemnon. being murdered by his wife when he got back from the Trojan War. Yeah, lesson learned Don't take a bath if you've been gone for ten years. Your wife may come in and kill you. because That's what happened there. So Sleeman, when he found the shaft graves at Myenae, he thought he had found the graves of Agamemnon But in fact It wasn't. It was the first dynasty My see and I So again, as an example of how Sleeman finds the right things for the wrong reasons or misidentifies or whatever. So the famous line, he said there, I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon, It wasn't Agamemnon you were looking at. It was some unnamed king from four hundred years earlier. But you know it got the world's attention. So Agamemnon, Priam's Treasure. He's like the PT. Barnum of archaeology. If you will, he's a showman All right, so we've got the Myceneans on the Greek mainland They are going to start collapsing by about twelve hundred BC By ten fifty BC, nobody's calling themselves A Mycenean anymore And they have to then rebuild from the ground up after the collapse So that's the Mycenanians on one side. The Hittites On the other They are in what is now modern day Turkey, ancient Anatolia, AKa Asia mininor, as you would call it in the Roman period. the hit heights Their capital cityities at Hatuas, which is way off to the east They most of Anatolia Their dates are just about the same as the Myceneans They moved to Hatu sauce. in about seventeen hundred BC and they are gone by about twelve hundred BC. In fact They collapse almost more thoroughly any of the other societies during the late Bonze Age collapse and capital city of Hatusas is abandoned In fact, there was a strife in the royal family. and so they they were destined to go down anyway, I would say. But among their Conquest on the western coast of Anatolia would have been Troy They N Troit, we think, again, nothing's one hundred percent certain We think it's a city they called Willusa And Willowsu gets mentioned in their records quite a number of times fromr the fifteenth century BC onwards, right down to about twelve hundred So it's in their records. for three hundred years What's interesting, W is up If you look at the Greek name, it's Troy, but it's also Ilios, as I said Iliios originally would have had a digamma in front of it, meaning it had a W. But the W drops out Troy was actually Willios Willios. And Willios and Willi it could be a false friend it also could be the same place So Korufman, for example, the German archaeologist who did the remote sensing, he was quite convinced Troy and Willisw were the same place. As am I? I think again, Ocham's Rzor, simplest solutions, the most likely, there's no other place to put Willisw except at this area But isn't there also that other interesting bit of evidence that comes back to what you're saying Paris's other name is, too Yes, Paris's other name is Alexander So we have two names everything. It's almost like there are two separate stories that have been interwoven. Right And again, it's the same thing we find in the Bible. There's two stories in Genesis that have been interwoven. So the parallels are kind of interesting. So anyway, yes, with with Willisa and Alexander All right, so in the hitite They talk about interactions with Willisaw. Their first interactions are back in the fifteenth century. There's something called the Asuwa Rebellion There is a confederation of twenty two cities and areas in Northwest Anatolia that the Hittites call ively Asua That's actually where the later name Asia comes from comes directly from Asswa Two of the cities that they list because they give us the names Two of the cities are Wiluia which is an early form of Wilusa and Tarusa. which is probably the Troad So we probably got Troy and then the Troad, the area around Troy They are part of this Asua coalition The Hittites say that the king of Willusw at that time rebllt And so the Hittite came with his army. it was Talia, either the first or the second, we're not sure which one He went and put down the rebellion and took the King of Willisaw away as a hostage Pting his son on the throne, not the Hitti king's son, but the Welusian king's son, guy named Kukuni Kkuni promptly rebelled again the minute the H tites left So the hitites came back. put him to death quelled the rebellion Okay, so We also have at Hatusas, the capital city In nineteen ninety a guy operating a bulldozer. He was widening the road So the tourist could get in to see the capital city. He found a bronze sword on the bronze sword, which looks suspiciously like a type A sword the Mycenaeans would have had in the shaft graves It looks like that. There is some argument about whether it is or not, but it looks myenian to me. There is an inscription on the blade written in an Acadian, not in hit type, but Acadian, the diplomatic lingua Franca of the day, like French was in the time of Benjamin Franklin, and on the sword in Akadia and it says I toalia dedicate these swords to the storm god For thanks for putting down the Osuwa Rebellion Okay, so if we've got a Mycenean sword that's being used in the Asuru Rebellion, which was at Wilusa and there is obviously more than one sword because in the inscription it says, I dedicate these swords Do you have the Mycenaeans as arms dealers and selling weapons to the Trojans Or you have Mycenaeans fighting at Rrooy Hand in loveve with that. There's another entity mentioned by the Hittites in their text called Akiyawa And the Akiyawa texts start at the same time, and some of them are linked to Wilusa So people have been arguing since about nineteen sixteen, more than a century Could Akiahwa be the Achaeans Could they be the Mycenaeans I think the answer is yes because otherwise, You have this area that the Hittites knew about that they talk about that we haven't found archaeologically And on the other hand, we have a place we know archaeologically, the Mycenaeans that wouldn't be mentioned by the Hittsites, which makes no sense because we know archaeologically that they're trading back and forth. to some extent. So I think we've got Troy in the Hiti text and we've got Akyahwa in the Hit Hi text. Those texts talk about battles on and off for three hundred years That battle with the Asua Rebellion is just the first of what I call the Trojan Wars. There are three more, and one of them, which is dated to about thirteen hundred BC, maybe a little bit later involves the Hittites going T Willow, sir and helping a king who had been deposed by an unnamed enemy And they put him back on the throne and signed a mutual defense treaty him and his descendants What was his name? Alexandandus. We know his name is Alexandus. Wusa In hitight Is that not Alexander of Wios That is Paris of Troy. Again, it could be a false friend, and people have been arguing about this for decades I it's not a coincidence. and I think that the Alexander and the Alexandus are the same. And we've got the story of a Trojan warar two different sides. We've got the hit tyight version And we've got the Homeric version My question when people say to me Was there a Trojan war? I said, Yeah, but there were four of them. And you know, well, was Homer really writing about a Trojan war. Yeah, absolutely. He was writing about A Trojan M, but which one So and even the last one, there's a guy named Walmu that is in charge at Rroy and the Hitites help him as well. So I usually and I just told my students this in my anciinearies class yesterday, I am like the ultimate skeptic. I want resources of independent evidence Before I'll believe anything And for the Trojan War, I think we've got it It's circumstantial, but you've got Homer and the Hitite records Right? And you've also got archaeology So those three T me together suggest that something happened I won't say it happened just as Homer describes because I don't think it did Something happened. There is a nucleus, a kernel of truth around which the epic was written. It's like King Arthur Right? Same thing. It's really great exploring that. and I mean, just to pick up Alexandu Paris although it's not evidence, You know, for the exact paris that's mentioned in the Trojan War, what it does seem to be evidence for is that that is a royal name in Troy in Wilusa. So that's kind of the kernel of truth you can get just from that record. Exactly, exactly. And we have other things that we can pull out from the Hipite records too. There is, for example, the name of a Mycenaean king that fights at Wilusa including with the number of chariots that is there. We also have another one that talks about riding with the brother of the king and a chariot And then there are other other hints like at one point, the Hittite The Hittite King banishes his wife Overseas. to Ajiahwa So Akiyawa has to be overseas, which would work out well if it's mainland Greece Again, scholars have been arguing about this Ao always been suggested as roads as somewhere else on the western coast of Anatolia, as Thrace you know on and on and on. But I think again, by default On the Mycenean mainland really works for Akiahwa. So there's a lot to play with and it's a lot more complicated than one might expect But again, that's what makes it fun. It's a jigsaw puzzle. you're missing half of the pieces. You don't know what the picture looks like because you're missing the top of the box as well. you've got enough of the jigsaw puzzle that you could tryry to figure it out and get close to an approximation as to what happened. but The only way we're ever gonna find out what actually happened is to invent a time machine and go back, right, whichich I'm waiting for. I'll be the first in there What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? and did the Vikings ever reach America I name'm Donn Weldman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership Find American History Hit twice a week every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit Eric, it's so interesting. I mean just to recap so evvidence in the archaeological record that there was clearly contact between the Hittites and the Mycenaeans trade. And what it seems like at Walusa, there's Mycenaeans going across the Aegean Sea and fighting in what is today kind of Northwest Anatodia, Western Anntatodia, G The next thing I'd like to ask you about then is the kind of the makeup of The Mycenaean Of course, in the Trojan War, you get this idea of they all come together all of these different kings and they journey across the sea But you mentioned earlier, this classic image we have of the Mycenaeans is that you Greece is divided up between many different kings, ruling their own places. what will be Sparta, Pylos, Mycenae, Athens, and so on But the Hittis mention the kingdom of Akiwa and I think they mention a great king as well. Yes Yes So that's a problem Is there potentially which would align with the Trojan War text actually Those Mycenaean kingdoms aren't as independent as people might have thought and actually was there actually an overlaord king, onene like Agamemnon who was kind of chief of them all? No King of kings. Yes, it's possible. It is possible. I cannot rule that out. and in fact, it's been suggested by a couple of scholars that that might have been the case But we can't prove it one way or the other If it is I would say the Hittites misunderstood to a certain degree. If there were a king of kings and let's say Mycenae were at the forefront Then the Hittites would have, you know nailed it. Yes, there is one guy that we really should be corresponding with that the others answer to. You could say that if it's more of a conglomeration, a conffederation then the Hittites didn't understand they had to deal with a corporation, if you will One analogy I made in One of the articles or books I wrote was to the Delian League the later Greek Confederacy that they formed in the aftermath of the Persian invasions And it could be that the Mycenaeans were like a brronze Age Delian League where you had everybody was equal and everybody had to vote. But then again You could have had an aggamemnon If though you had won prrimary kingdom Then the question is, which one is it Is it my senai Maybe, maybe not. That just happens to be one of the first that we excavated again, courtesly of Sleman be Tyrans, it could be Hylos It could be Thebes, which is the Bronze Age is underneath the modern city at Thebes, but that has been suggested as the dominant power in part, because we have yet to excavate it, you can suggest whatever you want So The upside is we don't actually know was At the very least, it's a conglomeration. It's a conffederation. At the very most It's a unified conglomeration with one leader. But we haven't been able figure that out in part because the writing is just the accounting texts from the palaces. We don't have any epics. We don't have anything that would be History Not like The Hittites do, the Hittites, we've got that for them We know all about them. We know there's, you know, a major king. We can tell you his name. We can tell you when he lived. can't do that. for the Mycenaeans. we don't actually have the names really of any Mycenaean kings that we know of I mean, we've got what Homer says But we don't have any elsewhere. So it's kind of interesting what we do and don't have from the ancient world. And the Mycenaeans to a certain degree, even though we know a heck of a lot about them, there are still huge gaps in our knowledge. which we're not going to fill until we find an archive or something, which I'm not sure we ever will So getting more of a sense of whether those rulers of those Mycenaean cities could have banded together to go raiding in Anatolia or had a bit of a warrior king ethos like Achilles or Agamemnon and Menelaus That's not clear as of yet from what we have No, and I'm not sure it ever will be. We do have mentions elsewhere, the Egyptians mention an area called Tanaya, which I think is mainland Greece. And Amenhotep III, for example, in the middle of the fourteenth century has a list of places in the Aegean on one of a statue basis. and he actually in that list Myceni. Kinosos and so on So the Egyptians obviously know about them. and we've got Minoans and Mycenaeans pictured O the walls in the noles' tombs, bringing things to the pharoh. So you know, we're dancing around it But the Myceneans and the Minoans, for that matter themselves Do not write epics histories or anything like that. So we are missing All of those records, unfortunately The evidence that we do have then of fighting in and around Wilusa, believed to be Troy, Eric, Mycenaeans, Hittides and so on we actually, of course, in the Trojan War it's pictured as a ten year siege and fighting outside the walls and so on. What do we actually know about the nature of warfare at that time? What should we be imagining Well, I think that's the primary word. we should be imagining because we have to figure it out. But we also, again have to figure out How much we can use Homer and how much we need to ignore him becausecause what we've got I already The Trojan War is going to be late Bronze Age We are told by Homer that the major warriors get in a chariot They're driven up to the front lines. to the walls of Troy, they then dismount from the chariot And Battle taxis, aren't they? Is that the portrayal? Exactly, exactly. They are the Ubers of the Bronzees, Exactly Yeah, they get off the turreot and they fight hand to hand combat That's what Homer says In reality, we know from things like the Battle of Kadesh, which is fought in twelve seventy nine or twelve seventy four BC between the Egyptians and the Hittites. in what is now Syria. We know they are using chariots as a mobile Fighting force Right? They're tanks And there's like eight hundred chariots in that battle. And trust me, they're not dismounting. They are fighting from the Tiots. So what Homer is describing seems to be how chariots and chariot warfare function in his day in the Iron Age And we know from the Egyptians and the Hittites. that they're actually fighting completely differently We also know, and this is from things like the Amarna letters, which is an archive in Egypt from about thirteen fifty BC, that a large contingent of infantry or archers or anything would be a dozen men Right? a hundred would be huge So you don't, you're not talking lots and lots and lots of people whichich is why it's interesting. againg, if you look at Homer and the catalog of ships And you say, okay, there's either a thousand or somewhere over eleven hundred ships Each ship holds fifty Man Let's just say for argument's sake, we'll go with the face that launched a thousand ships. Be it's easier to multiply fifty and a thousand. R right. That would be fifty thousand warriors that go over to Troy if my maths are correct. That would be the largest army the world's ever seen at that time There There's no way There's that many So you know, I would cut a zero off, you know, five hundred men Okay, you know, even fififty. Okay And in fact, we are told in the epic cycle that there was an earlier attack on Troy by somebody by the name of Heracles U huh. Okay. And he attacked Troy in the time of Priam's grandfather A guy named Leo Medon which would have been somewhere about the fifteenth century and is said Datack with six fifty men on a ship, that would have been three hundred men That's believable Right We see three hundred all the time in antiquity. Alexander kept going off doing things with three hundred men. It's the largest force any one guy can command by themselves, Th contingents of a hundred each So, you know, Heracles attacking Troy with three hundred men, that's believable fifty thousand under Agamemnon, not so believable. So this is what I mean, we have to I hate to use the word. We have to interrogate Homer and try to figure out what is possible. But we do know what Warfare is like in the brronze Age ellsewhere And if we can extrapolate and say it was probably that way in the region of Troy as well And then we can go from there What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America I'm Don Weildman, and on American History hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership Find American History Hit twice a week every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit try having its strong rules Of course, like the siege supposedly takes ten years if you've actually got a much smaller force Could there still have been sieges? Is the archaeological evidence there of like a complete destruction of Troy at times during this period? that you know a smaller force from overseas, mycenaes could have still been able to that city, even with such smaller numbers, maybe not over ten years, but do we know of sieges that then ended in great destructions like that? Yeah, ye, absolutely. In fact, I mean, there are nine cities of Troy and there's evidence that you know some of them are destroyed. In particular, this chy six and chy seven Choice six, I should say, is split. into phases. There's six A be CD E FG And it it really covers the time period from about seventeen hundred. down to fourteen hundred or thirteen hundred BC. And several of those evidence Partial destructions and then The last one Troy six H. Total destruction But it looks like it's an earthquake rather than humans there are blocks tossed about, which You know, could have been caused by a battering ram but it is much more likely be an earthquake. And there's one wall in particular that I show a picture of that's just tilting over You know, and it's not supposed to do that So Destroy six H is pretty much completely destroyed, but probably by an earthquake The succeeding city estroy seven A because there's A and B, but seven A is basically the reoccupation. of the city destroyed by an earthquake and there you can see It looks like a city under siege. There are Big storage jars sunk into the ground. and then other storage doors above. we see something similar at Kanosos, but here it looks like it's supporting a population. that has suddenly swelled twowo times, three times normal Andy beautiful big buildings of six that Homer describes. now have party walls And where you had one family you probably now have three or four families living It was suggested that it was a siege Others are now suggesting it was the survivors of the earthquake. and they're trying to rebuild So either way seeven A Six I. is the reoccupation what's important alsoso destroyed in the end And it's definitely destroyed by humans There are arrowheads. in the walls Greek Mycenaean manufacturer. There are unburied bodies in the streets, Montfreded Kufman found the body of a seventeen year old girl kind of lying in the street there and the lower city. definitely shows evidence. In fact, there's one house in the lower city. You can see it's destroyed by an earthquake in six a. and then rebuilt in seven A and destroyed by humans. So you've got earthquake destruction and human destruction And those date to about the right time period, either one of them could have been Homer's Trojan warar. So when they were excavating under Korfman The debate was which is Homer's Troy? Is it six or seven? Is it the one destroyed by an earthquake or is it the one destroyed by humans? And honestly, either one would work for Homer's description And as for a siege, yeah, it could have lasted ten years But some scholars, I think Barry Strauss included, have suggested that There was a saying in the ancient world in nine years and then a tenth, meaning a very long time And it simply could be that it really wasn't ten years but you also in the epic cycle have a failed attack on Troy earlier. where they land on the coast and they sack a city thinking it's Troy. It's not. it's a place called Tothania And they basically go, oops, sorry, we thought you were Troy are bad and they leave again And they go back and it doesn't say how much time elapses between that failed raid and the actual raid on Troy So I'm not so sure it lasted ten years or had to last ten years. It is what it worth. It's a story It's a great story and I'm guessing Eric, would we have any idea what the motive would be for that kind of destructive end that you have from that time period? It's near the Bronze Age collapse. you get the word se peles coming in if there's no evidence for Heelen of Troy going there and being the reason C be something to do with The see peoo or else something else? It could, it could or it could be much more mundane, rightight. to begin with if Helen even existed if the war really We're being fought over her She was just an excuse They were fighting and this is where There's a line in the movie Troy from two thousand four with Brad Pitt. There is a line that rings true Agamemnon says This is a war being fought. Like all other wars, it's for land. It's for possessions. It's for gold. It's not for the love of a woman, that's an excuse. So yes, the Mycenaeans want Troy because it controls access to the Black Sea and they get to levy taxes people going in and out. It's like controlling the straits of Hormuz and oil, you know, Some things very timely, yees. Yeah, S things never change. So Helen would have been an excuse, I think. They would They were going to fight this anyway. And I mentioned earlier Troy is on the periphery of the Mycenaean area. The western coast of Anatolia is the periphery. of the Myceneans, but it's also the periphery of the Hittites And so Troy is what we call a contested periphery It' caght in the middle Right? It's, you know, collateral damage in here. And that's why I suggested that the war might actually be between the Hittites and the Mycenaeans and Helen's got nothing to do with it except that she's a nice Fil plot for Homer. And that's why I'm not sure we can really believe what he says, and The same goes for the Trojan horse You know, was there was there really a Trojan horse Eric The Trojan horse What do you think? U Yes and no What I think Okay, first and foremost It is unlikely there actually was a Trojan horse. if there even if there were, we'll never find it There was an April Fools. story that's circulated a couple years ago saying they had found part of the Trojan horse. And I'm like, no, no, no, no If there were something like that, it could have been some sort of siege engine. It could have been a battering ram It could have been a tower that was pushed up And we know later in the Iron Age, the No Assyrians used those You have these beautiful reliefs from Nineveh, isn't it? Yes, off the capture of Laise Yeah, Yes, exactly. Right. And They would have been doing that at about this time, actually, maybe a little bit earlier. So yes, so the Trojan horse could be a what would it be a metaphor, a simile, something like that, standing for a siege engine. It could have even I don't think it was a catapult, but maybe a tower would be the best. That's a possibility other possibility is that it is the earthquake The Trojan horse and the earthquake are one and the same. That was suggested in the nineteen fifties by a German scholar named Shakermeer. And he said, Okay If there were an earthquake We do see it in Troy six, there is an earthquake He said