Ep. 017 – Black Ships on Trojan Shores

Today we delve into a grey area between myth and history: the Trojan War. The Homeric epic poem The Iliad is now one of the most well known Greek myths. Before the discoveries of Mycenae and Troy around the turn of the century, almost no one believed that the Trojan War had actually happened. Now, archaeological evidence from Troy and other Anatolian coastal cities, combined with letters and treaties found in Hittite archives give us a glimpse at a what may be the historical basis of the Trojan War. Homer tells us of black ships on Trojan shores and of epic clashes between heroes who were aided by the gods. The Hittite archives tell us of Mycenaean raiders on the Anatolian coast and of a Hittite king who moved in to quell a Mycenaean backed rebellion. Listen to today's episode to see what we now know about the state of the Bronze Age world at the time Herodotus thought the Trojan War had been fought.

Listen to the Episode

Episode Transcript

Introduction

Today we will take a look at one of the most enduring myths of ancient history, the Trojan War as enshrined in epic form in The Iliad. In myth, this is the war where the face of Helen launched 1,000 Achaean ships, destined for Ilios, or Troy, where they would besiege the city and have their vengeance. You may wonder why the Trojan War as a focus for our podcast on maritime history. The sack of Troy, the Trojan Horse, all that happened on land, right? And yes, it did, but there is an undercurrent of maritime power running like an integral thread throughout the entire myth. Without the Achaean sea power, the entire story would change, and who knows how history would have differed. We’ll talk today about the role sea power played in the period, and how differing cultural views influenced the Mycenaeans, the Trojans, even the Hittites. This may be a long episode, because I also think it’s important to get an accurate picture of the Late Bronze Age world’s dying stages so that we can frame the emergence of the Sea Peoples in its proper light. And, there are many players on this stage, as I’m sure you’re aware.

We’ve talked in past episodes a bit about Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of one of these players, the Mycenaean civilization, and more specifically about his unearthing of golden artifacts from shaft graves at Mycenae. Beyond Mycenae, I think it’s pretty widely known that Schliemann also discovered the site of Troy with its many layers. He had his personal theories about the sites back then, and historians in the intervening years have proposed many alternative theories, even today we are still simply theorizing. Was the site of Troy the actual site of the events in The Iliad? Was the Trojan War even real in a historical sense? If so, where does the epic drama of Homer’s tale depart from historical events? And, the bottom line for any student of history, what contemporary sources are there to even help shed some light on any of these inquires? Many questions to begin with today, but I trust that in looking at some of those sources we can today see some of the historical reality underlying one of the earliest tales of a war where a naval force played a large role.

A brief warning here before the plunge: this whole discussion is quite complex. My hope is to present you with a coherent picture of a distinct possibility of what the history looked like, but keep in mind there are many theories to explain the history behind Homer’s Trojan War and the proper interpretation of the historical documents that we’ll look at. This discussion could take up hours if we let it, indeed, stacks of books have been devoted to the subject. In addition to the complexity, this topic dovetails into our future discussions of the Sea Peoples and the Late Bronze Age Collapse, so I want to lay a good foundation today and will reference much of what we say today in the upcoming episodes. Here’s to hoping it all makes sense when we’re through!

Perhaps it is ill advised, but for today’s episode I’m going to make the assumption that we’re all familiar with the basic plot of the Trojan War as recounted in Homer’s Iliad. The recent Hollywood adaption in the film Troy is, to put it bluntly, a travesty to Bronze Age history, as well as to the Homeric tradition of the myth itself, but I’ll suppress any pedantic urges for now and hope you all can do likewise. If you’re looking for a good podcast treatment of the Trojan War myth, look no further than “The Myths and History of Greece and Rome” by Paul Vincent. He dedicates a handful of episodes to recounting the myth, and I’ve enjoyed his podcast immensely.

Historical Background for the "Trojan War"

With the preliminaries behind us then, let us now take the plunge. We’ve seen that the Mycenaeans of 1500 through 1300 BCE were quite active in Mediterranean trade, making much contact with the Levant, Cyprus, and some coastal areas of Anatolia. They were also the originators of the oared galley, the ‘long-ships’ that Homer has the Achaeans using to make their way over to Troy. Some have said the the Homeric authorship of the epic at some point in the 8th century BCE (which is a huge debate in and of itself) would have resulted in later Greek traditions and practices seeping into what was supposed to have taken place at least 400 years before Homer’s time. There is certainly a degree of that transference present, as there will be in most any writing or history, but with regard to the description of ships in the Iliad, much of what Homer described has been proven accurate through archaeological finds dated to the period of the 13th century BCE, the period where historians generally place the Trojan War. The ‘black ships’ we talked about in Episode 15, for example, not to mention the fact that Homer describes longships steered by a single pilot on a single steering rudder. That is precisely how early period galleys were built, while the galleys of Homer’s day actually had dual steering rudders. These few specifics aside, though, before we can really get into the real-history events behind the Trojan War, a civilization that’s not yet graced the stage of our podcast needs to make its debut.

This civilization is that of the Hittites, a super-power of the Bronze Age world, though a relative late-bloomer in the grand scheme of history, as were the Mycenaeans. The discovery of the Hittite civilization and their history is another fascinating topic that is way beyond our scope, and I’m actually not sure whether a podcast has yet examined the Hittites in depth. For our purposes today it’s enough to know that they were the occupiers of much of Anatolia, having emerged as a distinct civilization only in the 17th century BCE, but having had progenitors in the region for several hundred years previous. The Hittites borrowed their cuneiform writing from the Assyrians, and while they did occupy an expanse of territory that bordered the Mediterranean along much of Anatolia’s southern coastline, stretching around to the Levant coastal city of Ugarit, reaching right to the walls of Byblos at one point, the Hittites were not seagoing peoples by any means. These were the famed charioteers of the ancient world, a huge portion of their empire land-locked. This does not mean that they had no maritime connections, however. The Hittites controlled many coastal cities, and though the cities remained nominally independent and reliant on formal alliances or vassal- city agreements with the Hittite king, it is thought that the Hittites would call upon the ships of major coastal cities in times of need. We’ll see this proven out when we get to look at one of the oldest recorded naval battles in history, waged by the Hittite king Suppiluliuma II against some invading Cypriots, but using the ships of a Ugarit, a Syrian city controlled by the Hittites.

Being largely landlocked and dependent on the trade of its coastal allies, the Hittites were keen on retaining control of the Levant for as long as they could. This is the was the cause of the Battle of Qadesh, which took place around 1275 BCE. Ramses II of Egypt attempted to expand Egyptian control northward, but the Hittites were having none of it. That’s getting a bit ahead of ourselves, perhaps, but it’s good to keep in mind at least. As I’ve said, the Hittites controlled much of Anatolia, varying portions of the Levant, and their eastern reaches abutted the empires of Assyria and the Mittani. The real focal point for us today though is the western most stretches of Anatolia, the coastlines and the islands that dot the edge of Aegean Sea but are a moderate distance from Greece proper. Knowing what we know at this point, that the Mycenaeans were quite active on the seas, and that the western coast of Anatolia was just barely within the reach of Hittite influence, it should be no surprise to find out that many areas along the western coasts of Anatolia were destinations for Mycenaean goods, to a moderate extent.

Hittite Records Reveal the Bronze Age Networks

This is the point where the physical letters and records found at Hittite archaeological sites come into play, and its as good a point as any to emphasize just how amazing the discovery of these Hittite records have been to our understanding of the Bronze Age world. Much like the Mycenaeans, Minoans, and others, the Hittites were not really known until the archaeology boom of the 19th century. Since that time, many thousands of Hittite cuneiform tablets have been discovered throughout Anatolia, none more important than a cache of 2,500 tablets found at the ancient equivalent of the Hittite Foreign Office. These tablets, among others, will form the basis of our talk about the Trojan War, and they are a fascinating glimpse at diplomacy and the inner workings of the great ancient empires, while also being 3,000 year old windows into the same human nature that sits at the helms of the nations today.

As we look at these documents and get into the intricacies of war and politics, a basic framework is instructive. That framework, for me at least, is this: the Mycenaeans were an eastward looking people. Their palaces were scattered among the islands of the Aegean, and their trade routes stretched to the eastern most reaches of the Mediterranean. While the Mycenaean empire may not have been a centralized one, the fortunes of the various cities all depended on trade with their eastern neighbors, even with Egypt, so the Mycenaean galleys patrolled the seas while Levantine merchants moved the goods, think of the Uluburun and Gelidonya wrecks from last time.

In stark contrast stood the Hittites and, by association, the Trojans. Troy was, quite paradoxically, a seaport that had no naval force to speak of. Their military protection from the east came from the Hittites, and their wealth came thanks to their strategic location and welcoming of merchants. Homer paints the Trojan royalty as a horse-loving people, horses featuring in his descriptions of Trojan culture. Ships and seafaring, however, are not in the Trojan wheelhouse, nor that of the Hittites, so in a sense, the Mycenaeans have an automatic advantage through the maneuverability and the versatility of movement and transport by sea.

These are the cultural identities of the various players at the time of the Trojan War, as described by Homer, but do historical records reflect this? I think they do, and to see just how revealing the records are, we’ll start 200 years before the time of the Trojan War, but in the same region, the western coast of Anatolia. Archaeology has shown that the western coastal cities of Anatolia were subject to a moderate Mycenaean presence, not necessarily an occupation, mind you, but the presence of large amounts of pottery and other artifacts indicative of small Mycenaean enclaves. In comparison to the large quantities of Mycenaean goods in the Levant and Egypt, however, the Mycenaean trade in Anatolia was negligible, a discrepancy that we will try to explain here soon. We’ll likely never get enough evidence to paint a full picture, but we know that at least one city, Miletus, could boast a large percentage of Mycenaean inhabitants and may have had a political connection to the Mycenaean cities of Greece itself. The site had been settled by Cretans in the 15th century and was then taken over when the Mycenaeans grew in power. The presence of the distinctive Mycenaean tombs at Miletus show us the extent of Mycenaean occupation.

Don’t let the nominal Mycenaean activity in western Anatolia give you the wrong idea, though. We’ve seen how trade was a thoroughly international affair even back here in the Bronze Age. Egyptian artifacts have been found all over, as have Babylonian and Minoan/Mycenaean artifacts. Even the Hittites who were introduced today had their trade goods spread to all of their neighbors in the vicinity. It is a strange reality, then, to see that only 12 Hittite objects have ever been found in all of the various Mycenaean sites around the Aegean. Likewise, only a handful of Minoan and Mycenaean goods made their way into central Anatolia, the heartland of the Hittite empire, despite the fact that numerous Egyptian, Babylonian, Cypriot, and Assyrian goods have been found in Central Anatolia. For some reason there seems to have been a trade barrier between the Hittites and the Mycenaeans, a blockage that is not seen between any of the other Bronze Age Near East powers. Intriguing, you say? I agree, and there’s more. Cline theorizes that this strangely unique lack of Mycenaean - Hittite trade is indicative of the world’s first trade embargo.

History's First Trade Embargo

We’ll look at the proffered evidence in a moment, but it’s first useful to note that the Hittites and Mycenaeans had a history of “relationship issues” beginning 200 years before the Trojan War. As mentioned, archaeological estimates are that the Trojan War occurred sometime around 1250 BCE, give or take, and Herodotus shares the same opinion. All the way back in 1430 BCE, however, the Mycenaeans and the Hittites were already going at it. An inscription discovered in the Hittite capital city of Hattusa reveals that in 1430 the Hittite king Tudhaliya was forced to put down not one, but two rebellions in a region called Assuwa. The long debates about toponymy aside, scholars generally agree that this place the Hittites called Assuwa was none other than the region around Troy, perhaps including other coastal areas of northwestern Anatolia. Two names in particular, Wilusiya and Taruisa, are thought to refer to the city of Troy and it’s surrounding lands specifically. Hittite activity here may not be quite so remarkable, but that fact that this inscription describing the Assuwa rebellions was found on a sword of Mycenaean origin ads another element to the story. Alone, it wouldn’t tell us a lot, but other fragmentary documents from the same period refer to the rebellions and to a place the Hitties called Ahhiyawa. One letter mentions the land of Ahhiyawa, the king of Ahhiyawa, and islands belonging to the king of Ahhiyawa, all within the same context of the Assuwa rebellion.

Ahhiyawa is, again, a name that’s been subject to much debate, but there is more broad agreement based on Egyptian and other similar records that this term refers to none other than the Mycenaeans and to their islands in the Aegean. Tying this all together, then, Cline theorizes that this evidence of Mycenaean weaponry and association with armed rebellion in western Anatolia aligns perfectly with the literary traditions of battles and raids by the Greek heroes in the lands of Anatolia. The Iliad contains several instances of reference to pre-Trojan War battles and to weapon types that were no longer used in 1250 BCE. Furthermore, the Greek hero Heracles was supposed to have sacked the city of Troy once before the Trojan War itself, using only 6 ships to make the journey.

The Mycenaeans as Bronze Age "Vikings"

Knowing what we know about the Mycenaeans, what possible rationale could have driven their military involvement in western Anatolia? The basic answer is that the Mycenaean culture was a militaristic one, especially in comparison to their Minoan predecessors. Linear B tablets found at Pylos, the home of Nestor and the site of a significant Mycenaean city-state, reveal that the Mycenaeans made a common practice of taking slaves from cities along the Anatolian coast. Hundreds of women are described doing menial tasks back in Pylos, and they distinguished from one another based on their place of origin: place like Lemnos, Halicarnassos, Chios, Assuwa, all locations in western Anatolia. There is even one woman described as having come from To-ro-ja, a possible reference to Troy itself. All the women are described as captives, the same way in which Homer described the women seized by Achilles during one of his treks south of Troy during the long war. It’s interesting to compare this evidence to the Iliad itself, where the capture of Helen by the Trojans was a cause for war.

Anyway, it seems that to a large extent the 1300’s BCE in the eastern Aegean were comparable to the period of Viking raids along the eastern coasts of Britain. A people with an immensely superior navy utilized that advantage to raid coastal cities, cities that would have been rich in resources, gold, silver, weapons, and most importantly for the Mycenaean economy, slave labor. Indeed, Homer’s fixation on describing several great Achaean heroes as a ‘sacker of cities’ gives us an insight into the predominance that coastal raiding played in the Mycenaean mindset. The nature of Mycenaean political structure is somewhat outside our scope, as usual, but it’s been theorized that the loose nature of the association between city-states would have contributed to this predilection for raids on western Anatolia. The more loot and slaves a Mycenaean king could bring back to his own city, the more allegiance and muscle he could attract, leading to a snowball effect of growing military might requiring more loot, and so on.

Along with that thought, we must keep in mind that the Mycenaean world was not centralized as we would think of a centralized civilization like Rome. It’s quite plausible that one Mycenaean city would have made a raid against an Anatolian coastal city, while another Mycenaean city would have traded with them instead. This explains the presence of Mycenaean pottery all along the coast, but as we move closer in time to the Trojan War, evidence from the Hittite Foreign Office archives begins to show more detail about the political climate.

In the early stages of the 13th century BCE, Hittite records begin to include mentions of a troublemaker in neighboring regions called Millawanda and Arzawa. Millawanda was a region in southwestern Anatolia around the city of Miletus. We already saw how the Mycenaean Greeks had a disproportionately large presence in Miletus, and the Hittite records even recognize that this region was part of the Mycenaean lands, but such recognition did not dissuade the Hittites from intervening when they felt it necessary. The Hittite’s had destroyed the city in 1315 BCE, but Mycenaean influence had evidently remained to some extent. In fact, while the Mycenaeans were raiding coastal areas, as we’ve seen, they were also engaged in diplomacy, particularly with the royal family of a region known as Arzawa. This region encompassed the cities of Ephesus and Smyrna, cities directly to the north of Miletus, so direct neighbors of the Mycenaean presence in Miletus and, therefore, and understandable people for the Mycenaeans to keep on good terms. Until the 13th century, Arzawa had been both a vassal state of the Hittite king and on good terms with the Greeks in Miletus, but the Hittite letters of this period bear little love for a rebel named Piyamaradu. He may have been a member of the royal family of Arzawa, tired of his reliance on Hittite power, but we know for sure that in the decades before the Trojan War, he was engaged in a series of rebellions in Millawanda and Arzawa. What’s more, he was rebelling against Hittite control with the help of the Mycenaeans, possibly even at their behest.

The "Tawagalawa Letter"

We get a firsthand, behind-the-scenes glimpse at this whole diplomatic situation in a letter known as the Tawagalawa Letter, written by the Hittite king Hattusilis III right around 1250 BCE and sent to an unnamed king of Ahhiyawa, a Mycenaean king. Right off the bat, it’s revealing to see that the Hittites and the Mycenaeans had direct diplomatic contact, but it gets even better. At the time of the letter’s writing, Piyamaradu had continued his rebellious streak, raiding Hittite territory in western Anatolia. We learn that Piyamaradu had been given asylum in Mycenaean territory, with reference to his boarding of a ship and travel to an island somewhere in the Aegean. We also learn that the brother of the Mycenaean king to whom the letter was addressed had been active in the rebellion. This brother’s name was Tawagalawa, and he had been actively recruiting manpower to keep the rebellion alive. In the past, relations between the Hittites and the Mycenaeans had been better, Tawagalawa had even ridden in a chariot with the personal charioteer of the Hittite king, but rebellion in the west had changed matters. Now, before we get into heart of the Tawagalawa letter for it’s relation to the Trojan War, it’s also important to learn that the name Tawagalawa is the Hittite rendition, but in the Greek many now believe the name to be none other than Eteocles. He was a son of Oedipus in Greek mythology, and ruled with his brother, a curious parallel between myth and the Hittite record to be sure.

The Tawagalawa Letter is revealing not just for it’s discussion of Mycenaean activity in Anatolia, but also for what it tells us about the Mycenaean status in the Bronze Age world. In the letter, Hattusilis called the Mycenaean king ‘my brother’ on multiple occassions, as was a common practice when royals addressed one another. We see this echoed in the Hittite correspondence with Egypt and Egyptian letters to other places. Furthermore, Hattusilis calls the Mycenaean king a “Great King,” indicative of the status of the Mycenaeans in the eyes of the Hittites. One scholar has suggested that Hattusilis is being diplomatic, stroking the Mycenaean ego and doing his best not to provoke an international incident. After all, the letter tells us that Hattusilis has personally entered the city of Miletus, and though he has demanded the extradition of Pyamaradu into Hittite hands, he apologizes if the demand sounds “soldierly” or blunt and sends a royal kinsman as collateral, a guarantee of Piyamaradu’s good treatment should he be given up by the Mycenaeans. All in all, then, this letter tells us that the Hittites viewed the Mycenaeans as a powerful kingdom in the west, able even to seduce Hittite vassal states like Arzawa into an open rebellion against the Hittites.

So, the Tawagalawa Letter tells us assuredly that the Hittites and the Mycenaeans had high-level diplomatic contact, that they viewed one another as great powers in the world, and that the Mycenaeans were unafraid to get militarily involved in affairs in western Anatolia, even to the extent of provoking Hittite reaction. Important points, yes, but one final passage from the letter is key for us when it comes to issues of the Trojan War. In the letter, Hittite King Hattusilis asks the Mycenaean King to talk to Piyamaradus and to “tell him that the King of Hatti and I, that in the matter of Wilusa over which we were at enmity, he has persuaded me, changed my mind, and we have made friends. A war is wrong for us.” Later on Hattusilis again references “the matter in question concerning the town of Wilusa over which we made war (and over which we now have come to a settlement.)” What this means is only what it seems, that the Hittites and Mycenaeans had come to blows over a town named Wilusa. Where is this town, you ask? Well, let’s just say that one Greek name for Troy was Ilios, but they originally pronounced it as Wilios, not far at all from the Hittite name Wilusa. Scholars now by and large feel that Wilusa in the Hittite records is a reference to the region north and west of Arzawa, possibly extending even to the city of Troy. War fought over the region around Troy, then. Quite interesting, and there’s still more!

Separate documents from the Hittite archives also discuss the town of Wilusa, which we can equate with the region of Troy. An amazing document is actually a treaty between a king of Wilusa and the Hittite king Muwatalli II. This treaty was made around 1275 BCE, only 20-25 years before the best estimates of when a Trojan War would have taken place, so its automatically interesting to see that the Trojans had made a formal alliance with the Hittites. The Hittite King Muwatalli is the same king that fought Ramses at the Battle of Qadesh I’d mentioned earlier, and in this treaty, the Trojan king pledges military support for any campaigns the Hittite king enters. There are detailed Egyptian accounts of the Battle of Qadesh, and one of the Hittite allies were a people the Egyptians called the Drdny, spelled d-r-d-n-y. Jumping back over to Greek accounts, Homer called the people of Troy both Dardanoi and Trojan, two branches of the city’s royal house. So do we have Egyptian records of the Dardanoi fighting in Syria, fulfilling the pledge of their treaty with the Hittite king? It’s a distinct possibility, even if it’s not concrete.

Perhaps even more amazing is that this treaty between the king of Wilusa and the Hittite king names the Wilusian king, a man called Alaksanus. This name falls outside the conventional Hittite language, so it’s been theorized that it is a Hittite transliteration of the Greek name Alexandros. According to Greek tradition, another name for the Trojan prince who stole away Helen, known today as Paris, was Alexandros of Ilios. Could the Alaksandus of the Hittite treaty and Paris of the Iliad be one and the same? Again, fascinatingly possible, but inconclusive. One more correlation that is just as fascinating, but ultimately doesn’t prove anything beyond doubt. One of the gods that was named as a guarantor of Alaksandus’ side of the treaty was a god named Apaliunas, a name equated with the name Apollo, a Greek god of many roles. The remarkable correlation here is that the Homeric tradition, Apollo takes the side of the Trojans, guiding Paris’ arrow fired from the safety of the Trojan walls to find the vulnerable heel of the Achaean hero Achilles.

The Archaeology of Troy/Hisarlik

At this point we’ve looked into the main Hittite records that seem to be connected to any potential events that may have been a historical basis for the Trojan War myth. We haven’t really looked yet at the archaeology of Hisarlik, the likely location of the city of Troy, and I don’t think we need to go too deep here. Essentially, long-term archaeology at the site has revealed a city of many layers, each layer a period of history in the city’s growth and evolution. Troy VIIa has shown a measure of evidence that it was destroyed in war, evidence of fire, human remains in the streets and arrowheads as well. Estimates are that it was destroyed too late to fit within the Trojan War timeframe, possibly as late as 1180 BCE, making this destruction one that is possibly attributable to the Sea Peoples. The preceding layer, Troy VI, has been dated nearer to 1250 BCE, perhaps even closer to 1300. It also shows signs of destruction, but scholars still debate whether the destruction was due to earthquake or to invasion, as few signs of armed conflict are present. The site of the city itself, then, doesn’t help much other than to confirm that within the 100 year span around the estimated time of the Trojan War, the city of Troy was destroyed more than once. Perhaps future archaeology will reveal more concrete connections to Mycenaean invaders. For now, we can only wait and hypothesize.

Description of Achaean Ships in Homer's Iliad

We’ve not really talked yet about what Homer has to say to us about any ships that the Achaean invaders would have used, so let’s take a look at that briefly, and then we’ll circle back to summarize the complex evidence we’ve seen today. Much has been written about the passage in Book 2 of the Iliad that is referred to as the ‘catalogue of ships.’ Here, Homer lists in detail the cities who sent their sons to fight for Agamemnon against Troy, 164 places named in total. It is thought that this list of warriors and places was compiled independently of the writing of the Iliad and that its roots lie in a Greek memory that predates the Homeric writings but was likely written after the fall of the Mycenaeans. This entire vein of study related to the catalogue of ships could be a miles long rabbit trail, so I’ll summarize. It appears that the catalogue of ships must be fairly accurate as a reflection of the Mycenaean world around its end, say 1200 to 1100 BCE, because several places are named in the list, places that have been discovered and which were inhabited during Mycenaean times but then lay abandoned until sometime in the 700s BCE. Beyond that, every city in the catalogue that has been discovered today and has been excavated has shown evidence of occupation during Mycenaean times, some of them down through history and others of them showing that gap after the Mycenaean decline. What this tells us is that the catalogue of ships, or at least a substantial portion of it, has roots in a Mycenaean view of their world and is not just a list that was compiled several hundred years after the fact. Still, it’s impossible to prove any connection between the list and between a Trojan War, but it nonetheless is useful for getting a view of the Aegean as it existed near the time of the Trojan War.

As for the physical ships in which the Mycenaeans would have sailed to Troy, they would have been mainly the penteconter style ship that we talked about in Episode 15, as well as a similar but smaller version that sat 20 rowers instead of 50. We saw how Homer described the ships as ‘black ships,’ a reference to the black appearance of the pitch that kept the hulls waterproofed. He describes the ships as ‘red-prowed’ and ‘blue-prowed,’ bursts of color that we saw in the contemporary Gurob ship model that was found in Egypt but probably depicts a Mediterranean-style galley. Homer frequently describes them as “well-planked,” ‘well-wrought,’ or similar phrases, so they must have been sturdy ships, pleasing to the eye, especially when amassed in a great fleet. Homer likewise calls them “hollow ships,” so they wouldn’t have had fully-covering decks like we generally think of on ships. There were probably small decks for and aft, for lookouts fore and for a helmsman and navigator aft, but otherwise, it seems that the bulk of the ships were uncovered, benches lining the length, occupied by the fighting force who doubled as rowers when such speed was necessary. Since the rowers were also the fighting force, it would make sense for the Mycenaeans to have used their sails whenever possible, so as not to use up the strength of their fighters. Homer talks of single masts and a single white sail, how the men would set up the mast when the wind was advantageous, but how upon entering harbor “they furled the sail and stowed it within the black ship and lowered the mast by the forestays till quickly they brought it to rest in the crutch.”

The Achaean ships were built for speed, sleek and narrow, able to make headway no matter the weather or conditions. Homer also mentions frequently how, when possible, the Achaeans ran their ship up on shore every night, sleeping in their shadow and using them as storage during land campaigns. When needed they could be readied for sail just as quickly, allowing the Achaeans to slip away at speed. These, we can confidently say, were the ships of raiders, able to maneuver in shallow water thanks to their light, low profiles. This idea of the Mycenaeans as raiders now brings us back around to a summary and one final question that may or may not have an answer to your satisfaction. Why did the Mycenaeans, Homer’s Achaeans, invade Troy? The Homeric motivation of Helen’s capture aside, why would the real life Mycenaeans of 1250 BCE have chosen military involvement in Anatolia as we’ve seen that they most certainly did?

Explaining a "Historical" Trojan War

This question turns on the state of the Bronze Age world in the middle of the 13th century BCE. One theory that has gained a moderate backing is that Troy had grown to be a rich city because of its location in the southern portion of the Dardanelles, a chokepoint for any sea access from the Aegean to the Black Sea, or vice versa. If Troy’s location allowed it to serve as a stopping port for long- distance trade, then it would naturally follow that any historical basis for the Trojan War may have also turned on access to the Black Sea trade route. To follow the chain of logic in this theory, we must then ask whether there is any archaeological evidence for the existence of a trade route between the Aegean peoples and anyone within reach of the Black Sea shores. One would think that if we are arguing for some historical event behind the Trojan War myth that we could likewise argue for a Bronze Age Black Sea trade route, based on the myth of Jason and the Argonauts and their voyage to Colchis, a region on the far eastern shores of the Black Sea. What’s more, the Greek traditions placed the Argonaut’s voyage as taking place before the events of the Trojan War, so there is at least the backing of mythology here. The catch is that there is very little archaeological evidence of Mycenaean presence in or trade with the peoples of the Black Sea.

Some evidence has been found, to be sure. Stone anchors and oxhide ingots have been found along Cape Kaliakra, the southwestern region of the Black Sea, closest to the Bosporus. A handful of double axes and a corresponding mold for making the axes have also been found near the Bosporus, and these axes are traceable directly to Troy as similar weapons were known to have been produced there. Even in the eastern reaches of the sea, in the Caucasus region, swords of a distinctly Aegean style have been found, though only 9 of them in all. Beyond some scant traces of Mycenaean pottery, not much else has been found to date. Some scholars dismiss all of this evidence, while other explain it by pointing to the fact that overland trade routes were heavily used by the Hittite empire in Anatolia, a possible way to account for the artifacts to the east. Ultimately, we really can’t get a clear answer to this theory. It seems to be a stretch, considering the relative lack of Mycenaean goods in the Black Sea. It doesn’t help either that no artifacts from Black Sea peoples, who were still mainly smaller tribes in the Late Bronze Age, no artifacts have been found at Troy. If the city were an entrepôt, as such, there should certainly be more evidence of trade from the Black Sea back the other direction. Perhaps future discoveries will help or hurt this theory, but for now I think a more likely explanation is as follows.

Let’s return again to look at the state of the world in the middle of the 13th century BCE. As we’ve seen, Troy had been destroyed more than once. The Hittites and Egyptians vied for control of the Levant, and if you remember way back to our episodes on New Kingdom Egypt, we’ve seen that the patterns of trade and supply on the sea had begun to be disrupted on a more frequent basis. In short, the Late Bronze Age powers were in flux, the Mycenaeans no exception. Considering their relative supremacy on the Mediterranean, it makes complete sense that the Mycenaeans would resort to coastal raiding on the cities of their neighbors to east when times got tough. Looking at the Iliad alone we can see that the Bronze Age Greeks had a reputation as being a bellicose people. This reputation is born out in other sources and in the proliferation of war instruments and armor in the tombs of Mycenaean kings. We saw earlier how the Mycenaeans relied on slave labor to a large degree and that the capture of slaves in Anatolia is provable in Linear B texts found at Mycenaean cities. This same period, 1300 to 1200 BCE or so, saw the addition of Cyclopean architecture, great walls and such like that, to the previously open palace structures of the Mycenaeans. The motivation behind such additions is not known, but whether it was a defensive measure due to rising trouble from other sea raiders, or whether it was an attempt by a dying power to show that some life still remained, the Cyclopean architecture of the period is another evidence of a world in flux.

All of these factors combined reveal a plausible, historically verifiable basis behind the myth of a single Trojan War. Was there really one single event? Likely not. The Hittite records reveal Mycenaean involvement in Anatolia for at least 150 years prior, but there is certainly evidence in these same texts that that the Hittites had possibly pushed the Mycenaeans out of Miletus, their main hold there. Furthermore, the ruler of Troy had formalized an alliance with the Hittites, and the Greeks had apparently clashed with the Hittites over some issues in the region around Troy. There was no one single Trojan War, but don’t forget, even in the Iliad itself Homer talks about the various forays that Achaean heroes made against other cities along the Anatolian coasts, sacking them to supply their forces during the extended campaign. Prestige lay in being considered a “sacker of cities.” Perhaps there was an actual Agamemnon who managed to unite the Mycenaean cities in a time or rising trouble. Mycenae is to this day, and likely in that day, seen as the main center of a culture shared by Aegean cities of the time. It’s hard to nail down, for sure, and I apologize if I’ve only served to confuse you by all of this talk today. I’ll end with one last intriguing possibility. How could we talk about the Trojan War without referring to the Trojan Horse, the enigmatic symbol of the war in the modern retelling. I’ll leave the connection here to the words of Michael Wood, taken from his BBC series and companion book ‘In Search of the Trojan War’.

“The tale of the horse has been connected with the god Poseidon, who we know existed in the Mycenaean pantheon. In Arcadia, Poseidon was always worshipped in the shape of a horse, in other parts as a horseman or master or horses. For country folk he was Hippos, the horse. But Poseidon, even in historical times, was also regarded as the only originator of earthquakes. Here let us remember the alleged destruction of Troy VI by earthquake, and how in the tale Laomedon cheated Poseidon and was punished by the demolition of his beautiful walls. Did a later bard invent the thrilling device of the wooden horse with the Poseidon connection in the back of his mind, transferring the older traditions to an earlier sacking by Herakles? Even if this is implausible and the Greeks did indeed sack Troy only after it had been shattered by an earthquake, can we still perhaps retain the connection of a cult idol of Poseidon, the god of earthquakes, in the shape of a wooden horse – left by the Greeks as a thank-offering? On the whole, it is best to admit that there is something unfathomably mysterious about the wooden horse story; it was evidently in existence long before Homer’s day, but more than that we cannot say.”

Michael Wood, In Search of the Trojan War (1985).

Sources

• Boer, Jan G., Phantom-Mycenaeans in the Black Sea, in Talanta, Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, Vols. 38-39 (2006-2007).
• Braudel, Fernand, Memory and the Mediterranean (2001).
• Casson, Lionel, The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times (1959).
• Cline, Eric H., 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (2014).
• Hiller, Stefan, The Mycenaeans and the Black Sea, in Robert Laffineur & Lucien Busch (eds.), Thalassa: L'Egèe préhistorique et la mer, pp. 207–216 (Liège: Univerité de Liège, 1991).
• Homer, The Iliad.
• Kelder, Jorrit M., Mycenaeans in Western Anatolia, in Talanta, Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, Vols. 36-37 (2004-2005).
• McGrail, Seán, Early Ships and Seafaring: European Water Transport (2014).
• Mee, Christopher, Anatolia and the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age, in Aegean and the Orient, pp. 137–148 (1998).
• Paine, Lincoln, The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (2013).
• Strauss, Barry, The Trojan War: A New History (2006).
• Wachsmann, Shelley, Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant (2008).
• Wood, Michael, In Search of the Trojan War (1985).