The History Book Club discussion

This thread is dedicated to the discussion of the Greek Dark Ages.



This thread covers the discussion and account of the collapse of the Mycenaean World and discusses the aftermath of how the Greeks were poised to start their civilization.

The Greek Dark Age or Ages (ca. 1200–800 BCE) are terms which have regularly been used to refer to the period of Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean Palatial civilization around 1200 BCE, to the first signs of the Greek city-states in the 9th century BCE. These terms are gradually going out of use, since the former lack of archaeological evidence in a period that was mute in its lack of inscriptions (thus "dark") has been shown to be an accident of discovery rather than a fact of history.

The archaeological evidence shows a widespread collapse of Bronze Age civilization in the eastern Mediterranean world at the outset of the period, as the great palaces and cities of the Mycenaeans were destroyed or abandoned.

Around this time, the Hittite civilization suffered serious disruption and cities from Troy to Gaza were destroyed. Following the collapse, fewer and smaller settlements suggest famine and depopulation. In Greece the Linear B writing of the Greek language used by Mycenaean bureaucrats ceases.

The decoration on Greek pottery after c. 1100 BCE lacks the figurative decoration of Mycenaean ware and is restricted to simpler, generally geometric styles. It was previously thought that all contact was lost between mainland Hellenes and foreign powers during this period, yielding little cultural progress or growth; however, artifacts from excavations at Lefkandi on the Lelantine Plain in Euboea show that significant cultural and trade links with the east, particularly the Levant coast, developed from c. 900 BCE onwards, and evidence has emerged of the new presence of Hellenes in sub-Mycenaean Cyprus and on the Syrian coast at Al Mina.

Source: Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Da...

Please feel free to add books, images pertaining to Ancient History of the Greek Dark Ages, and/or urls, etc that pertain to this subject area. No self promotion please.

Here is the lecture outline for Donald Hagan's course at Yale. It outlines quite a few terms and outline questions which are the focal point of his lecture on the Dark Ages:

http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/introduc...

Here is the transcript for Lecture Two:

http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/introduc...

Lecture 2 - The Dark Ages

Overview:
In this lecture, Professor Donald Kagan explores the earliest history of Greek civilization. He demonstrates how small agricultural enclaves eventually turned into great cities of power and wealth in the Bronze Age, taking as his examples first Minoan Crete and then Mycenaean Greece. He also argues that these civilizations were closely related to the great monarchies of the ancient Near East. He points out that the Mycenaean age eventually came to an abrupt end probably through a process of warfare and migration. Reconstructing the Mycenaean age is possible through archaeological evidence and through epic poetry (Homer). Finally, he provides an account of the collapse of the Mycenaean world, and explains how in its aftermath, the Greeks were poised to start their civilization over on a new slate.

Stanley M. Burstein

Stanley M. Burstein

Stanley M. Burstein

Stanley M. Burstein


Donald Kagan

Lecture Two:

http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/introduc...

Excerpts from Donald Hagan's transcripts:

1. I'm going to talk to you today about the beginnings of the Greek experience as far as we know it, and I should warn you at once that the further back in history you go the less secure is your knowledge, especially at the beginning of our talk today when you are in a truly prehistoric period. That is before there is any written evidence from the period in which you are interested. So what we think we know derives chiefly from archeological evidence, which is before writing--mute evidence that has to be interpreted and is very complicated, and is far from secure. Even a question such as a date which is so critical for historians, is really quite approximate, and subject to controversy, as is just about every single thing I will tell you for the next few days. These will be even more than usual subject to controversy even the most fundamental things. So what you'll be hearing are approximations as best we can make them of what's going on.

2. This is Donald Hagan's definition of civilization and when it began:

And what we find, the first example of a Bronze Age--and I use the word civilization now for the first time, because before the Bronze Age--there is nothing that we would define as civilization. Civilization involves the establishment of permanent dwelling areas that we call cities, as opposed to villages. Agricultural villages will have existed all over the place in the late Stone Age, in the Neolithic Period, as it is known. But there is a difference and the critical difference is that a city contains a number of people who do not provide for their own support. That is to say, they don't produce food. They need to acquire it from somebody else. Instead, they do various things like govern and are priests, and are bureaucrats, and are engaged in other non-productive activities that depend upon others to feed them. That's the narrowest definition of cities.

3. Bronze Age - either 3000 BC or approximately 2900 BC

Other excerpts from Donald Hagan:

1. That civilization was uncovered by the archaeologists right at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sir Arthur Evans, an Englishman, was responsible for the major work that has revealed that civilization. He was captivated by it, he--at one point I think he convinced himself that he was a descendant of the kings of that civilization. But in any case, he named it. He named it after the legendary King of Crete who appears in Greek mythology by the name of Minos. So he referred to that civilization as the Minoan civilization. When we use the word Minoan we mean the civilization whose home is Crete. It spread out beyond Crete because the Minoans established what we might want to call an empire in various parts of the Mediterranean, and it starts with Crete. It is a Bronze Age culture, and it is the first civilization we know in the area.

2.The Minoans are not Greeks. Strictly speaking, what do we mean when we say somebody is Greek? We mean that his native language, not one that he's acquired subsequently, but the one that he learned as a child, was Greek, some version of the Greek language. These are linguistic terms. But of course, the people who spoke them, especially in the early years, tended to be part of a relatively narrow collection of people, who intermarried with each other chiefly, and therefore developed common cultural characteristics. So of course, the language is only a clue. When you speak about Greeks you will be speaking about something more than merely the fact that they spoke a certain language.

2. Well, the way we can reason things out from the evidence we have suggests that Greek-speaking peoples came down into the area around the Aegean Sea, perhaps around 2000 B.C., about a thousand years later than the emergence of the Minoan civilization at Crete. And again, I think these days they tend to down date it by another century or so, so it might be around 1900 B.C. We really don't know very much about these early Greek settlers. We begin to know more about three or four hundred years down the road, when there appear buildings and settlements in the world later inhabited by the Greeks, as we know, to which we give the name Mycenaean.

This is the pdf file for this open course: The Dark Ages - terms and questions

http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/introduc...

This is the synopsis for Lecture Three - a continuation of the Dark Ages lecture with Donald Kagan of Yale.

I have already cited the books mentioned in post two:

Lecture 3 - The Dark Ages (cont.)

Overview:

In this lecture, Professor Kagan addresses what scholars call the Homeric question. He asks: what society do Homer's poems describe? He argues that in view of the long oral transmission of the poems, the poems of Homer probably reflect various ages from the Mycenaean world to the Dark Ages. More importantly, close scrutiny of the poems will yield historical information for the historian. In this way, one is able to reconstruct through the poems, to a certain extent, the post-Mycenaean world. Finally, Professor Kagan says a few words on the heroic ethic of the Greek world.

Reading assignment:

Pomeroy, Burstein, Donlan and Roberts. Ancient Greece. Oxford University Press: New York, 1999, pp. 40-71.

Kagan, Donald. "Problems in Ancient History." In The Ancient Near East and Greece. 2nd ed., vol. 1. Prentice-Hall: New York, 1975, chapter 1.

Note: the above books were cited by me in post two for the first half of the lecture on the Greek Dark Ages.

Ancient.Greece.org (The Dark Ages)

http://www.ancient-greece.org/history...

For kids:

http://greece.mrdonn.org/darkages.html

Here is the link for Lecture Three - The Dark Ages continued:

http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/introduc....

Here is the transcript:

http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/introduc....

awww all links gone:(

Chakara, they are still out there on iTunes etc.

Here is a link:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/a...

Who exactly were Hittites? Origin, evolution and descendants?

The Hittites were an Ancient Anatolian people who established an empire at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around the 18th century BC.

This empire reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Suppiluliuma I, when it encompassed an area that included most of Asia Minor as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.

After c. 1180 BC, the empire came to an end during the Bronze Age collapse, splintering into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived until the 8th century BC.

The Hittite language was a member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. They referred to their native land as Hatti, and to their language as Nesili (the language of Nesa). The conventional name "Hittites" is due to their initial identification with the Biblical Hittites in 19th century archaeology.

Despite the use of Hatti for their core territory, the Hittites should be distinguished from the Hattians, an earlier people who inhabited the same region (until the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC) and spoke a language possibly in the Northwest Caucasian languages group known as Hattic.

The Hittite military made successful use of chariots.[1] Although belonging to the Bronze Age, they were the forerunners of the Iron Age, developing the manufacture of iron artifacts from as early as the 14th century BC, when letters to foreign rulers reveal the latter's demand for iron goods.

After 1180 BC, amid general turmoil in the Levant associated with the sudden arrival of the Sea Peoples, the kingdom disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived until as late as the 8th century BC.

The history of the Hittite civilization is known mostly from cuneiform texts found in the area of their kingdom, and from diplomatic and commercial correspondence found in various archives in Egypt and the Middle East.



The Hittite Empire was the section in blue

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittites
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestori...


Source:
Wikipedia
Tour Egypt

Descendants probably in modern day Turkey and Syria and their empire had extended to include Egypt at one time. Who knows there may be descendants of this ancient race in Egypt or in other parts of the Middle East.

"The Hittites were a people who once lived in what is modern Turkey and northern Syria. Most of what we know about them today comes from ancient texts that have been recovered. It would seem that the first indication of their existence occurred in about 1900 BC, in the region that was to become Hatti. There, they established the town of Nesa. Over the next three hundred years, their influence grew until in about 1680 BC, a true empire was born.

Read more: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestori...

Bentley, thanks for the interesting write up on the Hittites. I've always been fascinated with Ancient Near East history.

You are welcome Phillip - Pradeep Jayatunga from Sri Lanka had a question and I wanted to help him.

Thanks Bentley, it was very helpful.

Pradeep how are you. I am glad that it was helpful to you.

Yes, it was. I recently read a book on the history of the war chariot (author's name slips my memory) and got interested in Hittites. BTW I wonder whether there is any connection between Hittites and the Hyksos who invaded and ruled Egypt for a while.

Would it be this book Pradeep:


by Arthur Cotterell

Yes I think so. Thanks Rick

Pradeep wrote: "Yes, it was. I recently read a book on the history of the war chariot (author's name slips my memory) and got interested in Hittites. BTW I wonder whether there is any connection between Hittites a..."

I do not believe that these groups were connected Pradeep. The Hyksos were Semites.

Here is a little write-up on the timeline of the Egyptian conflicts with the Hyksos and the Hittites from The Finer Times:

Hyksos Invasion
It is said that around the year 1650 BC the Hyksos of the northern Nile Delta made an invasion into Egypt and with little confrontation was able to take control of the northern Egyptian lands.

This invasion led to the Hyksos holding the Egyptian lands for around a century. While many see this as a negative for Egypt it seems the Hyksos were part of the reason why the Egyptians grew in stature as a military nation as they took the war to the Hyksos Empire.

The Ancient Egyptians under Seqenenre Tao (II) and Apophis waged war with the Hyksos in northern Egypt and Apophis was able to rout the Hyksos forcing them north out of Egypt forever.

Egypt and the Canaanite
Ancient Egyptian warfare started around 1500 BC and were mainly caused by the Egyptians wish to expand their lands and political control in the region. The first known war was one with the Canaanite coalition that occurred along the coastal lands Israel, Lebanon and Syria and into Turkey.

The most well known battle of this war was the Battle of Megiddo where Pharaoh Thutmose III sent 10,000 to 20,000 men to face an army of 10,000 to 15,000 led by the King of Kadesh and the King of Megiddo. This battle happened in 1457 BC.

The Egyptians camped close to the Canaanite forces and as morning broke the Egyptians surprised the Canaanite in attack, the overwhelming strength of the Egyptians broke the will of the Canaanite and they fell into full retreat. The Egyptians killed 83 Canaanite and captured just fewer than 400 as prisoners, the outcome of the battle meant that the Egyptians needed to lay siege to the city, which they did for 7 months before the city fell in surrender. Egypt won the war and its lands grew to encompass the region within its boundaries.

Egypt and the Hittites
The next well known Ancient Egyptian War was against the Hittites in the famous Battle of Kadesh in 1288 BC. Here the Egyptians under Ramesses II faced the Hittite’s led by Muwatalli II at the plains outside the city of Kadesh (present day Syria).

History says that the Egyptians had 20,000 men with only 10,000 engaged in the battle while the Hittites had a massive 50,000 men. This battle was the largest Chariot battle in history with just fewer than 6,000 chariots between the two armies.

The battle in its placement outside Kadesh came as a surprise to the Egyptians as Nomad travellers had told them that the Hittites were some 200 kilometres north from where they actually were. This meant Ramesses thought that he had the chance to take Kadesh unopposed and rushed towards the city, unfortunately this meant his four divisions got scattered as they all moved at different paces.

The Hittites took the initiative and started a massive chariot attack on the Egyptian division named Ri, annihilating them as they went. The Hittites chariot attack then moved onto a second Egyptian division called Anum which was decimated, although some managed to flee. The Hittites thought they had won the battle and started looting whatever they could from the dead Egyptians, this was their big mistake.

The remaining two Egyptian divisions made a counterattack and the two combined divisions routed the Hittite chariot force killing almost all Hittites other than the few who managed to swim over the river back to the rest of the Hittite army.

The final part of battle happened the next day when the Hittite army attacked once more, this attack turned into bloodshed on both sides with many men lost. In the end the Hittite army had to retreat back across the river to where they were positioned the previous day.

Both sides claimed victory in the battle, although it looks to have ended in a stalemate. The true result was that Egypt didn’t claim more ground but the Hittites could not continue the battle because of logistical problems with supplies thus it turned into a Pyrrhic victory to Egypt.

Source: http://www.thefinertimes.com/Ancient-... - written by Peter Fitzgerald

OK

"Around this time, the Hittite civilization suffered serious disruption and cities from Troy to Gaza were destroyed."
Bentley, was Troy part of the Hittite civilization?

The Hittites were more from Turkey and Syria originally.

Well there is conflicting historical interpretations on this - some say like the Iliad that the Trojans were basically Greeks but then folks did not know that Troy was most likely in Turkey.

And of course maybe somewhere in Turkey there might have been a small connection to the Hittites. But the Hittites are not Hyksos.

The Trojans however might have been Luwians (also from Turkey) The Luwites and the Hittites were Indo-European (in an area called Anatolia at the time) and the Semites, in both modern and ancient historic times, covered a broad area from North Africa, Western Asia, Asia Minor and the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest historic (written) evidences of them are found in the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia), an area encompassing the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (modern Iraq), extending northwest into southern Asia Minor and the Levant (modern Syria and Lebanon) along the eastern Mediterranean. Early traces of Semitic speakers are found, too, in South Arabian inscriptions in Yemen, Eritrea, Northern Ethiopia, and after this in Carthage (modern Tunisia) and later still, in Roman times, in Nabataean inscriptions from Petra (modern Jordan) south into Arabia.

Source: Wikipedia

Pradeep what is your interest in Ancient History? I found your intro - so you are an attorney - are you an attorney in Sri Lanka? How did you get so interested in Ancient History?

Also, there is a wonderful open course at Yale which is taught by Donald Kagan -
here is the link - it is free and you can listen to it and probably view it. You might like this very much.

http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205

Personal interest. Read Iliad (children's edition) as a child and have been reading (and collecting) all I could find about the Trojan War- preferably scholarly literature but fiction too is enjoyed. Interested in other areas of Ancient History too - Roman,Greek, Egyptian and Bronze Age Britain. My question about Troy and Hittites however stemmed from a non-scholarly source (Hope you don't mind me mentioning fiction in this group). David Gemmell's Troy books are not among the best of its genre in my view but the only fiction on Troy to mention Hittites.

Bentley wrote: "Pradeep what is your interest in Ancient History? I found your intro - so you are an attorney - are you an attorney in Sri Lanka? How did you get so interested in Ancient History?

Also, there..."
Thanks. Yep, a corporate lawyer. Have been interested in history from childhood.

Are you a corporate attorney in Sri Lanka or was that your country of origin?

In SL.

Good for you.

One of the disadvantages is the difficulty in finding books I like. Amazon shipping to SL is expensive. I get books delivered to friends in UK and wait for their visits to SL.

That works - do you have the technological capabilities of a Kindle in your location - there are quite a few ways to get books downloaded and you can even read them on line. I can imagine that shipping could be expensive - it would be wonderful if you could download material and save the shipping. When I was in Singapore I was able to download books easily to my iPad and my Kindle but I imagine that this capability must vary from location to location and country to country.

I know. I have been told several times in fact! The problem is that I'm old fashioned in this regard. Just can't seem to like words on screen. I have read (and still do rarely) a few free e books on computer but, that's when I have free time in office. To read and relax at home I need words on paper.

Pradeep with your love of reading and the situation there in SL - it is time to turn a new page and get a Kindle. They are better than paper in the sunlight and now they also have a backlit feature at night and you can adjust the font size - you cannot do that with books. And you can carry around tons of books and put the kindle in your briefcase or in a satchel and it is light as a feather. My home is filled with books and I love them but necessity in your case is the mother of invention and the cost of the books is so much cheaper. I know I love the pictures in the real books and just the lore of books but my eyes are better off with the Kindle.

Bentley you are quite persuasive. Yeah, I should think about it especially, since space is running out in my shelves.

Exactly and you can set up folders of your books like you do here on topical shelves.

Hmm

Kathy that is very nice of you to add Catherine's suggestion.

Great adds.

The Trojan War: A New History

by Barry S. Strauss (no photo)

Synopsis:

The Trojan War is the most famous conflict in history, the subject of Homer's "Iliad," one of the cornerstones of Western literature. Although many readers know that this literary masterwork is based on actual events, there is disagreement about how much of Homer's tale is true. Drawing on recent archeological research, historian and classicist Barry Strauss explains what really happened in Troy more than 3,000 years ago.For many years it was thought that Troy was an insignificant place that never had a chance against the Greek warriors who laid siege and overwhelmed the city. In the old view, the conflict was decided by duels between champions on the plain of Troy. Today we know that Troy was indeed a large and prosperous city, just as Homer said. The Trojans themselves were not Greeks but vassals of the powerful Hittite Empire to the east in modern-day Turkey, and they probably spoke a Hittite-related language called Luwian. The Trojan War was most likely the culmination of a long feud over power, wealth, and honor in western Turkey and the offshore islands. The war itself was mainly a low-intensity conflict, a series of raids on neighboring towns and lands. It seems unlikely that there was ever a siege of Troy; rather some sort of trick -- perhaps involving a wooden horse -- allowed the Greeks to take the city.

Strauss shows us where Homer nods, and sometimes exaggerates and distorts, as well. He puts the Trojan War into the context of its time, explaining the strategies and tactics that both sides used, and compares the war to contemporary battles elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. With his vivid reconstructions of the conflict and his insights into the famous charactersand events of Homer's great epic, Strauss masterfully tells the story of the fall of Troy as history without losing the poetry and grandeur that continue to draw readers to this ancient tale.

Style and Society in Dark Age Greece: The Changing Face of a Pre-Literate Society 1100 700 BC

by James Whitley (no photo)

Synopsis:

In this innovative study, James Whitley examines the relationship between the development of pot style and social changes in the Dark Age of Greece (1100-700 BC). He focuses on Athens where the Protogeometric and Geometric styles first appeared. He considers pot shape and painted decoration primarily in relation to the other relevant features - metal artefacts, grave architecture, funerary rites, and the age and sex of the deceased - and also takes into account different contexts in which these shapes and decorations appear. A computer analysis of grave assemblages supports his view that pot style is an integral part of the collective representations of Early Athenian society. It is a lens through which we can focus on the changing social circumstances of Dark Age Greece. Dr Whitley's approach to the study of style challenges many of the assumptions which have underpinned more traditional studies of Early Greek art.

Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer

by Robin Lane Fox

Synopsis:

This remarkable and daringly original book proposes a new way of thinking about the Greeks and their myths in the age of the great Homeric hymns. It combines a lifetime's familiarity with Greek literature and history with the latest archeological discoveries and the author's own journeys to the main sites in the story to describe how particular Greeks of the eighth century BC travelled east and west around the Mediterranean, and how their extraordinary journeys shaped their ideas of their gods and heroes. It gathers together stories and echoes from many different ancient cultures, not just the Greek - Assyria, Egypt, the Phoenician traders - and ranges from Mesopotamia to the Rio Tinto at Huelva in modern Portugal. Its central point is the Jebel Aqra, the great mountain on the north Syrian coast which Robin Lane Fox dubs 'the southern Olympus', and around which much of the action of the book turns.

Robin Lane Fox rejects the fashionable view of Homer and his near-contemporary Hesiod as poets who owed a direct debt to texts and poems from the near East, and by following the trail of the Greek travellers shows that they were, rather, in debt to their own countrymen. With characteristic flair he reveals how these travellers, progenitors of tales which have inspired writers and historians for thousands of years, understood the world before the beginnings of philosophy and western thought.

Art and Identity in Dark Age Greece, 1100-700 B.C.E.

by Susan Langdon (no photo)

Synopsis:

This book explores how art and material culture were used to construct age, gender, and social identity in the Greek Early Iron Age, 1100 700 BC. Coming between the collapse of the Bronze Age palaces and the creation of Archaic city-states, these four centuries witnessed fundamental cultural developments and political realignments. While previous archaeological research has emphasized class-based aspects of change, this study offers a more comprehensive view of early Greece by recognizing the place of children and women in a warrior-focused society. Combining iconographic analysis, gender theory, mortuary analysis, typological study, and object biography, Susan Langdon explores how early figural art was used to mediate critical stages in the life-course of men and women. She shows how an understanding of the artistic and material contexts of social change clarifies the emergence of distinctive gender and class asymmetries that laid the basis for classical Greek society.

The Dark Ages of Greece

by Anthony M. Snodgrass (no photo)

Synopsis:

This volume constructs a narrative of four centuries of Greek history from a synthesis of literary and archaeological evidence, including pottery, burial practices, architecture and metalwork, religion, commerce and language. The author argues that this era was in truth a dark age, from the perspective both of scholarship and the people who lived through it conscious of lost skills and departed glories. The recession was caused, he demonstrates, not by external factors but by a process of internal collapse.

Ages In Chaos: Was There A Dark Age In Greece

(no image) Ages In Chaos: Was There A Dark Age In Greece by Immanuel Velikovsky

Synopsis:

First published in 1952, Ages in Chaos was the first of six volumes covering the period from the Exodus (end of the Middle Kingdom) to Alexander the Great. Based on his booklet "Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History", Ages in Chaos preceded Oedipus and Akhenaten, Ramses II and His Time, People of the Sea, and the unpublished volumes Dark Age of Greece and The Assyrian Conquest (the first one and the last two are available online).

This first volume spans the period from the Exodus to Akhenaten. Biblical scholars and evangelists appear for the most part to be unfamiliar with it. The connections Velikovsky shows between Biblical events and Near Eastern history are at other times attacked or derided by believers, perhaps because they've been burned by false claims. Perhaps this attitude stems from a misplaced trust in blind belief.

Velikovsky's attention to detail and sheer erudition continue to awe and inspire. Lesser works have come and gone before and after Ages in Chaos. None have built such a convincing case. Those interested in building some heretical chronology of their own would do well to study Velikovsky's works if only to save themselves time.

His studies of the roots of various beliefs by other historians, including those of ancient times, are fascinating, and his finding synchronisms between the Old Testament and the ancient history of surrounding people and places are monumental and revolutionary. Had he published Ages in Chaos before Worlds in Collision, his impact might have been greater. Those with longtime familiarity with his chronology are certain that he will have greater impact in the future, if not directly then indirectly.

The existing consensus pseudochronology grew out of 19th century (and earlier) nonsense beliefs such as freemasonry, but remains the consensus through rejection of commonplace scientific dating techniques. As it loses credibility with each passing year, one wonders why so much venom has been expended against Velikovsky's chronology -- particularly those who have actually read the works.

See also Velikovsky's other works (new and used), David Rohl's "Pharaohs and Kings", Peter James' "Centuries of Darkness", Ryan and Pitman's "Noah's Flood", Mary Settegast's "Plato Prehistorian", and Robert Schoch's "Voices of the Rocks".

Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery

by Joachim Latacz (no photo)

Synopsis:

In this book Joachim Latacz turns the spotlight of modern research on the much-debated question of whether the wealthy city of Troy described by Homer in the Iliad was a poetic fiction or a memory of historical reality.

Earlier excavations at the hill of Hisarlik, in Turkey, on the Dardanelles, brought no answer, but in 1988 a new archaeological enterprise, under the direction of Manfred Korfmann, led to a radical shift in understanding. Latacz, one of Korfmann's closest collaborators, traces the course of these excavations, and the renewed investigation of the imperial Hittite archives they have inspired. As he demonstrates, it is now clear that the background against which the plot of the Iliad is acted out is the historical reality of the thirteenth century BC. The Troy story as a whole must have arisen in this period, and we can detect traces of it in Homer's great poem.

The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry

by Gregory Nagy (no photo)

Synopsis:

Despite widespread interest in the Greek hero as a cult figure, little was written about the relationship between the cult practices and the portrayals of the hero in poetry.

The first edition of The Best of the Achaeans bridged that gap, raising new questions about what could be known or conjectured about Greek heroes. In this revised edition, which features a new preface by the author, Gregory Nagy reconsiders his conclusions in the light of the subsequent debate and resumes his discussion of the special status of heroes in ancient Greek life and poetry. His book remains an engaging introduction both to the concept of the hero in Hellenic civilization and to the poetic forms through which the hero is defined: the Iliad and Odyssey in particular and archaic Greek poetry in general.

The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East

by Robert Drews (no photo)

Synopsis:

When did the Indo-Europeans enter the lands that they occupied during historical times? And, more specifically, when did the Greeks come to Greece? Robert Drews brings together the evidence-historical, linguistic, and archaeological-to tackle these important questions.When did the Indo-Europeans enter the lands that they occupied during historical times? And, more specifically, when did the Greeks come to Greece? Robert Drews brings together the evidence-historical, linguistic, and archaeological-to tackle these important questions.

Archaeology and the Emergence of Greece

by Anthony Snodgrass (no photo)

Synopsis:

The papers in this book presume to stray across the traditional boundaries with the domains of prehistorians, ancient historians, and literary critics. . . . It had been regarded as somehow out of order for Classical archaeologists to meddle with social, political, and economic history; or with topics that involved the entire Old World; or with testing the historical veracity of ancient authors; or with the intellectual presuppositions of ancient artists. At heart, my experience has been not so much of swimming across the tide, as of working across the grain of the subject." from the PrefaceIn the past few decades the aims, subject matter, and methods of classical archaeology have changed beyond recognition. Archaeology and the Emergence of Greece collects twenty-five essays by A. M. Snodgrass, the leading authority on the archaeology of early Greece that led the way in this transformation. Snodgrass emphasizes the Iron Age as the formative period in the making of Classical Greece and elaborates upon this link by commenting on literature, history, anthropology, Aegean and European prehistory and Roman provincial archaeology. This volume, for which Snodgrass has written new introductions to each essay, will become required reading for students and scholars of the ancient world. The essays have been chosen and organized to facilitate classroom use.