In Search of the Trojan War (38 page)

For the mainland palaces, the period between 1300 and
c
.1250 BC was the greatest period of Mycenaean building; it was a period either of great confidence or of great defensiveness. At this time tremendous fortifications were completed at Gla, Tiryns, Mycenae, Athens, and at scores of lesser sites like Eutresis, Araxos, Krisa and Tigani. That the most superb monuments of the civilisation should come so soon before its observable decline is not unusual, as Ibn Khaldun noted:

At the end of a dynasty there often appears some show of power that gives the impression that the senility of the dynasty has been made to disappear. It lights up brilliantly just before it is extinguished, like a burning wick the flame of which leaps up brilliantly a moment before it goes out, giving the impression it is just starting to burn, when in fact it is going out.

Here we are entitled to take into account the traditions enshrined in Greek legends which are known to have a basis in the Bronze Age. It was the uniform belief that palaces like Mycenae were places of blood, ruled by violent men, prey to internecine struggle, and constantly engaged in warfare. The archaeology of palaces like Mycenae and the details in the Linear B tablets confirm that this was indeed a militarist and aggressive world. Theirs was at base a subsistence economy. A large subordinate population, probably including many slaves, was tied to the land, producing the food for their masters and enough surplus oil, pottery, grain, textiles and flax for export. Similarly in the tablets the emphasis on war gear should be noted. At Knossos and Pylos there are massive quantities of very expensive materials which, in the case of the copper, tin and gold, could only be obtained through war or trade. In other words, both the labour force and the means of coercion could only be sustained by trade or violence: a truly vicious circle, and no doubt kings like
Agamemnon were cruel and ruthless, as kings had to be in this kind of culture. It is a case of self-defence as much as anything else, for only by violence could the ruling élite preserve themselves. As Ibn Khaldun put it:

Any royal authority must be built upon two foundations. The first is might and group feeling, which finds its expression in soldiers. The second is money, which supports the soldiers and provides the whole structure needed by royal authority. Disintegration befalls the dynasty at these two foundations.

Kings like Agamemnon, then, needed to reward and equip their war host with loot – treasure, raw materials, precious metals, cattle and women. This is true of all so-called heroic societies. In Homer, as we have seen, the greatest praise is to be called a ‘sacker of cities’. This is the reality of Bronze-Age power; it has to do with the very structure and ideals of the society. This is entirely borne out by the Linear B tablets from Pylos. The presence there of slaves from Lemnos, Chios, ‘Asia’, Miletus, Halicarnassos and Cnidus, working in highly organised ‘state industries’, shows us that the world of Agamemnon was one which constantly needed to seize slaves in war, or buy them from its slave ports. It was a society where surplus expenditure at the top – treasure, royal cult, royal graves, war gear – was so enormous that a great pyramid of labour was needed to sustain it, labour which had to be constantly replenished – even though the women slaves bred children – for the life expectancy of such people must have been very low. Nothing drives this point home more clearly than the contrast in the Pylos tablets between the lengthy descriptions of the stocks of ornate furniture in the palace stores at Pylos, and the curt lists of foreign slaves and their rations. Imagine the expenditure and craftsmanship lavished on this: ‘one chair of spring type, inlaid with [blue glass paste] kyanos and silver and gold on the back, which is inlaid with men’s figures in gold, and with a pair of gold finials, and with golden griffins and griffins of kyanos’ – this is merely one item in scores
listed on surviving tablets (as we would expect, the same loving attention to detail is evidenced in the descriptions of war gear, for example in chariot bodies ‘inlaid in ivory, painted crimson, equipped with bridles with leather cheek straps and horn bits’).

By contrast, look at the ‘twenty-one Cnidian women, twelve girls, ten boys. … At Eudeiwelos: eight women, two girls and three boys; [rations] 336 litres of wheat, 336 litres of figs. …’ Experts have guessed that each of these people received a ration of 24 litres per month, a little less than the classical soldier’s ration; supplemented by figs, the wheat could be decreased: the Roman agronomist Cato recommends a reduction in the ration of bread for slaves ‘when they start eating figs’. Such was the world of Agamemnon.

With that background, the peculiar conditions of the thirteenth century now need to be taken into account. Mycenaean society was already under stress. Soon after 1300 the Mediterranean had started to witness the widespread raiding and instability which would later engulf it. There may have been economic problems, overpopulation, crop failures, drought and famine – these are questions the experts have yet to resolve; similarly we cannot yet answer the question of climate change. Was there perhaps also a cessation or diminution of Mycenaean trade with the Near East later in the century? All these factors may have played a part. We should not rule out the possibility of internecine feuds within kin groups of dynasties, and fighting between rival city states, as in the legend of the Argive sack of Thebes in the generation before the Trojan War. Events on the coast of Asia Minor may also have played their part: at just this time the Hittites seem to have taken Miletus, one of the greatest towns in the Aegean, and it may be that Greek interests were squeezed out of south-western Anatolia, forcing them to look further northwards for their slaves and raw materials – towards Troy.

Hypotheses these may be, but a combination of some or all of these factors
must
be true; we have to account somehow for the changing economic fortunes of the Peloponnese, and we have to assume that Agamemnon and his fellow kings and élites
did what they could to remedy the situation. Their rule needed booty, slaves and treasure, and frequent predatory forays must have been the way they sustained themselves: in fact such hostings could have gone out yearly. Most likely these forays were to the north and east, especially on the coast of Asia Minor where the Hittite tablets show that the Greeks were increasingly active in the early decades of the thirteenth century. Seen in this light, an attack on the citadel which controlled the Dardanelles seems so obvious that if we had no tale of Troy we would have had to postulate it. Undue worry about the motives for such an attack is unnecessary – this kind of warfare is, as I have said, in the very nature of Mycenaean society and kingship.

Here we can attempt to bring in the evidence of the Hittite tablets, if only speculatively. As we have seen, the kings of Ahiyawa mentioned, but not named, in the Hittite texts may be those remembered in Greek tradition as the dynasty of Atreus and Agamemnon. But in Anatolia we are on sounder historical footing. We are in the days of the Hittite kings Muwatallis (1296–1272), Urhi Teshub (1272–1265) or Muwatallis’ brother Hattusilis (1265–1235). Of the dynasty in Wilusa/Troy we also know something. The Wilusan king in Muwatallis’ day (and perhaps considerably later) was Alaksandus, who is surely the model for Homer’s Alexandros–Paris (Anatolian Pariya). His is the likely time in which the war took place, and the Hittite archive provides a broad context for the war in its portrayal of the increasing influence of Mycenaean kings in western Anatolia.

The Greeks had been growing in strength and influence over the previous two generations. Miletus had been sacked by the Hittites in
c
.1320, but by Hattusilis’ day (1260s) Miletus was acknowledged as Ahhiyawan territory with an agreed border delineated by treaty. Greek influence over its ruling family is taken as real by the Hittites, who were aware of the presence there of a brother of the Greek king. But both Muwatallis and Hattusilis needed to keep the west pacified at a time when they were obliged to fight wars on several fronts. They had the growing might of Assyria to contend with in what is now
northern Iraq, pressing westwards towards the rich trading cities of the upper Euphrates and Syria; they also had the Egyptians continuing to push northwards in Syria. In 1275 Muwatallis fought a drawn battle at Kadesh against Ramses II with troops of eighteen subject peoples, client states and allies. Evidently these included armed élites from some of the Arzawan states because Dardani (Wilusans) were present, presumably under King Alaksandus. Wilusa then was still intact in 1275.

Move on ten years though: in 1262/1, Hittite territory right up to the gates of Carchemish fell to the Assyrians, a major disaster to Hattusilis. At that very moment he was threatened to the south by Ramses, and struggling in the west with the Ahhiyawan king and his ally the renegade Arzawan Pijamaradus, who was sowing discord and dissension on the Aegean seaboard. The network of client states built up by Hittite diplomacy over two centuries was now under threat. It may have been during this period that the Trojan War was fought. It was an uneasy time when, as the Hittite tablets show, in western Anatolia kings were deposed, pretenders set up, and lands ravaged, with political exiles seeking refuge ‘overseas’ in Ahhiyawa, in Miletus, or further afield (the exiled former ‘Great King of Hatti’ himself, Urhi Teshub, indeed was still plotting away in the Egyptian court).

To a Bronze Age political analyst, it must have looked as if the ‘domino theory’ was working itself out in western Anatolia. And always in the background was the shadowy presence of the king of Ahhiyawa, with whom the Hittites now, for the first time, felt the need to be conciliatory. The evidence of the Hittite archives clearly shows us the predatory nature of the Achaian presence in western Anatolia, just as the later legend said; let us then accept what the archives are telling us.

The war, therefore, could have taken place between 1274 and 1263 BC, between Kadesh and Hattusilis’ campaign down the Maeander valley to subdue the renegade Pijamaradus. Then, after Hattusilis has chased all the way to the Aegean at Miletus, and made his conciliatory noises to the king of Ahhiyawa, he speaks revealingly of the troubles of the past few years. In particular he is
almost apologetic about an earlier quarrel with the Ahhiyawan king, and of ‘the war with Wilusa over which we have now made peace’: So the war was either right at the start of his reign (
c
. 1265) or else during his time as general of the ageing Muwatallis (1275–72; he was out of favour with his brother Urhi Teshub).

Let us speculate a little further. The conflict had arisen on several fronts. The Greek king had been aiding a faction in the Arzawan royal family who were hostile to Hatti. He was in league with the nabobs of Miletus on the shores of Asia Minor, who acknowledged his overlordship and provided him with raw materials and slaves. He had also been instrumental in other west Anatolian kings renouncing the overlordship of Hatti; the ruler of the Seha River land, for one, had ‘relied on the king of Ahhiyawa,’ and provoked a confrontation with Hattusilis. Into these events the king of Troy/Wilusa was sucked. Though in the north-eastern extremity of the Aegean world, his ancient citadel was well-known to the Greeks; it may have sheltered a colony of Mycenaean merchants; the kings may have exchanged embassies. Troy was the strongest fortress in the northern Aegean. It had a dominant position at the intersection of ancient trade routes by land and sea. It was an ancient dynastic seat with royal treasure accumulated over generations. A great prize for the sackers of cities.

Perhaps there was some pretext, some diplomatic incident, which triggered it off (Homer says the seizure of a royal woman); but it was a pretext sufficient to enable Hattusilis and the Greek king subsequently to patch things up. Exactly who sided with whom we do not yet know, but the Greek Great King launched a seaborne expedition to the Troad, doubtless with his allies and confederates. But here is the crucial factor: in attacking Wilusa, the Greeks would inevitably draw in the Hittite king or his generals. For just as the Wilusans were bound to provide troops for the Great King of Hatti for his expeditionary campaigns (as they did at Kadesh in 1275), their treaty with Muwatallis required the Great King of Hatti in his turn to help them if they were attacked; this was the duty of an overlord. Perhaps indeed
Homer preserves a dim memory of this in the Trojan Catalogue which lists the considerable force of west Anatolian allies who came to help Priam and Paris – Alexandros in their hour of need.

A Mycenaean expedition to the north-east Aegean would not have been difficult to mount. They had the resources in terms of ships, even if Homer’s catalogue has magnified the numbers. The Thera frescoes show us what may be a Mycenaean overseas expedition to the Libyan coast, with long-oared and sailed vessels containing heavily armed warriors with boar’s-tusk helmets, long spears and oblong tower shields. The manner in which such forces were raised is shown in the Pylos tablets, where their equipment is enumerated in every detail. For an overseas expedition it would have been an élite force: the main kings with their retinues and the armed followings of their chief barons, at most a few hundred from each kingdom. Troy was obviously not the only, or even the main, objective. The tradition in Homer in fact asserts that Troy was one incident in a series of forays into Teuthrania and Mysia, with attacks on Lemnos, Lesbos, Pedassos, Lyrnessos and other places, in all of which cities were sacked, cattle and women seized. The archaeological evidence for the destruction at just this time of Thermi on Lesbos, one of the biggest towns in the Aegean, fits very well with the Homeric tale of Achilles’ sack of Lesbos.

The Trojan story, then, takes in a long period of Mycenaean aggression in the coasts and islands of north-west Anatolia. Troy was not the only place sacked, but it was the best known to the Greeks, the best built and the most difficult to defeat. It is even possible that, as Lechevalier suspected, and as the Hittite texts might suggest, the whole expedition was a failure, its events magnified back home by the bards of threatened dynasties as their world grew increasingly shaky. But the city was surely destroyed. A plausible version of the story would be that, as at Phylakopi and Knossos, the Greeks descended on golden Troy after it had been damaged by a natural catastrophe, the severe earthquake which Blegen believed struck Troy VIh. But as we have seen, there is no compelling evidence for the earthquake,
and the legend may after all be correct in asserting that Troy was deliberately demolished after a bitter siege. The place was plundered, and its women carried back to work on the estates around Mycenae and Pylos; it is even possible that along with the captive Lemnian and Asian women we have one of these people named on a Pylos tablet written down a generation or so later: ‘a servant of the god,
To-ro-ja
’ (‘Trojan woman’?).