Helen of Troy [1]

In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy is known as woman whose abduction sparked the Trojan War. But Helen’s character is more complex than it seems at first glance. When considering many Greek and Roman myths that surround Helen from her childhood to her life after Trojan War, a layered and more fascinating woman emerges.

[Helen of Troy by Antonio Canova (1757-1822]

Helen is one of those mythical characters fathered by Zeus. In the form of a swan, Zeus either seduced or assaulted Helen’s mother Leda. On the same night, Leda slept with her husband Tyndareus and as a result gave birth to four children, who hatched from two eggs. From one egg came the semi-divine children, Helen and Polydeuces (Pollux) and from other egg came mortals Clytemnestra and Castor. Boys, collectively called Dioscuri, became divine protectors of sailors at sea, while Helen and Clytemnestra would go on to play important roles in saga of Trojan War. In an even older myth, Helen’s parents were Zeus and Nemesis, goddess of vengeance. In this version, too, Helen hatched from an egg.

Helen was destined to become most beautiful woman in the world. Her reputation was so great that even as a young child, hero Theseus desired her for his bride. He kidnapped her and hid her in his city of Athens, but when he was away, Helen’s brothers, Dioscuri, rescued her and brought her home. As an adult, Helen was courted by many suitors, out of whom she chose Menelaus, king of Sparta. But though Menelaus was valiant and wealthy, Helen’s love for him would prove tenuous.

Around this time there was a great event among Olympians, the marriage of goddess Thetis to Peleus, a mortal. All the gods were invited to attend except for Eris, whose name means 'discord'. Furious at her exclusion, Eris comes to the party unannounced, and tosses an apple on which is written 'for the most beautiful' towards the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. Each goddess claims the apple is meant for her and the ensuing dispute threatens the peace of Olympus.

Zeus appoints Trojan prince Paris to judge who is most beautiful of the three. To sway his vote, each goddess offers Paris a gift bribe. From Hera, Paris would beget royal power, while Athena offers victory in battle. Aphrodite promises him Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world as his wife, and thus Paris names her winner of competition. To claim his prize, as promised by Aphrodite, Paris travels to court of Menelaus, where he is honoured as guest. Defying the ancient laws of hospitality, Paris seduces Helen and flees with her in his ship and sails home to Troy with Helen.

This was an act which was considered abduction in Greek law, regardless of Helen’s complicity. When Menelaus discovers that Helen is gone, he and his brother Agamemnon lead troops overseas to wage war on Troy.

Another version of Helen’s journey from Mycenae put forth by Herodotus, poet Stesichorus, and playwright Euripides in his play 'Helen'. In this version, a storm forces Paris and Helen to land in Egypt, where local king removes Helen from her kidnapper and sends Paris back to Troy. In Egypt, Helen is worshipped as 'Foreign Aphrodite'. Meanwhile, at Troy, a phantom image of Helen convinces Greeks she is there. Eventually, Greeks win the war and Menelaus arrives in Egypt to reunite with real Helen and sail home. Herodotus argues that this version of story is more plausible because, if Trojans had had the real Helen in their city, they would have given her back rather than let so many great soldiers die in battle over her.

Nevertheless, in most popular version of the story, that of Homer, Helen and Paris return to Troy together. When they arrive, Paris’ first wife, the nymph Oenone, sees them together and laments that he has abandoned her. She grows bitter and even faults Helen for having been kidnapped by Theseus as a child. In heartbroken anger she says: "She who is abducted so often, must offer herself up to be abducted", wrote Ovid in his Heroides (V.132)

Paris’ slight against Oenone would prove detrimental for him in the end. Greeks sail to Troy and ten years of war commence.

Source.

Did the Trojans found London?

Medieval England believed in a somewhat strange origin story: that London was once called 'Troynovant' or 'New Troy', and that Englishmen were the direct descendants of Aeneas, one of the many heroes of the Trojan War.

This legend first appears in the Historia Brittonum, an anonymous 9th-century historical compilation to which commentary was added by Nennius, but it is best known from the account given by the 12th-century chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae.

Geoffrey of Monmouth mentioned that Brutus was the name of the founder and first King of Britain. According to the legend (he wrote), Brutus was the great-grandson of Aeneas who traveled to Greece and met a group of Trojan refugees who had been enslaved by the Greeks. Brutus became their leader and forced the Greek king to let them go.

Brutus and his Trojan refugees then travel west, through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the great unknown. They hear, probably from Punic tin traders on their way to Tintagel, about the fabled island of Albion, where giants live. King Brutus defeated these giants on Albion and build a city along the River Thames, which he named 'Troia Nova' (New Troy), a name which was gradually corrupted to 'Trinovantum'.

But in reality, the name Trinovantum derives from the Iron Age tribe of the Trinovantes, who lived in Essex, Suffolk and parts of what is now Greater London. They are even mentioned by Julius Caesar in his account of his expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 BC. In a later account of those expeditions by Orosius, they are referred to as civitas Trinovantum, meaning 'the nation (or city) of the Trinovantes'.

In Roman times, the city was known by the name Londinium, which appears to be cognate with Llundain, and London.

So, London wasn't founded by exiled Trojans. But it does beg the question where the Trojans really did go after their defeat at the hands of the coalition of Greeks.

What everyone seems to forget is that the Trojans were actually Greeks too. And those Trojan Greeks would have done what all Greeks do when they have met with a disaster: They try to rebuild their city ór they travel back to their homeland and families, hoping to rebuild their lives there.

A perfect example of this is the fairly recent genocide, expulsion, and erasure of Greeks in Smyna (now Izmir) by the Turks in 1912. They called it the He Megali Katastrophe ('The Great Catastrophe'). Survivors of that massacre mostly went to their family members in Greece.

An inscription with verses from Book 14 of the Odyssey

A clay brick, inscribed with the first 13 verses from Book 14 of the Odyssey, was found in 2018. The verses describe the meeting of Odysseus with his faithful swineherd Eumaios. It was later reused as building material in a burial monument of the third Century AD in the necropolis of Fragonisi, located circa two kilometers from Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games.

The brick dates from the end of the second century AD to the first half of the third century AD. It is the oldest known excerpt of these verses. Both Fragonisi and Olympia are less than 100 kilometers from Paliki, the true location of ancient Ithaka. It shows that even in that timeframe, the stories of Homer were still very much alive in the region.

Its find was considered one of the most important archaeological discoveries of that year worldwide.

The clay brick is now on display at the Archaeological Museum of Olympia.

Spyridon Marinatos: Paliki was Ithaka

I'm not the only one who thinks that the peninsular called Paliki was once the illustrious Ithaka. Even Spyridon Marinatos (1901- 1974) thought so.

Marinatos was a Greek archaeologist, specializing in Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations. He is best known for leading excavations at Akrotiri on Santorini (1967–74), where he died in a tragic fall. Akrotiri was a wealthy city in the Bronze Age until it was destroyed and covered in ash by the explosive eruption of the volcano in about 1500 BC.

Remember, Homer wrote that "Around are many islands, close to each other, Doulichion and Same and wooded Zacynthos", "Ithaka itself lies low, furthest to sea. Towards dusk." and "the rest, apart, face dawn and sun.”.

But modern Ithaki is not low-lying, it is mountainous; it is not the furthest out to sea and it does not face towards dusk; nor do the nearby islands face towards the dawn and sun. And where are Doulichion and Same?

A frequent co-worker from Marinatos, Antonis Rigatos (1927), remembers clearly what Marinatos once upon a time said: “He told us that this land – Paliki – was once ancient Ithaka, and that with our excavations we were looking for clues.”

But if Paliki – the western peninsula of Kefalonia – was once ancient Ithaca, many problems are solved at once. This concept was already mentioned by Spyridon Marinatos in the 1950s.

Paliki is low-lying – the highest mountain is Mount Lakties at just 525 metres. It is on the western side of Kefalonia, and the other islands lie to the east, facing dawn and the sun. Eastern Kefalonia glories in a water-front town called Sami – which suggests that eastern Kefalonia could plausibly have been called Same after the name of the town, as was often the case in ancient times. And the island called Ithaki today could instead have carried the name Doulichion – as indeed some late-mediaeval cartographers have suggested. If you believe these ideas, Homer’s poetic descriptions are a much better fit with the geography.

[Bronze coin from Pale]

The Paliki peninsula owes its name to the city of Pale (Πάλη), one of the four (Pale, Krane, Same, Pronnoi) leading cities (or tetrapoleis) of Kefalonia in the classical Greek and Hellenistic periods. This division of the island appears to have been a very ancient one, since a legend derived the names of the four cities from the names of the four sons of Cephalus[1]. Pale was mentioned by both Herodotus and Thucydides in their histories, and the city was located on and around a small hill overlooking the sea, just north of modern Lixouri on the southwestern coast of Paliki. The territory around Pale was called Paleis (Παλείς).

While Marinatos regarded Paliki as ancient Ithaka, he never mentioned that Paliki must have been an island.

[1] Smith: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, illustrated by numerous engravings on wood - 1854.

Where (exactly) was Ithaca (the city)?

Odysseus' realm, Ithaca, has now been conclusively identified as Paliki, the peninsula that is attached to Kefalonia.

[Ulysses Landing At Ithaca By John Linnell]

But where should we start to dig if we want to find the remains of Ithaca, the actual city and the location of the palace?

Taking Homer's 'Odyssey' as our guidebook, we can find enough clues that enable us to pinpoint the location of the settlement.

Remember, in those days, the Mediterranean was a perilous place. Pirates (or displaced people) roamed the sea and were attacking settlements. As a result these settlements were never built directly onto the seashore, but were largely hidden in the mountainous terrain to protect its inhabitants from these raids. Also, lookouts were continuously scanning the sea to see if danger was approaching.

If we follow Butler's translation, BOOK XIII (ULYSSES LEAVES SCHERIA AND RETURNS TO ITHACA) gives an impression of the location where Odysseus first came ashore on his beloved Ithaca: “This is the haven of the old merman Phorcys, and here is the olive tree that grows at the head of it; [near it is the cave sacred to the Naiads; here too is the overarching cavern in which you have offered many an acceptable hecatomb to the nymphs, and this is the wooded mountain Neritum.”

Both the cavern, and mount Neriton are located on the eastern shore of the Argostliou Gulf, the bay that separates Paliki from Kefalonia. In the Odyssey, ἄντρον (ántron), is invariably translated as 'cave', but can also mean 'cavity' or 'hollow', which perfectly describes a sinkhole.

If Ithaca, the settlement, was situated on Paliki, on the western side of the Gulf of Argostoli or Kólpos Argostolíou (Κόλπος Αργοστολίου), he would surely been set ashore on that slab of land. Landing on the eastern shore, but needing to be on the western shore would mean an enormous detour. This leads us to the conclusion that Ithaca cannot be found on Paliki proper.

From the next chapter of the Oddyssey, BOOK XIV (ULYSSES IN THE HUT WITH EUMAEUS), we learn that Odysseus needed to walk along the foothills of Mount Neriton where he spends the night with his old friend Eumaeus, the swineherd.

[The southern shore of the isthmus]

But then, lastly, we should also remember the well-known description of Ithaca which was 'sea-girt' (apereísios or ἀπερείσῐος) as in 'And if we should return to sea-girt Ithaca, our dear fatherland,...' and 'May the son of Cronos never make thee king in sea-girt Ithaca...'

Therefore, Ithaca can never be an island (nesos or νῆσος), because an island is 'surrounded by sea'. A girt (or girth) is a belt. Sea-girt gives us the impression of 'sea on both sides of the land'.

That fact can help us to finally locate Ithaca and therefore also the palace of Odysseus: on the almost three kilometers wide isthmus that connects Paliki to Kefalonia.

Italian DNA shows Bronze Age migrations

A new study revealed that Bronze Age Italians interacted with people from Eastern Europe[1]. Many ancient humans around Eurasia migrated and mixed with people from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, a steppe-land located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, but until recently, the genetic component of ancient Italian Steppe-related ancestry was unexplored.

The team analysed the DNA of individuals from archaeological sites from Northeastern and Central Italy dated to the Chalcolithic, Early Bronze Age, and Bronze Age.

The study showed that the two populations began sharing genes around 3,600 years ago in Central Italy. This genetic admixture also happened at a similar time when burial practises and kinship structures changed, suggesting the populations shared culture as well as genes.

“We were able to generate the first genome-wide shotgun data of ancient Italians dated to the Bronze Age period and study the arrival of the Steppe-related ancestry component in the Italian Peninsula,” says lead-author Tina Saupe.

The team found that the genetics of ancient individuals from the Italian Peninsula were more like Early Neolithic farmers in Eastern Europe than to farmers from Western Europe, despite the geographic divide.

“Because of the geographical distribution of the archaeological sites of published and newly generated genomes, we were able to date the arrival of the Steppe-related ancestry component to at least around 4,000 years ago in Northern Italy and around 3,600 years ago in Central Italy,” says co-author Luca Pagani, “We did not find the component in individuals dated to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, but in individuals dated to the Early Bronze Age and increasing through time in the individuals dated to the Bronze Age.”

The end of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean was a period of great upheavals. After Troy had fallen, Odysseus needed ten years to get home to his beloved Itaka. History tells us that Minoan and Mycenaen palatial centres were destroyed and abandoned.

This study also shows that even people from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe were displaced during the Dark Age of Greece by (probably) climate change, droughts, crop failure, wars, and migrations.

[1] Saupe et al: Ancient genomes reveal structural shifts after the arrival of Steppe-related ancestry in the Italian Peninsula in Current Biology – 2021. See here.

When was the Trojan War?

We know about the Trojan War from Homer, the poet who composed both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms. The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaka, whose journey home takes ten years (after the ten-year Trojan War).

Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took place and they always ask the same questions: where did it take place and when did it take place.

The first question was answered by Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890), who began digging in 1870 (not excavating) at Hisarlik, an artificial hill in western Turkey, now situated approximately 6.5 kilometres from the Aegean Sea and about the same distance from the Dardanelles. He found several layers of occupation and declared he had found Troy (Τροία). Historians now agree that Hisarlik is indeed the fabled city of Troy (in ancient Greek, Ἴλιος or Ilios).

The actual date of the Trojan War remained elusive, but Greek astronomer Stavros Papamarinopoulos and his colleagues have found a very credible solution[1]. They looked closely at the astronomical and biological information that Homer included in the Odyssey.

Five days before Odysseus' finally was able to return to Ithaka, Homer wrote: '... and the sun has perished out of heaven and an evil mist covers all.' Papamarinopoulos thinks that this must signify a solar eclipse, but there are several possible eclipses that fit within the historical time frame.

[NASA's computers forgot there's no year 0]

Even Plutarch and Heraclitus believed that the passage in the Odyssey (“Theoclymenus' prophecy”) to be a poetic description of a near total solar eclipse. Baikouzis and Magnasco write that 'close to noon ….the total eclipse of the sun occurred at 12.02 p.m local time'[2].

Homer also gives significant details in connection with the climate, the environment, the plants, the animals, and the peoples' habits, which strongly prove the autumn as the season of the Odysseus’s return to Ithaka.

In conclusion, the only possible date for Odysseus’s return to Ithaka is 30 October 1207 BC plus five days. Which means that he finally returned home on 4 November 1217 BC. Given that it has taken Odysseus ten years to return home, the ten year Trojan War must have raged from 1227 BC until 1217 BC.

Part 2 of this series 'When was the end of the Trojan War' can be read here.
Part 3 of this series 'The Trojan War and the Exodus' can be read here.

[1] Papamarinopoulos et al: A New Astronomical Dating of Odysseus' Return to Ithica in Mediterranean Arhaeology and Archaeometry - 2012. see here.
[2] Baikouzis and Magnasco: Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey? in PNAS - 2008. See here.

Why was Nestor considered old?

Nestor and his palace at Pylos constitute problems. Nobody really knows where these names originate from and what these names could possibly mean.

[Nestor]

One of Nestor’s prime characteristics in the epic poems is his age, writes Jonas Grethlein[1]. Nestor has even become synonymous with ‘old man’. But how old was Nestor? There are two passages in the Iliad and the Odyssey which explicitly state his age.

In Iliad, Book I, lines 250- 252 the Homeric narrator says:

δύο μὲν γενεαὶ μερόπων ἀνθρώπων ἐφθίαθ᾽, οἵ οἱ πρόσθεν ἅμα τράφεν ἠδ᾽ ἐγένοντο ἐν Πύλῳ ἠγαθέῃ, μετὰ δὲ τριτάτοισιν ἄνασσεν:

“Two generations of mortal men had passed away in his lifetime, who had been born and reared with him before in sacred Pylos, and he was king among the third.”

Telemachus explains his respect for Nestor in Odyssey, Book III, line 245

τρὶς γὰρ δή μίν φασιν ἀνάξασθαι γένε᾽ ἀνδρῶν: ὥς τέ μοι ἀθάνατος ἰνδάλλεται εἰσοράασθαι.

...for thrice, men say, has he been king for a generation of men, and like unto an immortal he seems to me to look upon.

Whatever you make of these statements, they certainly give the impression that Homer meant to convey the image that Nestor was old, possibly very old.

Though life was generally short (or cut short) in the distant past, some people could reach a very high age. Seneca the Elder was over 90 years old when he died. So, why was Homer so explicitly mentioning the advanced age of Nestor?

Maybe everybody has been looking in the wrong direction. Maybe we should turn our attention southwards. Towards Egypt.

In Ancient Egyptian, pr or pr`Ȝ meant 'great house' or 'palace'. Martin Bernal suggests that the Egyptian word may be the origin of Pylos (Πύλος), which has been inhabited since Neolithic times[2]. So, it's old, very old.

This idea is less strange than it may seem at first glance because in one of the oldest Greek scripts, Linear B, the site is called pu-ro[3].

[Dagger, found in Pylos, made from Damascene bronze. It depicts creatures of the sea]

Could the palace of Nestor possibly have been founded by Egyptians as a small colony, then deserted, and finally been inhabited by Nestor's ancestors? Or was Nestor himself descended from Egyptians?

The name Nestor, ruler of Pylos, itself may also point to an Egyptian origin because it has a plausible Egyptian etymology in either Hst Ḥr 'royal throne' or Nst wr 'great throne', both of which titles are attested.

That the word Nestor referred to a title rather than a personal name of an individual would explain Nestor's longevity, which so amazed Homer.

[1] Grethlein: How old was Nestor? in Eikasmos - 2006. See here.
[2] Martin Bernal: Black Athena: Volume III: The Linguistic Evidence - 2006
[3] Barbara Montecchi: Pu-ro, pa-ki-ja-na/ne, and the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Pylos in Aegeus Society For Aegean Prehistory - 2018

Troy in the Dark Ages

The Dark Age enveloped Greece; it enveloped Troy too,

[Ceramic amphora showing Achilles killing the Amazon queen Penthesilea, Athens, circa 530 BC]

... for the site is barren of deposits which might be referred to the period c. 1100-700 BC. Not one sherd of proto-geometric pottery is known to have been found at Troy—not by Schliemann, or by Dörpfeld, or by Blegen himself. We are now in effect asking what happened at Troy during the Dark Ages of Greece, from the [beginning of] the 11th to the [end of the] 8th century B.C.: and this is the answer which we must accept—that there is nothing at Troy to fill the huge lacuna. For 2000 years men had left traces of their living there; some chapters in the story were brief and obscure, but there was never yet a chapter left wholly blank. Now at last there is silence, profound and prolonged for 400 years[1].

This observation of Denys Page (1908-1978), Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, is in the nature of amazement: out of a mound covering a ruined place, an archaeologist expects to extract stray objects that accumulated there in the space of centuries. In Troy there is “silence profound and prolonged” as if time itself had stopped.

But the same author stresses that “the Iliad preserves facts about the Trojans which could not have been known to anybody after the fall of Troy VIIa.”[2]

Thus not only did Homer know of the kingdom and people of Mycenae that were buried for centuries of the Dark Ages, but he knew also of the kingdom and people of Troy who, too, were dead, buried, and forgotten in the darkness of the Dark Ages.

The site of Troy was reoccupied late in the seventh century; but from the fall of Troy, now put by archaeologists ca. -1260, until Homer’s time, there was nothing on the surface of the mound that could disclose to the poet the many intricate details which he webbed into his epics.

It is realized that Homer knew the scene of the Aegean coast of Asia Minor of the eighth and seventh centuries; therefore, it was argued, he could not have lived in the days of the Trojan War (or shortly thereafter) in the 12th century. A poet having composed the poems in the twelfth century would not be able to introduce into them innumerable references to the Iron Age in Greece and the post-Phrygian Age in Asia Minor of the seventh century.

Was the site of Troy alone in Asia Minor an archaeological void for five hundred years, following that city’s destruction at the end of the Mycenaean Age?

[1] Page: The Historical Sack of Troy in Antiquity (page 31) - 1959
[2] Page: The Historical Sack of Troy in Antiquity (page 221) - 1959

Source.

The Odysseus Syndrome

The Odysseus Syndrome is a syndrome coined by Joseba Achotegui, Professor of Psychotherapy in Barcelona[1]. It is sometimes called the Immigrant Syndrome of Chronic and Multiple Stress, but the problem with the alternative name is that most immigrants are also emigrants, yet they are both migrants.

[Mark Acetelli (2017): Odysseus]

The syndrome is named after the classical Greek hero, Odysseus, who was unable to return home and travelled for some 10 years through the Mediterranean after the end of the decade-long Trojan War. The hardships of his journey can be compared to the ones of contemporary migrants, who must struggle with intensely stressful, novel situations in isolation and with little help. Scarcity of their resources makes it impossible to cope with and successfully adapt to the unfamiliar environment of the receiving country, which in turn leads to experiencing a range of detrimental symptoms.

The Odysseus Syndrome is described as an atypical set of depressive, anxious, dissociative, and somatoform symptoms that results from being exposed to extreme levels of stress unique to the process of modern migration. Rather than a mental disorder, this syndrome is a natural reaction to toxic levels of stress seen in migrants who are otherwise in normal mental health[2].

Symptoms of Odysseus Syndrome include migraines, insomnia, recurrent worrying, tension, nervousness, irritability, disorientation, fear, fatigue, sadness, gastric pain, bone pain, low self-esteem, increased tobacco and alcohol consumption, and decreased productivity.

A lack of social support or access to appropriate medical care may aggravate these symptoms. The problem is also the result of arriving into countries that differ vastly in culture from their original home countries. The Ulysses Syndrome is therefore also a culture shock.

Could the Odysseus Syndrome also result in the frenzied behaviour of Odysseus and his fellow-heroes? And what about the Vikings going berserk?


[1] Achotegui: Migración y Salud Mental. El Síndrome del inmigrante con estrés crónico y múltiple (síndome de Ulises) in Vertex - 2005
[2] Bianucci et al: The "Ulysses syndrome": An eponym identifies a psychosomatic disorder in modern migrants in European Journal of International Medicine – 2017

Ancient Greeks and (their love of) fish

In the time of Ancient Greece the Mediterranean was positively teeming with fish. If you cast a net, you could almost be sure of making a good catch. Even the marine biologist Jacques Coustau (1910-1997) was able to film large schools of fish often more than a meter long. These days, as a direct result of overpopulation, overfishing, and pollution, nets often are hauled up empty. When fishermen do catch fish, they can easily discover an exotic and poisonous lionfish (Pterois volitans) in their nets.

Dr. Demetra Mylona is a zooarchaeologist who conducts research for the Institute Aegean Prehistory Study Center for East Crete. She collected data from written sources, scientific texts, and also from the study of ancient fish remains, such as bones[1].

"We can learn a lot from ancient fish bones brought to light with the archeologist's hoe, and from the pots they were cooked in by doing chemical analyzes of food remains," Mylona explains.

Ancient inscriptions speak of prosperous fishing guilds near rich fishing waters. However, the profession of fishmonger seems to have been particularly lucrative. Nothing much has changed in that respect.

According to Mylona, the Ancient Greeks had a special fondness for fish from the Aegean Sea that lived in rocks, but also liked fish from the open sea, such as the coveted tuna. They also liked mackerel, bonito, and anchovies, which were abundant during their season and relatively easy to catch with their nets.

Processed fish, such as tuna and anchovies, was consumed by all levels of society and was the subject of a very flourishing trade throughout the Mediterranean.

Mylona also pointed out that garos (γάρον) was a fundamental element of the Mediterranean diet in ancient times through the Middle Ages. "Garos was a kind of sauce made from fatty fish with salt, equivalent to the fish sauce used in the cuisine of South Eastern Asia. High-quality garos, made from tuna guts and blood, was expensive," she explained. The ancient Romans also acquired a taste for Greek fish sauce. They called it garum.

There were cities around the Mediterranean that lived off the production and trade of garos and other fish products. Even today we can find the amphorae in which these were transported, which, in addition to their characteristic shape, often contain the remains of processed fish," Mylona added.

But this research raises the question of why the Ancient Greek heroes, fighting in the Trojan War, consumed only meat and turned to fish only as a last resort. But that's a topic for another post.

[1] Dimitra Mylona: Fish-Eating in Greece from the Fifth Century B.C.  to the Seventh Century B.C.: A story of impoverished fishermen or luxurious  fish banquets? [thesis] - 2008

What was the name of Odysseus’ city?

No, the name of the capital, city, village or port is not mentioned in Homer's Illiad or Odyssey. We must turn to Ploútarchos (Πλούταρχος) whom we know better as Plutarch (AD 46–after AD 119). In his book 'Quaestiones Graecae', this Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and priest, addresses the question of Ithaka's (main) city.

[Odysseus embracing his father Laertes after returning home to Ithaka]

In Question 43 of the aforementioned book Plutarch asks: 'Why is the city of the Ithacans called Alalcomenae (Ἀλαλκομ́εναι)?' 

πόθεν ἡ τῶν ᾽Ιθακησίων πόλις ᾽Αλαλκομεναὶ προσηγορεύθη; διὰ τὸ τὴν ᾽Αντίκλειαν ὑπὸ Σισύφου βιασθεῖσαν ἐν τῆι παρθενίαι τὸν ᾽Οδυσσέα συλλαβεῖν· ὑπὸ πλειόνων δ᾽ ἐστὶν εἰρημένον. ῎Ιστρος δὲ ὁ ᾽Αλεξανδρεὺς ἐν ῾Υπομνήμασι προσιστόρηκεν, ὅτι τῶι Λαέρτηι δοθεῖσα πρὸς γάμον καὶ ἀναγομένη περὶ τὸ ᾽Αλαλκομένειον ἐν τῆι Βοιωτίαι τὸν ᾽Οδυσσέα τέκοι· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἐκεῖνος ὥσπερ μητροπόλεως ἀναφέρων τοὐνομα τὴν ἐν ᾽Ιθάκηι πόλιν οὕτω φησὶ προσαγορεύεσθαι.

Solution. It is affirmed by most, that it was because Anticlea in the time of her virginity was forcibly seized upon by Sisyphus, and brought forth Ulysses. But Ister the Alexandrian hath acquainted us in his memoirs, that Anticlea was married to Laertes, and being brought to a place about the Alalcomeneum in Boeotia, was delivered of Ulysses; and therefore Ulysses called the city of Ithaca by the same name, to renew the memory of the place in which he had been born

Therefore, the city on Ithaka was called Alalcomenae in honour of a city with the same name in Boeotia.

The problem, of course, is that Plutarch lived more than a 1,000 years after the events that were described in the works of Homer. During that long period of time, memories will become legends. Legends fade to myth. Myths get embellished with spurious material to muddle history.

Can we walk back in history and find a more ancient source that mentions the name of Odysseus city? The sad answer is: Unfortunately no.

Possibly both the name of the island (or peninsula) and its city were both called Ithaka. This solution corroborates with our conclusion in a previous post, where we found that the name Ithaka may well have had the meaning of 'old' or 'ancient'. One would think that both the city and its surroundings may well have deserved that epithet.

A potential Ithaka on Paliki is the hamlet of Atheras, where a Medieval structure - called 'a castle' - is found. Can Atheras be our Ithaka?

The origin of the name Ithaka?

Of course, the true origin of the name of Ithaka, the fabled home of Odysseus may never be found. But we may try to retrieve the origin from the dark and uninviting past.

[Attika]

Our first logical step is to search in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. There we find that Ithaka derives from Ancient Greek Ἰθάκα (Itháka), which is the Doric form of Ἰθάκη (Ithákē). Searching further we find that the Doric form is of 'uncertain origin', but that the first element is possibly derived from a Phoenician word with the meaning of 'island'. That is not very helpful, because we can easily imagine that Ithaka could also have a Punic origin, where Y also means 'island'.

We may find an alternative etymology in Martin Bernal's 'Black Athena: Volume III: The Linguistic Evidence'. Bernal claims that Itháka (Ιθαkα), Attika (Αττιkα), and Ituke (Ἰτύκη) share the same syllabic structure: -th-k-. Itháka is obviously the island and town of Odysseus, but also an old town on the Euphrates: Qabr Abu al-'Atiq. Attika is the territory around Athens, while Utica was once a city near Carthage in what is now Tunisia.

The name of Utica, Wikipedia tells us helpfully, is derived from Phoenician ˁAtiq (ʿtq), cognate with Arabic ˁatiqah (عَتِيقَة) and Hebrew ˁatiq ('to pass', 'supercede'). These all mean 'old' and contrast the settlement with the later colony Carthage (qrt-ḥdšt), whose own name literally meant 'new town'. This is cognate with the name of the walled area within the modern city of Jerusalem: Ha'Ir Ha'Atiqah (הָעִיר הָעַתִּיקָה) meaning 'the old city'.

The existence of another Ithaka on the banks of the Euphrates strongly suggest that this toponym is Semitic in origin, but it is difficult to say whether it meant 'preeminent' or 'ancient'. The first interpretation is reinforced by Ithaka's early dominance over Cephallenia and Zakynthos. The latter interpretation could point in the direction of 'ancient' if there's any possibility that the name is derived from that of its inhabitants.

The same ambiguity holds for tracing the name of Attika, although the meaning of 'ancient' is more likely given the Athenian boasts of their antiquity and the region's standing out from the Dorian invasion.

So, the name of Ithaka may mean 'old', simply to state the ancient roots of their inhabitants.

A Forgotten Perspective on Odysseus

Odysseus was once king of Ithaka, son of Anticlea and Leartes. He became, like the other princes of Greece, one of the suitors of Helen, but he wasn't successful in his endeavours because of the great number of competitors. Instead he solicited the hand of Penelope, the daughter of Icarius.

[Icarius]

Tyndarus, the father of Helen, favoured this solution, because this meant that it removed Odysseus from his list of problems. He was directed to choose one of the suitors without offending all the others, and to bind them all by a solemn oath that they would unite together in protecting Helen if any harm was ever done to her.

So, Icarius gave his daughter Penelope in marriage to Odysseus, but he was so tenderly attached to her that he wished her husband to settle at Lacedæmon. Odysseus refused, but when he saw the earnest petitions of Icarius, he told Penelope, as they were going to embark, that she might choose freely either to follow him to Ithaca or to remain with her father. Penelope blushed in silence, and covered her head with her veil. Icarius, upon this, permitted his daughter to go to Ithaca.

Odysseus and Penelope returned to Ithaca, where his father resigned him the crown, and retired to peace and rural solitude.

The abduction of Helen by Paris, did not permit him to remain in his kingdom for long, and he was bound, in common with the rest to defend her against every intruder. Thus he was summoned to the war with the other princes of Greece.

[Penelope]

Pretending to be insane, because he did not want to leave his beloved Penelope, he yoked a horse and a bull together, and ploughed the seashore, where he sowed salt instead of grain.

His cunning plan, however, soon unravelled. Palamedes, son of Nauplius, king of Eubea, was convinced that the father was not insane. So, he placed Odysseus' infant son Telemachus before the plough. Palamedes was proven to be right, because Odysseus turned away the plough from the furrow, not wanting to hurt his son.

Telemachus was still in the cradle when his father went with the rest of the Greeks to the Trojan war, which means he was in his early twenties when Odysseus finally returned to Ithaka. 

This perspective also shows the close relationship between Helen and Penelope. Close enough to be a doublet?

[Text adapted from the Classical Dictionary (1847), compiled by Charles Anthon]

Riddles about Amber in the Odyssey

Amber is fossilized pine tree resin found mostly in and on the beaches of the Baltic Sea. But so much was found that some sort of catastroph must have occurred to drown so many pine trees.

The Ancient Greek word for amber was ēlektron (ἤλεκτρον). The word is associated with ēlektor (ἤλεκτορ), used in the Iliad to mean the 'beaming', 'dazzling' or 'radiant' sun.

Amber always fascinated the ancients and they imagined that it had some internal fire (imagine igneam) or described the material’s gentle glow (mollis fulgor). The amber’s colour was certainly poetic —of wine, honey, wax, embers, or fire— but was of secondary importance to its glow. 

We find the first (extant) mention of amber in Homer’s Odyssey. When Telemachus visits Menelaus’ palace in Book 4, he is awestruck: “Mark the flashing of bronze throughout the echoing halls, and the flashing of gold, of ēlektron, of silver, and of ivory. Of such sort, methinks, is the court of Olympian Zeus within, such untold wealth is here; amazement holds me as I look.”

It is the flashing of the jewels, more so than the jewels themselves, that puts Telemachus in mind of Zeus; the word he uses is steroph (στεροπή): the flash of a lightning bolt.

The word elektron occurs twice more in the Odyssey: once in Book 15 (lines 455–462), when the swineherd Eumaeus, tells Odysseus the story of his kidnapping. He remembers the cunning Phoenician mariner who turned up at his ancestral home with an eye-catching golden necklace strung with amber pieces. Also, in Book 18 (lines 294–296), when the suitors vie with one another in the extravagance of their gifts to Penelope, Eurymachus’s contribution is “a richly crafted necklace of gold adorned with sun-bright amber”.

[Necklace with a pendant scarab, Italic or Etruscan and Greek, 550–400 B.C. Amber, gold, and carnelian]

The word elektron was also used in antiquity to describe the alloy of silver and gold (modern electrum). The earliest surviving source to discuss both materials is Herodotus. Pliny (Natural History 33.23.80) says, “All gold contains silver in various proportions.… Whenever the proportion is one-fifth, the ore is called electrum.” Some scientists think that elektron was originally used for the resin and then transferred to the metal because the two materials shared certain optical properties. Both were beaming, dazzling, and radiant.

Clearly amber was once abundant. Even in 1701 more than 6 tonnes of amber was used to panel an entire room in the Charlottenburg Palace (Berlin, Prussia), later transferred to the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace (near Saint Petersburg, Russia).

How did amber got to Ancient Greece? As Odysseus lived in the early 12^th century BC, we can imagine caravans slowly making their way from the Mediterranean to the Baltic and back. A more plausible route is via the Volga, as the Vikings did some millennia later. That also suggests that a voyage like that of the Argonauts might well have had a secondary purpose: meet up with traders from the Baltic and transfer amber to their boat. We can even imagine that the fabled Golden Fleece was an amber vase with a depiction of the golden-woolled, winged ram.

The trade network of amber, which reached as far as Egypt, vanished suddenly in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Amber disappeared totally from the market after 1200 BC and was not known again for centuries. Between 1200 BC and 500 BC no amber reached the Mediterranean. The demise of the trade and trade routes of amber coincided with the Dark Age of Greece, suggesting that the Minoan (on the island of Crete) and Mycenaean civilizations (on mainland Greece) had simultaneously crumbled because of prolonged climate change in the region.

[Update 25 August 2021] Amber necklace found in Poland.

An ornate amber necklace was found during the excavation of a cemetery in the Polish village of Przykopka (formerly known as Birkenwalde). The amber necklace was made up of 35 individual hand polished beads, along with a heart-shaped amber pendant. The researchers also found coins from the 18th and 19th century, along with clothing, jewellery, pins, buttons, hairpins, pottery, and animal remains.

Where is (the real) Mount Neriton?

As the frequent visitor of this obscure weblog might know, the precise names of the Ionian Islands were lost during the Dark Age of Greece. When the islands were repopulated the new islanders simply named these islands as they thought they were originally named.

How wrong there were.

We can simply demonstrate that by pointing to the description Odysseus gives of his beloved Ithaca.

In the Odyssey, lines 9.20-21 it is stated that:
ναιετάω δ' Ἰθάκην ἐυδείελον: ἐν δ' ὄρος αὐτῇ
Νήριτον εἰνοσίφυλλον, ἀριπρεπές: ἀµφὶ δὲ νῆσοι

Bright Ithaca is my home: it has a mountain,
Leaf-quivering Neriton, far visible

In the Odyssey, lines 13.344-351 it is stated that:
ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε τοι δείξω Ἰθάκης ἕδος, ὄφρα πεποίθῃς.
[..]
τοῦτο δὲ Νήριτόν ἐστιν ὄρος καταειμένον ὕλῃ.

But come now, to convince you I will show you the landmarks of Ithaca.
[..]
and over there is Mount Neriton, clothed with its forests.

Odysseus was extremely proud of 'his' Ithaca and he explicitly mentions Neriton, a mountain that is 'far visible'. To be visible from afar means it must be rather high. The mountain is also covered by trees.

If we turn our attention to the island that nowadays erroneously bears the illustrious name Ithaca, we can immediately see that, yes, it is a rugged place and, yes, it does have some low mountains. But these are not something to be proud of because they dwarf beside Mount Ainos on Cephalonia. That mountain has a lofty elevation of 1,628 meters. The top of Mount Ainos is covered with fir trees and is a natural reserve.

But that explanation immediately poses another problem.

Because, we identify ancient Ithaca with modern Paliki, the peninsula attached to Cephalonia. If Mount Neriton is Mount Ainos then our theory must be wrong.

But suppose that Ithaca of Odysseus wasn't just the peninsula of Paliki but rather some settlements around the coasts of the Gulf of Argostoli, situated between Paliki and mainland Cephalonia. That also means that the Gulf of Argostoli must be identical with Odysseus' harbour of Phorkys.

When I visited neighbouring Zakynthos (Zante) in 2023 and viewed Cephalonia, the most striking feature of that island was its high mountain. Thus, even nowadays you are amazed by the imposing height of Mount Ainos (Ὄρος Αἶνος) or in Italian Monte Nero ('Black Mountain').

Which eye disease might Odysseus have had?

When Odysseus finally returned to his beloved Ithaca, he was worried that he would be recognized too soon. To avoid that problem, the goddess Athena promised to change his appearance to make him 'unknown to all mortals'. She 'shrivelled the fair skin on his supple limbs and destroyed the flaxen hair on his head'.

[The goddess Athena]

 I wonder if Odysseus really needed Athena to change his appearance. Remember, Odysseus was away for twenty years, had experienced the siege of Troy and survived several harrowing adventures. He would have aged considerably during that time. Furthermore, the Mediterranean climate with its incessant sunshine, would shrivel anybody's fair skin and we can imagine that the ageing Odysseus would have lost some (or most) of his hair during his long absence. He might even have been bald.

But Athena also promised to 'dim thy two eyes that were before so beautiful, that thou mayest appear mean in the sight of all the wooers, and of thy wife, and of thy son'.

The original text uses the term 'knyzosis' for the condition, which is related to the Ancient Greek verb knúō (κνύω) which means 'to scratch'. Knyzosis thus gave Odysseus' eyes an unpleasant appearance, although without decreasing their vision, and the condition was accompanied by an itchy feeling.

Is it possible to discover the actual eye disease that Odysseus might have had?

It cannot be conjunctivitis which simply results in a temporary reddish or pink eye. Yes, pain, burning, scratchiness, or itchiness may occur, but it doesn't really change your appearance.

A better candidate is blepharitis, characterized by inflammation of the eyelids. This condition may also cause burning, itching, or a grainy sensation when introducing foreign objects or substances to the eye. Blepharitis is not sight-threatening.

When your eyelids are inflamed, they get swollen and, because it also results in scaling, reddening, and crusting of the eyelid, it would have given Odysseus 'an unpleasant appearance'.

All of these changes (shrivelled skin, destroyed hair and eyelid inflammation) would surely make Odysseus unrecognizable.

Why were there so many suitors waiting?

Odysseus was away from Ithaka for some 20 years. How did anybody know when he would return to his 'kingdom? It was much more probable that most would have thought he was dead. Any normal man would have returned almost immediately after a siege that lasted ten long years. Not Odysseus.

During Odysseus' long absence, 108 'unmarried young men' started courting Penelope, Odysseus wife or widow (whichever version they wanted to believe). Which is strange, because Penelope must have been at least 40 years old, so why would only young suitors be interested in her?

The suitors took up residence in Odysseus' home and vied for Penelope's hand in marriage. Rather than simply rejecting the suitors, Penelope devised a cunning plan to delay their courtship and told the suitors that she would make her choice known only after she had finished weaving a funeral shroud to present to Odysseus' father, Laertes. For three years, Penelope weaved the shroud during the day and unraveled it at night.

The story claims that it was simply a tactic to delay her decision, but it might well be a symbolic way of telling us that she was 'biding her time'. She was waiting. But for what?

If you think about it, it is a strange situation. Whichever island or peninsula you claim is Ithaka, it is just a smallish piece of land. Small means that it couldn't have had a large and continuous food and wine supply to feed all those suitors.

Don't expect the palace to have been that large either. So, where did these 108 'suitors' live and sleep? These were not suitors, they were young able men that formed a defensive force. They were awaiting an invasion.

Homer lets us believe that Odysseus came to his Ithaka alone and that he, assisted only by his son Telemachus, the elderly swineherd Eumaeus, and the cowherd Philoetius, managed to kill all suitors and some disloyal maidservants.

That's quite a massacre and seemingly without any real repercussions. Not from the relatives of the suitors on the nearby islands of Dulichium (which I equate with modern day Ithaka), Same (which I equate with Cephalonia), or Zakynthos.

So, what really happened? The most logical solution to this vexing question is that Odysseus must have been the leader of an invasive force that wanted to claim or reclaim (the territory of) Ithaka.

[Excerpt from Apollodorus, The Library Epitome Footnotes by J.G, Frazer]

This explanation curiously also supports a report by the Greek historian Duris of Samos (~350BC-after 281BC) who asserted that Penelope had sex with all 108 suitors in Odysseus' absence, and gave birth to Pan as a result. Sex with 180 suitors is not simply a case of being rather promiscuous but is better explained as a collective rape by enemy soldiers.

[Reaction from Odysseus Unbound] Although there might be some debate about the roles of the suitors and the explanation for their numbers, we would agree with the proposition suggesting that different names were assigned to the islands in the time of the epics: Doulichion in place of modern Ithaki, Sami instead of Eastern Kefalonia, and Ithaca in place of modern Paliki. Of course this would imply that Eastern Kefalonia and the Paliki peninsula were once separate islands - a hypothesis that we have been testing scientifically for some time and which is becoming less and less of a remote possibility as our work progresses.

Homer's Wine-dark Sea. A novel explanation?

One of the most vexing problems in the works of Homer is the mention of a 'wine-dark sea'. The colour of wine can can vary wildly from white, rose, red to black, although the last colour is just a very darkish red. But you would never think that these colours would describe the colour of the sea.

Many were the explanations that have been forwarded, from the conjecture that Ancient Greeks couldn't (yet) see or describe the colour blue (they could: kúanos (κῠ́ᾰνος) which is conventionally translated as 'blue') or Homer wanted to indicate the sea during sunset (not likely: sunset will make the sea seem orange to purple).

[Source: Kiwi Hellenist. See here]

If all translations are - more or less – in agreement (which they are), then maybe we should look at the source. Could Homer himself have been erroneous?

At first glance you could argue that Homer's texts were faultless, though some did find problems. But suppose that Homer needed to adapt words to fit into the metric of his poems.

First. Most translate epi oînops póntos (επί οἶνοψ πόντος) as 'on (the) wine-dark sea', though the phrase actually should be translated as 'on (the) sea, looking like wine', from οἶνος 'wine' and ωπ 'face'. Originally, the phrase was written as epi w(o)īnopa (επί ϝ(ο)ἶνοψ πόντος). The extra consonant, the digamma ϝ was pronounced as 'wau', had dropped out of the epic dialect by the time the Iliad got written down. The digamma also explains the transition form Greek oinos via Latin vinos to our modern word 'wine'.

Second. Suppose Homer never wanted to write 'on (the) sea, looking like wine' but something like 'on (the) brilliant sea' or 'on (the) sparkling sea'. What sort of expression would we find in Ancient Greek?

Then we find aîthops (αἶθοψ) which means 'bright', 'sprarkling' or 'gleaming'. The word is used to signify the gleaming of copper and iron. Its other meaning is the sparkling of wine. Both are attested in Homer's poems.

Maybe, in (some dialects in) Ancient Greece, there wasn't much difference in meaning or even pronounciation of oînops (οἶνοψ) 'wine' and aîthops (αἶθοψ) 'bright'.

Odysseus' journey into the Underworld

Of all his many adventures, Odysseus’ journey to the Underworld is his most extreme. He manages to reach the place most distant from home, and from life itself, yet return even from there. His nekyia (νέκυια) in book 11, his ‘dialogue with the dead’, is arguably one his greatest feats.

[Mosaic depicting Odysseus, from the villa of La Olmeda, Pedrosa de la Vega, Spain, late 4th-5th centuries AD]

Odysseus’ expedition seems, as ever, ambiguous: he learns something specific about his own future, from Tiresias, but as for what we learn, the message seems less clear. The emphasis is squarely on storytelling—its pleasures and advantages, as well as any insights it might offer. But one small clue is that (the spirit of) the Theban Teiresias clearly knows Odysseus and addresses him as 'Son of Laertes, sprung from Zeus', which enhances our idea that this too is part of a later addition, as shown in 'Helen and Penelope: A doublet? But why?.

Odysseus tells the story of his journey to the dead while enjoying the hospitality of the Phaeacians, just before securing his passage home. Circe, he recounts, insisted that he needed to consult Tiresias before sailing home, so he and his men embarked on their mission, ‘weighed down by anxiety and shedding many tears’. They arrived at the murky land of the Cimmerians by the banks of the river Oceanus. There they pulled up their ship and walked upstream, until they reached a specific place indicated by Circe, dug a trench, and sacrificed to the dead. Immediately, the shades began to swarm up from the Underworld, eager to taste the blood of the slaughtered animals, and ‘pale fear’ gripped Odysseus.

Still, he managed to keep the shades at bay, and did not let them drink the blood. At that point, the shade of one of his companions stood before him: Elpenor could still recognize Odysseus and talk to him, because he had not yet been properly buried—indeed, he had fallen off Circe’s roof the night before, stone drunk, and broken his neck. Odysseus addressed him with open curiosity, asking him how he had made it there so fast, faster even than his own swift journey by ship.

As ever, our ‘man of many turns’ does not seem to take death too seriously, and considers it almost an affront that Elpenor could travel to the Underworld faster than him. Elpenor himself, however, plaintively begs to be buried. Odysseus then spots his own mother among the shades, and yet she does not seem to recognize him. Finally, Tiresias appears, and delivers his prophecy. At this point, Odysseus has accomplished his mission and could therefore leave— but he is curious, wants to interrogate the dead. He lets his mother drink the blood of the sacrificial victims, and she suddenly recognizes him, asking how on earth he made it there while still alive. She then reassures him that Penelope is still faithful, and urges him to tell his wife some good stories when he gets home: ‘Go now, make for the light as quickly as you can, but remember all this, so that some day you will be able to tell it to your wife.’

Ancient DNA: Minoans and Mycenaens were (almost) the same

The discovery of the Minoan (on the island of Crete) and Mycenaean civilizations (on mainland Greece) in the late 1800s gave birth to modern archaeology and opened a direct window into the European Bronze Age. This period of history had previously been glimpsed only through Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The Minoan civilization flourished on Crete beginning in the third millennium BC and was very advanced both artistically and technologically. The Minoans were also the first literate people of Europe. The Mycenaean civilization developed in mainland Greece in the second millennium BC. It shared many cultural features with the Minoans.

The origins of the Minoan and Mycenaean peoples, however, have puzzled archaeologists for more than a century. It is widely believed that they derived from different ancestral populations.

Researchers recently reported the first genome-wide DNA sequence data on the Bronze Age inhabitants of mainland Greece, Crete and southwestern Anatolia[1]. They analysed dental DNA from the remains of 19 ancient individuals who could be definitively identified by archaeological evidence as Minoans of Crete, Mycenaeans of mainland Greece and people who lived in southwestern Anatolia.

Next, they compared the Minoan and Mycenaean genomes to each other and to more than 330 other ancient genomes and over 2,600 genomes of present-day humans from around the world.

The results show that Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically highly similar – but not identical – and that modern Greeks descend from these populations. The Minoans and Mycenaeans descended mainly from early Neolithic farmers, likely migrating thousands of years prior to the Bronze Age from Anatolia, in what is today modern Turkey[2][3].

"Minoans, Mycenaeans, and modern Greeks also had some ancestry related to the ancient people of the Caucasus, Armenia and Iran," explained Lazaridis.

[1] Lazarides et al: Genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans in Nature – 2017
[2] Lazarides et al: Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East in Nature – 2015 
[3] Clemente et al: The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations in Cell - 2021. See here.

A papyrus with lines from the Odyssey

Papyrus fragment with lines from Homer's Odyssey, ca. 285–250 BC.

For the ancient Greeks, papyrus, a paper made from the stalks of the papyrus plant, was the preferred material on which to record permanent writings, such as a marriage contract or, as here, a book. Writing on papyrus was done with a stylus, such as a sharpened reed with a split point or a bronze pen with nib, and ink, usually made of lampblack in water.

This is the first early Ptolemaic fragment of the Odyssey ever discovered. It contains three lines from Book 20 that do not occur in the standard text preserved today and is a physical testimony to the fact that local variations of this famous work existed in the third century BC.

The most important repository of Homeric texts in the Hellenistic world was at the library of Alexandria, Egypt, the first comprehensive public library ever built, which was founded by the Ptolemaic kings in the early third century BC. As Homer was the poet par excellence, his work was central to the library's collections, which contained copies of the Homeric poems from many different city-states, including Chios, Argos, and Sinope. One of the first endeavors of the Alexandrian scholars was to establish a standard text for these most cherished works of Greek literature.

Source.

Helen and Penelope: A doublet? But why?

Reading Homer closely reveals a problem: what exactly has happened to Helen and Penelope. The two share strong parallels: Helen’s marriage to Menelaos was preceded by being courted by an army of suitors; Penelope too was courted by an enormous group of suitors.

Helen is stolen away by Paris and needed to be won back by her proper husband. Only a slight change has been made in the case of Penelope, namely that Odysseus’ return prevented the stealing away.

Other passages too suggest a doublet: The most telling is, where Helen recalls the incident of Odysseus sneaking into Troy, how she recognised him immediately but chose not to betray him. The question may arise how she knew how Odysseus looked like. When or where could she have met him before?

In this passage we find explicitly stated that Odysseus entered the city disguised as a beggar; that Helen alone saw through his disguise; that he cleverly evaded her questions; that she made arrangements for a bath for her disguised guest; that she swore not to reveal him to his enemies; and that afterwards there was lamentation among the other women at what had happened.

These events are clearly identical to those in the Odyssey: the late-night conversation between Penelope and Odysseus. Penelope likewise was the first to recognise Odysseus.

The question should be: is the character of Helen a doublet of Penelope, or vice versa. There can be no doubt that Helen is the original. Without Helen, the entire basis for the historical Trojan War, and the reason for Odysseus being absent in the first place, would be gone.

But what prompted Homer to use a character twice? Was Penelope perhaps a figure already established in myth in a different context?

She may have been borrowed from an Arcadian cult: Penelope was worshipped in Mantineia as the mother of Pan. Later, after the Homeric epics were famous throughout the Mediterranean region, worshippers changed the role of Penelope and she became Odysseus' wife. After Odysseus found that she had committed adultery and expelled her from his house, she came to Arcadia and there gave birth to Pan.

Odysseus’ household contained no one for him to return to. The original story, therefore, was not about Odysseus’ return but rather about an invasion, about a foreigner arriving and attacking the local defensive force, the 'suitors', killing them, and claiming the throne.

This explains problems in the conflict between Odysseus and the 'suitors'. In the Odyssey, the suitors are guests under the protection of Zeus, and killing them would have been viewed as a crime against Zeus. In the original form of the tale, however, they enjoyed no such protection, and so Odysseus could attack and kill them without any divine repercussions.

Given the strong ties that Odysseus has with northwestern Greece, the original form of the 'return' story likely was about an invasion from the northwest.

Source.