Gods, Heroes and Tyrants

Sound Bite

Where does Greek history begin? Textbooks discussing Early Greek history leave spurious 'dark age' gaps where the evidence fails to match historians' fixed ideas. In this bold volume, dramatic claims regarding everything from the Trojan War to the 'Mask of Agamemnon' are argued in detail from both an archaeological and a literary perspective, unraveling historical conundrums that have stumped classicists for generations.

About the Book

Is it possible that the history of ancient Greece as found in the textbooks is seriously misdated? Emmet Sweeney is not the first to make such a proposal. That honor goes to Immanuel Velikovsky, whose series Ages in Chaos (1952) held that the whole of ancient Near Eastern history before the classical age was a fabrication.

Velikovsky identified Egyptian chronology as the source of the problem; and indeed the chronology of early Greek history, during the so-called Mycenaean period, was constructed along the lines demanded by Egyptian history. And, in a multitude of ways, legend and tradition agreed. For example, Homer's Iliad is full of references to the Phrygians, who were evidently close allies of the Trojans. Indeed, so intimate is the connection that we might suspect the Trojans themselves of being a branch of the Phrygian nation. Yet Phrygia, it is known, did not exist until the eighth century BC, when the Moschians, or Bryges, a Thracian people, migrated across the Bosphorus and settled in Asia Minor. Greek tradition is explicit that Priam, king of Troy during the famous siege, was a contemporary of Gordius, the first Phrygian king and founder of the capital city Gordion.

In this volume Sweeney explores the contradictions and "coincidences" that support a whole new view of ancient history.

Much of Greek myth is about the natural events of 850 BC and natural events which preceded them. This being the case, it seems reasonable to assume that the inhabitants of the region at the time were most probably at least in part ancestral Greeks. The culture of these Early Helladic folk was maritime and warlike. They raised great fortifications around many of their settlements settlements which tended to lie along the coast. They were already familiar with tin-bronze, which speaks of trading relations with Atlantic Europe.

When considering the source of the military threat against which the Early Hellads raised their huge coastal fortifications, we need to think of Atlantic Europe and Atlantic North Africa, where a mighty seafaring culture, contemporary with Early Bronze Age Greece, is also attested. And this of course brings us into altogether deeper water, in more ways than one.

Introduction

In the book that follows I shall be arguing that early Greek history as found in the textbooks is seriously misdated. I am not the first to make such a proposal. That honor goes to Immanuel Velikovsky, whose series Ages in Chaos (1952) held that the whole of ancient Near Eastern history before the classical age was a fabrication. Velikovsky identified Egyptian chronology as the source of the problem; and indeed the chronology of early Greek history, during the so-called 'Mycenaean' period, was constructed along the lines demanded by Egyptian history. Thus when it became clear, towards the end of the nineteenth century, that the great flowering of 'Mycenaean' culture coincided with the Egyptian New Kingdom, especially the Eighteenth Dynasty, it was decreed that the Mycenaean Age belonged in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries BC, where Egyptologists had already placed the Eighteenth Dynasty. There were many dissenting voices at the time, most notably from the ranks of the classicists, and that great curmudgeon Cecil Torr fought a prolonged and very public battle with Flinders Petrie over the issue. In a thousand ways, claimed Torr, the Mycenaean Age showed itself to belong in the eighth or even seventh century BC. With what justification then did Petrie and the Egyptologists force their timescales into the world of the Aegean? Still, such doubts were ultimately laid to rest. The Egyptologists, who by this time were claiming a scientific foundation for their chronology, stressed the numerous connections disclosed by archaeology between the Mycenaean Age and the Eighteenth Dynasty and thereby compelled a second millennium date for the former.Many of the objections raised by Torr were later resurrected by Velikovsky. Echoing his predecessor, Velikovsky demonstrated that Mycenaean art and culture seemed to find its closest parallels in art and culture of the eighth and seventh centuries BC. Furthermore, it was found that Mycenaean material occurred at no great depth beneath that of the classical period, whilst in many places it was apparently associated with Archaic ware of the seventh and even sixth centuries. This, for example, was the case at various sites throughout the Peloponnese and southern Greece and most especially on Crete and Cyprus. And, in a multitude of ways, legend and tradition agreed. So, for example, Homer's Iliad is full of references to the Phrygians, who were evidently close allies of the Trojans. Indeed, so intimate is the connection that we might suspect the Trojans themselves of being a branch of the Phrygian nation. Yet Phrygia, it is known, did not exist until the eighth century BC, when the Moschians, or Bryges, a Thracian people, migrated across the Bosphorus and settled in Asia Minor. Greek tradition is explicit that Priam, king of Troy during the famous siege, was a contemporary of Gordius, the first Phrygian king and founder of the capital city Gordion.

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Table of Contents

IntroductionChapter 1. An Age of HeroesWhere Does Greek History Begin?The Rediscovery of Homeric GreeceThe Early DebateA 'Dark Age' IntrudesThe Dark Age in Asia MinorChapter 2. Archaeology and ArtArtistic AnomaliesA Bitter ControversyThe Emergence of Greek CultureThe Earliest Greek CultureContemporary CulturesChapter 3. The Question of LiteracyEpic PoetryThe Loss of LiteracyThe Linear B TabletsThe Language of Linear BCadmus and the Phoenician AlphabetChapter 4. Evidence from AbroadThrace and ScythiaMagna GraeciaEtruriaCyprus and the EastChapter 5. Links Across the SeasGreece and the EastAchaean Warriors Fight the AssyriansThe Shaft Graves of MycenaePelops and Chariot WarfareAgamemon in the Records of the HittitesMopsusChapter 6. The Course of HistoryMyth and HistoryA Dramatic BeginningGreeks and PelasgiansThe Rise of CreteMycenae before AgamemnonThe Story of ThebesChapter 7. Bridging the GapThe Dorian InvasionThe Age of the TyrantsThe Age of ColonizationIron Swords of TegeaFestivals and Legal CodesSome Genealogies and ChronologiesEpilogueAPPENDIXPhaeton's Fire and Heracles' LaborsTable 1. Bronze Aga and Iron Age ContemporariesBibliographyINDEX