The Trojan War (31 page)

On Amazons, see J. H. Blok,
The Early Amazons: Modern and Ancient Perspectives on a Persistent Myth
(Leiden: Brill, 1995); Lyn Webster Wilde,
On the Trail of the Women Warriors: The Amazons in Myth and History
(New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2000); Jeanine Kimball-Davis,
Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines
(New York: Warner Books, 2002); Renate Rolle,
World of the Scythians,
trans. F. G. Walls (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); and browse the archaeology links of the Web site of the Center for the Study of Eurasian Nomads, http://www.csen.org. On the female soldiers of Dahomey, see Stanley B. Alpern,
Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey
(New York: New York University Press, 1998) and Robert B. Edgerton,
Warrior Women: The Amazons of Dahomey and the Nature of War
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000). For a suggestion that the Amazons were really the female archers (or possibly male archers dressed as women) who took part in Hittite ritual, see Watkins, “The Language of the Trojans,” in Mellink, ed.,
Troy and the Trojan War,
53, 55.

War and religion often go together. There are good insights into the religious milieu of Bronze Age Anatolia and its survival in Homer in Christopher Faraone,
Talismans and Trojan Horses
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). For an introduction to ancient Anatolian religion, see M. Popko,
Religions of Asia Minor
(Warsaw: Academic Publications, 1995); on Luwian religion, see Manfred Hutter, “Aspects of Luwian Religion,” in H. Craig Melchert, ed.,
The Luwians,
Handbuch der Orientalistik, vol. 68 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 211–80. There is much on Mycenaean religion in the books below.

THE MYCENAEANS

Among several good and readable introductions to the subject are John Chadwick,
The Mycenaean World
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1976) and W. D. Taylour,
The Mycenaeans,
2nd edition (London: Thames & Hudson, 1983). A more detailed and scholarly introduction is available in O. Dickinson,
The Aegean Bronze Age
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

For a scholarly survey of fairly recent work, see C. W. Shelmerdine, “Review of Aegean Prehistory VI: The Palatial Bronze Age of the Southern and Central Greek Mainland,”
American Journal of Archaeology
101:3 (1997): 537–85, reprinted with an addendum on the period 1997–99 in Tracey Cullen, ed.,
Aegean Prehistory: A Review,
Supplement 1 to
American Journal of Archaeology
(Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 2001), 329–82. Elizabeth French,
Mycenae, Agamemnon's Capital: The Site in Its Setting
(Charleston, S.C.: Tempus, 2004) is a succinct introduction to the most important Mycenaean site. An article on the excavations at Pellana and the purported palace of Menelaus and Helen is (in Greek) Theodore G. Spyropoulos, “The Palace of Menelaus and Helen in Mycenaean Lacedaemon,”
Aeropos
54 (March–April 2004): 4–15. An earlier candidate for the site of the palace is Therapne; see Hughes,
Helen of Troy,
29–33.

On Linear B texts, see Ventris and Chadwick,
Documents in Mycenaean Greek,
and J. T. Hooker,
Linear B: An Introduction
(London: Bristol Classical Press, 1980). For an exciting tale of scholarship in action, see John Chadwick,
The Decipherment of Linear B,
2nd edition (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967).

Earlier scholarship on the Mycenaeans, especially in light of Linear B texts, tended to regard Late Bronze Age Greek kingdoms as centralized, bureaucratic machines, and therefore utterly different from the ramshackle chiefdoms of the
Iliad.
For a corrective, see D. B. Small, “Surviving the Collapse: The Oikos and Structural Continuity Between Late Bronze Age and Later Greece,” in Michael Galaty and William A. Parkinson, eds.,
Rethinking Mycenaean Palaces
(Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, 1999), 283–91; Ione Mylonas Shear,
Kingship in the Mycenaean World and Its Reflections in the Oral Tradition
(Philadelphia: INSTAP Academic Press, 2004). For Linear B texts and the Mycenaean military, see Palaima, “Mycenaean Militarism.”

There are tantalizing suggestions of the impact of Anatolia on Mycenaean culture and society in such works as S. Morris, “Potnia Aswiya: Anatolian Contributions to Greek Religion,”
Potnia: Deities and Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age
, in
Aegaeum
22 (2001): 423–34; and Trevor R. Bryce, “Anatolian Scribes in Mycenaean Greece,”
Historia
48:3 (1999): 257–64.

For the possibility of Mycenaean mercenaries in the Egypt of King Tut, see R. Parkinson and Louise Schofield, “Images of Mycenaeans: A Recently Acquired Painted Papyrus from El-Amarna,” in W. Vivian Davies and Louise Schofeld, eds.,
Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant: Interconnections in the Second Millennium
BC
(London: British Museum Press, 1995), 125–26.

On Mycenaean jewelry, see Eleni M. Konstantinidi,
Jewellery Revealed in the Burial Contexts of the Greek Bronze Age
(Oxford: J. & E. Hedges, distributed by Hadrian Books, 2001) and http://www.fhw.gr/chronos/02/mainland/en/mg/technology/index.html.

On Mycenaean food, drink, and perfume, see Y. Tzedakis and H. Martlew,
Minoans and Mycenaeans: Flavours of Their Time
(Athens: Production Kapon Editions, 1999) and Cynthia W. Shelmerdine,
The Perfume Industry of Mycenaean Pylos
(Göteborg, Sweden: P. Åström, 1985). The possibility of human sacrifice in Minoan Crete is explored in J. A. Sakellarakis and S. E. Sapouna,
Archanes
(Athens: Ekdotike Athenon S.A., 1991).

HITTITES AND OTHER ANATOLIANS

The interaction between man and nature in ancient Anatolia is explored in J. Yakar,
Ethnoarchaeology of Anatolia
(Jerusalem: Graphit Press, 2000). On the animal world, see Billie Jean Collins, ed.,
A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East
(Leiden: Brill, 2002). For an introduction to archaeological sites in Turkey, see Ekrem Akurgal,
Ancient Civilizations and Ruins of Turkey
(Turkey: Guzel Sanatlar Matbaasi A.S., 2001). There is much of value in Bernard McDonagh,
Blue Guide: Turkey,
3rd edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). Bilge Umar has written many books on the historical geography of Turkey. It is not necessary to know Turkish to appreciate the photos in his
Türkiye'deki Tarihsel Anitlar
(Istanbul: Inkilâp Kitabevi, 1995).

Trevor Bryce, in his
The Kingdom of the Hittites
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) and his
Life and Society in the Hittite World
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), provides an excellent introduction to the Hittites, as does J. G. MacQueen,
The Hittites and Their Contemporaries in Asia Minor,
revised edition (London: Thames & Hudson, 1986); see also several good articles in Sasson, ed.,
Civilizations of the Ancient Near East,
as well as the lavishly illustrated O. Tashin,
Die Hethiter und ihr Reich: Das Volk der 1000 Götter
(Stuttgart: Theiss Verlag, 2002 [in German]) and the guide to Hattusha by its current excavator, J. Seeher,
Hattusha Guide: A Day in the Hittite Capital,
revised edition (Istanbul: Ege Yayinlari, 2002). On new theories about the destruction of Hattusha, see J. Seeher, “Die Zerstörung der Stadt Hattusa,”
Akten der IV: Internationalen Kongresse für Hethitologie
(Wiesbaden, 2001), 623–34. H. A. Hoffner, “Daily Life among the Hittites,” in R. E. Averbeck et al., eds.
Life and Culture in the Ancient Near East
(Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 2003), 95–120, is an excellent overview. There are important recent papers in K. Alishan Yener and Harry A. Hoffner Jr., eds.,
Recent Developments in Hittite Archaeology and History: Papers in Memoriam of Hans G. Güterbock
(Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2002), and Gary Beckman, Richard Beal, and Gregory McMahon, eds.,
Hittite Studies in Honor of Harry A. Hoffner, Jr: On the Occasion of his 65th Birthday
(Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003). There is a great deal of value in the monographs by Gary Beckman,
Hittite Diplomatic Texts,
2nd edition (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999); I. Singer,
Hittite Prayers
(Leiden: Brill, 2002); Harry A. Hoffner Jr.,
The Laws of the Hittites: A Critical Edition
(Leiden: Brill, 1997); and Harry A. Hoffner, ed.,
Hittite Myths
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998). On Hittite music, see Stefano de Martino, “Music, Dance, and Processions in Hittite Anatolia,” in Sasson, ed.,
Civilizations of the Ancient Near East,
vol. 4, 2668–69.

For the Hittites' neighbors and the political geography of Anatolia, see H. Craig Melchert, ed.,
The Luwians,
with important contributions by Trevor Bryce, J. D. Hawkins, Manfred Hutter, and others; J. D. Hawkins, “Tarkasnawa King of Mira”; Hawkins, “Anatolia: The End of the Hittite Empire and After,” in Eva Andrea Braun-Holzinger and Hartmut Matthäus, eds.,
Die nahöstlichen Kulturen und Griechenland an der Wende vom 2. zum 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr.: Kontinuität und Wandel von Strukturen und Mechanismen kultureller Interaktion,
Kolloquium des Sonderforschungsbereiches 295 “Kulturelle und sprachliche Kontakte” der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, December 11–12, 1998 (Möhnesee: Bibliopolis, 2002), 143–51; M. Benzi, “Anatolia and the Eastern Aegean at the Time of the Trojan War,” in Franco Montanari and Paola Ascheri, eds.,
Omero Tremila Anni Dopo
(Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002), 343–409.

What language or languages did the Trojans speak? There is much of interest on this still-unanswered question in the works by Watkins and Melchert cited above; see also G. Neumann, “Wie haben die Troer in 13. Jahrhundert gesprochen?”
Würzberger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaften
23 (1999): 15–23; Ruggero Stefanini, “Toward a Diachronic Reconstruction of the Linguistic Map of Ancient Anatolia,” in S. De Martino and F. Pecchioli Daddi, eds.,
Anatolia antica: Studi in Memoria di Fiorella Imparati, Eothen
11 (Florence: Logisma editore, 2002), 783–806; Itamar Singer, “Western Anatolia in the Thirteenth-Century
B.C.
According to the Hittite Sources,”
Anatolian Studies
33 (1983): 206–17.

For relations between the Greeks and Anatolia, see H. G. Güterbock, “The Hittites and the Aegean World: Part 1, The Ahhiyawa Problem Reconsidered,”
American Journal of Archaeology
87:2 (1983): 133–38; M. J. Mellink, “The Hittites and the Aegean World: Part 2, Archaeological Comments on Ahhiyawa-Achaians in Western Anatolia,”
American Journal of Archaeology
87:2 (1983): 138–41; E. T. Vermeule, “Response to Hans Güterbock,”
American Journal of Archaeology
87:2 (1983): 141–43. See also Trevor Bryce, “Ahhiyawans and Mycenaeans: An Anatolian Viewpoint,”
Oxford Journal of Archaeology
8 (1989): 297–310; Trevor Bryce, “Relations Between Hatti and Ahhiyawa in the Last Decades of the Bronze Age,” in Beckman et al., eds.,
Hittite Studies
(2003): 59–72; E. Cline, “A Possible Hittite Embargo Against the Mycenaeans,”
Historia
40 (1991): 1–9; W. D. Niemeier, “Mycenaeans and Hittites in War in Western Asia Minor,”
Polemos,
vols. 1–2, in
Aegaeum
19, pp. 141–56; P. H. J. Houwink ten Cate, “Contact Between the Aegean Region and Anatolia in the Second Millennium
B.C.
” (1973), in R. A. Crossland and Ann Birchall, eds.,
Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean: Archaeological and Linguistic Problems in Greek Prehistory
(Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Press, 1974), 141–61.

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST BEYOND ANATOLIA

A succinct introduction to the ancient Near East is found in B. A. Knapp,
The History and Culture of Ancient Western Asia and Egypt
(Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1988). Two valuable reference books are Sasson, ed.,
Civilizations of the Ancient Near East,
and Daniel C. Snell, ed.,
A Companion to the Ancient Near East
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). Important collections of documents from the region include W. W. Hallo, ed.,
The Context of Scripture: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World,
2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1997–2000); J. B. Pritchard,
Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament,
revised edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969); Amelie Kuhrt,
The Ancient Near East: c. 3000–330
BC,
2 vols. (London: Routledge, 1995).