Black Ships

by Jo Graham

  “Men do not measure grain in tallies anymore, or write down the number of their measures. They do not build on the coast, but in strong places inland, and do not send their ships to trade far from home. The world has ended and the great days are past.”

  “We endure,” I said. “And I cannot find what we have built so ill.”

  Below us, the pale leaves of the grapes entwined, and beyond them a grove of young olive trees stretched their boughs to the sun. Ila’s husband was not a sailor, but a farmer with terraced slopes who planted trees that would bear for his children, and these were his.

  “It is beyond price,” Neas said and took the water skin from me. Sometimes we walked up here, when he had the desire to talk to his oracle privately. I had not given up that office to Kianna, though it would be hers one day to counsel the king, and the two young kings who would come after.

  “I am fifty-three,” he said. “And I have seen the world end and then begin. That is more than enough for one lifetime.”

  “It is, Neas,” I said.

  He took another drink and then handed the water back to me. I drank, pushing my hair back from my eyes, more silver than black now.

  Down on the river one of our little coasters was coming up from the sea, a fishing boat back from a catch made at dawn.

  “That’s Markai with Seagull, isn’t it?” he asked. Neas’ eyes were not what they had been.

  “Yes,” I said. The coaster turned into the channel, her sail furled and her ten oars moving in perfect time.

  “Do you think they remember us, those we have loved, beyond the River?” he said.

  I turned and looked into his light eyes, as warm and as familiar as the sky above us. He had asked me this before, on the Island of the Dead, while the waves washed over the empty city, cool and bleak beneath the waters. I was less sure of my answer this time.

  “My king,” I said. “I do not know. When I was a child I was taught that when we pass the second River, that is Memory, we forget. But while we tarry in the Endless Fields we may remember. But now I do not know.”

  He smiled into my eyes. “My Lady, whatever we are taught, whatever the gods will, I will remember you until the end of the world.”

  I closed my eyes and then opened them, but he was still smiling at me. “My dear prince, I will remember you too,” I said, and while I did not feel Her hand just then, I knew with every certainty I have ever felt that it was true.

  Below us, the coaster was coming up to the dock. Markai was at the tiller, his chest bare and brown in the summer sun, his black hair held behind him with a piece of leather.

  I leaned back on Neas’ shoulder, and his hand went round my waist, holding my hand in his.

  There was a squeal and my little granddaughter, four years old, ran shouting down the dock. Markai leaped lightly onto the stones and swept her up laughing, tossing her onto his shoulder, her long dark hair streaming.

  And the world was mended.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Black Ships is based on The Aeneid, which is in itself a kind of historical novel. The Aeneid was written by a Roman, Publius Vergilius Maro, best known as Virgil, at the very end of the first century BCE. During this time, the early part of the reign of Augustus, there was a fad for all things Greek and for Greek culture, which of course included the two great epics, The lliad and The Odyssey. Telling the story of the Trojan War and its aftermath as Odysseus tries to return home, The Iliad and The Odyssey remain classic stories of war and adventure today.

  Virgil wanted to capture something of the thrilling beauty of these two great poems for Roman audiences in a way that made a new work that was uniquely Roman, and that could serve as a cultural touchstone in the same way. He wanted to tell a story that would both provide a context for Rome’s history and that would be popular with general audiences as well as the most important patron, the emperor Augustus. The story he told is that of Aeneas, the last prince of Troy, who undergoes great trials on land and sea on his way to find a new home for the Trojan people, and ultimately to found the Roman people.

  So Virgil’s epic is my starting point, my first source. I have used the DC Heath and Company edition in Latin, published in Toronto in 1964, in which I first met Aeneas and his travels when I was in high school. There are any number of fine translations, and I encourage you to find them!

  The historicity of the Trojan War has been debated at least since Virgil’s time. The most accessible and inspiring recent book on the subject is one I have leaned on extensively, Michael Wood’s In Search of the Trojan War, University of California Press, 1985. Carefully blending modern archaeological research with recently deciphered Linear B tablets, with sources from Egypt and Hatti, and with The lliad itself, he presents the Trojan War as part of the crisis in the Mediterranean that precipitated a Dark Age that lasted for hundreds of years. This is the story I have chosen to tell—of the wanderings of the People not as an isolated event, but as part of the great displacement in this time of crisis.

  But what of Troy itself? The city on Hisarlik that we know as Troy and that the Hittite archives knew as Wilusa was destroyed many times. Two particular sets of ruins, those of Troy VI and Troy VIIa, both date from this period. The two destructions may be as little as a generation apart. In short, they may bear the same relationship to each other as World War I and World War II. Does it not seem reasonable that over time people will conflate these two modern conflicts, and that Hitler and Wilson might be seen as antagonists, facing each other operatically in the same story? Perhaps that is what has happened here, and that the events of both conflicts have been put together as the story of one war that lasted ten years.

  I have set the First Trojan War, the one in which Gull’s mother was made captive, around 1200 BCE, one of the later dates for the destruction of Troy VI. The Second Trojan War, the one that precipitates the wanderings of Neas and the People, is the destruction of Troy VIIa, around 1180 BCE. The cities were completely different. Troy VI was a great city with beautiful walls, broad streets, and lavish palaces. Troy VIIa was a “shantytown” built on the ruins, with mended walls and palaces cut up into small apartments. This is Neas’ and Xandros’ Wilusa. It is also the city excavated by Carl W. Blegen, whose midcentury classic work, Troy and the Trojans, was recently reprinted by Barnes and Noble Books, New York, 2001.

  Among the many books I have leaned on for the People’s wanderings, I especially recommend two:

  The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe CA. 1200 BC by Robert Drews, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1995, is an incredibly insightful military history analysis of the change in warfare at the time, and especially of the impact of the new kind of sword on the chariot-based armies of the period. I have also leaned heavily on the Smithsonian Institution, whose collection of old- and new-style swords from the Aegean world was extremely helpful when I needed to go see Neas’ Shardana sword!

  The second book is The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean by N. K. Sandars, Thames and Hudson, New York, 1985, which connects the dots beautifully between the people of Wilusa, Ugarit, Byblos, and Egypt. It brings the Sea People out of Homer and into history, detailing the great battle fought by Ramses III around 1175 BCE that denied the Sea People control of Egypt and at last provided an unbreachable bulwark against the chaos that had already engulfed most of the Mediterranean world.

  One of the greatest dramatic problems I encountered in retelling some form of The Aeneid is the entire Carthaginian sequence, and Aeneas’ doomed affair with Queen Dido. The story-telling problem is that Carthage was not founded until at least four hundred years after the probable Trojan War, and it would be completely impossible for Aeneas to visit it! However, in the actual late Bronze Age the great power was Egypt, where a princess could indeed wield the kind of power Virgil gives to Dido. We know Ramses III had sisters, but do not know their names. Basetamon is an invention of mine to combine historical Egypt with the famous story of Dido and Aeneas.

>   The sources on Egypt are myriad, but there is one that merits special mention because of the amount I used it in telling Gull’s experiences, Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt by Joyce Tyldesley, Penguin Books, London, 1994.

  Another fascinating book that I used extensively in the Byblos section is Mark S. Smith’s The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, Erdmans, Cambridge, 2002. For the reimagined descriptions of the Thesmophoria and the mythological calendar of Greece, I was inspired by Jennifer Reif’s Mysteries of Demeter, Samuel Weiser, Maine, 1999.

  I hope that you will be as fascinated by this little-known period of history as I was, and that you will go explore some of the wonderful source material yourself! (A list of other useful materials appears on my Web site: www.jograham.net.)

  PEOPLE, PLACES, AND THINGS

  Achaian: archaic term for the Hellenes, the people we think of as ancient Greeks. Used in Homer, a better translation might be Mycenaeans

  Agamemnon: the High King of Mycenae at the time of the Achaian expedition against Troy. In that war, he took the prophetess Kassandra as his prize, raping her and returning with her to Mycenae. He was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, who was in turn killed by his son Orestes, who was in turn pursued by the Furies

  Ahhiyawa: Achaia, or mainland Greece, in the Arzawan language

  Amynter: One of Neas’ captains, of the warship Hunter. Father of two sons, the eldest of whom is Kassander

  Anchises: Neas’ father, a nobleman of Wilusa who was the lover of Lysisippa, the daughter of Priam who became Cythera

  Aren: Gull’s younger half brother

  Arzawan: the language spoken by the people of Wilusa and the surrounding territories, including parts of the Hittite empire

  Ashkelon: “the city of Ashteret,” modern-day town of Al Majdal/Migdal Ashkelon in Israel, just north of Gaza. During the reign of Ramses III it was an Egyptian settlement

  Ashterah: a eunuch priestess dedicated to Ashteret in Byblos

  Ashteret: She Who Treads Upon the Sea, the Semitic goddess of sexuality, fertility, and the sea. She is the daughter of the god El, worshipped in Phoenicia and Judah. Byblos is one of the ancient centers of her worship

  Bai: rower on Dolphin who is also a skilled archer

  Basetamon (Princess): sister of Pharaoh Ramses III, and his viceroy in Memphis

  Blessing of Ships: rite opening the spring sailing season, around the spring equinox and the end of March

  Byblos: a city on the coast of modern-day Lebanon, known for its exports of wood and paper. The ruler of Byblos is Prince Hiram

  Chariot of the Sun: Neoptolemos’ flagship, painted with Helios’ chariot on the sail

  Cloud: one of Neas’ warships

  Creusa: Neas’ wife, Wilos’ mother, who was killed in the destruction of Wilusa

  Cumai (Cumae): a town north and west of modern Naples, near Mount Vesuvius. In ancient times there was the Shrine of the Sybil of Cumae and a reputed entrance to the Underworld

  Cythera: one of the epithets for Aphrodite of the Sea. Also the title of the chief priestess of Aphrodite of the Sea

  Demeter: goddess of grain and the harvest, mother of Kore Persephone

  Denden: Egyptian name for the Wilusans

  Dolcis: Pythia’s servant in Pylos

  Dolphin: Xandros’ ship, with a leaping dolphin painted on her prow white on black, and red on white on her sail

  Feast of the Descent (Skira): the festival marking Persephone’s descent into the Underworld, and her transformation from Kore to Queen of the Dead. Takes place at the end of June

  Feast of the Return (Thesmophoria and related rites): the festival marking Persephone’s return from the Underworld and her reunion with her mother, Demeter. This is one of the main festivals of the year, taking place over a week in late October

  Gull (also Linnea, Pythia, and Sybil): The daughter of a woman taken as a slave from Wilusa, Gull grows up in Pylos along the flax river until an accident causes her to become Pythia’s acolyte

  Hattuselak: Hittite gentleman of Millawanda, an old friend of Anchises

  Hiram (Prince): ruler of Byblos, a city on the coast of modern-day Lebanon

  Hry (He Who Walks in the Sunlight of Amon): a priest of Thoth in Memphis who had traveled in Wilusa before the first war. Hry is not a personal name, but a title held by the Lector Priests who had charge of sacred texts and learning. In context, it’s something like “Father”

  Hunter: one of Neas’ warships, named for Orion, the hunter of the skies. Captained by Amynter

  Idele: one of the captive women from Wilusa, wife of Maris

  Idenes: the son of King Nestor of Pylos

  lla: daughter of Gull and Xandros

  Iphigenia: the daughter of Agamemnon who was sacrificed by her father to raise the winds that the Achaian expedition might sail for Troy

  Island of the Dead (Thera): the modern-day island of Santorini, Thera is a volcanic island in the Cyclades that had a thriving civilization during the Bronze Age. It was destroyed in a massive volcanic eruption around 1270 BCE

  Jamarados: Captain of Lady’s Eyes, the most experienced of Neas’ captains

  Kalligenia (the Ascent of the Maiden): the last rite of the Thesmophoria, in late October

  Karas: son of Gull and Xandros

  Kassander: Amynter’s son, a messenger boy and substitute rower on Dolphin

  Khemet (the Black Land): Egypt, more specifically the valley of the Nile, and the language spoken there

  Kianna: Tia’s daughter, promised to Gull before her birth as her acolyte

  Kore (the Maiden): Persephone in her virgin aspect

  Kos: Xandros’ second in command on Dolphin. His younger sister is Tia

  Krete: modern-day Crete, the seat of the Minoan civilization during the Bronze Age

  Kyla: Illyrian girl who is Gull’s friend in Pylos

  Lady of the Dead: Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld who is the consort of Hades

  Lady of the Sea: Aphrodite, specifically Aphrodite Cythera, who was born from the waves

  Lady’s Eyes: one of Neas’ warships, captained by Jamarados

  Latinus: King of Latium

  Latium: an Etruscan town northwest of modern-day Rome

  Lavinia (Princess): the daughter and only surviving child of King Latinus of Latium

  Lide: a captive woman from Wilusa taken in the first war, she is also a skilled midwife and healer, as well as the mother of two young sons

  Linnea: the name given to Gull by Pythia, meaning “girl from the flax river”

  Lord of the Dead: Hades, ruler of the Underworld, husband of Persephone

  Lower City (of Wilusa): The city had two parts, the Citadel, which was on the high mound of Hisarlik and enclosed by a great wall, and the Lower City which stood outside the walls presumably around the harbor. Few archaeological remains have been recovered from the Lower City

  Lysisippa: Priam’s eldest daughter, Kassandra’s older sister, who was Cythera, the chief priestess of Aphrodite, at Mount Ida. Anchises was her lover, and Neas is her son

  Markai: son of Gull and Xandros

  Memphis: ancient capital of Egypt, later the second greatest city in Egypt. Near modern-day Cairo

  Menace: one of Neas’ warships

  Mikel: one of the warriors of the Phoenician god Baal, a young god who wants to champion the worthy

  Millawanda: the Hittite name for Miletus, a walled city on the coast of Asia Minor

  Mycenae: the greatest of the Achaian cities in the Bronze Age, it seems to have been the seat of a confederation of states throughout mainland Greece and possibly the islands. It may have been the home of the “Great King of Ahhiyawa” mentioned in the Hittite diplomatic archives. In mythology, that Great King was Agamemnon, son of Atreus, who led the Achaian assault on Troy. The citadel of Mycenae was discovered by Heinrich Schliemann late in the nineteenth century and has been the subject of many archaeological expeditions since then

&nb
sp; Neas (Prince Aeneas): Son of Anchises and a priestess of Aphrodite (Lysisippa the daughter of Priam), the last prince of Wilusa. He was married to Creusa, who was killed in the sacking of the city. His son is Wilos

  Neoptolemos: son of the hero Achilles, in mythology he is blamed for the murder of Hector’s infant son Astyanax, several other members of the Trojan royal family, and with the rape and enslavement of Hector’s widow Andromache. Perhaps this holds the memory of an expedition led against Troy VIIa in the generation after Agamemnon

  Nestor (King): In The Iliad and The Odyssey, the king of Pylos, an ally of Agamemnon

  Nubia: during the reign of Ramses III, a tributary kingdom of Egypt located southward along the Nile in modern-day Sudan

  Patroclus: In The Iliad, the companion (or lover) of Achilles who is killed before the walls of Troy, thus stirring Achilles to vengeance

  Pearl: one of Neas’ warships, captained by Maris

  Polyra: one of the Wilusan women captives in the second war, mother of a nine-year-old son who escaped the sinking of a fishing boat by swimming to Dolphin and being rescued by Xandros

  Priam: former king of Wilusa, Neas’ grandfather

  Prison of the Winds: Mount Etna in Sicily, the most active volcano in Europe. In mythology, Aeolus, the god of the winds, was imprisoned beneath the mountain, and Hephaestus had his forge there

  Pylos: city on the western shore of Greece, south of Ithaca. In the Bronze Age, there was a palace and settlement there that was deserted around 1200 BC. In The Iliad and The Odyssey this was the royal seat of King Nestor. The palace was excavated by Carl Blegen in the 1930s

  Pythia: the oracle at any of the great Shrines, in a later period particularly that of Apollo at Delphi. In Black Ships, the old oracle to whom Gull is apprenticed

  Ramses III: Pharaoh of Egypt from 1183–1152 BCE, he was the last powerful Pharaoh of the New Kingdom. He defeated sea raiders in a massive battle circa 1175 BCE, a battle commemorated in the carvings in the temple at Medinet Habu