The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

by David Abulafia

  II

  The impact of Troy on the history of the Mediterranean is twofold. On the one hand Troy functioned from the beginning of the Bronze Age as a staging-post linking the Aegean to Anatolia and the Black Sea; on the other, the tale of Troy lay at the heart of the historical consciousness not merely of the Greeks who claimed to have destroyed the city, but of the Romans who claimed to be descended from its refugees. The real Troy and the mythical Troy have been hard to disentangle since 1868, when the German businessman Heinrich Schliemann, obsessed with the veracity of the Iliad, identified the mound of Hisarlık, four miles from the point where the Dardanelles flow into the Aegean, as the site of Homer’s city.6 While some scholars have argued that there was no Trojan War, and that in consequence the identity of Troy is a non-question, discoveries in the Hittite archives further east have removed any serious doubt that Hisarlık contains the ruins of a city or statelet variously known to the classical Greeks as Troié and Ilios. Later settlers, including the Greeks who built the new city of Ilion in classical times, and Emperor Constantine, who thought at first of building the New Rome there rather than at Byzantion, were equally convinced of the attribution. More remarkably still, the site has an exceptionally long history reaching back long before the date ascribed to the Trojan War by classical authors (1184 BC). Its history began as bronze was first diffused across the eastern Mediterranean. It was rebuilt again and again; in 1961, one of the modern excavators of the mound, Carl Blegen, identified forty-six strata in nine main layers.7

  Troy had no known Neolithic antecedents. It was settled by people who were familiar with copper, and probably traded in tin. The first Troy, ‘Troy I’ (c. 3000–c. 2500 BC), was a small settlement, about 100 metres across, but it grew into an impressively fortified site, with stone watchtowers and three lines of fortification.8 Over this period there was much rebuilding, and in the last days of Troy I a great conflagration put an end to the fortress. But within the fortress a settled domestic life had proved possible, and the survival of spindle whorls shows that textiles were woven by the side of hearths whose remains have been unearthed; so it stands to reason that the early Trojans also traded in cloth, made from the fleeces of sheep reared in the plains below the citadel. The best-preserved house from Troy I was nearly twenty metres long, with a porch facing westwards; it may well have been inhabited by a leader of the community and his extended family. The early Trojans manufactured small figurines, mostly female, and they lived off shellfish, tuna and dolphin flesh as well as meat and grain. Metal weapons have not been recovered from this level; but the existence of whetstones indicates that copper and bronze tools were regularly sharpened. There is no evidence for luxury: surviving ornaments were made of bone, marble or coloured stone. The plentiful pottery is sombre in appearance, dull in colour and generally undecorated, though the shapes have a certain elegance.9

  Early Troy formed part of a cultural world which extended beyond Anatolia; a similar community developed on the island of Lemnos, not far to the west, on the site of Poliochni, sometimes described as ‘the oldest city in Europe’, as also at Thermi on Lesbos.10 But it is not profitable to speculate where the earliest inhabitants of these lands came from or what languages they spoke. Indeed, if Troy and Poliochni first emerged as trading stations guarding the routes across the Aegean and into the interior, it is likely that they began to attract people of varied origins, as have port cities ever after. Though Hisarlık now stands back from the sea, prehistoric Troy stood on the edge of a large bay (of which Homer seems to have been aware), which has gradually become full of silt.11 Thus it was a maritime city, strategically situated: contrary winds could render entry into the Dardanelles impossible for weeks at a time; shipping was detained in the bay and the inhabitants of the citadel could profitably service the needs of those on board. All this did not happen immediately, and during the period of Troy I it is likely that navigation past the citadel was intermittent and not easy to control. What emerged in its place, Troy II (c. 2500–c. 2300 BC), was a grander and better defended citadel, a little larger, with a monumental gateway and a great hall or megaron, probably surrounded by wooden columns. These Trojans were also farmers and weavers – a spindle has been found to which a piece of carbonized thread still adhered.12 They acquired or manufactured sophisticated armaments; it is thought that their bronze weapons were imports, but softer weapons made just of copper were available and may have been made locally, using metal brought across the Aegean.

  Even though they had now graduated to wheel-thrown pottery (absent from Troy I), Blegen did not like their pots and assumed that they were ‘a dour, austere people, with little fondness for gaiety and light’;13 it is a matter of taste whether the slender goblets the Trojans were now producing were really so dull and lacking in character. In addition, large pots arrived in Troy from as far away as the Cyclades, carrying oil or wine. Similar pottery to that made in Troy has been found around the shores of the Aegean and Anatolia, and the easy assumption is that these items were exported from Troy, though it is more likely that the style of pottery reflected a common culture of which Troy was one part. Indeed, Poliochni, with which Troy shared so many features, was twice the size of Troy. These Aegean settlements lagged far behind the cities of Egypt and Mesopotamia in wealth, and there is no evidence they had yet developed writing, a tool that would, in due course, greatly facilitate trade and accounting; nonetheless, Troy and Poliochni were becoming part of an intertwined trading world across which snaked regular commercial routes by sea and land; and the clearest evidence that this brought great wealth to the elite of Troy II is found in the famous ‘Treasure of Priam’ discovered by Schliemann.

  The long disappearance of this treasure within Soviet vaults has deprived scholars of the opportunity to make sense of what sometimes seems to be a contrived creation of Schliemann himself.14 Schliemann gathered together what he found in several hoards, one of which he characterized as the ‘Great Treasure’, attributing it to a siege which (if it ever occurred) took place a millennium later. The quality of workmanship was truly impressive. The collection of women’s jewellery and gold and silver vessels is striking, including a golden ‘sauceboat’ and what he believed to be a woman’s headdress made of gold filaments, as well as thousands of gold beads and several silver necklaces; there were plenty of items made of other materials, including jade ceremonial axes and rock crystal knobs that may have been attached to sceptres. Some items were apparently made locally; others, including the gold itself, must have been imports. All this speaks volubly for a society which was ruled by a prosperous elite that had accumulated considerable wealth from the profits of the trade passing through the city. Troy was not just a trade entrepôt but a centre of industry, most probably producing heavy wool fabrics; another export may have been timber from Mount Ida nearby, for shipbuilding and construction in nearby lands; the area was rich in farmland and livestock. Judging from finds of animal bones, it was not yet the famous centre for the rearing of horses that it would eventually become. But Troy was a peripheral settlement; the Mediterranean was never the focus of the interests of the great kings of Hatti further to the east, which were firmly directed towards the mountainous, mineral-bearing interior of western Asia.

  The rise of Troy was not a straight trajectory. Troy III (built after Troy II was destroyed by fire around 2250 BC) was a poorer settlement than Troy II, and its inhabitants were squeezed together less comfortably on their hilltop. Turtle flesh featured prominently in their diet. On Lemnos, Poliochni apparently suffered attacks, and the town contracted in size and wealth by the end of the third millennium BC. Around 2100 BC Troy was destroyed again, perhaps in war, but in the rebuilt Troy IV conditions were not markedly better, and tight, tortuous streets wound between the houses. Wider changes in western Asia were affecting the eastern Mediterranean: in central and eastern Anatolia the empire of Hatti and then, from c. 1750 BC, the new empire of Anitta became the focus for trade up from the Tigris and Euphrates; business was dive
rted away from the trade routes that had been bringing metals to the northern edge of the Aegean.15 After the age of gold, then, came a period of recession, lasting 300 years or more, though by the end of Troy V, around 1700 BC, conditions were improving; houses were cleaner, and the inhabitants preferred beef and pork to the turtle stews of their forebears. But the most striking developments in trade and culture were taking place once again in the islands of the eastern Mediterranean – on Crete and the Cyclades.

  III

  The Minoan civilization in Crete was the first major Mediterranean civilization, the first wealthy, literate, city-based culture with a vibrant artistic culture to emerge within the Mediterranean world. This claim might seem to be contradicted by the still earlier emergence of high civilization in Old Dynasty Egypt, but the Egyptians regarded the shores of the Mediterranean as the outer edge of their world, which was defined by the Nile, not by the sea beyond. By contrast, the Minoans actively navigated the Mediterranean and the sea featured in many striking ways in their culture – in the design of their pottery, in their ceramics, and, possibly, in the cult of the sea god Poseidon. The Minoans were almost certainly descended from migrants who had arrived from Anatolia. Yet what they created was a civilization distinctive in its style of art, religious cults, economic life and social organization. In addition, they left a memory of their achievements in the legends of the great king Minos, whose name has been attached to their civilization by modern archaeologists. Thucydides reported how King Minos had been the first to create a great naval empire, or thalassokratia, in the Mediterranean world; so some memory of early Crete lingered as late as fifth-century Athens. The Athenians also remembered a sacrificial tribute of young men which had been paid regularly to the king of Crete, of which echoes can be found in the ritual practices of the Cretans during the second millennium.16

  The earliest settlement at Knossos, dating back to Neolithic times, was already developing its own artistic style before the end of the third millennium. Pottery designs of early Bronze Age Crete diverged more and more from those of neighbouring lands. Pottery of the period known as Early Minoan II (c. 2600–2300 BC) was characterized by a mottling effect, managed through tricks learned during firing; in addition, attention was paid to the outward form of vessels, achieving a delicacy of form and a liveliness in decoration (great swirls and flowing meanders) which increasingly distinguished the pottery of early Crete from that of contemporary Anatolia. There were influences from outside, too. By 2000 the Cretans were producing ivory and stone seals, a sign that an elite anxious to assert ownership of its goods had emerged; some themes, such as lions, are clearly of outside inspiration, while abstract patterns often recall Egyptian or Near Eastern seals – trade with Syria and the mouth of the Nile was already active.17

  It is not necessary to make a stark choice between the early Minoans as an indigenous people of talent and the Minoans as migrants who brought with them elements of Near Eastern cultures; Crete was a crossroads of several cultures, and must have attracted settlers from many directions. Classical writers from Homer onwards enumerated the many different peoples who inhabited the island, including the ‘great-hearted Eteo-Cretans’, that is, ‘true Cretans’, and the ‘noble Pelasgians’, a term used for any number of wandering peoples. Place-names on Crete and on the mainland with pre-Greek endings such as -nthos and -ssa may have been left by peoples who were living in the region well before the coming of the Greeks; the most memorable -nthos word is ‘labyrinth’, which classical sources connected with the palace of Minos at Knossos, while -ssa words include the word for the sea itself, thalassa.18 Language and genes are, however, separate issues, and better than any attempt to identify a ‘native stock’, with its own idiosyncratic genius, is an interpretation of the Minoans as cosmopolitan people whose easy openness to many cultures also left them free to devise art forms of their own that were unlike those anywhere else. They were not hidebound by traditions of style and technique which some neighbouring cultures, notably in Egypt, preserved little changed over many millennia.

  The building of the palaces offers the clearest proof that what developed in Crete was a dynamic local civilization. Knossos, six miles from the seashore, was reconstructed as a great palace around 1950 BC, and around the same time (‘Middle Minoan I’) other palaces developed at Phaistos in the south and Mallia in the east. Knossos, however, was always the queen among the palaces; whether this reflected its political or religious pre-eminence, or simply the greater resources of the area under its command, is uncertain; theories that the island was divided into chiefdoms based at the various palaces are, indeed, theories. Even the term ‘palace’ is doubtful: possibly these structures were temple complexes, though it would be wrong to assume that the Minoans applied the same sharply defined categories as a modern observer.19 There had been a small complex on the site of Knossos previously; so the building of the great palaces was not the initiative of a new immigrant people who had seized charge, but one that grew out of the existing culture of the island. It reflected an economic boom, as Crete confirmed its role as the crossroads of the eastern Mediterranean, as a source of wool and textiles. Imitation of foreign palaces was conscious: there were grand palaces and temples of comparable size in Egypt, with frescoed walls and colonnaded courts. But the design, style and function of the palaces in Crete was quite different.20

  The palace at Knossos was repeatedly damaged by fires and quakes, and over its 200-year history there were many changes in its internal appearance. But a few snapshots of its contents can be shown. The so-called Vat Room, dug into the soil of the Old Palace, contained an impressive collection of goblets and artefacts from about 1900 BC, probably used in religious rites. Some of the pottery came from the highlands of Crete, but there were exotic objects too, such as pieces of ivory, faience and ostrich egg, revealing contact with Egypt and Syria. Predictably, there were quantities of obsidian from Melos. So it is clear that in the period of the Old Palace the Minoans were linked northwards to the Cyclades and south and eastwards to the Levant and the Nile. A distinctive type of loom-weight found in the Old Palace suggests that Knossos was a centre for the production of a special type of cloth which was exported to neighbouring lands; these weights appear outside Crete only after about 1750 BC. Enormous jars, pithoi, set into the ground were used to store oil, grain and other goods, whether for palace use or for trade. The Cretans perfected an eggshell-thin pottery, exported to Egypt and Syria. Some items were made in palace workshops; but around the palaces there stood real towns, for this was ‘civilization’ in the full sense, a culture that revolved in significant measure around cities, with all their specialized crafts. Knossos had satellite towns at Katsamba and Amnisos which functioned as its seaports, and Amnisos was mentioned in Egyptian texts. Here, the Minoan fleets were built and docked, and (to judge from pottery finds) trade expeditions set out for the Peloponnese and Dodecanese, including Rhodes, then up to Miletos and probably Troy.21 The first Minoan shipwreck to be discovered by maritime archaeologists came to light only at the start of the twenty-first century, in north-eastern Crete. The ship was ten or fifteen metres in length and carried dozens of amphorae and large jars, used for carrying wine or oil along the coasts of Crete some time around 1700 BC. Its wooden structure has entirely decayed, but a Cretan seal shows a single-masted vessel with a beaked prow and high stern, and that is probably how it looked.22

  Evidence for external links, and of the idiosyncratic response to them, comes with the appearance of writing in Crete. Seals in pictographic writing begin to appear from about 1900 onwards, so the development of a script seems to coincide quite neatly with the first phase of palace-building. By the end of the Old Palace period, large numbers of documents were pouring forth: inventories of goods received or stored, including tribute from those working the land to be paid to the ruler or deities of Knossos. The main function of writing was to maintain accounts; and behind the scribes there was evidently an efficient and demanding administration. A few o
f the symbols resembled Egyptian hieroglyphs, indicating that the Cretan script drew inspiration from Egyptian writing. Perhaps because the sound system of the Cretan language was different, most of the signs that actually developed were quite unEgyptian. So the idea of writing may have been borrowed; but the writing system was not.

  Fires and massive earthquakes brought the first palace period to an end in the eighteenth century BC. Phaistos had to be totally reconstructed. At a sanctuary on Mount Jouktas, a priest, a priestess and a young man gathered to propitiate the earth-shaking gods; the young man was sacrificed, but then the roof collapsed, burying those who had vainly offered up his life.23 Bearing in mind the story of the young men and women sent from Athens to feed the Minotaur, there is no reason to doubt that human sacrifice was practised in Minoan Crete. After some intermediate attempts at rebuilding, the New Palace complex emerged which – despite further fires and earthquakes – is still visible at Knossos, imaginatively reconstructed around 1900 by Sir Arthur Evans, with its vibrant frescoes, its maze of chambers, its ‘royal quarters’ on several levels, its great court and the ceremonies that can be dimly perceived: the ritual or sport of bull-leaping, and great processions bringing tribute to the goddess Potnia.24 This New Palace period lasted from about 1700 BC to 1470 BC, ending spectacularly with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that also put an end to the Cycladic civilization on the island of Thera. Some of the frescoes portray a lively palace-based culture: one shows the women of the court, often bare-breasted, sitting around what must be the central courtyard, though one should not be beguiled by these paintings, which are intelligent reconstructions from small fragments. Most commentators have revelled in this image of Minoan culture as happy, peaceful and respectful of women; but it is important not to impose modern values, and what we see in the frescoes is the life of the elite – a princely court, or colleges of priests and priestesses. The question whether the palaces were really, or also, temples is pertinent here. These buildings were home to a court culture that revolved around religious cults, in which the snake goddess played an especially important role, probably as a chthonic deity; as in other early Mediterranean cultures, female deities were dominant.