Chronicle 10. THE… “SUN LANGUAGE”

Chronicle 10. THE… “SUN LANGUAGE”

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικο 10. Η… “ΓΛΩΣΣΑ-ΗΛΙΟΣ”

Calligraphic tree of life, Turkey (1897-98)

● Linguistics à la Turca ● İsmail Beşikçi and the Kurds ● Egyptian, Graeco-Byzantine, Arabo-Persian and Turkish Music ● Assimilation Through Religion and
Language ● Arabic Music Schools

Michales Loukovikas

“HITTITES, SUMERIANS, EGYPTIANS, ROMANS, Indians and Chinese: they all owe their existence to the Turkic race; their cultures and languages have been created by the Turks. Arabs and Jews are of Turkic origin; the prophet Muhammad was a Turk, as well. And all the languages of the world are derived from Turkish, the mother of all languages. The Kurdish language is non-existent; it is just a corrupt dialect of Turkish; the Kurds are nothing but Turkish highlanders”.

Psychotic megalomania? Absolutely! But also a… university thesis, or even more: an official state policy! This aphorism might very well be the starting point of a synopsis about the official Turkish ideology on the national question. Everyone in the Eurasian zone – except the Hellenes, the Persians, and… barbarians – owe almost everything to the Turks: their very existence, their language and culture, let alone their music!

“What about the Hellenes?”, some “Romioí” anxiously insist on asking, as they refuse to accept that they have either… never existed, or – most likely – are included among the “Romans” of the above citation quoted from the gold-bound kitabs of the sages.

“The question on the origin of the Yunanlılar [Ionians] has been clear since the time of Homer”, is the smug reply. “The great rhapsode was also a Turk called Omer. Besides, the Europeans have preserved his name almost intact: Homer”!

Well, I’m not referring to freaks of a sick mind. It is perhaps hard to believe but these ideas are championed by academics! The “Great Idea” (Megale Idea) has died out in Greece(?), but in Turkey it is alive and well, and (desires to be) the master of the world…

Anatolian languages

The Kurdish languages belong to the Iranian and Indo-Iranian branches of the Indo-European family. Therefore, they are related to the Persian (Farsi), Indian Sanskrit, Hellenic and most European languages. Even… worse (for the Turkish “linguists”), the ancient languages in the Anatolian area, still spoken or extinct, such as Hittite, have also been Indo-European.⁽¹⁾

Asia Minor/Anatolia: the multitude of peoples, languages and countries in antiquity.

• ⁽¹⁾ Most probably by the 1st century BCE, the native Anatolian languages went extinct, since the area was heavily Hellenized after the conquests of Alexander the Great. This makes Anatolian the first known branch of Indo-European to become extinct. The languages that are attested (written in cuneiform or hieroglyphs) are the following:

Hittite in central Anatolia; Carian; Lydian; Cappadocian; Pisidian; Sidetic in Pamphylia; Palaic in Paphlagonia; Isaurian on the Taurus Mountains; the Lycian branch, where Milyan is included; the Luwian branch, centered in Cilicia, but also extending northwest, where the Trojan language perhaps belonged; possibly Lycaonian; or the subsequent Pamphylian. Other Indo-European tongues in the peninsula were Phrygian and Mysian, probably belonging to the Paleo-Balkan languages, together with Thracian, Dacian, the Illyrian branch, and others, indicating that the Phrygians, and possibly the Mysians, went to Anatolia from the Balkans.

● Nationalism cries out: “one country, one people, one language!”, versus Reality, depicted in the above diverse mosaic of Anatolian countries, peoples, and languages.

Against this panspermia of ancient native Indo-European Anatolian languages and dialects, the Turkic languages (Turkish is just one of them) are relatively newcomers in Asia Minor, and belong to the Altaic family, together with the Mongolic tongues. Some linguists group the Altaic and Uralic (or Finno-Ugric) languages together (in the Ural-Altaic family). No such hypothesis connecting the Altaic and Indo-European languages has been put forward. It doesn’t matter much to Ankara’s “scientists”. So, they teach linguistics this way… à la turca:

Subject: The Sun Language Theory

“As is well known, the word soleil means sun in French. In the Turkic dialect of Yakut [Sakha] we can find the corresponding word silai. As the ‘s’ of the Yakut dialect turns to ‘g’ in the other Turkic dialects,⁽²⁾ it is self-evident [!] that the word comes from a Turkic root meaning light. Nevertheless, the Turks prefer the more common Turkish word günes. But the proof of the Turkic origin of the word soleil has been a revelation of a great linguistic and scientific truth, from which most important conclusions are derived”…

Signed (unashamedly): İ. N. Dilmen, professor.

The theory that Anatolia might be the cradle of the Indo-European languages was distorted into a pseudo-theory they had a Turkic/Turkish origin though: a) the popular hypothesis postulates their root in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and expansion by early 3rd millennium BCE; b) the earliest evidence of Turkic tongues as a separate group comes almost four millennia later in an early 8th century CE inscription found in Mongolia; c) the first reference to “Turks” appears in Chinese sources of the 6th century CE; d) Asia Minor was invaded by the Seljuks in the 11th century, ultimately resulting in permanent Turkic settlement in the peninsula.
● Above: a Hattian pair of long-horned bulls (copper,
c. 2300-2000 BCE)

• ⁽²⁾ This text makes clear that, according to Dilmen (and “linguists” à la turca), there are no Turkic languages; they are all Turkish dialects. He defined Yakut (or Sakha) as a dialect, although it is considered a language. Nationalist stranglehold on social sciences is very well known (Dilmen is a “very good” example). That’s why there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect. The most common and most purely linguistic criterion is that of mutual intelligibility. It seems logical but it’s deceptive and far from scientific:

• Once I was in Granada with two Italianas searching for a good place to listen to flamenco. I still remember my amazement when I heard the girls asking passers-by for information: they spoke Italian, the others answered in Spanish, and there was no problem of mutual intelligibility! What does that mean? That Italian and Spanish are dialects? If so, of what language?

• On the other hand, one day, while eating in the University Dining Hall, there were two Cypriots sitting at the same table opposite me and speaking their village vernacular. I understood zero, nil, nothing at all! Not even the topic of discussion! What does that mean? That Helladic Greek and Cypriot are not Hellenic dialects but separate languages?

İsmail Beşikçi and
the Kurdish Question

Since I don’t like to be branded as “nationalist”, I invoke a Turkish scientist in the true sense of the word, the sociologist İsmail Beşikçi, a man who’s spent most of his life in Turkish state prisons not because he has committed any crime, but because he’s had the courage to publicize his documented views. Beşikçi has been persecuted/prosecuted, just because he initially criticized (and polemicized later on) the Turkish ruling ideology as it was set forth in such “scientific” theses – and even more because he has studied in depth and wrote extensively about a taboo subject: the Kurdish question.⁽³⁾

Kurdish musicians (1890)

• ⁽³⁾ The on-going war between Turks and Kurds dates back to the “Turkish War of Independence”, which established a Turkish nationalist state that has repressed the human rights of Kurdish people. The Kurds felt betrayed because they had taken part in almost every “dirty job” of the Turks from the late 19th century to the 1910s, mainly in the first ethnic cleansings of the 20th century, as they thought that they “cleared” the place for themselves. The perpetrators of the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Genocides (1.5 million + 900.000 + 400.000 = almost 3 million dead) were Turks, Kurds, Arabs and Caucasian Muslims: in fact, it was the genocide of heterodox people by the Islamists. But the Turks were primarily nationalists; so, they also turned against the Kurds, who finally rebelled. Major historical events, before the PKK revolt, include the Koçgiri, Sheikh Said, Ararat, and Dersim rebellions (1920, 1925, 1930, and 1938).

• Note that Beşikçi was born a Turk, not a Kurd. So he deserves our admiration even more.

The citations quoted above (except that reference to Homer) are from Beşikçi’s Historical Thesis on Turkey / The Sun Language Theory and the Kurdish Question, which cost him three years in prison, since he was “reckless” enough not to deny the existence of a nation… The first thing he took into account was the nature of the positions adopted by Turkish “scientists”, under the “guidance” of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), in 1930. Based on official documents, speeches and “scientific” theses, Beşikçi analyzed the formulation and development of the ideology of Kemalism, exposing its unscientific, racist and chauvinistic nature. In one of his numerous apologies (i.e. speeches in defense of himself), he attacked the official “Justice” of the Kemalist regime:

İsmail Beşikçi

“As a repressive state mechanism, this court threatens writers and intellectuals with imprisonment, favours police measures and secret trials, condemns scientific thought, prefers the secret services’ reports against truth and sociological findings, imposes verdicts without – at least – taking into account the defense of the accused and, using loopholes, accepts colonial oppression and tyranny, denying the reality of the existence of the Kurdish nation, something that is an objective fact above the will of people and institutions.

“This court essentially acts as an administrative and political body with a seemingly ‘independent function’ and ‘independent judgment’. It functions like the gendarmerie, police, national security service and other similar services, attempting to impose the hegemony of the official ideology through its verdicts. Rejecting an objective truth, your court is lying, considering the conclusions drawn by systematic societal research, the reliable knowledge, and the rights we advocate, as incriminating evidence.

“This court acts like the gendarmerie, police, national security
and other services, attempting to impose the hegemony
of the official ideology through its verdicts.” (İsmail Beşikçi)

Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk)

“In its verdicts regarding my books, your court states that ‘the sacred memory of Atatürk is stained’. What does that mean? It means that the Kurdish masses – men, women and children – will be continuously sent to exile, to the gallows, will be slaughtered, that laws and decrees will be shamelessly adopted on this logic – but anyone who criticizes such phenomena will be tried on the grounds of ‘libeling the sacred memory of Atatürk’. How can one consider genocide, exiles, the complete assimilation enforced in Kurdistan by the Kemalist regime as ‘sacred memory’? The division and partition of Kurdistan, the implementation of the tactics ‘divide and rule’ against the Kurdish nation, may be ‘sacred memory’ only for the imperialists and colonialists.

“The Turkish universities, on the other hand, as slaves of the official ideology, reject in principio scientific thought obscuring and denying the reality of the Kurdish nation. They consider the official ideology, which is based on fraud and indifference towards objectivity, as the only irresistible and definite reality. Thus they present this official ideology as scientific and legal. It is at this point that the ‘independent’ court and ‘independent’ judgment intervene, trying under threat of punishment to prevent any criticism of the university professors who, through political charlatanism, demand material and social privileges”…

This trial took place in 1979, just one year before the so-called “democracy” was overthrown in a coup of the army, the mighty pillar supporting at that time the regime. More trials and convictions preceded and followed for Beşikçi. Even if he could live two or three lives, he would not have time enough to serve the 200 plus years in prison imposed on him in total. Released in 1999, he was sent back to court in 2010 – that is, even after the collapse of Kemalism – for “propaganda” because of an article entitled The Rights of Nations to Self-Determination and the Kurds, which cost him 15 extra months in jail.

In January 1981, he sent a Letter to UNESCO from his prison, stigmatizing the decision of the Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization of the United Nations to declare that year as The Atatürk Year.⁽⁴⁾ A new conviction followed. Undeterred, he continued sending letters from the dungeons to international organizations that, of course, ended up in the hands of Turkish judges, who imposed new sentences. A letter to the Journalist Union of Switzerland e.g. cost him 10 years!

• ⁽⁴⁾ Note that: a) Kemal is the only person to receive such recognition by the UN “Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization”; b) education, science and culture have suffered much from his policies; c) the recipients of this recognition were, in fact, his heirs governing Turkey at the time: the military putschists; it was as if they were rewarded by UNSESCO for their… coup d’état in the previous year!

But even in his trials (where we lose count, indeed) with his apologies (several of these speeches were put together in his testimony, Defense), he persevered with remarkable courage and selflessness in order to defend the rights of the Kurdish people, relying on the public sense of justice; a sense that has ceased to govern the decisions or actions even of the “competent” international organizations.

We imagine spontaneously that we have before us İsmail B, personifying Josef K, Kafka’s main character in The Trial. But our association is rather incongruous: Beşikçi has not been a surreal figure of absurdist fiction but an indomitable hero of free thought and scientific knowledge, a symbol of our time – exactly because people like him are so rare today. However, he had the misfortune to be born in Turkey. Therefore, he will never be awarded a Nobel Prize!⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 but… what can one expect from a Nobel Committee that has awarded the prize to persons such as Henry Kissinger (1973), Menachem Begin (1978), Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres (1994), Barack Obama (2009), and the neo-liberal European Union (2012) – but has not honoured Mahatma Gandhi?

Âşık Veysel

I’m certainly not to blame for politicizing the issue of linguistics à la turca, as it is an issue profoundly political. Lay, if you will, the blame on Alain Gheerbrant who “cast the first stone” by paralleling Mustafa Kemal to Âşık Veysel (see Chronicle 9). No doubt, there are even worse cases. One thing is to credit “exclusively” the Turks with Anatolian music; another thing is to do the same with the music of Constantinople; especially if we bear in mind that the Ottomans described this music as Arabo-Persian; it was called Turkish, or even Ottoman, only after the Republic was established, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire…

● There are cases of “friendly fire” on this issue, which is, nevertheless, anything but crucial. It’s just a matter of orderliness and correct terminology. See e.g. the starting point of Stéphane Yerasimos, the Greek-born director of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies, when he presented an album with old “Ottoman music” featuring, among others, compositions by Dimitrie Cantemir, who was anything but Ottoman:⁽⁶⁾

Cantemir on a Romanian stamp

• ⁽⁶⁾ Cantemir was a great intellectual (philosopher, musicologist, composer, linguist, ethnographer, geographer, historian), and prince of Moldavia where he learned Greek and Latin and acquired a profound knowledge of the classics. He lived in forced exile for 23 years in Constantinople, where he studied at the Patriarchate’s Greek Academy, wrote about music and also composed. How is it possible to classify his music as “Ottoman” when the composer also fought against the Ottomans as an ally of Peter the Great in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1710–11?

“This project of performing Ottoman music on original instruments”, Yerasimos wrote in the booklet, “arose from a simple question: why not apply the method that has been already successfully followed in Europe for several decades, and try to re-discover the spirit and the performing style of the Ottoman music of the great period – the 17th and 18th centuries?”

Constantinople / from Byzantium to Istanbul, by Stéphane Yerasimos

● The Empire that substituted the once powerful Byzantine Empire after its downfall was Ottoman, indeed, as it was controlled by this tribe. But is this sufficient reason to classify also the music of post-Byzantine Constantinople under the same heading? My objection is due to the explicitly ethnic import of the term Ottoman as it means Turkish. On the contrary, the term Byzantine is supranational, referring in general to “the eastern part of the Late Roman Empire that, after the fall of Rome, continued as its successor until 1453.” In both these empires, the Byzantine and Ottoman, culture was a collective work of all ethnicities living within their boundaries. Ethnic identities can be found only in cultures that have been cultivated by peoples distinguished for the originality of their contributions to human civilization. If e.g. there has been no Phoenician civilization, given that the Phoenicians were heavily influenced by the Egyptians, Mesopotamians and Hellenes, in the same way there’s been no Ottoman civilization either. Let alone that, compared to the Ottomans, the contribution of the Phoenicians, especially in the spread of the alphabet, has been far more important.

Christianism and Islam: Differences in Assimilation

QUITE DIFFERENT APPROACH ADOPTED ALAIN DANIÉLOU, Gheerbrant’s compatriot and namesake. As an adviser to UNESCO’s International Music Council, he supervised several outstanding recordings of world music, such as Unesco Collection: A Musical Anthology of the Orient; Musical Atlas; Musical Sources; and Anthology of Indian Classical Music / A Tribute to Alain Daniélou. As a producer of the Cairo recordings, Taqâsîm and Layâlî, on instrumental or vocal modal improvisations, he formulated a thought-provoking synopsis that begins as follows:

Alain Daniélou playing sitar (1987)

“The melodic system peculiar to the Arabic-speaking peoples of the countries bordering on the Eastern and Southern shores of the Mediterranean is the result of a long evolution. It derives from the adaptation by the Arab conquerors of the ancient Greek, Persian, and Egyptian systems, which gradually developed into a unified and highly original art.

“‘Until the 13th century the theorists refer to Greek theories, but subsequently there arose a distinctly independent theory and an art, cultivated at the court of the Caliphs, which became increasingly refined and elaborate. Until the end of the 19th century, this art continued to develop under the influence of fresh Persian and Byzantine elements, which had become more prominent owing to the Turkish domination’ (d’Erlanger).”

“The melodic system of the Arabic-speaking peoples of the Mediterranean derives from the adaptation of the ancient Greek, Persian, and Egyptian systems”… “Until the end of the 19th century, this art continued to develop under the influence of fresh Persian and Byzantine elements.”
(Alain Daniélou, Rodolphe d’Erlanger)

The conclusions we can draw are quite astonishing, indeed: until the eve of their empire’s downfall, the Ottomans – at least in the domain of music – were still under the influence of the empire they had abolished half a millennium before! It was natural that the Arabic-speaking peoples, then vassals of the Ottomans in the region, were equally influenced. In this way, the Byzantine echoe echoed and resonated throughout the Mediterranean: the Christians, mainly in the western part of mare nostrum, were influenced through Byzantine ecclesiastical chant, at least until the 11th century when, due to the Schism, Gregorian chant became obligatory for the Catholics; the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire in the Orient were also influenced – not by ecclesiastical chant, of course, but by the erstwhile Byzantine secular music.

Lady With Tambourine, oil painting, Qajar period, Iran

Persian influences may be considered natural, because the Iranians had already realized their self-determination, having their own independent state. But what can anybody say about Byzantine music, especially secular, which – supposedly – ceased to exist as soon as the state that gave birth to it was erased from the map? How could it possibly influence the Mediterranean on the eve of the 20th century, and even impregnate it with “fresh” musical elements?

Trying to resume what Alain Daniélou and Rodolphe d’Erlanger have said, and the thoughts they have induced, we can imagine a historical model as follows: the Arabs (those coming from the Arabian Peninsula) were cultivated adopting the ancient Hellenic, Persian, and Egyptian cultures. They knew, therefore, very well that their empire would not last long if they were not able to assimilate the civilized Mediterranean peoples they had conquered. It was an indispensable prerequisite to safeguard their caliphate and stay in charge.

The Arabs knew their empire would not last long if they did not assimilate the ancient peoples they had conquered. This could only happen through religion (Islam) and language (Arabic), breaking the ties of these peoples with their glorious past. All they needed was a combination of incentives and coercion.

Under the circumstances, this could only happen through religion, first of all, and secondarily (but equally important), language. It was absolutely necessary for the Arabs to break the ties of these ancient peoples with their glorious past, making them convert to Islam and (even better) adopt Arabic. Hence they could exert undisputed control over their vast empire. A combination of incentives and coercion was all they needed. It was a rather moderate tactic compared with the one endorsed by the Christians to convert the Hellenes, unleashing an outright violent campaign, a long, widespread genocide (see Chronicles 23-24, The Genocide of the Hellenes and The Triumph of Cretinism).

When the Ottomans took over the Caliphate, they also adopted Arabic culture that had sprung out like an amalgam from these ancient civilizations. Note that this synthesis started bearing fruit only in the 13th century, after Constantinople fell for the first time to the Crusaders and Venetians in 1204. No similar cultural renaissance took place during the Ottoman period. That’s why there were still “fresh Persian and Byzantine elements” into the Court music and art until the last days of the Ottoman Empire. What exactly was the Ottoman contribution? It was not so much musical but mainly political – through this wide, unified area – allowing these “elements” to have a great impact on every corner of the empire.

Arabic Music Schools – Turkish Music

Salah el Mahdi

ACCORDING TO THE TUNISIAN PROFESSOR Salah el Mahdi, who spoke at the International musicological symposium at Delphi on Rhythms, Modes and Scales of Mediterranean Music in 1988,⁽⁷⁾ the Near East was influenced by the “old Turco-Byzantine music, extending to the Balkans and Caucasus”:

• ⁽⁷⁾ The European Cultural Centre of Delphi’s English text concerning this International Meeting renders the Greek musical term τρόπος (mode) as… manner. Unfortunately, no one there noticed it to correct it…

“Arabic culture is an integral and significant part of Mediterranean culture”, he said. “The modes of Arabic music are classified into four major schools:

“a) The Maghreb School; it is represented by the Arabo-Andalusian musical heritage introduced into this area by the Arabo-Andalusian refugees in the 14th and 15th centuries. This music survives today across North Africa, along with the old music of the Libyan people of this region.^(h)

• ^(h) Ancient Libya: The name referred to a) the region west of the Nile Valley, corresponding more or less to the modern Maghreb (North Africa except Egypt); b) the country immediately west of Egypt; or c) to the whole of Africa that was still more or less a terra incognita. Herodotus wrote that the Phoenicians carried out the first periplus of “Libya” (Africa) on behalf of the Egyptians. Talking about the Libyan people, Mahdi most probably referred to the Berbers and the rest of the Maghrebis.

“b) The Near East School; it is represented by the musical heritage of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and, of course, Egypt. In part, this school has influenced Libya and Tunisia, which thus participate in two schools, as they are found in between. The Near East School has been influenced by the old Turco-Byzantine music, extending to the Balkans and Caucasus.

“c) The Arabo-Persian School; it is represented by the Abbasid musical heritage that was created in their great capital, Baghdad. It’s been the musical act in Iraq, Iran and all the [former] Soviet Republics of Central Asia as far as China.

“d) The Arabian Peninsula School; it includes Saudi Arabia, Yemen, all the Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman, and has had a twofold influence: from India and Africa.”

Now that we are sufficiently informed, and also have the necessary standard of comparison, we may have some fun enjoying Bernard Mauguin’s sophistries:

“Born in the shadow of Islam, Turkish classical music has been confused early in its history with art music of Persia and the Arab peoples. This common origin has been the cause of a persistent misunderstanding and, in general, little distinction is made between these various musical forms, which are usually grouped together under the vague heading of ‘Oriental music’…

“However, just as a knowledgeable listener can easily distinguish a work of Bach from a work of Berlioz, he could never confuse the playing of a Turkish musician with that of an Arab or an Iranian musician. Classical Turkish music has its own distinct personality”…

Johann Sebastian Bach

Wow! We are talking about such colossal differences: those between Bach and Berlioz! Who would have the guts to disagree? But these are differences of eras, between two composers (one baroque, the other romantic) who created in the same tradition of Occidental “classical” music during the so-called common practice period (baroque, classical, romantic). Racial differences (i.e. German vs. French) were rather insignificant. The same applies to the distinction among Turkish, Arab and Iranian musicians: their main difference, especially before the creation of national states, was also a difference of eras. If Mauguin compared Bach not with Berlioz but with Brahms, he would have noticed that they too are “easily distinguishable”. However, such a comparison between two composers of common origin (both Bach and Brahms were Germans) would have deprived him of any pretext for his chicaneries.

Bach vs. Berlioz: not German vs. French music but
baroque vs. romanticism (plus genius vs. average…)

No doubt that if instead of Western theorists we had their Oriental colleagues, things might have been even worse, since everyone would have “trumpeted one’s own merchandise”. Salah in Delphi e.g. spoke of Turco-Byzantine music because he was not a Turk; that’s why he gave no due emphasis to the role of Persian music theorists, something that the Iranian Hormoz Farhat did; but he in turn “forgot” the contribution of Byzantine musicians, which Simon Karás put forward at the forefront – and so on…

What the Orient needs is an era of Renaissance and Enlightenment – sine qua non – something that the Occident intentionally obstructs for its own interests. These interests, I’m afraid, are served, consciously or not, by those Western theoreticians who can’t see the forest for the trees (or, if you like, focus on the finger and can’t see it’s pointing to the moon), i.e. focusing on the secondary (the local differences in music), and minimizing the primary (its common features). The classic recipe: divide et impera! Or rather: διαίρει καὶ βασίλευε, as the one who first adopted this tactic was probably Philip of Macedon…

• >> Chronicle 11. “MUSIC IS THRACIAN AND ASIAN”
• << Chronicle 9. THE CELEBRATED TRÍCHORDON

Next Chronicle 11. “MUSIC IS THRACIAN AND ASIAN” ● “Barbarian” Contribution to Hellenic Instrument Making and Playing ● Antiquarianism-Ancestor Worship ● Multi-String Instruments and Psalteries ● Diapason, Harmony, Polyphony ● Music, Poetry, Nation ● Folk and Erudite Music ● Hydraulis ● Crusades ● Strabo on Music

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Chronicle 2. IT ALL STARTED HERE…

Chronicle 2. IT ALL STARTED HERE…

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 2. ΟΛΑ ΑΡΧΙΣΑΝ ΕΔΩ…

Ploughing in Egypt

● Neolithic Revolution ● Cities, Exchange, Writing ● Aegean and Orient: Differences ● Irrigation and Trade Networks ● “Asiatic Mode of Production” and Centralization ● Nature, Gods and Democracy

Michales Loukovikas

IT ALL STARTED HERE: in the Mediterranean – in the Fertile Crescent.

The Fertile Crescent

ALTHOUGH BORN SUPPOSEDLY in Africa, man was civilized around the Mediterranean, in the Near East, more specifically in the arc formed by Mesopotamia, the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine) and the Nile valley in Egypt, also extending to Cyprus and Anatolia, as far as the Taurus Mountains: it was the so-called Fertile Crescent, where man made the first giant leap with the Neolithic agricultural revolution. It took millennia until something equal in scope happened again, with the industrial revolution that started in England in the 18th century.

Man made the first giant leap in the Fertile
Crescent with the Neolithic revolution

Neolithic baker

Despite the view that this second revolution signaled a return to barbarity, let us stick to generally accepted ideas for the time being. Even common sense says the key was the first step, when hunters and gatherers became pastoralists and farmers. This development was probably brought about by women: gathering fruit was their responsibility together with children, while men hunted.⁽¹⁾ Thus, we can reasonably assume that agriculture, especially farming, the main aspect of the emerging rural economy, has been an innovation brought forth by women.⁽²⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ That sexual division of labour explains numerous differences in mentality between the sexes that still characterize them, causing misunderstandings in their relationships.

• ⁽²⁾ I do not know if any researcher has ever made the above very logical guess. As I have pointed out, however, we should no further engage in such speculations for the time being, and better stick to generally accepted ideas – as long as they are not directly related to the issues under our consideration. Such are the assumptions related to the theories of man’s African origin, the origins of the inhabitants of Greece, the Indo-European languages and their speakers, or the Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet, among various issues that are relevant, or sufficiently vague. As I have said, they are nothing but theories… (See our next Chronicle of the Humans).

As is well known, a farmer is more bound to the land than a hunter-gatherer or a pastoralist. Thus, the transition to farming led to the creation of permanent settlements that gradually grew: they became villages, some of them towns, or even cities. The latter – as the Hellenic and Latin words polis (πόλις) and civitas indicate – brought about both politics and civilization. Man began his gradual transformation into what Aristotle would much later call a “political animal” to identify a new distinctive feature of Homo sapiens vis-à-vis the other species.

The transition to farming led to the creation of settlements
that gradually grew: they became villages, towns, cities.
The latter brought forth both politics and civilization.

The ancient city of Mari on the Euphrates (reconstruction)

Cities require central authority and hierarchy, imposing monuments, division of labour, specialization. They necessitate the arts and crafts, architecture, pottery, commerce, metallurgy… The Mediterranean periplus began tentatively at that time, in parallel with the caravan routes along land roads that were inaccessible and dangerous. Consequently, so long as man familiarized himself with the sea, he’d rather sail than travel on land. It is an oxymoron that the liquid element is far more “solid” and safe, but that’s how it is. Besides, land roads were largely non-existent at that time.

No need to say, the exchange of commercial goods is accompanied with the exchange of ideas, aesthetic patterns, intellectual “goods”, innovations. That is how the new way of life spread rapidly inside and outside the Mediterranean basin, reaching eastwards as far as the Indian subcontinent and beyond: the Indo-Mediterranean contacts date back to at least the third millennium BCE, or even earlier.

The exchange of commercial goods is accompanied with
the exchange of ideas, aesthetic patterns, innovations.

Early Mesopotamian writing tablet recording
the allocation of beer (3100-3000 BCE)

The conditions were already ripe for the next titanic step: writing. Even though the reasons for this great innovation were initially… bureaucratic (administrative record keeping, transfer of orders and messages), the invention and subsequent simplification of writing with the alphabet was indispensable as a condition for the systematic transfer of knowledge between generations and, of course, for the cultivation of literature and the arts – fields where the Hellenes excelled.

Although the ancient Greeks constitute a universal point of reference, one needs to turn away from every temptation of nationalist simplifications. A “threat from the East” was present also then: it was the Persians. At the same time, knowledge from the East was present there, too: any Hellene philosopher aspiring to become a sage would go there for his “PhD”! The Orient was the source of innumerable ideas, and artifacts, along with their know-how. However, everything imported and adopted, had to be adapted according to the local needs and tastes; and some went by the wayside…

Alexander

Aegean vs. Orient: Differences

One of the several historical paradoxa of this period e.g. concerns the differences between the Aegean and the Orient in their political structures. The decentralized Grecian city-states that flourished in the Iron Age, i.e. in classical times, had few Oriental equivalents: the Sumerian and Phoenician cities. On the contrary, the prevailing state entities in the East were centralized empires of both the Bronze and Iron Ages. Be that as it may, the mighty Achaemenid Empire was repeatedly defeated and humiliated by the “Amphictyony” of Hellenes – except the Thebans and some other so-called medísantes (μηδίσαντες) “Quislings”: i.e. all those who surrendered to the Persians-Medes and fought on their side.

● “Except the Thebans”: it is a reference to the subsequent and far more well-known “except the Lacedaemonians”, from the famous victorious inscription on the Battle of the Granicus river in 334 BCE: “Alexander, son of Philip, and the Hellenes except the Lacedaemonians”! In the previous year, the Spartans, spoiled during the “Median” or Graeco-Persian Wars, as they had always been in command, refused to participate in Alexander’s campaign, because there would not be… a king of Sparta in command! Constantine Cavafy poetically commented:

In the Year 200 B.C.

“Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians…”

We can very well imagine
how completely indifferent the Spartans would have been
to this inscription. “Except the Lacedaemonians” –
naturally. The Spartans
weren’t to be led and ordered around
like precious servants. Besides,
a pan-Hellenic expedition without
a Spartan king in command
was not to be taken very seriously.
Of course, then, “except the Lacedaemonians.”

That’s certainly one point of view. Quite understandable.

So, “except the Lacedaemonians” at Granicus,
then at Issus, then in the decisive battle
where the terrible army
the Persians mustered at Arbela was wiped out:
it set out for victory from Arbela, and was wiped out.



Constantine Cavafy,
by Panaiotes Daphiotis

And from this marvelous pan-Hellenic expedition,
triumphant, brilliant in every way,
celebrated on all sides, glorified
as no other has ever been glorified,
incomparable, we emerged:
the great new Hellenic world.

We the Alexandrians, the Antiochians,
the Seleucians, and the countless
other Greeks of Egypt and Syria,
and those in Media, and Persia, and all the rest:
with our far-flung supremacy,
our flexible policy of judicious integration,
and our Common Greek Language
which we carried as far as Bactria, as far as the Indians.

Talk about Lacedaemonians after that!…

(Adapted into English by Edmund Keeley / Philip Sherrard)

Alexander’s empire

● So much for the phrase “except the…”, that’s always been very “trendy” in Hellas. As for the “medísantes” (derived from the Medes, Media, mentioned by Cavafy), they have flooded the land, indeed! Among others, they include even Themistocles, the man who triumphed supreme in the battle of Salamis! His successors have so much ballooned that a list of their names is almost impossible. They are well-known and visible, nevertheless: they mostly crowd the corridors and salons of the ruling elite…

But why In the Year 200 B.C.? Why Cavafy alludes in his title to such a later date? We ignore the poet’s intentions… At any rate, that year the 2nd Macedonian War broke out ending three years later with Rome’s victory over Macedon. It was the beginning of the end because since then Greece fell under full Roman control.

It was not so much that the Hellenes did not want, but rather did not
need an imperial government, as a result of objective conditions…

“THE NECK OF A GREEK the yoke will not abide”, one could say. OK, but this was a result of objective conditions. It was not so much that the Hellenes did not want, but rather that they did not need an imperial government. What for them was an extraordinary situation requiring collective and comprehensive effort, for the Easterners was an everyday struggle with an opponent much more powerful than the mightiest empire: Nature itself…

Babylonian map (canals and irrigation systems) West of the Euphrates (1684-1647 BCE)

Expanding his presence in an environment of rather great contrasts, a land that would be barren without the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, with abundant waters but also with floods and cataclysms lurking, the Easterner realized the need for coordination of the efforts of all communities. Next to deserts, symbolizing the constantly present, absolute evil, these rivers were a blessing from heaven but had unpredictable behaviour: thus, they should be tamed. Major public works, especially for irrigation and drainage, were a prerequisite for human survival; commerce, as well, for the supply of the communities with absolutely necessary raw materials, but also luxury goods.

Well, these basic networks of irrigation, and also of state-run trade, necessitated centralized power that should inspire fear. Obviously, all those in power needed law-enforcement agencies: the army and clergy; they needed imposing, majestic palaces, monuments, temples. It’s what Karl Marx has called the “Asiatic mode of production”, and is a key to understand Oriental despotism. A by-product is the relative – or ostensible, as others say – stagnation, or even immobility, that has characterized these societies for millennia until now.

Irrigation and trade necessitated centralized power inspiring fear.
Law-enforcement agencies, the army and clergy, were necessary.
It was impossible for democracy to grow on Babylonian soil.

Babylon

Let us not forget, however, that these societies cultivated astronomy, geometry, mathematics – for the same reasons they invented writing; societies that created wonders, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – though hanging from a thread: the infrastructure that had made them great was also their Achilles’ heel. You realize that with just a look at the ruins of Babylon conquered and pillaged by time.⁽³⁾ It was absolutely impossible for democracy to grow on Babylonian soil.

• ⁽³⁾ When this text was written, Babylon had not been conquered by the USA. Yet the conquerors were conquered in turn, as well. But the price was heavy: disregarding the consequences, the US forces built a military base on Babylonian ruins. Dr. John Curtis of the British Museum described how the archaeological site was in some parts leveled to create a landing area for helicopters and parking lots for heavy vehicles. The occupation forces, he wrote,

One of the dragons from the Ishtar gate

“caused substantial damage to the Ishtar Gate, one of the most famous monuments from antiquity… American military vehicles crushed 2,600-year-old brick pavements, archaeological fragments were scattered across the site, more than 12 trenches were driven into ancient deposits and military earth-moving projects contaminated the site for future generations of scientists… Add to all that the damage caused to nine of the moulded brick figures of dragons in the Ishtar Gate by soldiers trying to remove the bricks from the wall.”

● It is well known that American soldiers, and other personnel from the “Coalition of the willing” (invaders of Iraq, e.g. Poles, also stationed in Babylon), looted many antiquities that found their way to private collections.

The Oriental despots, satraps and tyrants were “necessary evils”. And, because there is always a match between worldly and heavenly powers (the concept of monarchies held “by the Grace of God” is in fact quite ancient), equally almighty and omnipotent, terrible and frightful, have been the Oriental gods; especially since they’ve been left alone with no competition at all, after their antagonists had been “dealt with” by the clergy of the new monotheistic religions.⁽⁴⁾

• ⁽⁴⁾ I am still wondering: How is it possible for the transition from polytheism to monotheism to be regarded as progress when, in fact, it has been regression? The Judaization of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds (in the Orient and Occident respectively) through Christianization was a sine qua non precondition of obscurantism during the Dark Ages.

The Oriental despots, satraps and tyrants were “necessary evils”. Equally almighty, terrible and frightful were the Oriental gods. No comparison
with the Olympians, who were full of shortcomings: they were human.

Leda and the Swan (i.e. Zeus), by Correggio (1531–32), with children musicians on the left.

No comparison whatsoever with the Olympians, who were full of shortcomings, as they were human, made in the image of the mortals that had created them, the Hellenes, their way of life, their society – or, rather: societies, for Greece, its topography, generated decentralization. The land was most beautiful, indeed, but not a paradise on earth. Living standards could improve through expansion, conquest, but also colonization. Either way, each option contributed to an even greater decentralization.

Life, therefore, was not a “test for some happy afterlife” – an idea the common people of the “Asiatic mode of production” should necessarily entertain. The Greeks were shaped and inspired by Hellenic Nature. They philosophized and discussed public issues under her beneficial influence. She “dictated” the forms of their state and political organizations – regardless if they both fomented discord. Their model was the city-state, polis; democracy was their ideal; and freedom their highest virtue – regardless if they lived in a slave and “male” society. It seems contradictory… Moreover, their democracy was pure, direct; today’s so-called “democracy” is the so-called “representative”, where power is not exercised by the people anymore, but by their so-called “representatives”, contrary to the very definition of democracy. (See the additional Chronicle 4 on Democracy). More and more oxymora and paradoxa…

Living in this ambience, the Greeks have not only summarized, but humanized, as well, the ancient world. They have shown what measure, proportion, harmony is. They have turned knowledge and culture into every free citizen’s right, and not that of a privileged closed caste. They have also left their invaluable heritage systematized and documented for future generations. However, just like their gods, they have been full of shortcomings, born out of the same environment that has fostered their virtues, with individualism underlying all. They are called les enfants terribles de l’antiquité. Rather, of human history, I would say…

• >> Chronicle 3. A CHRONICLE OF THE HUMANS
• << Chronicle 1. UNIVERSAL MEDITERRANEAN

Next Chronicle 3. A CHRONICLE OF THE HUMANS ● Academic Scholasticism ● Ares Poulianós: Archanthropus and Homo Erectus ● Homo’s Cradle: North Aegean and Macedonia ● DNA Analyses: Minoans, Mycenaeans, Cretans and Hellenes ● Paleolithic Odyssey ● Aegean Stonehenge ● Balkan Writing

The Temple of Poseidon

Chronicle 1. THE UNIVERSAL MEDITERRANEAN

A. MEDITERRANEAN PERIPLUS

In Search of Orpheus

.

Chronicle 1. THE UNIVERSAL MEDITERRANEAN

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 1. Η ΟΙΚΟΥΜΕΝΙΚΗ ΜΕΣΟΓΕΙΟΣ

● Mediterranean: the Most Crucial Crucible of Civilizations in the World
● Outline of Our Historical Space ● Unity Within Diversity

Michales Loukovikas

THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA HAS CAST A SPELL ON US ALL for far too many reasons. If the ancient Hellenes have done great, they mainly owe it to this sea rather than the mainland. That goes for the Phoenicians, too, as well as every other Mediterranean people that have left their mark on the history of mare nostrum. The same is also true, more or less, for all coastal peoples. We are primarily Mediterranean natives, and only secondarily European, Asian, African, Balkan, Levantine, or else. And yet, very few have Mediterranean consciousness. The sea that once brought us together – even during our military confrontations – now seems as if keeping us apart.

The importance of this small and landlocked sea is far greater than what we can imagine; the Mediterranean has been the most crucial crucible of civilizations in the world, because it connects the three most important continents: Africa, where man was allegedly born; Asia, where he was civilized; and Europe, where he was liberated – on Grecian soil, as is well known. Thus, it was quite natural for the Mediterranean aura to penetrate deep into the territory of these continents and its historical space to greatly exceed its narrow geographic boundaries.

The Mediterranean has been the most crucial crucible of civilizations. Its historical space has greatly exceeded its narrow geographic boundaries.

Geographically, the Mediterranean is clearly delineated. Besides, it was given this name because it is surrounded by these three continents and looks like a huge lagoon, having only one natural outlet, leading to the Atlantic Ocean: the Strait of Gibraltar through the legendary Pillars of Heracles. However, as a historical space, it is far broader. Human communities, as a rule, have regarded no natural obstacles as eternally insurmountable. After a while, the growth of civilization, of technology, and the courage of some daring individuals, always led to barriers overcome, creating wider entities of exchange and cooperation.

That far broader sea, the “universal” Mediterranean, is the one we’re voyaging around: from the Atlantic coast of Iberia and the Maghreb, as far as the Indian subcontinent and the Chinese border area in Central Asia, often crossing some complementary seas, such as the Black and the Caspian Seas, the Red Sea and the Gulf. We also sail out into the Indian Ocean, due to the extensive Afro-Asian exchange, we caravan through the Sahara, for even the desert was not able to obstruct a cultural osmosis, bearing rich fruit to the northern coast of the Black Continent, without excluding crossings of the Atlantic, mainly destined for Latin, Iberian America, but also for several parts in the North of the New World, where the Mediterranean culture is still omnipresent.

This area is certainly so immense that no one is willingly ready to accept there are common features. Skepticism, nevertheless, starts dwindling away when one is reminded of the diverse exchange since age-old times between the two most remote peninsulas at the extreme ends of this integrated historical space: the Indian and the Iberian. These contacts were later strengthened with the Arab conquest of Iberia and, even more, with the arrival of the Indian Gypsies (Roma) at the peninsula.

Spanish Roma, by Yevgraf Sorokin

It goes without saying, of course, that in this area, where the Hellenic presence was once very strong, apart from a minimum common denominator, there is such a plethora of sounds and art forms that it would be quite foolishly risky for anyone to try to “square” in an alleged attempt of some sort of classification.

The challenge amidst all those myriads of local idioms and aesthetic standards is unity within diversity, rejecting any form of uniformity.

The challenge amidst all those myriads of local idioms and aesthetic standards, both folk and erudite, is unity within diversity. This unity should be cherished and safeguarded at all costs in the current period of galloping homogenization, which launches instead a certain “unity” through uniformity – i.e. something that must be imposed on man, for it is against human nature.

Sound-diversity, just like biodiversity – diversity in every form – is the absolutely necessary condition not only for the survival, but also for the development of mankind and human civilization. However, beware: the response to the so-called “globalization” is not entrenchment but openness to the outside world instead, expanding exchange and cooperation on equal terms, honesty and tolerance. All those who trust themselves adopt an “open doors” policy.

A coin of Palestine (1931)

“And those who do not consent?”, you may wonder. “What shall be done with all those who constantly undermine unity having non-Mediterranean big powers backing them? Is it possible at this moment for the perpetrators and the victims to coexist, such as the Israeli Jews and the Palestinians? Are we day-dreaming?”

IT IS TRUE that whatever differentiation we may figure out between citizens and politicians, the people are also to blame since, as a well-known saying goes, “each people deserve those who govern them” (Plato), or, if you like, “toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite” (Joseph de Maistre), i.e. every nation gets the government it deserves.

“Each people deserve those who govern them”. (Plato) “Toute
nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite”. (Joseph de Maistre)

The degradation of a citizen to the status of a subject definitely makes things worse, especially now that the intelligentsia is mostly sold-out and has no role to play anymore. The identification of cultured people with states or parties is no longer conceivable, for it has been proven beyond any doubt that it constitutes the worst service to the arts and letters – to culture as a whole, to humanity.

If we accept that mankind is able to create a world of peace and co-operation in the interest of all peoples, we can say: all those who do not consent are de facto excluded from any efforts to forge a Mediterranean unity. That is why honesty precedes tolerance – where, of course, there are limits. We are not diplomats. In the final analysis, has diplomacy ever promoted culture?

• >> Chronicle 2. IT ALL STARTED HERE…
• << At Anchor. BEFORE SAILING OFF

Next Chronicle 2. IT ALL STARTED HERE… ● Neolithic Revolution ● Cities, Exchange, Writing ● Aegean and Orient: Differences ● Irrigation and Trade Networks ● “Asiatic Mode of Production” and Centralization ● Nature, Gods and Democracy

Chronicle 23. THE GENOCIDE OF THE HELLENES

Chronicle 23. THE GENOCIDE OF THE HELLENES

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 23. Η ΓΕΝΟΚΤΟΝΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΕΛΛΗΝΩΝ

● “Burning Books, Burying Scholars” ● Libraries Burned ● Massacre
of Thessalonica ● Delphi, the Serapeum and the Temple of Artemis
in Ruins ● Sacrilege of Alexander’s Sōma ● The Darkening Age

Michales Loukovikas

.

GENOCIDE: “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” (The UN Genocide Convention)

 

“In the early Middle Ages, in the time of Valens, Valentinian and Theodosius, there was a veritable ‘Inquisition’ established in the East, whose atrocities, persecutions and massacres were in no way inferior to those of the Spanish Inquisitors, who just persecuted people for sinister faith, while the Orthodox ‘penalizers’ in the Orient intended to eliminate en masse anyone who was Hellenizing or philosophizing on the face of the earth.” (Emmanuel Rhoides)

.

NATURAL SELECTION, Charles Darwin’s revolutionary evolutionary theory – a cornerstone of biology – does not apply to man-made creations, which are instead “artificially selected” (censored), on the basis of ideological prejudice against all non-conformist ideas. Big Brother, it seems, has been omnipresent long before George Orwell’s 1984, burning not only books and libraries, but on many occasions the authors themselves, while “purifying” society and rewriting “history”… The motives of such crimes against humanity are very rarely outright politico-economical; as a rule, they are disguised behind a religious mask – especially when this religion is monotheistic, i.e. antagonistic to all the other creeds, authoritarian, and also power-hungry. Note that among the monotheistic religions, Christianism is the “unchallenged champion” of such crimes. Here is a short list of the first phase:

● 213–210 BCE. The “burning of books and burying of scholars” campaign during the Qin Dynasty of ancient China epitomizes the “war against freedom of thought and speech” that is still raging: all Chronicles, except those by the Qin historians, the Classics of Poetry and History, works of Confucius and several other schools, should be burned; and anyone discussing these books be executed. More than 460 scholars, or almost 1200, according to another count, were buried alive. The campaign soon led to revolts and war resulting to a further damage of texts of history: the capital was sacked and burned, in 207 BCE, destroying the officially sanctioned works in the imperial library, as well.

● 53 CE. Saul (Paul) of Tarsus, the trouble-maker, combined his preaching with book burning in Ephesus. This episode inspired many artists applauding such actions (see e.g. paintings by Eustache Le Sueur, Lucio Massari, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, etc.) that all fascists imitated with enthusiasm… Acts of the Apostles, 19: “Τhey counted the value of [the burned books] and found it came to 50,000 pieces of silver” = more than 20 million €!

“Βurning of books and burying of scholars”: late dynastic period painting

● Circa 160 CE. Epicurus’ book Established Beliefs was burned in a Paphlagonian market, by order of a charlatan prophet. It was just a first glimpse of what would follow, as soon as these charlatans climbed up the highest echelons of power…

● 170s CE. Describing the Bible as “utter trash”, “a Greek intellectual named Celsus launched a monumental… attack against the new religion”, writes Catherine Nixey in her well-documented study, The Darkening Age / The Christian Destruction of the Classical World – hence our many, lengthy quotations in the previous, present, and next Chronicle. “Celsus was more than disdainful; he was worried that this religion – which he considered stupid, pernicious and vulgar – might spread even further and… damage Rome. Over 1,500 years later, the 18th century English historian Edward Gibbon would draw similar conclusions, laying part of the blame for the fall of the Roman Empire firmly at the door of the Christians… The Church… promptly placed his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, its list of banned books.⁽¹⁾ Even in liberal England, the atmosphere became fiercely hostile to the historian”.⁽²⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ Updating the Index (1900), pope Leo XIII stressed: “It is totally unacceptable to support, defend or allow freedom of thought, of speech… as if these rights are given to man by Nature”!

• ⁽²⁾ But even in the 20th century, the Pythons’ “1979 film, Life of Brian [parodying the life of Jesus], was banned in several countries.” (C. Nixey)

Library of Celsus in Ephesus (2nd century CE), the third-largest in the Roman world after Alexandria and Pergamum, was the funerary monument of Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, governor of Asia (Minor). The library, an architectural marvel, and its 12,000 scrolls, were burned by Christian Gothic barbarians, who also destroyed the magnificent Temple of Artemis there, one of the 7 wonders of antiquity (262 CE). The library’s façade was restored in the 1970s.

● However, both Celsus and Gibbon were right: “What… if God and Caesar both laid claim to the same thing? Well, said the great thinkers of the first Christian century, in that case God took precedence. As Augustine put it, if God’s law diverged from Roman law, then the Heavenly City and its inhabitants were compelled ‘to dissent, and to become obnoxious to those who think differently’… At the highest level the Church was starting to challenge the power of the state. Roman observers had long noticed the Christian tendency to consider themselves above the law… ‘There is no crime’, declared Shenoute, ‘for those who have Christ’… Murder committed for the sake of God was not a crime but actually ‘a prayer’… As Christianity gained in power their acts of defiance gained in boldness. Courtrooms in the east of the empire were disrupted by sinister groups of dark-clad, psalm-chanting monks… Monks – anonymous, rootless, untraceable – were able to commit atrocities with near impunity… Even Theodosius, a wholeheartedly Christian emperor, mutedly observed that ‘the monks commit many crimes’.” Gibbon, on his part, comparing the monks with “a race of filthy animals”, wrote: “In almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants; and the ruin of the fairest structures of antiquity still displays the ravages of those barbarians”.

● Catherine Nixey begins her dramatic narrative in Palmyra in 385 CE. Exactly the same scenes, unfortunately, would unfold in the city of Zenobia, the “nymph of the desert”, even nowadays, committed by the terrorists of the Islamic State. But what’s happened now in a single region of Syria, or in one country, Afghanistan, by the Taliban, was then about to spread to an entire empire and last for many centuries:

It’s ironic that the new fundamentalists’ target was again Athena: the statue of Al-lāt, equated with the goddess of Wisdom, destroyed in 2015; so was the Lion at the temple’s entrance. (We see Asclepius on the wall). Other ISIS crimes: the monumental arch in Palmyra’s colonnade (also 2015); Tetrapylon (2017); the theatre (used for executions, 2017); the Baal Shamin temple, blown up; etc…

“The destroyers came from out of the desert. Palmyra must have been expecting them: for years, marauding bands of bearded, black-robed zealots, armed with little more than stones, iron bars and an iron sense of righteousness had been terrorizing the east of the Roman Empire. Their attacks were primitive, thuggish, and very effective. These men moved in packs – later in swarms of as many as five hundred – and when they descended, utter destruction followed. Their targets were the temples… Great stone columns that had stood for centuries collapsed in an afternoon; statues… had their faces mutilated; temples… fell in a single day… In this atmosphere, Palmyra’s temple of Athena was an obvious target… The ‘triumph’ of Christianity had begun.”

● “Today”, says Nixey, “almost no one has heard of Celsus and fewer still have read his work… It simply disappeared… Almost all information about him has vanished, including any of his names except his last… The long and inglorious Christian practice of censorship was now beginning… Celsus accused Christians of actively targeting idiocy in their recruitment… Lack of education made listeners vulnerable to dogma, he argued. Christians ‘do not want to give or to receive a reason for what they believe, and use such expressions as «Do not ask questions; just believe», and «Thy faith will save thee»’… They declare that ‘Wisdom in this life is evil, but foolishness is good’ – an almost precise quotation from [Saul’s (Paul’s) Epistle to the] Corinthians… To men as educated as Celsus… this was unfathomable: in Greek philosophy, faith was the lowest form of cognition.”

Christianism Has Never Been an Ideology of Liberation

● Christian leaders might have “actively targeted idiocy in their recruitment”, but were anything but… idiots themselves, choosing as their ideal target group “the vast majority of the empire – perhaps 80-90% of men, and a higher percentage of women – [that] was illiterate”. The Christians selected them because they were “hoi polloi” (the many), in order not to upgrade them (with “bread, education, freedom!”), but to downgrade the whole society to their level. Christianism has never been an ideology of liberation; quite the opposite:

The Slave Market, by Gustave Boulanger (c. 1882): in the Roman era,
the “merchandise” was multi-racial; racism would appear later…

“Many of those who set out for the hills” to become monks, Nixey points out, “were poor and illiterate. Some were even slaves – much to the irritation of their Christian superiors. Nietzsche and Engels would later equate Christianity and its values with slaves and slave morality – but if that was true, then no one had told the most powerful Christians in this period. They had no truck with such dangerously revolutionary ideas as the emancipation of slaves. Far from encouraging the escape of Christian slaves, senior clerics cracked down hard on any who attempted to escape their mortal bondage by disappearing into the desert for a more heavenly servitude. When one bishop advised slaves to desert their masters and become ascetics, the Church was appalled and promptly excommunicated him. ‘We shall never’, stated a Canon of the Holy Apostles, ‘allow such a thing, which brings sorrow to the masters to whom the slaves belong’… In the 4th century, St Theodore appeared: a saint whose speciality was finding missing slaves. Sleep on St Theodore’s tomb and… he would appear in your dream and show you where your recalcitrant slave was hiding.” (Then the Church will collect the reward!)

Seen from this perspective, the analogies between Christianism and fascism – apart from the same methodology – become more apparent. Both, though they are systemic, tempt and entrap the underprivileged. (More about Christianism and slavery, and how they are related, you can read in the next Chronicle).

A scholar on a sarcophagus, 180-200 CE

“A few decades after Celsus wrote On the True Doctrine, a more monumental assault was made on the Christian faith by another Greek philosopher”, Nixey goes on. “Yet today this philosopher’s name, like Celsus’s, has been all but forgotten. He was, we know, called Porphyry and his attack was immense – at least 15 books [Against the Christians]… It targeted Old Testament history, and poured scorn on the blind faith of Christians… Porphyry’s works were deemed so powerful and frightening that they were completely eradicated. The first Christian emperor, Constantine… announced… they were destroyed. In the same letter Constantine also consigned the works of the heretic, Arius, to the flames and announced that anyone who was found hiding one of Arius’s books would be put to death. A century or so later, in AD 448, Porphyry’s books were burned again, this time on the orders of… Theodosius II and Valentinian III.”

The Christians’ Psychopathology

● The Christian counter-attack to Celsus came some eighty-odd years later, and signed by Origen: thanks to his text, we now know what the True Doctrine was about. In the meantime, Clement of Alexandria formulated a Christian guide in his own manual, Paedagogus (Tutor; a most inappropriate title), which exposes alarmingly the psychopathology of Christian leaders, even before these fanatics climbed up to power. What Nixey says is most revealing and hair-raising:

“As Clement wrote, the Lord himself had said: ‘I will sharpen my sword… and render justice to mine enemies, and requite those who hate me. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh from the blood of the wounded’. (Who on earth was there – and where? – to listen to this sadist and write down his dictum?) “Clement,” proceeds Nixey, “in… authoritative paragraphs, peppered with frequent… threats from the scriptures, advised the faithful on every aspect of their day, from what they were allowed to eat and drink to what they could wear; from how they could style their hair to even what they were allowed to do in bed.⁽³⁾ In… his guide he censured almost every human activity.”

• ⁽³⁾ Preachers: “Sex between husband and wife is allowed but it should not be enjoyed.” [!] (C.N.)

Fresco from Herculaneum depicting a banquet

Two centuries later, “John Chrysostom advised avoiding dinners altogether in favour of funerals. ‘It is better to go’, he thundered… ‘where there is weeping, lamentation, groans, and anguish, and so much sadness, than where there is the dance, the cymbals, and laughter, and luxury, and full eating and drinking’… [! In addition,] contact with women of all kinds was something to be feared and, if possible, avoided altogether… [! But he] jubilantly observed: ‘The tradition of the forefathers… the tyranny of joy, [!] the accursed festivals… have been obliterated’: Pagan festivals, with their exuberant merriment and dancing, were banned… In 407 [the year John died], the old merry ceremonies were forbidden… If anyone declared himself an official in charge of pagan festivals then, the law said, he would be executed.”⁽⁴⁾

• ⁽⁴⁾ “The firebrand preacher John Chrysostom – John ‘Goldenmouth’ – [the rock star of the era] was so charismatic that crowds of Christians would pack into Antioch’s Great Church to hear him speak, his eyes flashing, then leave as soon as he was finished, ‘as if’, he observed, with a distinct want of monkish humility, ‘I were a concert performance’.” (C.N.)

“In literature of a newly sadistic strain, Christian writers outlined in graphic detail what awaited those who did not comply with the edicts… The punishments for sinners were atrocious… The Apocalypse of Peter reveled in verse after stomach-churning verse on what happened in Hell. In it, the reader is taken on an infernal safari in which the retributions for various misdeeds are pointed out with relish… Even children don’t escape.”⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ See what a church of Lesbos is distributing now (April 2019) to elementary school pupils – an entire screed, entitled Children’s Guide to Confession (of “sins”)… Just get an idea:

● “Do you by chance like to listen to secular songs on the radio? (…)
● “Do you by chance go to the theatre and the cinema? (…)
● “Do you by chance go to parties and dance sinful dances? (…)”
There’s no end to children’s “sins”, arranged in an array of categories and countless chapters…

Oedipus and the Sphinx, by Gustave Moreau

“Theatre was abhorred as a repository of blasphemous filth… What the Greeks considered civilized – even civilizing – Christian preachers reviled as ‘depravity’… a ‘disease’ and a ‘wanton madness’… Everything about the theatre was… from the Devil. The theatre… was a place of lust and drunkenness, a ‘citadel of all vile practices’. The ‘abominations’ that happened on stage were a ‘lawless corruption’ designed to pollute the ears and eyes of the audience… Tragedies were bloody, comedies were wanton… Actors were whores: Christians regularly substituted the words ‘actor’ and ‘dancer’ with the word ‘prostitute’; the theatre itself was ‘the temple of lust for prostitution’. Almost every kind of display was… stained with Satanism… As one preacher boasted, Christians smashed the flutes of the ‘musicians of the demons’ to pieces… The music that people danced to was considered perilous, for music can take away men’s senses, and mesmerize them, whipping them into a frenzy of lust… As Tertullian joyfully explained, all of these miscreants would be consumed in the avenging fires of the Lord – and he and his fellow obedient Christians would be there, enjoying the sight. What need for the theatre or the hippodrome now?, he asked. Because for the Christian faithful there are ‘other spectacles to come – that day of the Last Judgement, when the hoary age of the world and all its generations will be consumed in one fire’.”

Constantine: Genocide Act I – Persecutions in Perpetuum

● 313. The Edict of Milan on Freedom of religion, which Constantine the “Great” and “Saint” adopted, was meant to protect the Christians, but as it turned out, it seems it concerned only them. Following Galerius’ initiative, who had adopted a similar measure in 311, the emperor aimed at consolidating peace (Pax Romana) in the empire, something that had not been achieved through the persecution of Christians. But he was a… mama’s boy (as his mother, Helena, was a fanatical Christian). Therefore, instead of imposing the strict implementation of religious freedom, he was anything but impartial: the ancient gods on his coinage were replaced by Christian symbols, especially the “XP” monogram, which he had also on his labarum. Hence it was obvious the persecutions would go on; there was just a change of roles: the formerly persecuted were now the persecutors. It was also obvious that the new persecutions would be much more brutal and bloody, widespread and long-lasting (in perpetuum), for the very simple reason that the Christian leaders, who found themselves in a dominant position, confronted the vast majority of the empire’s subjects, who remained faithful to their traditional gods.⁽⁶⁾ Besides, it was even ironic that the persecutions were further multiplied because, as soon as the Christian priesthood was legalized, infighting broke out! As early as 313, the year of the edict, until 317, bishops threw brickbats against bishops in Carthage, until they asked for Constantine’s arbitration. There were three ecclesiastical councils and two trials before one faction (that of Donatus) was judged schismatic, with the result that its property was confiscated and the clergy banished.

The Pearls of Aphrodite, by
Herbert James Draper (1907)

• ⁽⁶⁾ “Christians at that moment were very much in the minority. It has been estimated they made up as little as between 7 and 10% of the empire’s total population.” (C.N.)

“The emperor Constantine proclaimed himself a follower of Christ”, recounts Nixey. “Under his auspices, the Church was soon exempted from taxes and its hierarchy started to be richly rewarded. Bishops were paid five times as much as professors, six times as much as doctors – as much even as a local governor. Eternal delight in the next life, bureaucratic preferment in this. What more could one wish for?”

● 325-326. Emperor Constantine ordered a temple of Aphrodite in Jerusalem to be demolished for the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre there. In the meantime, all the Hellenic sanctuaries on Athos were destroyed, while in the following years even more ancient temples were burned and torn down, and Christian churches erected on the ruins. Soon, this “operation” became “legal”, ordered by the king – who made sure that there were no pagan temples built in his New Rome.

“The great Roman and Greek temples were – or so Eusebius said – broken open and their statues brought out, then mutilated”, writes Nixey. “Officials ‘scraped off the material which seemed to be usable, purifying it by smelting with fire’, then poured the precious metal into the public purse… Constantine, as his nephew the ‘apostate’ emperor, Julian,⁽⁷⁾ would scornfully say, was a ‘tyrant with the mind of a banker’… A market of plundered art developed and Christians… took to levering out and selling statues that were particularly valuable… The Greek poet Palladas archly observed, as he looked at a fine array of gods in the house of one wealthy Christian, that ‘the inhabitants of Olympus, having become Christians, live here undisturbed: for here, at least, they will escape the cauldron that melts them down for petty change’.”

• ⁽⁷⁾ Julian, the “Philosopher”, for the polytheists, the “Apostate”, for the monotheists, depending on the philosophic or religious ideas and priorities or prejudice of each value system…

But early Christians were neither “bankers”, nor wealthy merchants; they were ignorant people and idiots – including some emperors:

“As Julian acerbically observed, while Constantine robbed the temples, his sons overthrew them.” Nixey describes vividly how, “in a spasm of destruction never seen before… the Christian Church demolished, vandalized and melted down a simply staggering quantity of art… In Athens, a larger-than-life statue of Aphrodite has been disfigured by a crude cross carved on her brow; her eyes have been defaced and her nose is missing.⁽⁸⁾ In Cyrene, the eyes have been gouged out of a life-sized bust in a sanctuary of Demeter, and the nose removed; in Tuscany, a slender statue of Bacchus has been decapitated. In Sparta, a colossal statue of the goddess Hera looks blindly out, her eyes disfigured by crosses. A beautiful statue of Apollo from Salamis has been castrated and then struck, hard, in the face, shearing off the god’s nose. Across his neck are scars indicating that Christians attempted to decapitate him but failed… In Egypt, countless chisel blows neatly defaced… the images of the gods in the Dendera temple complex on the left bank of the Nile. Divine figures were attacked with tiny hack marks – usually several hundred for each figure… Eberhard Sauer, a specialist in the archaeology of religious hatred, has observed that the closeness of these cuts… hints at blows made with almost frantic rapidity.”

“Purified” head of an ancient Hellenic statue in Samos

• ⁽⁸⁾ “A naked statue of Aphrodite was, wrote one Christian historian in disgust, ‘more shameless than that of any prostitute standing in front of a brothel’… Far less easy to feel desire for a statue who has had a cross gouged in her head, her eyes blinded and her nose sliced from her face.” (C.N.)

“We will never know quite how much was wiped out. Statues were pulverized, shattered, scattered, burned and melted into absence… Others were so well disposed of that they will probably not be found: they were thrown into rivers, sewers and wells, never to be seen again… The sacred groves of the old gods… were set about with axes and their ancient trees hacked down… Moments of vandalism were immortalized in glowing terms in Christian hagiographies… Far more violence was buried by silence… While it might take months of effort, years of training and centuries of accumulated knowledge to build a Greek temple, it took little more than zeal and patience to destroy one… People built themselves houses from the stones of demolished temples… One law announced that the stones from these temples should be used to repair roads, bridges and aqueducts. In Constantinople, a former temple of Aphrodite was used to store a bureaucrat’s chariots… The desecration continued for centuries.”

● Let’s pick up the thread again. The king ordered the execution of the eunuch priests in Egypt, because they… “offended” his “morals”. The same fate awaited dozens of gentiles, pagans, who were considered as “sorcerers of the evil”, and responsible for the poor harvesting in 335. Among them was the philosopher Sopater of Apamea, a disciple of the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, despite the favour and personal friendship of Constantine he enjoyed. According to the Hellene historian and sophist Eunapius, the king was convinced by some adviser that, by magical arts, the pagan philosopher had… obstructed the arrival of a fleet laden with grain! Constantine’s son, Constantius II, a zealous Arian, also persecuted the seers, prophets, magicians, astrologers, and other diviners, for he feared he would be deprived of his throne by “spells”! The serpent of Judeo-Christian obscurantism had been hatched…⁽⁹⁾

• ⁽⁹⁾ As I commented in Chronicle 2, footnote 4, the Judaization of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds (in the Orient and Occident respectively) through Christianization was the precondition – sine qua non – of obscurantism during the Dark Ages.

● A Hellene, for the early Christian Church, was a gentile, a pagan; the word retained that meaning until the end of the millennium. The Greeks distinguished themselves from others according to cultural standards; the Jews did so according to religious standards. It is more than obvious what each people’s contribution to civilization and what their ideals have been. In his Epistles, Paul almost always juxtaposes Hellenes to Hebrews, in disregard of all other ethnicities (Romans, Syrians, Egyptians, etc.) living in the area at the time. It is more than obvious who he considered an enemy! Another “softer” interpretation is that a Hellene for him was a polytheist, while a Hebrew was a monotheist. Nota bene, a gentile is, first of all, a non-Jew (and not a non-Christian). The word Hellene meaning pagan has persisted into modern times. Many advocates of a revival of the Olympian gods’ worship call themselves Hellenic Polytheists, while the religion is called Hellenism. Such persons outside of Greece are careful not to imply that they consider themselves Greek nationals.

The Council of Gods, Raphael (1517-18)

● “The word ‘pagan’,” according to Nixey, “was a pejorative and insulting word… It was also a Christian innovation: before Christianity’s ascendancy few people would have thought to describe themselves by their religion at all. After Christianity, the world became split, forevermore, along religious boundaries; and words appeared to demarcate these divisions. One of the most common was ‘pagan’. Initially this word had been used to refer to a civilian rather than a soldier. Later, Christian writers concocted false, unflattering etymologies for it: they said it was related to the word pagus, to the ‘peasants’… It was not; but such slurs stuck and ‘paganism’ acquired an unappealing whiff of the rustic and the backward – a taint it carries to this day.”

Besides, the English writer thinks it is better to “avoid ascribing modern nationalities to ancient characters and instead describe them by the language they chiefly wrote in. Thus the orator Libanius, though he was born and lived in Syria, is described not as a ‘Syrian’ but as a Greek. This was a cosmopolitan world where anyone… might consider himself to be a ‘Hellene’ – a Greek”, she adds.

● Constantius was the emperor who initiated the anti-paganistic legislation that in time would become the basis of the Inquisition. He escalated persecutions, as well, setting up a concentration camp in Scythopolis, Palestine, where Hellenes, other gentiles and all those who were considered to be “enemies of the empire”, singled out by vile royal counselors, were tortured and killed. Relevant evidence is given by Ammianus Marcellinus – “a former officer and Hellene”, as he used to describe himself, even in those hard times, born perhaps in Antioch. The idea for the construction of the camp was attributed to to George of Cappadocia, bishop of Alexandria, whose end would be as bad as his life was, once Julian ascended the throne.

Victory column of Diocletian (erroneously mentioned as Pompey’s pillar) erected at the Serapeum in 297 CE after suppressing a revolt in Egypt. It’s a granite monolith 20.46 m high (total height 26.85 m.)

● 356. “It became illegal – on pain of death – to worship images”, observes Nixey. “‘Pagans’ began to be described as ‘madmen’ whose beliefs must be ‘completely eradicated’, while sacrifice was a ‘sin’ and anyone who performed such an evil would be ‘struck with the avenging sword’.” Christianism’s Orwellian Brave New World was in need of a surveillance network. “Roman emperors had always used informers – ‘delatores’. Now, they were put to the service of the Church. Men of all ranks were required to become informers… If they refused or failed in their duties, then they themselves would be held accountable. Among those whom the clergy were tasked with reporting on were actors, actresses and, as one revealing little law added, prostitutes ‘who wore monastic habits’. The punishments could be terrible… [e.g.] by having molten lead poured down [one’s] throat. Correction was paramount.” (!)

Julian: a Parenthesis of Hellenism

● February 4, 362. Julian promulgated an edict to guarantee freedom of religion, proclaiming that all religions were equal in front of the Law, and that the Roman Empire had to return to its former religious eclecticism, according to which it did not impose any religion. As a student of philosophy in Athens, the last emperor who consciously rejected Christianism, was initiated to the Eleusinian Mysteries, which he later tried to restore, and became acquainted with two future bishops and “saints”: Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil of Caesarea.

Julian (361–363) was a complex personality: “military commander, philosopher, theosophist, social reformer, and man of letters”, who wrote in Greek. Of course, several of his works have been “lost”; one of the most important of such “lost works” was his Against the Galileans (Christians). He was half-Hellene from his mother. His parents were Christians; he was given a Christian education. Yet, he converted from Christianism to Hellenism when he was 20. The emperor’s role did not suit him, as he disliked absolute autocracy. He considered the ideal ruler as being primus inter pares (“first among equals”), and equal before the law to his subjects. Julian often frequented in the Senate, participating in debates as a member, not as a king. His habit of talking to his subjects on an equal footing, dressing casually, and leading an ascetic lifestyle, were all misunderstood by “hoi polloi”, who thought that he should behave like an all-powerful Emperor.

Julian the Apostate Presiding at a Conference of Sectarians, by Edward Armitage (1875)
Julian the… Sectarian? But at that time, sectarians were the Christians!

He continually sought to reduce the burdensome and corrupt bureaucracy, and dismissed the surplus staff, either civic officials, or secret agents. He promoted decentralization for the same reason, transferring authorities to the cities from the capital. Of course, he repealed the stipends that Constantine had awarded to bishops, and removed the privileges of the Church, as well. He envisioned the institution of a philanthropic system, as the Christian charities were open to all, including pagans, and criticized the priests of the old religion: “These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agapae,⁽¹⁰⁾ they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes.”

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ The agape (“love” in Greek) feast was a communal meal shared among early Christians.

After five months in Constantinople, he spent the next nine months in Antioch, preparing a campaign to Persia. He was disappointed a lot there, when he saw wealthy merchants hoarding food and selling it at high prices, with the situation heading for a famine. Despite his interventions, the curia and the city’s leading citizens did nothing. Finally, he fixed prices, and imported grain from Egypt; at the same time, he forced the landholders to sell. Then he tried to resurrect the ancient oracular spring of Castalia at a nearby temple of Apollo, where, however, a bishop had been buried. His order for the bones to be removed resulted to a massive Christian procession; shortly after, the temple was destroyed by fire. In 363, he ordered Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt: again, fires broke out and the works stopped. No need to say that in both cases, these fires were acts of sabotage by Christians, which could be described as “acts of terror”.

Mercurius killing Julian (Coptic icon). According to a “tradition”, Basil of Caesarea had been imprisoned at the start of Julian’s campaign. He prayed for help to Mercurius, who appeared in a vision, claiming to have speared Julian to death…

Julian was mortally wounded under mysterious circumstances during the Persian campaign, before he could implement his vision (“an act of God!”, the Christians would blissfully say, praising the “Lord”). But was it, indeed, “an act of God”? In 364, Libanius said that Julian was assassinated by a Christian soldier of his own army; but 14 years later, he… corrected himself, claiming that Julian was killed by a “Saracen” – though this turnaround happened in a period when the Christians were back in power. According to John Malalas, Basil of Caesarea commanded the assassination. Later Christian historians propagated the idea that Julian was killed by “saint” Mercurius. Considered apocryphal (Christian fantasy) is a report that his dying words were “νενίκηκάς με, Γαλιλαῖε!” (“You have won, Galilean!”). Julian would certainly speak in the plural: “You have won, Galileans!” (Compare his work Against the Galileans): there’s a big difference.

● As regards bishop George, according to Julian himself, Ammianus, as well as Christian historians, such as Sozomenus, Theodoret, or Socrates Scholasticus:

“George manifested his anti-pagan zeal in excess with arbitrary acts and insulting speeches, exacting onerous taxes, procuring the banishment of Zeno, a prominent pagan physician,⁽¹¹⁾ preventing the pagans from offering sacrifices and celebrating their gentile feasts, and bringing Artemius, duke of Egypt, whom the Alexandrians dreaded, for he was much given to the destruction of idols: he invaded with an armed force into the superb temple of Serapis [Serapeum], which was forthwith stripped of images, votive offerings, and ornaments… The news of Julian’s accession arrived at Alexandria on November 30, 361. George was at the height of his pride and power: he had persecuted and mocked the pagans, who now… felt that the gods could, at last, be avenged”… He was thrown into prison with two others who had overthrown a pagan altar; but “in the morning of December 24, the pagan mob again assembled, dragged them forth with horrible shouts of triumph, and kicked them to death.” Then they led the bodies through every part of the city and “eventually burned the remains on the shore, casting the ashes into the sea.” Alexandria, the glorious centre of Hellenistic civilization, was gradually sinking into the abyss…

• ⁽¹¹⁾ Everything Hellenic was “from the Devil”, as well, and banished: knowledge, science, medicine. Medical books were also burned and the only therapeutic methods left were blood-letting and… exorcism. Only dehumanized humans would never question the Christian “new order”…

St. George Killing the Dragon, by Bernat Martorell (1434-35): the same iconography, with a dragon
in the place of Julian!

● But who was that “duke of Egypt” (dux Aegypti), Artemius? For the Christians, he was none other than the “martyr” and “saint” Artemius of Antioch, where he was tried and beheaded in 362 for abuse of power and maladministration of his province, having demolished temples and broken down their idols – on his own will, or instigated by George. The Church apparently felt that his work was “God-blessed”! However, there’s a chance that in Julian’s years, we have not only one, but two “martyrs”: Artemius and George. The English historian Edward Gibbon e.g. identifies George of Cappadocia, the bishop, with… George of Lydda, the “saint”! The former was an Arian (i.e. a heretic), therefore, a “black sheep”. But the latter was the hero of a legend that, in several variations, fascinated even the Muslims. So, he should be preserved. The disinformation operation was thus put into motion (keep in mind that what information we have has passed through… a thousand censoring “sieves”)! George the “saint” was supposedly martyred in 303, during the Diocletian persecution. The technology of the era, however, did not allow a non-existent person to acquire flesh and bone. That’s why we know nothing about the “saint”, nor is there any proof that he ever existed. Whatever we know is according to… tradition. The oldest text referring to the legend, but without naming George, is Eusebius’ Church History in the 4th century (about his credibility, see Chronicle 19, last paragraph). The oldest text preserving fragments of the legend is in a Greek hagiography, a 5th-century palimpsest. But its compiler, just like Gibbon, also identifies the martyr with his namesake bishop.

● “As the early Christian author Origen admitted”, comments Nixey, “the numbers of martyrs were few enough to be easily countable; the Christians had died for their faith ‘occasionally’… Several saints appear never to have existed at all. It is now thought that fewer than ten martyrdom tales… can be considered reliable… There were few persecutions of those years: the Decian; the Valerian, seven years later, and ‘the Great [Diocletian] Persecution’ fifty-odd years after that in AD 303. And not all of these ‘persecutions’ were intended to explicitly target Christians… The Romans did not seek to wipe Christianity out. If they had, they would almost certainly have succeeded… The martyr stories… show what the scholar G. E. M. de Ste. Croix called ‘an increasing contempt for historicity’… The brief and sporadic Roman persecutions of Christians would pale in comparison to what the Christians inflicted on others – not to mention on their own heretics.”

● 363. When Julian was dead, the “purple” (the “crown”, as they used to say of later kings) was given, due to a “misunderstanding”, to Jovian, who established Christianism again as the official religion. Being under the influence of “saint” Athanasius of Alexandria, he moved “as if by magic” from tolerance to bigotry, subjecting those who worshipped ancestral gods to death and also ordering the Library of Antioch to be burned down.⁽¹²⁾ However, he was unable to complete his “mission”: he died (or… they made him die) half a year later. Very soon this task would be undertaken by Theodosius I.

A Greek rider seizes a mounted Amazon (armed with a double-headed axe) by her Phrygian cap; mosaic, 2nd half of the 4th century CE
(in the time of Jovian); from Daphne, a suburb of Antioch.

• ⁽¹³⁾ “Jovian ordered the destruction” of the Library of Antioch, relates Johannes Hahn in his Gewalt und religiöser Konflikt (Violence and religious conflict), “because he wanted to gain the favour of the Antiochians. Nevertheless, he failed completely: not only the pagans but also the Christians interpreted this as a barbaric act… He burned the temple, with all the books in it, at the urging of his wife, with his concubines laughing and setting the fire”…

● The “witch-hunt”, in the meantime, continued with even greater intensity, after Julian’s short reign: Hellenic philosophical and scientific treatises were burned in public, and hundreds of Greeks or other pagans, accused of sorcery, were being pilloried, imprisoned, tortured, executed, and their properties were confiscated. Among them was another philosopher, Simonides. Such accusations arose from the practice of theurgy, performed by Neoplatonic philosophers. It was “man’s conscious participation in the divine work,” which was accomplished by rituals, invoking god, or gods, with the goal of achieving henosis (union with the divine) and perfecting oneself. It is what the mystics, such as the Sufis, are after until now, with rituals using music and poetry, singing and dancing – and what the people of the Church detest until now.

● In 364, Maximus, Julian’s instructor in philosophy and theurgy, was accused of causing a lengthy illness in the new emperors, Valentinian and Valens, but was acquitted due to lack of evidence. In 365-366, however, he was again arrested for illegitimate enrichment. A heavy fine was imposed and he was tortured since he was not able to pay… Around 370, his name was implicated in some rumours about an oracle on who the next emperor would be. Valens reacted hysterically, unleashing a massacre, and as a result, he was loathed by his subjects. Maximus was tortured and beheaded in 372, although, according to Eunapius, he had no involvement in this plot.

St. Paul and the burning of pagan books at Ephesus, by Lucio Massari (1612). Acts of the Apostles, 19: “Τhey counted the value of [the burned books] and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver” = more than 20 million €!

● 4th century, 3rd quarter. “One of the most infamous assaults on thinkers and books took place in Antioch… Ammianus Marcellinus… one of the finest historians of the era, happened to be there. An accusation of treasonous divination led to a full-scale purge that targeted the city’s intellectuals… A noble of ‘remarkable literary attainments’ was one of the first to be arrested and tortured; he was followed by a clutch of philosophers who were variously tortured, burned alive and beheaded. ‘Innumerable books and whole heaps of documents, which had been routed out from various houses, were piled up and burnt under the eyes of the judges. They were treated as forbidden texts to allay the indignation caused by the executions, though most of them were treatises on various liberal arts and on jurisprudence… Throughout the eastern provinces whole libraries were burnt by their owners for fear of a similar fate; such was the terror which seized all hearts’… As John Chrysostom crowed, the writings ‘of the Greeks have all perished and are obliterated’.” Catherine Nixey sums up with the most tragic consequence: “It has been estimated that less than 10% of all classical literature has survived into the modern era.”

Omphalos of Gaea (navel of the Earth): Delphi with the Temple of Apollo (reconstruction)

Theodosius: Genocide Act IΙ – Massacre of Thessalonica
Christian Vandals in Delphi

● 390. Another “miraculous” metamorphosis was witnessed on Theodosius (379–395). His policy of tolerance in the beginning of his reign gave way to bigotry. The bloody turning point came with his order to his Gothic troops to commit the abominable massacre of Thessalonica in the Hippodrome in 390, when the citizens rebelled against his Germanic mercenary garrison (see Chronicle 18, footnote 5). The people had been invited to watch chariot races; but the Goths closed the gates and slaughtered everyone. The result: 7,000-15,000 Thessalonians killed. Ambrose, the archbishop of Milan, was quick to capitalize on this golden opportunity: he excommunicated Theodosius, and thereby turned him into his obedient instrument.⁽¹³⁾ The king submitted himself completely to the Church, and agreed to do public penance, adopting a new role as the champion of the Christian faith. The result was the so-called “Theodosian decrees”, breaking up pagan institutions and destroying their temples. The first act of his “penance” was perhaps the ruination of the temple of Apollo and most of the statues and works of art in Delphi, in the name of Christianism, in the same year (390).⁽¹⁴⁾ The sacred site was totally destroyed by Christian zealots in an attempt to obliterate all traces of Hellenism, which was already proscribed, a “religio illicit”: gentiles would be sought out by Christian informers, brought to court and in many cases executed. This “war on the infidels” was transferred to Alexandria the next year.

• ⁽¹³⁾ Ambrose could manipulate three emperors: Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theodosius I; naturally, he was “sanctified”! Adopting Constantine’s tactics, Gratian in 382 confiscated every paganist property. Valentinian’s legislation practically outlawed polytheism. Theodosius’ decrees were effectively a declaration of war on Hellenism. He not only authorized, but also participated in Christian zealots’ attacks against ancient shrines, when priests were killed and temples destroyed.

Aphrodite: clay figurine from Myrina
(2nd century BCE)

• ⁽¹⁴⁾ In fact, Delphi was already in a desolate state, with its treasures plundered and shattered: the oracle was visited by Oribasius, Julian’s personal physician, in 362, on behalf of the emperor, and received one of Pythia’s last “prophecies” (or, rather the cry: “Help!”). At least, that’s what the Christian historian Philostorgius says, but we ignore if it is a fact, or another case of falsified truth, of “history” written by the Big Brothers:

  .

  Tell the emperor,

  the splendid palace fell to the ground.

  Phoebus no longer has a house,

  nor the prophesying laurel,

  nor the speaking spring;

  the speaking water evaporated as well.

● 391. “Theodosius passed a formidable law. ‘No person shall be granted the right to perform sacrifices; no person shall go around the temples; no person shall revere the shrines’. Nor could anyone… venerate his household gods, or burn lights, put up wreaths, or burn incense to them. Then… a new and more terrible law came. ‘If there should be any temples in the country districts, they shall be torn down’… A bishop named Marcellus became ‘the first… to put the edict in force and destroy the shrines’… As the laws against pagans were building to an aggressive crescendo, [he also] destroyed the vast and still hugely popular temple of Zeus at Apamea… It fell with a crash that was loud enough to bring all the townspeople running… Marcellus [at last] was seized and burned alive by outraged polytheists… Today he is worshipped as a saint in the Orthodox Church.” No one could ever imagine what building would be the Christians’ next target. Catherine Nixey’s narrative builds up to a climax:

Serapeum of Alexandria (reconstructed)

● “At the end of the first century of Christian rule, the Colosseum dominated Rome and the Parthenon towered above Athens. Yet when writers of this period discuss architecture, these aren’t the buildings that impress them. Instead, their admiration is drawn by another structure in Egypt [despite destruction inflicted by Artemius]. Its great halls, its columns, its astonishing statues and its art all made it… ‘the most magnificent building in the whole world’. Everyone had heard of it. No one has heard of it now. While tourists still toil up to the Parthenon, or look in awe at the Colosseum, outside Academia few people know of the temple of Serapis.⁽¹⁵⁾ That is because… a bishop, supported by a band of fanatical Christians, reduced it to rubble.”

• ⁽¹⁵⁾ It is astonishing that none of these edifices (Parthenon, Colosseum, Serapeum) was included among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World!

The Serapeum and Artemision Razed to the Ground

● In 391, the enormous Serapeum, together with what was left out of the great Library of Alexandria, were looted, burned and razed to the ground by Christian fanatics and troops, at the decrees of Theodosius and archbishop Theophilus, whom Edward Gibbon describes in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as “the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue, a bold, bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and with blood.” The archbishop had discovered an underground Mithraeum,⁽¹⁶⁾ and together with his followers, mockingly displayed the worshippers’ sacred artifacts offending them enough to provoke an attack on Christians. The latter counterattacked, forcing the Mithraists to retreat to the Serapeum. Theodosius had given Theophilus the go-ahead to destroy, and just asked him to avoid another massacre. As the Christian historiographer, Socrates Scholasticus says in his Ecclesiastical History, Theophilus “caused the Mithraeum to be cleaned out… Then he destroyed the Serapeum… The heathen temples were therefore razed to the ground, and the images of their gods molten into pots and other convenient utensils for the use of the Alexandrian Church.” The temples that were demolished could be declared “abandoned”, as Theophilus immediately noted in applying for permission to convert them into Christian churches – an act that must have received general sanction, for cave-like mithraea turned into crypts, and temples forming the foundations of churches, appear throughout the Roman Empire in the 5th century.

• ⁽¹⁶⁾ Note that we know almost nothing about Mithraism, a religion contemporary with – and rival of – Christianism, practiced from about the 1st to the 4th centuries CE.

5th-century scroll: Theophilus standing triumphantly on the ruins of Serapeum: his eyes betray his paranoia…

● Standing triumphantly in the ruins, Theophilus looked around in search of his next victim and, after he razed to the ground numerous shrines all over Egypt, turned against the followers of Origen, embarking on a paranoid campaign that killed 10,000 monks: the massacre was unavoidable after all… Nevertheless, the slaughterer is considered a “saint” by the Copts!

“According to later Christian chronicles”, notes Nixey, Serapeum’s devastation “was a victory. According to a non-Christian account, it was a tragedy – and a farce. The Greek writer Eunapius felt the destruction was done less from reverence for the Lord than out of pure greed. In his account the Christians weren’t virtuous warriors: they were hoodlums and thieves. The only thing that they did not steal, he observed acidly, was the floor – and that was left ‘simply because of the weight of the stones which were not easy to move’… The tens of thousands of books, the remnants of the greatest library in the world,⁽¹⁷⁾ were all lost, never to reappear. Perhaps they were burned. As the modern scholar, Luciano Canfora, observed: ‘the burning of books was part of the advent and imposition of Christianity’.”

• ⁽¹⁷⁾ “It was over a millennium before any other library would ever come close to its holdings.” (C.N.) On the devastation of the Alexandrian Library, see Chronicle 18, footnote 6, and Chronicle 24, Arsons of Libraries.

● The destruction of the Serapeum was seen by many authors as representative of the “triumph of Christianity” over other religions – or the victory of a Hebrew god over Hellenic, Roman, Egyptian, Persian, etc., deities – hence other cultures; while that of the Alexandrian Library symbolized “knowledge and culture ruined”. The library held almost 700,000 scrolls from Hellas, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, India, and several other countries, being part of a grand research institute, an ancient university, called the Musaeum (House of the Muses), where many of the most famous thinkers of the ancient world studied and worked, such as: Archimedes, antiquity’s greatest scientist; Ctesibius, the father of pneumatics and inventor of the hydraulis (water organ, or today’s pipe organ; see Chronicle 11, Hydraulis, Pipe Organ); Euclid, the father of geometry; Eratosthenes, who argued for a spherical earth, calculated its circumference, and the tilt of its axis, to near-accuracy; Hero, the father of mechanics, inventor of the first steam engine (aeolipile), a follower of the Atomists; Hipparchus, the father of astronomy and founder of trigonometry; Aristarchus, who proposed the first heliocentric system of the universe; his case is an excellent example: his only extant work, On Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon, is based on the geocentric model; the other book that proposed the alternative hypothesis of heliocentrism is known only through citations by other scientists, such as Archimedes. Is this just a coincidence? Absolutely not!

Library of Alexandria (reconstructed)

● In 392, Theodosius banned the mysteries of Aphrodite in Cyprus, while “saint” Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, Christianized gentiles en masse with the threat of slaughter and fire, destroying all sanctuaries. The next year, the king extended the ban to all Pan-Hellenic artistic and athletic festivals and games, such as the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and also the Roman Actia. Given the opportunity, the sanctuaries in Olympia were plundered. In 395, Christian atrocities spread all over Greece, including symbolic sites – not only Olympia, but also Dion, Delphi (again), and Eleusis, where the ancient sanctuary was set to fire and all priests were killed because they had tried to revive the Eleusinian Mysteries.

● Violence reigned supreme during the late 4th century, with ancient temples destroyed and turned into Christian churches, their statues, altars, sanctuaries, carried around and mocked in public before they were shattered, gentile priests killed, and libraries burned. Surviving texts describe this widespread catastrophe in the Orient and Occident, referring among others to: the devastation of holy sites that extended rapidly throughout Egypt; the leveling of all temples in Gaza; the destruction of temples and idols in Syria and around Carthage; the attacks of Martin of Tours on holy sites in Gaul; and the list goes on…

The destruction of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia was ordered by Theodosius II in 426 CE

“In France”, writes Nixey, “St Martin, or so the Life of Martin proudly records, ‘set fire to a most ancient and famous shrine’ before moving on to a different village where he ‘completely demolished the temple… and reduced all the altars and statues to dust’. Hagiography records such attacks not as dismal… acts of vandalism but proof of a saint’s virtue. Some of the most famous saints in Christianity kicked off their careers… demolishing shrines. Benedict of Nursia… was celebrated as a destroyer of antiquities. Upon arriving in Monte Cassino, just outside Rome, he smashed an ancient statue of Apollo and destroyed the shrine’s altar. He toured the area ‘pulling down the idols and destroying the groves on the mountain… and gave himself no rest until he had uprooted the last remnant of heathenism’… John Chrysostom, hearing that Phoenicia was still ‘suffering from the madness of the demons’ rites’, sent violent bands of monks, funded by the faithful women of his congregation, to destroy the shrines in the area… In AD 401, Augustine told Christians in Carthage to smash pagan objects because that was what God wanted and commanded… His congregation, eager to sack the temples, started reciting Psalm 83. ‘Let them be humiliated and downcast forever. Let them perish in disgrace’… It has been said that 60 died in riots inflamed by this burst of oratorical fire.” It was an undeclared war.⁽¹⁸⁾

The Sack of Rome by the [Christian] Barbarians
in 410, by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre (1890)

• ⁽¹⁸⁾ Centuries of brainwashing created the false impression that Christianism fell like a “ripe fruit”, in a society tired of polytheism, where everyone embraced the new religion. Eusebius mentions street-fighting in Alexandria between Christians and polytheists, occurring as early as the mid-3rd century. A little later, early in the 4th century, “Spanish bishops were moved to declare that: ‘If anyone breaks idols and is killed on the spot’ he would not… be awarded the martyr’s crown”, as Catherine Nixey notes.

This peculiar civil war forced many people to convert to Christianism, but secretly they remained polytheists. Some had the courage to “apostasize”, just like Julian, adopting Hellenism again. It was the reason why laws against “apostasy” were promulgated by Gratian and Theodosius, with the penalties getting heavier and heavier. Polytheist writers blamed the Christian hegemony for all the evils of the empire, such as the Sack of Rome, in 410, by Alaric. Certainly, these books, and all similar writings, were destroyed by the Christians, who threatened to cut off the hands of anyone who dared to make copies of such “banned” literature.

● Alaric and his Goths were Christians (Arians), while the sack of Rome was the beginning of the end for the Western Roman Empire.

“The orator Libanius… and other worshippers of the old gods saw… their temples ‘in ruins, their ritual banned, their altars overturned, their sacrifices suppressed, their priests sent packing and their property divided up between a crew of rascals’… The vicious and thuggish attacks on the temples weren’t done out of piety, said Libanius [echoing Eunapius]. They committed them out of pure greed… ‘These attacks are a source of income’ because after raiding not only shrines but also peasant homes, ‘the invaders depart with the loot from the places they have stormed’.”

Saul of Tarsus, the trouble-maker: his preaching and book burning at Ephesus inspired many artists who applauded such actions that all fascists imitated. Here’s another version: The Story
of St. Paul: The Burning of the Books at Ephesus, by Pieter Coecke van Aelst (tapestry, detail: designed c. 1529, woven before 1546)

● A fundamentalist mob, led by “Chrysostom”, destroyed completely the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of antiquity, in 401, ten years after its closure. Its ruins were used to decorate the Hagia Sophia (columns), the Senate (bronze gates), the palace, and other buildings of Constantinople. A first verbal attack on the temple by Saul-Paul caused a violent riot. Destructions by the Christians started at the end of the 1st century. The “baton” was later taken by the Christian Goths who plundered Artemision in 262 CE. Archaeologists had been searching for six years before they located its traces in 1869.

● The impression one gets on this first “Christian century” is that Julian’s failure to restore freedom of religion was a turning point: the Christians realized what they had achieved and what they were in danger of losing. Their attacks would then reach proportions of an annihilation of all non-Christians, a true genocide – to a paroxysmal point.

●

Reconstruction of the procession carrying Alexander’s body based on Diodorus’ description

Sacrilege of Alexander’s Sōma

IN THIS ATMOSPHERE OF CHAOS AND POLARIZATION, utmost decay and moral degradation, proclaimed as “the triumph of Christianity over idolatry”, the symbolism of a “Victorious Jesus” could not be overwhelming without the “defeat” and “conquest” of the invincible conqueror, Alexander the Great. The king died (probably poisoned) in Babylon in 323 BCE. His body was en route to Macedonia, when it was hijacked by Ptolemy Soter for the prestige of having Alexander’s tomb in Egypt. The deceased, who had been declared as “the son of Amun” by the god’s oracle at Siwa oasis, asked shortly before his death to be buried there, in the temple of Zeus Amun, rather than alongside his biological father, Philip, at Aegae. Ptolemy Philopator built a magnificent mausoleum in Alexandria, inside a huge precinct, known as Sōma (Body), which became one of the most famous and sacred sanctuaries of the ancient world, for Alexander was worshipped as a god in the Macedonian and the Roman Empires – especially in the city he had founded, where he was like a patron. A large number of rulers and politicians, officers and officials, both Hellenes and Romans, paid respects to Alexander visiting the mausoleum. Julius Caesar was the first Roman leader to go to the Sōma, as a pilgrimage to the grave of his hero. Many others followed, from Augustus to Severus. However, there were some sacrilegious villains, like Caligula, who removed the breastplate, and Caracalla, who took the tunic, ring, and belt, while his troops were looting Alexandria for several days, slaughtering over 20,000 citizens, mainly young people, in 215, because of a satire produced in the city mocking his claims that he had killed his brother, co-emperor Geta, in self-defense.

City plan of ancient Alexandria with the four flashpoints framed in red: the Musaeum and the
Library, the Serapeum, and somewhere between the “Sōma”, the tomb of Alexander

● Nevertheless, even in such a bloodbath and plunder, with the sole exception of those “pickpockets” wearing the imperial purple, there was no real threat to Alexander’s Sōma until the next century. Ammianus Marcellinus described how bishop George, passing by the Sōma, in 361, wondered intentionally aloud in front of the people of Alexandria about the great and magnificent temple of the city’s genius: “How long will this tomb stand?”, he asked. By “genius”, Ammianus meant the tutelary deity of the city, Alexander. After a while, as we have seen, “George was killed for repeated acts of pointed outrage, insult, and pillage of the most sacred treasures of the city.” Besides, he was hated by all, pagans and Christians alike. But George was not alone. Theodosius, in 391, declared illegal the veneration of Alexander, together with all other pagan gods, and afterwards, says Alexandre Grandazzi in his Historia, “a violent Christian and anti-pagan riot exploded leading to the destruction of the great temple of Serapis, and possibly reached… the Sōma: an allusion… in a speech by the orator Libanius indicates that the body was removed from the tomb to be exposed publicly for the last time.” It seems that the body was hijacked again, and buried in a Christian manner since, according to the new dogma, it should be interred, while the preceding practice of entombment was thought to be idolatrous. Everything referring to Hellenism was destroyed, while the burial of important, illustrious persons was no longer done in mausoleums, but in Christian basilicas and underground. It is the time when Alexander’s remains “mysteriously” vanish. Already at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries, John “Chrysostom” boasted in a sermon that the Macedonian king’s tomb was “unknown to his own people”, i.e. to the Alexandrian polytheists. Some decades later, Alexander was included by Theodoret in his list of famous personages whose graves had been “lost”.

Alexander the Great, several versions, by Andy Warhol (1982)

● There are a couple of references to a mosque or tomb of Alexander in Arabic texts dating from the 9th and 10th centuries. They probably allude to a mosque that was reconstructed from ancient architectural elements in the 11th century. Alexander’s empty sarcophagus was found there by Napoleon’s forces in 1798. Leo Africanus, who visited Alexandria around 1517, wrote:

“In the midst of the ruins of Alexandria, there still remains a small edifice, built like a chapel, worthy of notice on account of a remarkable tomb held in high honour by the Mohammedans; in which sepulchre, they assert, is preserved the body of Alexander the Great… An immense crowd of strangers come thither, even from distant countries, for the sake of worshipping and doing homage to the tomb, on which they likewise frequently bestow considerable donations.”

Alexander the Great, mosaic,
by Alexandros Giannios

George Sandys, visiting Alexandria in 1611, was also shown a sepulchre venerated as Alexander’s resting place. Whatever the fate of the tomb that was “mysteriously lost” again, these testimonies constitute a double defeat over Christianism: a) Alexander’s veneration continued either with or even without his body, despite the sacrilege; b) a comparison between the two monotheistic religions here ends up overwhelmingly against Christianism.

● According to 21st century historians, such as Andrew Chugg, author of four books on Alexander, one entitled Alexander the Great, the Lost Tomb, there’s a chance that the embalmed body of the great Macedonian king might be preserved in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, where it has been mistakenly venerated as the body of Mark the Evangelist! The latter had gone to Alexandria in 49, and founded the Church there, becoming its first bishop. However, there were Alexandrian pagans who resented his efforts to turn them away from the worship of their traditional gods. So, in 68, they placed a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets until he died (the mobs, you see, were not a Christian invention: they have been an essential and indispensable “tool” of every ideology and doctrine).

Two Venetian merchants brought the mummy from Muslim Alexandria to Venice in the 9th century, and the doge ordered the so-called Chiesa d’Oro (Church of Gold) to be built next to his palace. The possession of an important relic would have serious political consequences. With a supposed evangelist on its territory, Venice acquired a status almost equal to that of Rome. During the construction of a new basilica in 1063, the relics “mysteriously” disappeared. According to a tradition, “Mark” himself revealed the location of his remains in 1094 by extending his arm from a pillar to the doge of the time.

Since 1811, the mummy rests in a crypt under the church’s altar, inside a marble sarcophagus on which there are also several Macedonian symbols. On the contrary, the Copts believe that Mark’s head remains in a church named after him in Alexandria, parts of his relics are in St. Mark’s Cairo Cathedral, and the rest are in Venice.

Nevertheless, there’s just one “little detail”: early Christian writers, such as Dorotheus, Eutychius, and also the author of the Chronicón Paschale, say that Mark’s body was burned by the pagans! How could it be possibly embalmed?

A scientific study on the remains would reveal the secret of their origin. Radiocarbon dating would establish if the body is old enough to match to that of Alexander. And, it would be possible to reconstruct his facial features from the skull (wherever it is), and inspect the bones for signs of multiple injuries, particularly the one inflicted on Alexander’s chest when an arrow penetrated into his sternum…

Do you sincerely think there will be any Church officials who would ever allow such a study, putting at risk the Church’s “history” for History’s sake?

• >> Chronicle 24. THE TRIUMPH OF CRETINISM
• << Chronicle 22. AN IBERIAN PERIPLUS REVIVAL

Next Chronicle 24. THE TRIUMPH OF CRETINISM ● The Genocide of the Hellenes (Β) ● Hypatia’s Assassination ● Christianism and Slavery ● Colonialism and Racism

Ruins and Columns of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus

Chronicle 27. AN ARCHAEOLOGIST’S WATERLOO

Chronicle 27. AN ARCHAEOLOGIST’S WATERLOO

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 27. ΤΟ ΒΑΤΕΡΛΩ ΕΝΟΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΛΟΓΟΥ

● Emporia in Egypt and the Levant ● Leonard Woolley’s Waterloo ● Itinerant Minoan Artists ● Creto-Egyptian Ties ● Differences Between Minoan and Pharaonic Society and Art

Michales Loukovikas

.

… Hope the voyage is a long one…
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbours seen for the first time!
May you stop at Phoenician emporia
to buy fine things…
And may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars…

(Constantine P. Cavafy, Ithaca)

A Minoan woman

UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, in the process of a research, in order to present a topic, you know beforehand in general terms what you’re looking for, while searching for documentation. Sometimes, however, the thread you have in hand to find your way in the “labyrinth of history” leads you to unanticipated landscapes, “into harbours seen for the first time”! Then a strong desire is born to “stop at Phoenician emporia… | and visit many Egyptian cities | to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars”, as Cavafy advises in his Ithaca. These are, indeed, the happiest moments of a research!

It happened exactly that when from the Aegean emporia in the historical space of the Mediterranean, I ended up following itinerant Minoan artists to distant lands! I felt I was obliged to give more information about these emporia, after referring to Naucratis in the previous Chronicle, when I realized I have already used this term several times in connection with colonies or trading posts; but the emporia were not exactly colonies or trading posts, though related to both. Writing in the Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World about Commercial posts and harbours, Elias Petropoulos tried to clear things out:

“The term emporium denoting a type of settlement or colony first appears in ancient literature rather late, in the 5th century BC. According to some scholars, an emporium should be understood as the locale of the emporos (or merchant), i.e. the traveller carrying commodities. The word emporos etymologically originates from the preposition en and the word poros, meaning sea route. The word appears in Homer’s Odyssey twice. In both cases the epic poet obviously meant a private individual who travelled for professional reasons. Hence we could suppose that the word emporium originated from the word emporos. Unfortunately, this word does not appear on [Mycenaean] Linear B tablets, and this is rather surprising, but it also leads to the obvious conclusion that the word was coined at a later time. Scholarship on the subject argues that the word or term emporium (in the sense of a colony or settlement and not that of a simple commercial transaction or exchange of products) appears first in writing in the work of Herodotus in the mid-5th century BC. By the 4th century BC the word is found written on an inscription (known as ‘the inscription of Pistiros’) which has been unearthed quite recently in a settlement of the modern Bulgarian (ancient Thracian) hinterland, close to Philippopolis…

Emporium < Emporos (< en + poros) = a voyager on a sea route

The Babylonian Marriage Market (1875), by Edwin Long,
inspired by a passage in the Herodotan Histories

“According to information we can extract from Melpomene, Herodotus’ fourth book [of Histories], the Black Sea was home to several emporia, as the ancient historian described them… There are also more scattered references in the other eight books of Herodotus. These emporia were located outside the Black Sea, and situated in the Mediterranean. The case of Naucratis among them really puzzles us: the ancient historian mentions it as both a polis and an emporium. Many studies have dealt with this issue, but nevertheless we still cannot determine the early nature of this settlement with certainty. The term usually understood as the opposite of emporium is colony, which is considered as a complete form of settlement in the model of the ancient Greek polis, featuring a distinct form of political and social organization. A colony was obviously established in the context of a predetermined plan of action, and under the auspices of a god (or gods) through an oracle, with every formality on the part of the metropolis, possessing an agricultural hinterland and its own coinage… However, in some cases, an emporium may be characterized as a proto-polis or proto-settlement, in the sense that it could act as an early stage in the foundation of a colony or polis.”

Frieze of a landscape with river; Acroteri, Thera – when there were still rivers on Santorini…

Egypt with Alexandria, Naucratis, Avaris, Sais, Pelusium, Memphis and Thebes mentioned in this Chronicle.

Emporia, according to Wikipedia, were places that the traders of one people had reserved to their business interests within the territory of another people. Except Naucratis, famous emporia in Egypt included Avaris and Sais, where Solon, the Athenian legislator, went “to gather stores of knowledge from its scholars”, in 590 BCE. Similar emporia were founded in the Levant, such as Al-Mina and Posideion in Syria. Sais (or Zau in ancient Egyptian) was located in the western Nile Delta. The city’s patron goddess was Neith. The Greeks, such as Herodotus, Plato and Diodorus Siculus, identified her with Athena and hence postulated a primordial link to Athens. Diodorus recounts that Athena built Sais before the deluge that supposedly destroyed Athens and Atlantis; all Hellenic cities were wiped out in that cataclysm, but the Egyptian cities survived. In Plato’s Timaeus and Critias (around 360 BCE), a priest in Sais entrusted to Solon the story of Atlantis, with its aggression against Greece and Egypt, and its eventual defeat and destruction by a natural catastrophe.⁽¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ The story of Atlantis may be connected with either ice melting after the last Ice Age (but Hellas was non-existent then), or the Sea Peoples’ raids and the consequent Bronze Age collapse. This could have been the “cataclysm” that destroyed Greece, while Egypt barely survived… (See the Chronicles 18, 19, 20, especially the last one).

Taureador: Fresco fragment from Avaris, 16th BCE

Avaris (today’s Tell el-Dab’a), the capital of Egypt under the Canaanite Hyksos, was also located in the Nile Delta, in the northeastern region. Its position at the hub of Egypt’s emporia made it a major administrative and commercial centre. Excavations have shown there was a busy harbour catering to over 300 ships in a trading season. Artifacts inside the precinct of the palace, possibly a temple, have produced goods from all over the Aegean. Most impressively, there were even Minoan-like wall paintings similar to those found in Crete at the Palace of Knossos. It is speculated that there was close contact with the rulers of Avaris, whoever they were, and the large building with the frescoes allowed the Cretans to have a ritual life in Egypt. French archaeologist Yves Duhoux also proposed the existence of a Minoan colony on an island in the Nile Delta.

Minoan Ladies in Blue fresco, ca 1525-1450 BCE

Outside of the Aegean, only three sites have an indisputable record of Minoan civilization, one being Avaris in Lower Egypt, the others Kabri and Alalakh in the Levant. Kabri, in Palestine, near the Lebanese border, is notable for its Minoan-style wall paintings. In the summer of 2009, more Aegean-style frescoes were found at the site. Apparently, the Canaanite rulers of the city wished to associate it with the Mediterranean culture and avoid Syrian and Mesopotamian styles of art that other cities in Canaan adopted. Alalakh was a late Bronze Age city-state in the area where Seleucid Antioch would rise by the end of the 4th century BCE. It was occupied from before 2000, when the first palace was built, and destroyed probably in the 12th century by the Sea Peoples (as were many other towns of coastal Anatolia and the Levant). Alalakh was never reoccupied and its place was taken by the nearby port of Al-Mina during the Iron Age.

Mantiklos Apollo, from geometric to orientalizing period, bronze, (c 700-675 BCE, Thebes, Hellas)

Al-Mina (“The Port” in Arabic) is the name that archaeologist Leonard Woolley gave to this ancient trading post in the Orontes estuary. According to Woolley, it was an early Hellenic trading colony, founded a little before 800 BCE in direct competition with the Phoenicians to the south. Large amounts of Greek pottery established its early Euboean connections, while the Syrian and Phoenician ware reflected a cultural mix typical of an emporium. The controversy whether it is to be regarded as a native Syrian site, with local architecture and pots, and a Greek presence, or as a Hellenic trading post, has not been resolved. Al-Mina served as an outpost for cultural influences that accompanied commerce with Urartu and Assyria through the shortest caravan route. Pottery recovered from later levels after 700 BCE shows that a Hellenic presence endured through the 4th century BCE, with pottery imported from Miletus and deftly imitated locally, apparently by Greek potters. Al-Mina is a key to understanding the role of early Hellenes in the East at the outset of the Orientalizing period of Greek cultural history. Robin Lane Fox has made a case for the Greek name of the site to have been Potamoi Karon mentioned by Diodorus Siculus; he suggestively linked it to karu (“trading post”) in an Assyrian inscription, which would result to Rivers of Emporia.

Sumerian silver lyre of Ur (2600-2400 ΠΚΧ)

Woolley identified Al-Mina with Posideion mentioned by Herodotus and Strabo, but recent scholarship places the latter at Ras al-Bassit, located 53 kilometres north of Latakia (Hellenistic Laodicea) by the Mediterranean. Excavations there revealed a small settlement of the late Bronze Age, when it may have functioned as an outpost of Ugarit to the south. Unlike Ugarit, Bassit survived the passage of the Sea Peoples and into the Iron Age. It had strong links with Phoenicia and Cyprus, and a Greek presence was attested from the 7th century BCE. Posideion expanded and its acropolis was fortified in the Hellenistic period.

Ram in a Thicket: one of a pair of figures found at Ur. The excavation was a joint venture of the British Museum and the Pennsylvania University. Then they decided to share the booty!

Woolley began work at Al-Mina in 1936, after the excavation in Mesopotamia, at Ur, where he discovered Sumerian royal tombs of great wealth. He made up his mind to work by the Mediterranean coast because he was interested in finding ties between the Aegean and the Mesopotamian civilizations, and also wished to throw light, as he wrote, “upon the development of Cretan civilization and its connections with the great civilizations of Nearer Asia”. Disappointed at Al-Mina, as he did not find a Bronze Age port there, he soon moved his interests to the earlier, more urbane site of Alalakh, where he worked before and after World War II (1937-39 and 1946-49). It seems, however, that his “view” was anything but “impartial”, for he, too, was “spectacled”, wearing “Asiatic myopic glasses”. All those clues on the “connections” he was interested in were there, of course; but, having already in mind an elaborate scenario, and most probably the secret ambition to turn Arthur Evans’ work in Crete upside down, he led himself to erroneous conclusions. If Ur had been his Austerlitz, Alalakh turned out to be his Waterloo! His failure to interpret his findings correctly should be taught in every School of Archaeology, helping each equally short-sighted scholar learn his/her lesson…⁽²⁾

Wishing to turn Arthur Evans’ work in Crete upside down, Leonard Woolley drew wrong conclusions. If Ur had been his Austerlitz, Alalakh turned out to be his Waterloo!

Lawrence (left) and Woolley at Carchemish

• ⁽²⁾ “Sir” Charles Leonard Woolley (1880-1960) was knighted in 1935 for his contribution to his discipline, since he was considered as one of the first “modern” archaeologists. Volunteered by Arthur Evans to run the excavation on a Roman site in northern England, Woolley started his career in 1906, later admitting: “I had never studied archaeological methods even from books… and I had not any idea how to make a survey or a ground-plan”. He worked with T. E. Lawrence, the later famous “Lawrence of Arabia”, on the excavation of the Hittite city of Carchemish in 1912-14. His work at Ur, starting in 1922, led to the discovery of the royal tombs and inspired Agatha Christie in writing the novel Murder in Mesopotamia. The writer later married Woolley’s assistant, Max Mallowan. Woolley was one of the first archaeologists to propose that the “great deluge” of the Bible was a local flood, after identifying a flood-stratum at Ur of “…400 miles long and 100 miles wide; but for the occupants of the valley, that was the whole world”…

The Knossos palace reconstructed

Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier vs. Leonard Woolley

REFERRING TO MINOAN ARTISANS TRAVELLING OVERSEAS: The Alalakh Frescoes and the Painted Plaster Floor at Tel Kabri (Western Galilee), the German archaeologist Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, who excavated at Kabri, explained how Woolley’s ambition to upturn Evans boomeranged back on him:

“The uniqueness and seeming suddenness of the emergence of the Cretan palace system in the Aegean has often been explained by connections with and influences from the older advanced civilizations of the ancient Near East. In Alalakh… Woolley thought to have found what he had looked for: in Yarim-Lim’s palace he recognized ‘unmistakable connections’ with Minoan Crete. Similar building techniques… as well as frescoes ‘identical in colouring, technique and style’ at Alalakh and Knossos led him to the conclusion that ‘there can be no doubt but that Crete owes the best of its architecture, and its frescoes, to the Asiatic mainland’, and that ‘we are bound to believe that trained experts, members of the Architects’ and Painters’ Guilds, were invited to travel overseas from Asia (possibly from Alalakh) to build and decorate the palaces of the Cretan rulers’.

“Crete owes the best of its architecture, and its frescoes, to Asia.”
(Leonard Woolley)

Yamhad, with Halab (Aleppo) as capital, and several toponyms mentioned in this Chronicle:
Carchemish, Alalakh, Ugarit, Qatna, Hazor in Canaan, Mari, Babylon, Ur.

“Woolley’s main argument for this theory, which has been accepted by eminent scholars,⁽³⁾ [!] was that ‘Yarim-Lim’s palace antedates by more than a century the Cretan examples in the same style’… However, after a long debate on ‘Alalakh and Chronology’, Woolley’s date (‘between c. 1780 and 1730 BC’) proved to be too high. Yarim-Lim of Alalakh was not – as Woolley had thought – Yarim-Lim I of Yamhad, the contemporary of the great Hammurabi of Babylon, but a younger brother of King Abban [Abba-El?] of Yamhad who gave Alalakh to him as an appanage principality…⁽⁴⁾ The dates recently proposed by different scholars lie between c. 1650 and 1575 BC. In regard to architecture… the evidence is far from substantiating Woolley’s theory of Near Eastern architects working in Crete… The orthostates of Alalakh are c. 300 years later than the orthostates of the first phase of the Old Palace at Phaistos… Fragments of wall paintings from Yarim-Lim’s palace show characteristic Minoan motifs which appear contemporary or even earlier in Crete. Moreover, the sense of movement detectable in the wall-painting fragments from Yarim-Lim’s palace is characteristically Minoan and in opposition to Near Eastern tradition.

• ⁽³⁾ You see, the… spectacled parrotlet (forpus conspicillatus) is not an endangered species!

• ⁽⁴⁾ There were three kings of Yamhad under the name of Yarim-Lim and, of course, far more local rulers with the same name, such as the one in Alalakh. Woolley (more than anyone else) should have known better before he wrote that “Crete owes the best of its architecture, and its frescoes, to the Asiatic mainland”…

Papyrus fresco on Thera

“Woolley’s strongest argument for a direct connection between the Alalakh paintings and those in Crete was that they both were executed in true fresco painting on wet lime plaster. But it is exactly this fact which definitely disproves Woolley’s theory of the Near Eastern ancestry of Cretan fresco painting. Until most recently the Alalakh frescos formed the only known example of true fresco painting on the ancient Near East. In Crete, true fresco painting is known at least from c. 1900 BC on. Thus true fresco painting apparently has been first invented on Crete, probably because it was suitable to the temperament of the Minoan artists.⁽⁵⁾ Technique, style and iconography of the fresco fragments from the Yarim-Lim palace at Alalakh indicate that their resemblances to the Cretan wall-paintings worked in the reverse direction as that originally thought by Woolley.

• ⁽⁵⁾ While the Egyptian artists of this period painted their wall paintings in the “dry-fresco” (secco) technique, the Minoans used a “true” or “wet” painting method, allowing the pigments of metal and mineral oxides to bind well to the wall, which required quick execution. The nature of this technique encouraged improvisation, spontaneity, and the element of chance. Since they had to work within the time constrains of the drying plaster, they had to be very skilful, and their fluid brush strokes translated into the graceful outlines that characterize Minoan art. For this reason, this method of painting was most appropriate for the fluid moments of life and nature scenes that the Minoans favoured, which contrasted sharply with the strict stylization and stereotyping typical of frescoes from other Mediterranean cultures of the same time. The figures of Minoan frescoes are depicted in natural poses of free movement that reflect the rigours of the activity they engage in, an attitude characteristic of a seafaring civilization accustomed to freedom of movement, liquidity, and vigour.

Ritual sprinkler in rock crystal
from Kato Zakros, Crete

“There is much evidence that Cretan objects of art were highly valued in the ancient Near East. In the Mari tablets Cretan imports are mentioned… The prestige character of the Cretan objects in the Mari texts is indicated by the fact that two of them were presented by King Zimri-Lim of Mari to other Mesopotamian Kings. As finds of Kamares pottery at Ugarit, Qatna, Byblos and Hazor demonstrate, this outstanding pottery was highly esteemed in the Levant. Thus, at least from the 19th century BC on, Crete within its relations to the Levant was not only the receiver but developed into an equal partner producing works of art for which there was a great demand in the Near East.⁽⁶⁾ These Cretan works of art arrived by some kind of exchange or trade in the Levant. But, as Woolley has stated, ’one cannot export a palace on board of a ship, nor is the «art and Mystery» of fresco-working a form of merchandise’.⁽⁷⁾ Do we therefore have to reconstruct just the reverse scenario as that suggested by Woolley, i.e. Cretan artisans travelling to Alalakh for painting the frescoes there?

• ⁽⁶⁾ I ignore the Levantine contribution to the Minoan culture and, unfortunately, Niemeier gives no information on the subject. What I do know is how much the Cretans were indebted to, and how much they were benefited by learning from, the Egyptians (see Chronicle 17, Minoan Trade and Influence). I can imagine, in addition, how much the Egyptians would have benefited if they were not so stuck-up to let themselves learn from the Cretans…

• ⁽⁷⁾ I used a similar argument in Chronicle 22, Conclusion, to show the necessity of Hellenic presence in Iberia: “What the Phoenician ships could not transport and, thus, made the Greek presence absolutely necessary in Iberia, was Hellenic culture, art, ideas, models, architecture, burial habits, etc.”

“The sense of movement is characteristically Minoan, in opposition to Near Eastern tradition. Kabri and Alalakh show a purely Minoan iconography and technique. This can only mean they were made by itinerant Minoan artists.”
(Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier)

Knossos: the Throne Room with the griffins reconstructed

“In ‘Greater Canaan’…⁽⁸⁾ there are two other sites which can contribute to the problem: Qatna and Tel Kabri. Fragments of wall-paintings from the palace at Qatna show [techniques] in the characteristic Aegean manner. Tel Kabri lay on one of the most important trade routes of the ancient Near East, [Way of the Philistines,] the later so-called Via Maris…⁽⁹⁾ In the palace of the local ruler… a threshold was plastered and painted with… similar floor-techniques and designs of the Minoan palaces but not from the Ancient Near East… There is evidence that the walls of this room were also covered with painted plaster of which unfortunately only tiny fragments have been preserved. The plaster floor has been painted in true fresco technique… found also in Cretan and Theran fresco painting but not in tempera and fresco secco. The colours in the floor’s painting are… very similar to those of Cretan and of Theran wall-painting… Originally the floor… imitated the slabs of a stone pavement… In Crete painted plaster floors imitating slab-paved floors are known from [c. 2000 BCE]. Other parts of the Kabri floor were decorated with floral motifs. Among them are chains of stylized linear iris blossoms of a characteristic Minoan type which occurs first in frescoes and vase-painting [in 1700-1500 BCE]. Such kind of decorative mixture is a characteristic feature of Minoan fresco painting… The Kabri floor and also the fresco fragments from Yarim-Lim’s palace at Alalakh do not have only single Minoan motifs foreign to ‘Greater Canaan’ which could be explained as intrusive or incorporated elements arriving by motif transfer, but they show a purely Minoan iconography as well as technique. This can only mean that they were executed by travelling Minoan artisans…

Asherah, Canaanite fertility goddess

• ⁽⁸⁾ Greater Canaan: “the area between the Amuq plain [where Antioch was later built] to the north and the deserts to the south and to the east for the middle and late Bronze Age… appears to form a largely uniform civilization with regional variations.” (Ruth Amiran)

• ⁽⁹⁾ The historical name of the road, sadly for the Israeli Jews, was Way of the Philistines, since it crossed through the Philistine plain, where the Gaza Strip is located. Via Maris was “fished up” out of the Vulgate – “via maris”, meaning “by the way of the sea” – without specifying any road (there was no such Roman name denoting any road anywhere). The modern name was adopted so as to… expel the Palestinians from their homeland, Palestine, even on archaeological terms!

La Petite Parisienne de Crète…

“We have evidence for exchange of information on the equipment of the palaces within the ancient Near East (to which Minoan Crete belonged in a certain sense as a westernmost member). That Cretans actually travelled to the Levantine coast is proved by a tablet from the Mari archives mentioning a Cretan who purchases tin at Ugarit from agents of the Mari palace. A tale in the mythological poetry of Ugarit is of highest interest in our context. In it the goddess Anat is sending the divine messenger over the sea to the god of handicrafts, Kothar wa-Khasis, who is brought from his throne in Kptr (almost unanimously identified as Caphtor = Crete) to build a splendid palace for god Baal and to furnish it with precious works of art.⁽¹⁰⁾ As Arvid Schou Kapelrud has stated, Kothar is ‘the master-builder and the master-smith as he is found in the Near Eastern courts of this time, a highly skilled specialist’. In Canaanite mythology the god of handicrafts was called from Crete to furnish the palaces of the deities with precious works of art; in reality the rulers of Tel Kabri (Rehov) and Alalakh (and other cities, possibly Qatna) asked the rulers of Crete for sending artisans to decorate their palaces with fresco painting. As has been demonstrated by Carlo Zaccagnini, the sending of specialized workers is well-attested in the framework of the diplomatic relations between the rulers in the ancient Near East, their transfers are inserted into the dynamics and formal apparatus of the practice of gift-exchange.”

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ “KPTR” may be identified with “Caphtor”; but the latter’s identification with Crete is anything but certain. Biblical Caphtor may refer to: a) Pelusium in the Nile Delta; b) Cilicia; c) Cappadocia; d) Cyprus; e) Crete (see Chronicle 20, Pelasgians and Philistines-Peleset). Egypt fits far better here because in all references to Kothar, except the poetic tale mentioned above, his abode is identified as “HKPT”, which is possibly read as “Hikaptah”, or “House of the ka (soul) of (god) Ptah”, i.e. Memphis. The Hellenes pronounced this Hikaptah as Aegyptos, hence the name of the country in many languages.

Minoan fresco frieze at Avaris reconstructed

AFTER THE DISCOVERIES in Alalakh and Kabri, the absolutely impressive Minoan wall paintings in Avaris with a long frieze of taurocathapsia (bull-leaping) against a labyrinth pattern, griffins or rosettes, recovered during Manfred Bietak’s excavations there,

“instantly created much sensation, since among the scenes depicted on them are spectacular representations of bull leaping so closely identified with Minoan cult and culture”, as Wolf-Dietrich and Barbara Niemeier commented in another paper on Minoan Frescoes in the Eastern Mediterranean.

“From 1990 on, we suggested that the Kabri and Alalakh frescoes were painted by travelling Aegean specialists, and [some time later] Bietak and Nanno Marinatos did the same for the Avaris frescoes”.

A Minoan heterotopia at Avaris. Taureador (detail)

There was a minor problem among archaeologists on the date of these frescoes. Wishing perhaps to please everyone,

“Bietak and Marinatos came to the conclusion that ‘Minoan wall painting existed in Avaris both during the late Hyksos period and the early 18th Dynasty’. Bietak had regarded as possible that ‘trade… links between Avaris and Crete… might have survived a dynastic change and might have carried on into the 18th Dynasty, even after the fall of the Hyksos.’ There is indeed enough evidence from history that the kind of diplomatic and economic relations which apparently are behind these fresco paintings can survive the changes of regimes.

“According to Bietak, ‘king Ahmose, the founder of the 18th Dynasty, fits particularly well into the picture of Minoan connections.’ He imagines the possibility of a political deal between Ahmose and the ‘Minoan Thalassocracy’ in which the Minoan fleet helped Ahmose – who had no fleet – against the danger still threatening from the Hyksos harbour bases in southern Palestine. There is no archaeological or textual evidence for the latter hypothesis, and it recalls rather imaginative and today forgotten scenarios connected with the expulsion of the Hyksos, like those according to which Mycenaean mercenaries helped Ahmose in evicting the Hyksos, or according to which fugitive Hyksos princes conquered the Argolid and subsequently were buried in the Shaft Graves at Mycenae. Moreover, Ahmose already had a fleet: he captured Avaris after a series of assaults by both land and water [and then] proceeded to southern Palestine.”

Ahmose fighting back the Hyksos

Even a pharaoh with a fleet of his own would surely prefer to have the far more experienced Cretan navy on his side, than against him, allied with the Hyksos! The Avaris paintings indicate an involvement of Egypt in international relations and cultural exchanges with the eastern Mediterranean either through exchange of gifts or even marriage. They additionally point to Minoan authority as being involved in Egyptian affairs, possibly because Crete had a strong naval force to offer the pharaoh, and also to Avaris as a place where these cultural exchanges took place, meaning the city was incredibly important to Egypt.

Girl from Acroteri, Thera: detail
from the fresco of the lilies

The marriage of a Minoan princess to an Egyptian pharaoh may be one possible scenario. Bietak has suggested that the Avaris frescoes were painted by Minoan artists who were members of the entourage of a Knossian princess married to a pharaoh, whom he first identified as a Hyksos ruler, then as Ahmose, and later as Thutmose III. At last, who was the Cretan girl’s groom? The Minoan eruption on Thera (c. 1640 – c. 1540) coincides with the Hyksos period in Egypt (1650–1550 BCE). But because the exact moment of the eruption escapes us, we can not speculate if the marriage took pace then and when. There follows Ahmose with his New Kingdom, when the Egyptians considered the Aegean to be part of their “empire”. The term must not be understood literally, because in Egypt, they misinterpreted even the gifts given to the pharaohs: “The Egyptians, with their characteristic egocentric sense of superiority, would have presented such gifts as tribute”, remarks A. R. Schulman. At any rate, “Ahmose fits particularly well into the picture of Minoan connections”. Thutmose could very well be the groom, too. Besides, we know that he had three foreign wives: Menwi, Merti, and Menhet. However, a problem arose: another dynastic change that happened during his reign, in the middle of the 15th century BCE – not in Egypt but in Crete, when the Minoans were put under the yoke of their own “Hyksos” (foreign rulers), the Mycenaeans. Therefore, if there was a wedding, it should have happened in the beginning of Thutmose’s reign, when the actual pharaoh was his stepmother, Hatshepsut, or immediately after her death, in 1458 BCE.

Theran rosettes

Whatever the case, these unique wall paintings are of Minoan style, technique, and content. There is a long frieze of bull-leaping and grappling against a maze pattern. Marinatos has made a case that the rosette motif, a prominent feature of the “Taureador” paintings, reproduces the Knossian rosettes, and that it is a distinct Minoan symbol. The frescoes also depict griffins, hunting scenes, felines chasing ungulates, several life-sized figures, and a white female wearing a skirt. Especially important are the Minoan palace emblems, such as the half rosette frieze, and the presence of big griffins that are the same size as the ones in the Knossian Throne room. The technique of painting is typically Aegean, while the style is of very high quality and compares with some of the best paintings from Crete. The use of Minoan royal motifs in a palace of Avaris, says Bietak, indicates that “an encounter on the highest level must have taken place between the courts of Knossos and Egypt,” while the large representation of the female in the skirt may suggest a political marriage of a Minoan princess to the pharaoh.

Minoan female acrobat
(ivory, 2800-1100 BCE)

“Dynastic intermarriage was a favoured diplomatic tactic in the Bronze Age Near East,” the Niemeiers point out. The entourage of a foreign princess, some scholars suppose, “would comprise several hundred people, who until the end of their lives remained in the harem of the pharaoh, and that one can well imagine that at Avaris the rooms of the foreign princess and her entourage were decorated according to her desires. [However], at Alalakh and Tel Kabri, the frescoes probably had been attached to the walls of major ceremonial (and possible ritual) halls of the palace, not of the private rooms of queens or princesses.”

The technique of using lime plaster in two layers with a highly polished surface, fresco in combination with stucco, are all techniques that are not Egyptian but first seen in Cretan paintings. The colours used by the artists are clearly Minoan. Using blue instead of grey is Minoan, with that colour convention being seen in Egypt later, due to Aegean influence. Besides, there are no Egyptian hieroglyphs or emblems among the fragments. The composition of the paintings and motifs also fit in perfectly with all those of the Aegean world. Thus the overwhelming evidence seems to point into the direction of Minoan artists working in Avaris.

Differences Between Minoan and Pharaonic Society and Art

Wild duck on Thera

“The differences between the styles of Egyptian and Minoan arts have been analyzed by Henriette Antonia Groenewegen-Frankfort and, most recently, by Bietak,” the Niemeiers comment. “According to Groenwegen-Frankfort, Minoan art differs from Egyptian (and ancient Near Eastern) art in its ‘absolute mobility in organic forms’. Bietak aptly explains this with the different cultural patterns of both civilizations. The Minoan society was not – as the Egyptian one – dominated by writing, listing, and absolute order, and therefore Minoan art was not subjected to hieroglyphic clichés and a rigid canonical order. As to a comparison of Canaanite and Minoan arts, we do not have, unfortunately, many objects of art from the middle Bronze Age Levant. But those which are extant show a style distinctly different from the Minoan one. For instance, the bird representations on bone inlays from Megiddo and Lachish seem motionless in comparison to the crane on an ivory plaque from Palaikastro. Canaanite female and male metal figurines appear stiff in comparison to the Minoan female and male metal figurines displaying strong inner tension and dynamics.”

“Minoan art differs from Egyptian art in its ‘absolute mobility in organic forms’.” “The Minoan society was not dominated by absolute order; so
Minoan art was not subjected to hieroglyphic clichés and rigid order.”
(Henriette Antonia Groenewegen-Frankfort and Manfred Bietak)

Another map of the area, with arrows pinpointing the places mentioned in this Chronicle): Alalah, Carchemish, Ugarit, Qatna, Byblos, Megiddo, Mari, Babylon, Ur.

As it turned out the wall paintings at Avaris, Alalakh, Kabri, possibly Qatna (17th – 16th centuries BCE), were not the older ones.

“Earlier are the painted stone imitations in Zimri-Lim’s palace at Mari [18th century BCE]. The excavator of Mari, André Parrot, compared the stone imitations to those at Knossos. He also asked for possible connections between the Mari and the Knossos murals, and, pointing to the evidence for their connections provided by the Minoan precious objects mentioned in the Mari archives, he apparently tended to see some Cretan influence in the murals there.”

● Located in Mesopotamia, far from the Mediterranean, Mari (today’s Tell Hariri) was a Sumerian and Amorite city on the Euphrates. It flourished from 2900 to 1759 BCE, when it was sacked by Hammurabi, despite the gifts king Zimri-Lim had given him. More important was Mari’s strategic position as a relay point between northern Syria and lower Mesopotamia. The city came to control the trade lanes between different regions such as Iran, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia. The royal palace contained over 300 rooms and was possibly the largest of its time (over 1,000 rooms, they say, had the palace of Knossos)! More than 25,000 tablets were recovered while excavating Mari, as Parrot noted, “bringing about a complete revision of the historical dating of the ancient Near East, and providing more than 500 new place names, enough to redraw the geographical map of the ancient world.”

● Qatna (modern Tell el-Mishrife), 18 km NE of Homs, was one of the largest Bronze Age Syrian towns. Trade routes in the 2nd Millennium connected Mesopotamia with Cyprus, Crete, Egypt. Qatna is mentioned in the tin trade, linking Mari, via Qatna, to the Mediterranean; Cypriote copper was also transported on this route; their alloy, bronze, was most valuable during both the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Theran boy-boxers

Regarding the ethnic composition of the “Minoan” workshops, there are various possibilities: the frescoes were painted a) by travelling Aegean artisans; b) under the supervision of Aegean artists, assisted by Levantine painters, after they were trained by them; c) by Levantine students of Aegean masters. The idea of mixed workshops seems more appealing, probable, realistic. Decorating huge palaces was a great undertaking. However, it would seem unthinkable to imagine Cretan ships full of artists travelling around the Mediterranean for this task. The artistic teams should have been rather small, working necessarily with local apprentices.

“It is difficult to decide in each case which of these solutions is the correct one,” point out the Niemeiers. “We would agree with Philip P. Betancourt that only a very small percentage of the fresco paintings is known and that ‘we are touching the tip of the iceberg of a whole series of interrelated workshops, working in Knossos, the Aegean islands, on the coast of Western Asia and in Egypt, perhaps travelling back and forth, perhaps occasionally exchanging personnel, or going back to Knossos to learn the most recent things’… The Alalakh, Kabri, and Avaris frescoes are to be seen ‘in terms of the forging of an élite koiné – artistic, iconographical, ideological, technological – in the circumstances of the intense maritime interaction between the coastal areas of the Eastern Mediterranean’,” as Susan Sherratt proposed. Marinatos has argued that these paintings are evidence of a koiné, a visual language of common symbols, which testifies to interactions among the rulers of neighbouring powers. This idea is adopted by the Niemeiers, as well: “The Minoan artists involved in the painting of all these frescoes apparently formed an important element in the growth of the so-called ‘International Style’ of the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean.”⁽¹¹⁾

• ⁽¹¹⁾ Not only of the eastern part of the Mediterranean: according to some fresco experts, similar wall paintings have also been found in “faraway” Morocco. However, it is not clear if they are painted with the true (wet) fresco or secco technique.

“Interrelated workshops worked in Knossos, the Aegean islands, the Western Asia coast and Egypt, travelling back and forth, exchanging personnel, or going back to Knossos to learn the most recent things.” “An élite koiné – artistic, iconographical, ideological, technological – was forged in the circumstances of intense maritime interaction between the coastal areas
of the Eastern Mediterranean.” (Philip P. Betancourt and Susan Sherratt)

Cretans in Egypt, bringing gifts of metal, jewelry etc, facsimile of a painting in Thebes, Egypt, 18th dynasty
(early 15th century BCE)

Whatever happened to the Avaris wall paintings? One group of them had fallen off the wall of a doorway, and another group of fragments was found in dumps deposited by the north-east palace. The frescoes seem to have been removed during the later Thutmosid period – when there was no Minoan Crete anymore, after it was taken over by the Mycenaeans.

“Minoan fresco painting apparently was a rather short-lived phenomenon in the Levant and Egypt – in Egyptian terms, covering the Hyksos period and the very beginning of the early 18th Dynasty,” the Niemeiers sum up. “Later, we find again paintings of nature scenes which appear to breathe a Minoan spirit. They were, however, executed in secco technique and certainly were not painted by Aegean artists. Minoan wall painting was a thing of the past at that time.”

Without Minoan Crete there was no room for Minoan art. Minoan workshops were still busy, of course; but the artistic masters worked for the new political masters, the Mycenaeans; there were no Greek artists at that time to compete with them. But their new works of art are not typified as “Minoan” anymore; they are called “Mycenaean”, sometimes with a footnote that they were made by Cretan artistic workshops. Would anyone ever think to describe as “Cretan” the masterpieces of another great Cretan master, who lived more than three millennia later, namely Doménicos Theotocópoulos, the famous El Greco?

Mycenaean women procession fresco

Before Tin, it was the Obsidian…

HERE WE ARE AGAIN AT OUR STARTING POINT, my dearest fellow voyagers, having come full circle back: we began with Periplus and Minoan Cretan Thalassocracy, and we concluded with Emporia and Minoan Cretan fresco.⁽¹²⁾ Now we can start anew, picking up the thread again, going back even before our starting point – before man learned how to work metals, when he voyaged in search of an equally valuable material: the obsidian. So, let’s attempt to go back to the Neolithic era. Let’s schedule it, at least: our vivid imagination is our strong point!

• ⁽¹²⁾ See also Chronicles 3, 5, and 17, 18, 19, about Crete, Cretans, Minoan civilization, navigation and trade, thalassocracy, fresco, taurocathapsia, etc.

• >> 28. THE MAKING OF THE MEDITERRANEAN PERIPLUS
• << Chronicle 26. IBERIAN CROSS-CHECK

Grandstand Minoan procession fresco

Chronicle 20. THE ENIGMATIC SEA PEOPLES

Chronicle 20. THE ENIGMATIC SEA PEOPLES

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 20. ΟΙ ΑΙΝΙΓΜΑΤΙΚΟΙ ΛΑΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΘΑΛΑΣΣΑΣ

● Bronze Age Collapse Due to Famine ● Trojan War and Anatolian
Sea Peoples ● Merneptah Stele and Exodus ● Hittites and Luwians

Michales Loukovikas

The “Great Green” Mediterranean, the “Sea of Hellenes”

BEFORE WE VOYAGE WEST, we need to sail off onto the “Great Green” of the “Sea of Hellenes” (Egyptian terms referring to the Mediterranean), in search of the Sea Peoples, meeting more migrant-refugee bands on the way. Voyaging in space and time, in history, legend or myth, let us go back to the explosive finale of the 17th century BCE, i.e. the “big bang” of the Minoan volcanic eruption on Thera, as it occurred very close to the period that the Sea Peoples initially appeared in Egypt. If we take into account the wrecking of the Minoan navy policing the seas, we can presume that these peoples were then nothing but pirates, and we also realize how interdependent the great powers were in the ancient world, as well.

Ancient ship, Egyptian papyrus painting

Later the Egyptians started identifying various bands of Sea Peoples in their own style, and one of the first they mentioned were the Sherden, or Shardana, a large group of pirates. They disrupted trade in the late 13th century and contributed greatly to the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. Nonetheless, they are not mentioned in either Hellenic or Hittite legends or documents, suggesting that they did not originate from either sphere of influence. Many scholars relate the Shardana to Sardinia due to the similarity between the two words. Based on the same principle, the archaeologist Margaret Guido proposed that the Shardana might have ultimately derived from Sardis, and the Sardinian plain nearby, in Lydia, and perhaps migrated later to Sardinia. It seems that many people, and not only the Trojans that would become Romans, left Anatolia and the Aegean for the Italian peninsula and its islands due to the Bronze Age collapse rather than before. There is evidence that gives credit to Virgil’s Aeneid – but without excluding the possibility of earlier migrations. Recent genetic studies indicate that the populations not only of people, but even of cattle, in several Italian regions, especially in Tuscany, are more related to Asia Minor, and mainly in the northwest, than to anywhere else.

A famous passage from Herodotus, quoted by scholars quite often, portrays the migration and drifting of Lydians in the Mediterranean because of famine:

Etruscans dancing, painting on a tomb

“Their king divided the people into two groups, so that the one should remain and the other leave the country. His son, Tyrrhenus, was to be the head of those who departed. They went down to Smyrna and built themselves ships. After sailing past many countries they came to the Umbri, where they founded cities and called themselves Tyrrhenians.”

We can’t but remember that Anatolia faced the same acute problem of famine in the time of the collapse and, as a result, the Sea Peoples, then a coalition of seagoing migrants, closed ranks seeking relief from scarcity. Drought could have easily precipitated socio-economic problems and wars. As regards the story told by Herodotus and its link to the Sea Peoples, some scholars contend that those people called Teresh by the Egyptians were none others than the Tyrrhenians, or Tyrsenians, who are often identified with the Tusci (hence Tuscany), the Latin exonym for the Etruscans, or Ras(en)na, as they called themselves. The Tyrsenian linguistic family, together with Etruscan, includes the Lemnian language, spoken on the Aegean island of Lemnos to the 6th century BCE. Another Aegean tongue possibly related to the Etruscan was the Minoan Cretan. A third Aegean island close to Asia Minor mentioned as their possible origin by Thucydides is that of Lesbos. The Romans, as Virgil’s readers, identified the Teresh with the Trojans. There are clues to support this view. Several writers, e.g. Andrea Salimbeti in The Greek Age of Bronze: Sea Peoples, comment that a Trojan connection in the case of the Teresh (or Tursha) should be at first taken under consideration:

The double-headed eagle, the Byzantine symbol of Empire, was used before by Mycenaeans and Hittites, e.g. this relief at Alaca Höyük (1400 BCE)

“Troy appears in a Hittite record as Taruisa. It is a reasonable assumption that the people of Taruisa called themselves by some name close to this; stripped of vowels so that it can be compared to the Egyptian spelling”.

The Troad (or Troas) was outside the territory but within the sphere of influence of Hatti. Nevertheless, another Hittite record points to a different location, for it contains a list of cities, among them Tarsa, most likely Tarsus. These toponyms and corresponding ethnicities would be written down in Egyptian hieroglyphs, or in any cuneiform script, as “T-r-s” or “T-r-sh” – i.e. without vowels.⁽¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ A very good example of how important the Greek innovation with the vowels in the alphabet has been. If the Egyptian script had vowels, as well, the enigma of the Sea Peoples might have long since been solved!

“The Sea Peoples may well have been Troy and its confederated
allies, and the literary tradition of the Trojan War may well reflect
the Greek effort to counter those raids.” (Eberhard Zangger)

Anatolian amalgam: the most important regions and peoples

Anatolian connections have been suggested for other Sea Peoples, too, such as the Lukka (Lycians). Most striking is that they mostly seem to have descended from the Troad. Thus the Swiss geoarchaeologist,⁽²⁾ Eberhard Zangger, thinks that “the Sea Peoples may well have been Troy and its confederated allies, and the literary tradition of the Trojan War may well reflect the Greek effort to counter those raids.” This is what the Iliad seems to reflect.⁽³⁾

• ⁽²⁾ Geoarchaeology uses techniques and subject matter of geography, geology, and other Earth sciences, to examine topics which inform archaeological knowledge. Geoarchaeologists study the natural processes that affect archaeological sites, such as geomorphology, as well as soil and sediments, to contribute to archaeological studies.

• ⁽³⁾ According to this scenario, the Trojan War was “just” and defensive on the part of the Greeks, not intended for conquest and destruction of the city controlling the passage to the Black Sea.

Ilium/Troy: the wider area and, below on the right, the modern coastline in red and, therefore,
the floodplain that interested Zangger – on the strategic straits and close to the border area.

Eberhard Zangger

Eberhard Zangger’s Anatolian Hypothesis

● In his Anatolian hypothesis, Eberhard Zangger caused a sensation because of his controversial identification of Troy as Atlantis. Zangger’s point of view is that Plato used an Egyptian version of the story about Troy for his famous report on Atlantis. He based his argument on comparisons between the Mycenaean culture and Plato’s account of the Hellenic civilization facing Atlantis, as well as parallels between the recollections of the Trojan War and the one supposedly fought between Greeks and Atlanteans (a Titanomachy variation). He interpreted the legend of the Trojan War to be the memory of the momentous chaos leading to the Bronze Age collapse, and arrived at the conclusion that Troy must have been much bigger than scholars had presumed, with artificial harbours inside the modern floodplain. In order to prove it, he prepared a helicopter-based geophysical exploration of the plain to locate layers of settlement and artificial port basins, using ground-penetrating techniques. Having granted an “exclusive excavation license” for Troy to Manfred Korfmann, a German archaeologist, the Turkish government rejected Zangger’s request. Disappointed, the latter summed up his theory giving a lecture in the Heidelberg Academy of Science. In my view, his ambitious project was undermined not by Korfmann’s… exclusive rights to excavate for Troy (! – Zangger’s plan did not entail any real excavations) but rather by Turkey’s unwillingness to authorize any disclosure of sensitive military data in an area close to the border for the sake of science.

The historicity of the Iliad

Trojan War scenes on pottery

Despite the attempts of several historians to discredit the historicity of the Iliad, the Trojan War is considered a historical event; in addition, it is a key to grasp the underlying causes of all these epoch-making developments. “For sure, the Sea Peoples’ movement was one of the largest and most important migrations in history that changed the face of the ancient world more than any other single event before the time of Alexander the Great”, remarks Andrea Salimbeti. This long, ravaging war, in combination with the widespread famine in the entire peninsula, created the explosive conditions leading to the collapse. Under the circumstances, many Trojans, allies or neighbours, became refugees, and some survived by their wits or swords. Archeological evidence leads to the conclusion that the Sea Peoples were not pirates anymore, nor raiders plundering and pillaging established cities, but instead a mass of people looking for a place to settle, in search of a home. This was obvious since their first invasion of Egypt under Libyan leadership, when they were accompanied by their families and belongings. The Libyan tribes also played a role in the first campaigns against Egypt. Herodotus and Hecataeus mentioned one of them centuries later. It was the Berber tribe of the Maxyes or Mazyes, the Mazaces to the Romans, or the Meshwesh to the Egyptians – who claimed to have Trojan blood in their veins…

A Peleset headdress, and a similar (?) Phaestos disc symbol (below on the right)

Pelasgians and Philistines (Peleset)

An important Sea People have been the Peleset, identified with the Philistines, or in a broad sense, the Palestinians:

“One of the theories”, says Salimbeti, “links them to the Pelasgians who were allies of Troy and one group of them lived in Thrace. Those Pelasgians would have migrated south, overrunning and fatally damaging Achaean Greek civilization. Shortly after, many would have gone farther south to Crete.”

There are also Biblical references to the Philistines as coming from a place called Caphtor, identified by several scholars with Crete:⁽⁴⁾

• ⁽⁴⁾ According to Wikipedia: “Caphtor is a locality mentioned in the Bible and related literature. The people of Caphtor are called Caphtorites (Caphtorim) and are named as a division of the ancient Egyptians. Traditional Hebrew sources place Caphtor in the region of Pelusium [in the Nile Delta]. Other sources [?] associate Caphtor with localities outside Egypt e.g. Cilicia, Cappadocia, Cyprus or Crete.” The least probable scenario is “hard truth” for some scholars… (See Chronicle 27, footnote 10).

The Nile Delta with Pelusium in the East, the Hellenic colony Naucratis in the West, and further on the location Alexandria was to be built. The ancient canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Seas is also shown.

“This theory”, adds Salimbeti, “has been somewhat strengthened by the discovery in Crete of the Phaestos disc. One of the symbols shows the head of a man crowned with feathers – very similar to the feather-topped helmets of the Peleset depicted” at the Temple of Ramses III.⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ Well, it was certainly unavoidable: “The similarity [of the Peleset helmet] with Maya and Aztec feather headdresses is truly amazing, given the distance that separated the Mesoamerican culture” from the Mediterranean… Galloping imagination somewhere in the Internet Sea, while far in the distant horizon the land of Atlantis is gradually emerging…

● Well, what about the language of the Philistines? Wikipedia informs us of “possible relations to Indo-European languages, even Mycenaean Greek, [which supposedly] support the independently-held [?!] theory that immigrant Philistines originated among ‘Sea Peoples’.” And what do we know about the Pelasgian language(s)? “In the absence of certain knowledge about the identity (or identities) of the Pelasgians, various theories have been proposed. Since Greek is classified as an Indo-European language, the major question of concern is whether Pelasgian was an Indo-European language”. For more information, we are forwarded to the Aegean language family, proposed by Giulio M. Facchetti, due to some alleged similarities between Etruscan, Lemnian, and some other languages of the area, such as Minoan Cretan, Eteocretan, Eteocypriot, and Philistine. These languages could constitute a pre-Indo-European phylum stretching from Canaan to the Alps. But this is not a view held in common; there are attempts to link Eteocretan and Eteocypriot with Semitic.

Pelasgian Cycladic civilization: on this “frying pan”’s design (2800 BCE), some imaginative people see a map of Atlantis!

Surely, all the above are nothing but hypotheses, as Facchetti himself admits. What counts is the idea the ancient Hellenes had about the Pelasgians, who had survived even in the classical period in several locations of mainland Greece, Crete and other Aegean islands. People identified as “Pelasgian” spoke a language or languages that the Hellenes described as “barbaric” – that is, they were incomprehensible to them. A tradition also survived that many parts of Greece had once been Pelasgian before being Hellenized. Hence, we can relish watching all scholarly theorizations crumbling and crashing down… (On the Pelasgians see Chronicle 15, footnote 7).

Another “Trojan” Sea People might have been the Weshesh. Again, the scarcity of information led… “necessarily” to speculation about possible links between their name and that of Ilion, as the city of Troy was also called by the Greeks – Wilusa (or Wilusiya) by the Hittites – after king Ilus (thence the Iliad). “The W of Weshesh”, notes Salimbeti, “is a modern invention for ease of pronunciation; the Egyptian records refer to Uashesh.” Some scholars associate this people with Assos, also in the Troad, or with Iassos in Caria, or with Issus (Issos) in Cilicia. Others have theorized that they became part of the Israelite confederacy as the tribe of Asher. Another people connected with the Hebrews were the Tjeker. Moving to Canaan, they captured the city-state of Dor and turned it into a large, well-fortified capital of their kingdom. Dor was violently destroyed in the mid-11th century BCE by the expanding Phoenicians, who were initially checked by the Philistines, and then by the Hebrews. King David (if he was something more than just a mythological figure) supposedly conquered Dor and the Tjeker were mentioned no more.

Teucer (Teucrus) of the Troad and Salamis

Achilles and Ajax playing a dice game: an amphora
by painter-potter Exekias, ca 540-530 BCE

A possible linguistic connection has been proposed between the Tjeker and the Tekrur, identified with the Teucri, a tribe described by some ancient sources as inhabiting northwest Anatolia to the south of Troy. Tradition offers basically two candidates for their homeland: Crete or Attica. Legend links all three places and goes even further, following two heroes with the same name: Teucer (Teucrus). According to Virgil, the older Teucer was from Crete but left the island with a third part of its inhabitants during a great famine (how many such stories…). They eventually settled near a river, named Scamander after his father. On the contrary, Dionysius of Halicarnassus claims Teucer had gone to the Troad from Attica. Scamander (or Xanthos) was a river-god, a son of Oceanus. According to Homer, he fought on the side of the Trojans after Achilles insulted him. He was the personification of the river that flowed by Troy. The Hellenes had set up their camp near its mouth, and their battles with the Trojans were fought on its plain. The land was initially called Teucria, after Teucer. When Dardanus arrived there, it was renamed as Dardania (thence Dardenelles), and later Troad (from king Tros). But these toponymic changes would not deter the Trojans to often call themselves Teucrians. Aeneas e.g. is described as “the great captain of the Teucrians”.

The Judgement of Paris (1904), by Enrique Simonet: Aphrodite, the winner in this ancient beauty pageant, stepping forward triumphantly naked, while Hera and Athena stay behind humiliated…

Teucer the younger, or “bastard”, was half-Trojan because his mother, Hesione, a concubine of king Telamon, was a princess of Ilion. His father had arrived from Aegina to Salamis, as he was sent away by his own father for he had accidentally killed his brother. Teucer also fought in the Trojan War, but on the side of the Hellenes, having his half-brother, Ajax, as a co-fighter, while his cousins, Hector and Paris, and his uncle Priam, were “enemies”. After all, war was a family affair – let alone for Teucer Jr. On his return to Salamis, however, his father accused him for not bringing Ajax’s body back home. He was in his turn disowned, exiled and set out to find a new home. With his departing words that Horace turned into a moving ode, he exhorted his companions to “despair in no way… tomorrow we shall set out upon the boundless sea”.⁽⁶⁾ This speech, related later to the theme of voyages of discovery, is also found in Dante’s Inferno and Tennyson’s Ulysses. Teucer eventually joined king Belus of Tyre in a Phoenician campaign against Cyprus, and when the island was seized, the king handed it over to Teucer as a reward. He founded there the city of Salamis, named after his homeland.

• ⁽⁶⁾ Horace, Odes: “Wherever fortune may bear us, kinder than my father, | We shall go, o men and comrades! | Despair in no way with Teucer as your leader and as protector, | Surely resolved Apollo has promised uncertain | Future to Salamis in a new world. | O men, who with me often have endured | Worse fortunes, now, banish cares with wine; | Tomorrow we shall set out upon the boundless sea!”
  (Quo nos cumque feret melior fortuna parente, | ibimus, o socii comitesque. | Nil desperandum Teucro duce et auspice Teucro; | certus enim promisit Apollo ambiguam tellure nova Salamina futuram. | O fortes peioraque passi | mecum saepe viri, nunc vino pellite curas; | cras ingens iterabimus aequor.”)

Leda and the Swan, from the Sanctuary of Aphrodite,
Paphos, Cyprus (3rd century CE)

The “copper island”, a vital node in the trade networks, experienced two waves of Grecian settlement: the initial wave consisted of Mycenaean traders, c. 1400 BCE. Towards the end of this period, great amounts of Mycenaean pottery were produced in Cyprus. A major second wave, connected with Teucer’s story, took place after the Bronze Age collapse, c. 1100 BCE, with the island’s predominantly Hellenic character dating from this era, due to the invasion of Helladic refugees. Apart from Salamis, Teucer is credited as a founder of other cities, too. A local legend in Galicia, in northwestern Iberia, relates the foundation of Pontevedra to “Teucro”. The legend seems to be based on the conjecture that Greek traders might have arrived there in ancient times. Though legends appear for a certain reason, historians and archaeologists tend to agree that the initial settlement was probably formed when Gallaecia was integrated into the Roman Empire (1st century BCE). Pontevedra, i.e. “old bridge”, in reference to an old Roman bridge across the Lérez river, is sometimes poetically called “The City of Teucro”, and its inhabitants teucrinos – just like the Trojans!⁽⁷⁾ (See Chronicle 26, Odysseys in the Aftermath of the Trojan War: Colonization of Iberia).

Oil lamp, Tróia

• ⁽⁷⁾ It seems as if Tróia, across Setúbal, Portugal, was named after Troy but we do not know why. Tróia peninsula has been inhabited since prehistoric times when it was an island called Acalá. In the 1st century CE, the Romans built a town and named it Cetóbriga. It served as a fishery centre until 412, when it was destroyed completely by an earthquake with tsunami. If the town’s initial name had been Tróia, we could think that the Romans, as originating from the Trojans, decided to build a “Troy” in the vicinity of the city of Odysseus – Olisipo, Lisbon! According to José Pedro Machado, Tróia – in the Onomastic-Etymologic Dictionary of the Portuguese Language – is not a toponym found exclusively in the area of Setúbal. There are more Tróias in Portugal and a Troya in Galicia. Their “godfathers” were probably inspired by the Iliad. Based on an article in the Great Portuguese and Brazilian Encyclopedia, Machado expressed the idea this name to originate from Cetóbriga: > Cetóbria > Cetróbia > Cetróia > Xetróia > Atróia – though it seems too much of an adventure for a toponym… Or perhaps the name comes not from Troy but from either Troyes or Truyes, two cities of France; or its origin is the Latin phrase “Trogia (villa)”, from the Celtic name Trogus – which is the most likely explanation.

Mosaic in Conímbriga

Thracian and Celtic Coincidences

● Cetóbriga is apparently a Celtic toponym, too. But because of the reports on the presence of even Thracians in Iberia, who also had the suffix –briga in their tongue, let’s have a look at that possibility, too. This suffix is very common in several toponyms of the peninsula. The most well-known city with such a name is Conímbriga, one of the greatest Roman settlements in Portugal. During pre-Roman times, the Conii (or Cynetes, who settled later in southern Portugal) occupied the settlement. After the town was destroyed by Suebi c. 465-468 CE, several of its inhabitants went to live in the neighbouring Aeminium that was gradually renamed as Coimbra. The word Conímbriga is not related to the Conii; it is formed by the native term conim (rock) and the Celtic suffix –briga (citadel), deriving from the Celtic Brigantes, who had Brigantia, N. England, under their control in pre-Roman times. Ptolemy wrote that the Brigantes also lived in SE Ireland, while Strabo mentioned the Brigantii as a subtribe of the Vindelici on the Alps. There was a Brigantium (Coruña) in Galicia, and a Brigaecium in Asturias. But there were also the Bryges, or Brigantes, a numerous Thracian people, whose cradle was perhaps the land of the Cicones, a Homeric tribe, between the Hebrus (Maritsa) and Nestos rivers, or the area around the Prespes or Brygeides lakes. The Bryges were ancestors of the Phrygians (‘B’ turned into ‘Ph’), who originally lived in the Balkans, and then settled in Asia Minor. The land of the Cicones, according to Herodotus, was initially called Briantica. The Bryges spread to N. Epirus (c. 700 BCE), to Paeonia, to Illyria (as Scymnus of Chios wrote in his Periēgēsis), to the Adriatic (in the area of the Brygeides islands), and later to West Europe, campaigning as followers of Dionysus. According to Hesychius, the suffixes –briga, or –bria, were typical in the names of the Thracian Brigantes’ towns (See Chronicle 26, Odysseys in the Aftermath of the Trojan War: Colonization of Iberia).

Trojan Horse: its oldest known depiction
on the Mykonos vase; ca 670 BCE

UP TO NOW, excluding Teucer, who attacked Cyprus in collaboration with the Phoenicians, representing all those who found refuge there, we have seen no Hellenes fighting alongside the Sea Peoples, or their allies, but rather against them in the Trojan War. It is what Sanford Holst already told us in the previous Chronicle:

“The Mycenaeans attacked the Anatolian people from the seaward side. To deal with this problem, warriors and ships in the Sea Peoples confederacy poured from Anatolia and the Black Sea into the Aegean, where they ravaged the Mycenaeans.”

Let us try to verify this in Wikipedia:

“The invaders, that is, the replacement cultures at those [Mycenaean] sites, apparently made no attempt to retain the cities’ wealth but instead built new settlements of a materially simpler cultural and less complex economic level atop the ruins. For example, no one appropriated the palace and rich stores at Pylos, but all were burned up, and the successors (whoever they were) moved in over the ruins with plain pottery and simple goods. This demonstrates a cultural discontinuity.”

This may demonstrate a logical discontinuity, as well! The question of who the invaders might have been is left open. However, the author identifies them with “the replacement cultures”, who were stupid enough to “burn up the palace and rich stores”, instead of appropriating them. Quite simply, those invaders had no intention to settle there; they went there just to destroy: for sure, they were not “the replacement cultures”!

Captive Sea Peoples in Egypt

The Anatolians were prevalent among the Sea Peoples but they were not alone. Several tribe names in the Egyptian files have a dubious or unknown origin – i.e. the Shekelesh, perhaps the Siculi, who moved to Sicily from the Italian mainland.

“There was a gigantic series of migratory waves”, Michael Grant remarks, “extending all the way from the Danube valley to the plains of China”; and Moses Finley agrees: “A large-scale movement of people is indicated… The original centre of disturbance was in the Carpatho-Danubian region of Europe… pushing in different directions at different times.”

But if we have faith in Michael Wood, they were… “essentially” [?!] Hellenes:

“Were the Sea Peoples in part actually composed of Mycenaean Greeks – rootless migrants, warrior bands and condottieri on the move? Certainly there seem to be suggestive parallels between the war gear and helmets of the Greeks and those of the Sea Peoples”. Moreover, he reminds us that “there were migrations of Greek-speaking peoples to [Sardinia and Sicily] at this time”, and therefore, he includes the Sherden and Shekelesh among the “villains”. Troy, he concludes, “was sacked by essentially Greek Sea Peoples”…⁽⁸⁾

• ⁽⁸⁾ It’s a pity there were “essentially” no Britannic “condottieri on the move”. Or else this… “thinking woman’s crumpet” (as Wood was humorously dubbed by British newspapers for his good looks most appealing to women) would have found Hellenic colonies even on Mars!

Cycladic head: a Pelasgian who is suspect as an “islander”: he has deformed his features!

Michael Wood is not alone, either. The identification of the Denyen and Ekwesh with the Danaans and Achaeans respectively are long-standing issues in Bronze Age scholarship, as the “suspects” also lived “in the isles”…⁽⁹⁾ Were the Egyptian scribes so naïve to use two names for one and the same people? What species of Bronze Age scholars are they if they (pretend to) ignore that Achaeans and Danaans are synonymous terms? Have they not been schooled in the Iliad? Homer mentions the name Achaeans 598 times; Danaans 138 times; Argives 182 times; and Hellenes only once. According to a version of the myth, they were ancestors of the Greeks and their tribes: Hellen, Graecus, Magnes, and Macedon (Makednós) were sons of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the only survivors of the Great Flood. Sons of Hellen were Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus; sons of Xuthus were Ion and Achaeus. Danaus, coming from Egypt, Pelops, from Anatolia, and Cadmus, from Phoenicia, gained a foothold in Greece, were assimilated and Hellenized. At least for the Danaans, perhaps due to their “Egyptian” origin, there is some “flexibility”: they are identified with the people of Adana in Cilicia, or possibly related to the land of the Danuna, near Ugarit, in Syria, or it is rumoured they joined Hebrews to form one of the original 12 tribes of Israel, that of Dan.

• ⁽⁹⁾ Although the connection of the Hittite toponym Ahhiyawa, or Ahhiya, with Achaea is strongly disputed (cf. Wikipedia: “the exact relationship of the term Ahhiyawa to the Achaeans beyond a similarity in pronunciation is hotly debated by scholars”; see also the conclusion of this Chronicle), the… “Wikipedists” are absolutely sure about the identification of the Achaeans with the Ekwesh. So, if you search for the entry “Ekwesh”, you are redirected to the “Achaeans”… As for the phrase “in the isles”, used by the Egyptians when referring to Sea Peoples and quoted by scholars as an argument, it ends up meaning: “Whoever is not a landsman is a suspect”!

THE MAJOR EVENT DURING PHARAOH Merneptah’s reign (1213–1203 BCE) was a war against a confederacy, termed the “Nine Bows”, under the leadership of the king of Libya. The pharaoh declared that he defeated the invasion, killing 6,000 soldiers and taking 9,000 prisoners. To be certain of the numbers, among other things, he took the penises of all uncircumcised dead and the hands of all the circumcised.⁽¹⁰⁾ We mention this macabre detail because, as it turned out, the so-called “Achaeans”, the Ekwesh, were circumcised, a fact that would certainly have obliged any serious Bronze Age scholar to “acquit” the Grecian Achaeans!⁽¹¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ Imagine those poor soldiers who were assigned to count all these penises and hands…

• ⁽¹¹⁾ …“a fact causing some to doubt they were Greek,” is what we actually read in Wikipedia! They were circumcised as a… camouflage! Or just to baffle our Bronze Age scholars! What they do remember is Virgil’s aphorism: “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”; i.e. “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” – in this case: bearing circumcision! Our scholars have been schooled in the Aeneid, at least… Note that not only the Ekwesh, but also the Shekelesh and Shardana were circumcised, as the Egyptians made clear (pity, they did not inform… Michael Wood)! Thus these two peoples had also been Oriental in origin and settled in Sicily and Sardinia only later. Those who were not circumcised were the Peleset. (“Aha!”, I can hear you chuckling, my dear scholars…)

Merneptah stele: the Zionist usurpers… usurped it from
another usurper!

Merneptah Stele and Exodus

● The pharaoh’s victories over the Libyans and their Sea People allies are glorified on the Merneptah Stele, a black granite slab over three meters high, that Flinders Petrie discovered in Thebes in 1896. There is, however, a kind of footnote in the final two of the 28 lines, which refers to a separate campaign in Canaan. There the king boasts of defeating and destroying four cities, the fourth one being most probably a city and valley in northern Canaan, called Jezreel – a word so similar to… Israel! For sure, that would be far more convenient and beneficial for all: the entire Jewish diaspora, the emerging Zionism, formally established as a movement the next year after the discovery, for many Christians, especially the clergy, and of course, for Petrie himself! That day he wondered: “Won’t the reverends be pleased?” and then he prophesied: “This stele will be better known in the world than anything else I have found.” He was not a fool: if this set of hieroglyphs on Line 27 could be read as… “Israel”, instead of “Jezreel”, it would present the first documented instance of this name in the historical record, and the only mention in ancient Egypt!

Although the readings in many places are illegible due to the rough surface and the poor cutting (Petrie’s own translation of the text contains dozens of question marks; only next to the controversial word the mark is missing…), most biblical archeologists accept Petrie’s version. So, his find was also proclaimed as… “Israel Stele”;⁽¹²⁾ based on a disputed word in the penultimate line of a text dealing with another subject! What a disgrace for Merneptah: a proud pharaoh boasting of a triumph over a handful of poor villagers! There were no more than about 25 villages then on the highlands of Canaan. Archaeologists and historians have attempted to trace the origins of these villagers but it’s been impossible to identify any distinctive features that could define them as specifically Israelite. “It is probably… during Iron Age I” (1200–1000 BCE), says archaeologist Paula McNutt, that “a population began to identify itself as ‘Israelite’.” The Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important, worth-mentioning local power even later, by the 9th century BCE, before falling to the Assyrians in 722. Thus, there was no “Israel” for Merneptah to mention – unless he was as prophetic as Petrie himself!

• ⁽¹²⁾ Merneptah is also to blame: he “appropriated” the stele from his predecessor, Amenhotep III, turned it round and wrote his controversial text on its rough surface. He could never imagine how this text would be distorted. For sure, he was not a prophet like Petrie!

Departure of the Israelites, by David Roberts (1829)

● This “misspelling” trick was some kind of “compensation” for the historical “error” of the Egyptians to mention neither the notorious Exodus nor the calamitous Biblical plagues. The archeologists are equally “guilty”, as they failed to find any evidence to support the “story” of the Jews in Egypt and the Sinai. The consensus among biblical scholars is that there was never any exodus of the proportions described in the Bible. According to the book of Exodus, arguably the most important in the Bible, the Jews leaving the country would have numbered some 2 million – compared with an entire Egyptian population of around 3 to 3.5 million in 1250 BCE! Marching ten abreast and without accounting for livestock, they would have formed a line 240 kilometers long! No evidence has been found that Egypt ever suffered such a demographic and economic catastrophe, or that the Sinai desert ever hosted (or could have hosted) these millions of people and their herds… The date proposed initially of an Exodus around 1450 BCE is also problematic: digs in the 1930s had failed to find traces of the simultaneous destruction of Canaanite cities c. 1400 BCE – and in fact many of them, such as Jericho, the first one to fall to the Israelites according to the Bible, were then uninhabited. A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence that can be directly related to the captivity, and the escape and travels through the wilderness, and most archaeologists have abandoned their investigation of Moses and the Exodus as “a fruitless pursuit”. Archaeologist William Dever says that there is “no room for an Exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness.”

Flinders Petrie’s “fine, Caucasian, dynastic race” invading Egypt…!

● Flinders Petrie, who could possibly “address the issue”, died a long time ago and was buried on Mount Zion, in Palestine. Besides, he remains a controversial figure as a committed advocate of “eugenics” and of the “superiority” of the white, Northern peoples over the Latinate and Southern peoples, as well as for his affiliation with a variety of fascist groups and anti-democratic thought in England. His archaeological views were equally racist: he contended that the Egyptian civilization was derived from a “fine”, invading “Caucasian Dynastic Race”, which had conquered Egypt in pre-dynastic times of late prehistory and introduced the pharaonic, dynastic culture to the “inferior” “mulatto” race then inhabiting the country. These views spilled over into disputes with E. A. Wallis Budge. The British Museum‘s Egyptologist declared that the ancient Egyptians were an African people with roots in eastern Africa and their religion was essentially identical to the religions of the peoples of northeastern and central Africa. However, all but some of his colleagues followed Petrie – a most revealing fact about the dominant ideology at the time, at least among intellectuals. Thus Petrie and his followers derided Budge’s ideas as impossible and “unscientific”…

NEXT ROUND in this protracted war against the Sea Peoples, marking the Bronze Age collapse, took place some three decades later, during the reign of Ramses III (1186–1155 BCE), the last great pharaoh of Egypt. His inscriptions state that the “Nine Bows” re-appeared as another “conspiracy in their isles”… Most Sea People tribes were there again; we are also informed that at least two great battles were fought, one on the sea, and the other on land.

The pharaoh proudly presented his captives (from L to R): the Libyan, Nubian, Syrian, Shasu, and Hittite (the… Hellene probably escaped!)

“When it was over”, says the Wikipedia article on the Sea Peoples, “several chiefs were captive: of Hatti, Amor, and Shasu among the ‘land peoples’, and the Tjeker, ‘Sherden of the sea’, ‘Teresh of the sea’ and Peleset or Philistines (in whose name some [?] have seen the ancient Greek name for sea people: Pelasgians)”…⁽¹³⁾

• ⁽¹³⁾ Pelasgian is related to πελός and Πέλοψ (Pelops: dark-skinned), or to πέλας (the fellow man, or the one nearby) and πελάζω-πλάζω (approach), or to περάω and πέρα (cross to the other side, as a migrant tribe). Once more, the scholars are wrong, as there is no connection with the sea, specifically πέλαγος (pelagos < πλήσσω or πλήττω, i.e. hit).

What conclusions can we draw? We are surprised, first of all, since our scholars were not… surprised at all when they read about a Hittite chief among those captive. Hatti had been a Sea Peoples’ arch-enemy – and one of their greatest victims. But scholars are usually aware of such “details” and are not taken by surprise. Besides, the same thing happened before and the pharaoh’s official complaints were forwarded to the Hittite monarch – as long as this empire still existed. OK, but why don’t they bother to explain, instead of wasting their time trying to involve the Greeks in this… “conspiracy theory”?

Ramses III vs the Sea Peoples

Eventually, we realize that the destruction of the established civilizations, mainly the Hittite and Mycenaean, was a deliberate tactic of the Sea Peoples to garner more strength at sea and amass land forces, as well. After all, the empires were of the aristocracies, Hittite or Mycenaean. What else could a desperate Hellene or a destitute Anatolian do, under the circumstances, but follow and stand by the peoples with whom he shared the same aspirations for a better life?

What else could a desperate Hellene or a destitute Anatolian do but follow the peoples with whom he shared the
same aspirations for a better life?

But what a pity for our scholars: not even one Greek among the captive chiefs… He probably escaped! The other captives were chiefs of the Amorites, who lived in Syria and part of Mesopotamia, and possibly of the Hebrews: Shasu is a term for nomad wanderers, and at least one of the tribes worshipped the Jewish god Yahweh. The rest were sea captains.

The pharaoh concluded his report as follows: “I slew the Denyen in their isles” and “burned” the Tjeker and Peleset… Therefore, he implied some maritime raids of his own, or some punitive expeditions elsewhere in the Mediterranean. In the Aegean? Where, what and whose were these “isles”? Whatever the answers, the chain reaction of the raids went on; it was the Egyptians’ turn to destroy – but destruction bears no signature…

Lady of Mycenae (fresco)

Homer mentions an Achaean attack upon the Nile delta, while Menelaus speaks of that in the Odyssey, recounting his voyage back home from the Trojan War. It was not, however, the only such marauding action by Mycenaeans against Egypt where they went “just for the fun of it” – and some gain, of course!

Taking into account the continuous turbulence among or within the sovereign Mycenaean royal families, the hypothesis that they may have utterly destroyed themselves is long-standing, and seems to find support by the reputable Greek historian Thucydides:

“For in early times the Hellenes and the barbarians of the coast and islands… were tempted to turn to piracy, under the conduct of their most powerful men… They would fall upon a town unprotected by walls… and would plunder it… no disgrace being yet attached to such an achievement, but even some glory”…

Hittite chariot

The “Achaeans” through Hittite eyes

VARIOUS HITTITE ACCOUNTS, from c. 1400 to c. 1220 BCE, mention a land in western Anatolia, named Ahhiyawa (or Ahhiya). The term is thought to be a Hittite rendition of the word “Achaea”, with the broader meaning of “the Achaeans’ land”. This idea was strongly disputed by other Hittitologists (see e.g. footnote 9). In addition, a precise geographical location of this land cannot be drawn from the texts. In any case, it seems that “Achaea” and Hatti evidently dealt with each other both on a diplomatic and a military level. We can read a letter that the Hittite king sent to his “Achaean” counterpart, where the latter is recognized as a “Great King”, and of equal status with the other contemporary great Bronze Age rulers: the kings of Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria. Referring to Millawanda (or Milawata: Miletus?) as a city within the “Achaean” domain,⁽¹⁴⁾ the Hittite monarch mentions an earlier “Wilusa episode”, within his own area, where the “Achaeans” lined up with his enemies. We have seen that Wilusa was most probably Troy (cf. the archaic Ϝίλιον, and later Ilion, i.e. the Trojan acropolis). This “episode” is possibly connected with the Trojan War.⁽¹⁵⁾

The Love of Helen and Paris, by
Jacques-Louis David (1788)

• ⁽¹⁴⁾ The Minoans had created in Miletus perhaps their most important settlement on Anatolian soil. The Mycenaeans inherited it, when they replaced the Cretans as the leading power in the Aegean. The city grew and became prosperous, as it is attested not only from the archaeological evidence, but also these Hittite records, which indicate that Miletus was the most important base for “Achaean” activity in Asia Minor ultimately reaching Iassos, Ephesus, and other cities.

• ⁽¹⁵⁾ Unfortunately, we cannot cross-check the available evidence because the Mycenaeans, unlike the Hittites, did not bother to write down such… “details”! The records in Linear B just refer to administrative bureaucratic issues of the palace. Even commerce is curiously absent from the written sources in Linear B! That’s why it’s impossible to reconstitute from texts in Linear B the late Bronze Age’s political developments. (Hittites vs. Mycenaeans: 1–0!)

In the second half of the 13th century, a long anti-Hittite revolt broke out with “Achaean” support, and headed by Piyama-Radu, who married his daughter to the vassal ruler of “Miletus”. His case is of particular interest since it appears to intertwine with that of the Trojan War. It was a remarkable revolt for its duration, having spanned at least 35 years, during which time he posed a considerable threat to three consecutive Hittite kings; it caused a great deal of turmoil in the areas of Wilusa, Arzawa,⁽¹⁶⁾ and Seha, and led to an invasion of Lazpa (Lesbos?), which passed under “Achaean” control. The aforementioned letter was sent in this period, as the Hittite king tried to persuade his “Achaean” counterpart to restore peace. Among other things, he mentions a brother of the “Achaean” monarch, named Tawagalawa, or… Eteocles,⁽¹⁷⁾ according to several imaginative scholars! Much more controversial is the “identification” of Piyama-Radu: it is speculated that he “corresponds to the archetype” of the Trojan king Priam… What’s next? They will probably… rewrite the Iliad!

• ⁽¹⁶⁾ “Achaea” and Arzawa joined forces several times against the Hittites. Arzawa was a kingdom, or a confederacy of local rulers, in western Anatolia, with Apasa, later Ephesus, as a capital.

• ⁽¹⁷⁾ The story of Oedipus’ son and king of Thebes is part of the Theban Cycle that is unrelated to the Trojan (Epic) Cycle and the Atreides. Eteocles’ brother was Polynices, with whom he fought for the throne and both were killed. The tragedy culminated with their sister Antigone’s death.

Places mentioned in this Chronicle (counter-clockwise): Wiluša, Lazpa, Seha, Mira, Apaša, Millawanda, Arzawa, Hapalla, Lukka, Alašiya, Ugarit, Amurra,Tarša, Hatti, Hattuša.

Warfare between “Achaeans” and Hittites began c. 1400 BCE. Hittite records mention the operations of the “Achaean” warlord Attarsiya in southwestern Asia Minor, possibly in Lycia, against Hittite vassals. It is the first recorded “Achaean” military activity on the Anatolian mainland, and is associated with an increase of Mycenaean findings in Miletus in this period (early 14th century BCE), indicating that a number of Greeks moved from mainland Hellas to this region. Attarsiya used the city as a military base, and hostilities continued until circa 1250 BCE. “Achaean” activity was to interfere in Asia Minor, with the support of anti-Hittite uprisings, or through local vassal rulers that the “Achaean” king used as agents for the extension of his influence. Speculation, of course, is also present here: It has been suggested by several scholars that the warlord was none other than Atreus, a mythical king of Mycenae, and father of Agamemnon. Others, noting that the Hittites do not speak of the “high king of Achaea”, argue that he should have been some general, named Atreus, or with a similar name, or finally that Attarsiya means Atreidēs, i.e. he was a member of the royal dynasty.

In order to undermine the Hittites, the warlord intervened in Anatolian affairs attacking Hittite vassals, such as Madduwatta from Arzawa (Luwia),⁽¹⁸⁾ whom he repeatedly defeated, as the army he deployed included 100 war chariots. But he eventually withdrew from Asia Minor to prepare a campaign against Alashiya (Cyprus?). He had the Lukka (“Lycians”) on his side, providing him the necessary naval support, together with a number of his Anatolian allies, even Madduwatta, who decided to switch camps. This worried the Hittites, since they considered the island one of their dependencies. The invaders finally defeated them, and thus Alashiya passed under their control. The Mycenaean presence in Cyprus is also corroborated by archaeological evidence, as we have seen, for Mycenaean finds dating from that time were unearthed there.

Anatolian hieroglyphs

• ⁽¹⁸⁾ The Luwians lived in central, western, or southern Asia Minor, as well as the northwestern part of the Levant, in the Bronze and Iron Ages. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European Anatolian tongue written in cuneiform of Mesopotamian origin, or a unique native hieroglyphic script, which was sometimes also used by the linguistically related Hittites.

The following decades were a period of Mycenaean expansion on the Anatolian coast (c. 1380–1320 BCE). In 1320-1315, there was another anti-Hittite rebellion in Arzawa, in cooperation with “Miletus”, and supported by the “Achaeans”, who appeared to be in control of a number of islands in the Aegean, an impression also supported by archaeological evidence. Finally, the Hittites were victorious. The king of Arzawa managed to escape to “Achaean”-controlled territory, and his land was split into three provinces: a southern province, Mira, would later become known as Caria; a northern province, Seha, would be renamed as Lydia; and an eastern province called Hapalla (the Grecian Pisidia). That was the finale of this kingdom’s history, which had passed into oblivion, and came back on the surface thanks to the Hittite texts.

If, indeed, the information contained in these archives corresponds up to a point to historical facts, it seems that the Mycenaean and Hittite palatial civilizations of the Aegean and Anatolia were “bored” (to death) by the same woodworms…

The Luwian Civilization: The Missing Link in the Aegean Bronze Age

ALBEIT BELATEDLY, I’VE STUDIED Eberhard Zangger’s book,⁽¹⁹⁾ The Luwian Civilization / The Missing Link in the Aegean Bronze Age (2016). I feel it is useful to outline his main points regarding the Sea Peoples:

• ⁽¹⁹⁾ Since 1994 Zangger has been advocating the view that a Luwian civilization existed in Western Asia Minor during the 2nd millennium BCE. In 2014 he established the international non-profit foundation Luwian Studies.

The Luwian Civilization / The Missing Link in the Aegean Bronze Age. Cover: probably an Atlantis-like reconstruction of Troy, the most prominent Luwian city, as Eberhard Zangger imagined it.

“Over twenty years ago, I proposed a chronological reconstruction of the political and economic development in the countries around the Eastern Mediterranean during the 13th century BCE. It causally links three wars comprised of reciprocal attacks. First, the so-called Sea Peoples’ invasions took place, during which the navy of allied Luwian petty states from the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea advanced to the southeast. The Luwians were then attacked a few years later by allied Greek forces – and this is memorialized in the tradition of the so-called Trojan War. And finally, a civil war… broke out in Greece.”

“Perhaps the trigger for the [Luwians’] decision to engage in war was [Hatti’s] conquest of Cyprus… possibly to get access to its copper resources. The Luwians in western Asia Minor played an active role in long-distance trade and may have depended on Cyprus as a port of call. Therefore they entered into a military alliance and built a fleet of fast, agile vessels for invasions. Instead of moving against the Hittite forces over land, they dashed across the sea and reached the important Hittite borderlands of Cyprus and Syria. The acclaimed mercenary armies of the Lukka and Sherden had become marine forces which no longer fought alongside the Hittite king but against him – they had formed the coalition known as the Sea Peoples… [Eventually] the capital Hattuša was wiped out overnight – and with it the Hittite Empire.”

Sphinx Gate at Hattusa

“The petty states from western Asia Minor suddenly controlled an area stretching from Macedonia across Anatolia to Syria and Canaan, where it touched upon the Egyptian dominion… Together with this vast territory, the Luwians now dominated almost all ore deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as the trade routes on land and at sea… Both the access to the Black Sea region as well as the connection through Cyprus and Syria to Mesopotamia were now under Luwian control. Considering the distribution of mineral resources, arable land, the path of the perennial rivers and of the trade routes, the Mycenaeans were about to face a superior force for an extended period of time. To avoid complete dependence… they engaged in a coalition themselves with the ultimate purpose to raid western Asia Minor… About ten years later, united Greek forces attacked western Asia Minor – and this was later remembered as the ‘Trojan War’… which was thus a counterattack against the previously victorious Sea Peoples.”

“While the Mycenaean kings were fighting at Troy, their wives and less competent deputies had taken their thrones. When the surviving victorious kings returned, many of these deputies did not want to give up their power. A civil war broke out and consumed progressively one citadel after another… Pylos – and later Ithaca – may have been among the last palaces to fall into the hands of the insurgents.” (Eberhard Zangger, The Luwian Civilization / The Missing Link in the Aegean Bronze Age; see Chronicle 26, Odysseys in the Aftermath of the Trojan War: Colonization of Iberia).

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Next Chronicle 21. IBERIAN “EL DORADO” ● Minoans, Mycenaeans, Phoenicians in Iberia ● Fortunate Isles, Hesperides ● Sardinia ● Odysseus, Calypso, Ophiussa ● Tartessos

Mycenaean gold diadem