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Homer and the Micenian World
#16
Quote:I'm still waiting for images of Mykenaian chariot lancers.

What do you think of the chariot images of Nestor's palace? I know is Late mycenean...Well I hope this is useful...there are some dark images:...
Reconstruction You may want to email this guy & wask him if he had made that experiment :wink:
lectures

http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available ... 20chariot'

This is the best! Wow! And you can test it here by yourself when is don:lol: :lol: :lol:
  
Remarks by Philip on the Athenian Leaders:
Philip said that the Athenians were like the bust of Hermes: all mouth and dick. 
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#17
Could you link to the specific images in question? The Pylos image shows a guy with a spear/javelin walking behind a chariot. I'm not disputing that spears were used from chariots. I'm questioning whether they were used for couched lance "shock tactics". Conter's thesis, to which you linked, does not support this theory either. I wouldn't place too much store in Troy: Total War. They have managed to mingle about 500 years of equipment and tactics.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen & Sword Books
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#18
Quote:This is the best! Wow! And you can test it here by yourself when is don:lol: :lol: :lol:
those Minoan swordsmen remind me of Scottish warriors....
and I agree with the Podcast....you mention Homer to most people nowadays and they think of the Simpsons...!
Listening at the moment; unless there were written records, now disappeared, that Homer had access to, all his knowledge must have come from the oral stories passed down from generations before.
I, for one, believe the Trojan war happened, but how many of the details were fact and which were romanticised or simply fiction, it is hard to tell.
It is also possible that 'Troy' was elsewhere, as is theorised and fought by the Greeks who settled in Western Europe.
If Helena/Elena was a Spartan princess, she would not have sat back during the battle. In my opinion Paris probably allowed her the freedom she did not have as the wife of Menelaus.
Elen was a Goddess of battle, adopted by, or belonging to the Celts....who were known for their chariot warfare and, indeed, female leaders.......maybe other sources should be considered too...?
This is fairly interesting to consider, if you consider Helena's 'fairness' that launched the thousand ships.......!
[url:2913g06n]http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/tributary/35/elen.htm#[/url]
(I have Bettany Hughes book on my reading list...!)

Quote:Patroklos also had a chariot with talking horses and he miraculously jumped his chariot over a ditch specifically dug to prevent chariots from crossing.
So did Cuchulain........from what I remember..
regards
Arthes
Cristina
The Hoplite Association
[url:n2diviuq]http://www.hoplites.org[/url]
The enemy is less likely to get wind of an advance of cavalry, if the orders for march were passed from mouth to mouth rather than announced by voice of herald, or public notice. Xenophon
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#19
First I agree with Dan, that troops in the images look rather innacurate.
We respectfully dissagree on the chariot charge and I only hope that I will have the chance to test my theory if the chariot shows at Watford.
Till then I cannot press the argument.

Cristina,Helen could not be a warrior princes. Bronze Age Spartan women are not recorded having the liberties of the Classical Era Spartan women.
But I stand on the possibility of warrior princesses in the northern Greek tribes of the time. The cult of Artemis Aetolia showing the hunting godess almost resembling Athena, survived into the Hellenistic times. There is also the legend of Atalandi of Fthia. That makes plausible the existance of "warrior pristesses" but nowhere like the warrior women of the Sauromatae Sarmatians or the Amazons.

An interesting point on Helen's name in Greek ELLENI:
SELLENI or HELLENI = the one who is bright like the Moon from SELLAS= light or SELLINI= the Moon
But the root of the word could possibly come from the verb
HELLEO = gather the army for war; therefor HELLENI: the one that for her armies are gathered.
HELLANA = the forse of the charge , shock of impact when the phallanx crashes on the Enemy. Today it survives in the French language under the word ELAN.
So HELLENE is the one who stirs passions.
Browsing the net I found a blog arguing that Helen was a scheming ruthless woman who could not stomach the fact that was married to a lesser king (Menealos) and left for Troy with her husband's knowledge to stir a war that would bring Agamenon and Mycenae down and raise the prestige of Sparta. Is seemd to work for them although not exactly as they had planned.

Although the author might have some points because the LA roote exist in every Indo-European language denoting light and brightness.
Kind regards
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#20
Keep in mind that the traditional chronology is screwed up, due to Egyptian influence. You have to knock 3 centuries off all the late Bronze Age dates, so the Trojan War was not c. 1250 but c. 950. The Dark Ages are mostly illusory, or at least MUCH shorter than generally taught. So Homer was only a few generations removed from the events and people he describes. Certain things like the ship list are straight out of Mycenaean Linear B lists.

This is only a shift of absolute dates before c. 1100, mind you, so the Dendra Panoply is still about 200 years earlier than the Trojan War era.

For more details,

http://www.larp.com/hoplite/chronology.html

Khairete,

Matthew
Matthew Amt (Quintus)
Legio XX, USA
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.larp.com/legioxx/">http://www.larp.com/legioxx/
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#21
Quote:Keep in mind that the traditional chronology is screwed up, due to Egyptian influence. You have to knock 3 centuries off all the late Bronze Age dates, so the Trojan War was not c. 1250 but c. 950. The Dark Ages are mostly illusory, or at least MUCH shorter than generally taught. So Homer was only a few generations removed from the events and people he describes. Certain things like the ship list are straight out of Mycenaean Linear B lists.

Really? Is this a new theory, or something that's been around awhile? Because I can find nothing about a big 300+ year redating of the Trojan War in any of the sources I checked. I'm not challenging you, but just curious as to your source. All the sources I could find online and in my books still place the Trojan War (if it really happened at all) in the mid-to-late 13th century BC. Most of those archaeologists who think the Hissarlik site is Troy think that Troy VII, which is dated to the same rough period as the literary sources place, is Homer's Troy; a minority think it's Troy VI, which is earlier. I have yet to see anyone identify a much later level (if there are later levels) as the Homeric Troy.

It seems any theory proposing such a massive shift in the ancient chronology would have attracted quite a bit of attention and yielded a lot of debate online and in scholarly journals like Archaeology, yet I can't find any reference to it. Help me out here!
T. Flavius Crispus / David S. Michaels
Centurio Pilus Prior,
Legio VI VPF
CA, USA

"Oderint dum probent."
Tiberius
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#22
Greetings,
I read somewhere online recently, about a theory that bought all ancient history forwards in time and altered the timeline of certain events....

ps...Helen of Troy makes move to capture hearts of Toni & Guy
was a heading in a local paper recently.......'she' lives in Sheffield...... :lol:

regards
Arthes
Cristina
The Hoplite Association
[url:n2diviuq]http://www.hoplites.org[/url]
The enemy is less likely to get wind of an advance of cavalry, if the orders for march were passed from mouth to mouth rather than announced by voice of herald, or public notice. Xenophon
-
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#23
I did find one online paper that expounds this exact theory-- i.e. that the Egyptian chronology upon which the Greeks based their dating was widely off by three or more centuries, that everything pior this must be down-dated, and that the so-called Greek "dark age" was only a few decades at most, not three or more centuries. Trouble is, it was written by Immanuel Velikovsky, author of "Worlds In Collision," who is widely regarded by most historians as a total crackpot.

Has anyone more respectable repackaged the Velikovsky theory more recently?
T. Flavius Crispus / David S. Michaels
Centurio Pilus Prior,
Legio VI VPF
CA, USA

"Oderint dum probent."
Tiberius
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#24
Going back to Helena of Troy....I find that 'El' denoted a God in the ancient world.
His consort Elath/Elat was an alternative name for Asherah, the Canaaite Goddess, known as Lady of the Sea...a goddess of love, war and fertility.
Asherah was also known as Astoreth and Astarte, and equivalent to Ishtar and later Aphrodite....... hmmmh! Beautiful warlike women who arrive by sea....???
Alaksandru of Wilusa, an ally of the Hittites is thought to be a alternative name of Alexandros of Illion, 'Paris'
Now if we are talking Hittite chariots as well as Mycenean.... [url:2k4jzr8h]http://www.ancientanatolia.com/Pictures/Gallery01/image37.htm[/url]
I am also wondering if Helena was not her real name....but a title...?
regards
Arthes
Cristina
The Hoplite Association
[url:n2diviuq]http://www.hoplites.org[/url]
The enemy is less likely to get wind of an advance of cavalry, if the orders for march were passed from mouth to mouth rather than announced by voice of herald, or public notice. Xenophon
-
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#25
Quote:Really? Is this a new theory, or something that's been around awhile? Because I can find nothing about a big 300+ year redating of the Trojan War in any of the sources I checked.

The most comprehensive work on the subject was done by Peter James et al. The book is called "Centuries of Darkness". The authors present a very very credible argument that the current chronology is bogus. They also propose a new chronology which makes sense to me but requires more evidence to convince the skeptics.
http://www.centuries.co.uk/

Using their proposed chronology, Troy VIIa dates to around 950-900BC.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen & Sword Books
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#26
FWIW here is Conter's argument against using a thrusting lance from aboard a chariot (pp28-30). Most of this comes from the work of Littauer and Crouwel who have already attempted physical experiments similar to the one proposed by Stefanos.

Representations aside, the thrusting spear probably is not a practical weapon to use from a moving chariot, as Littauer and Crouwel argue. The core of their argument rests on two factors. The first is the length of the axle, and the second factor is the length of the spear.

The axle of a chariot was long and extended beyond the box, which was about a meter in width. Extant Egyptian chariots have axles that vary in length from 1.98 to 2.36m, and made a wheel track of 1.75m (5.74 feet) on average. Mycenaean axles were most likely of a similar length because a long axle aided in stabilizing the chariot during turns. According to Littauer and Crouwel, because the axle also extended beyond the wheels, a space of at least 1.60m (5.25 feet) was needed between the boxes of passing chariots on a charge. This amount of space is needed in order to prevent the axles and/or the wheels of the opposing chariots from entangling.

The Mycenaean thrusting spear is estimated to have been about 10 feet long. The spear, because of its length and the weight of its bronze head, had to be held with two hands with a portion of the shaft behind the wielder. The full 10 feet, then, would not have been extended beyond the chariot box. Considering this factor together with the fact that at least 5.25 feet had to be left between the boxes of two opposing chariots, the thrusting spear would not have been long enough to adequately strike an opposing charioteer/warrior. If two opposing chariots attacked each other head-on, a spear held by a warrior in one of the chariots would have at best only been long enough to reach the forehead of one of the opposing horses. Striking one of the horses would have disabled the opposing chariot, but because not enough space would be left to drive around the fallen horse/chariot, the Mycenaean chariot would have possibly collided with it. If the opposing chariots were meant to pass side by side, after leaving enough space to prevent the ends of the axles or wheels from entangling, a ten foot long thrusting spear would not have been sufficiently long to stab the opposing warrior. In such a situation, the thrusting spear would have only been long enough to give a glancing blow. A thrusting spear is a piercing weapon, and as such is at it most effective when directly aimed at the opponent from the front. The only conceivable way that a spear could have directly pierced an opponent riding on a chariot would have been if the chariots were exactly parallel. Considering that the chariots were presumably moving at a quick pace, there would not have been a lot of time to accomplish this; therefore, successfully using a thrusting spear during a chariot charge is unlikely.

Littauer and Crouwel further their argument by adding the problem of the spearman maintaining stability after striking his opponent, especially if a direct hit was actually achieved. Because the thrusting spear had to be held with two hands, the spearman could not have held onto the rail. The force of a direct blow could possibly have thrown him out of the back of the chariot. Even if the spearman was meant to hit an infantryman, retaining the weapon after a successful hit would be next to impossible in a speeding chariot.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen & Sword Books
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#27
Thanks Dan.
Now I have a clearer idea what I will try to disprove or accept depnding if the experiment can take place.

David,
Revised chronology: (Actualy I found it in our Newsbot!! Thanks admins)
http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassi ... 03564.html
I do not know if it proves or disproves anything.
I still try to understand the revised chronology arguments.
Kind regards
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#28
Quote:Really? Is this a new theory, or something that's been around awhile?

Actually the disputes go back nearly a century. But the traditional "high" chronology has become very entrenched and the revisionists get very little press.

Quote:All the sources I could find online and in my books still place the Trojan War (if it really happened at all) in the mid-to-late 13th century BC. Most of those archaeologists who think the Hissarlik site is Troy think that Troy VII, which is dated to the same rough period as the literary sources place, is Homer's Troy; a minority think it's Troy VI, which is earlier. I have yet to see anyone identify a much later level (if there are later levels) as the Homeric Troy.

Right, all the basic and popular publications will stick to the traditional dates. And the date revisions won't change which Troy is the right one, really, it will only change the absolute dates of that level. The *relative* sequences are not greatly affected (except when some things now though to be sequential or greatly separated are found to be contemporary).

Quote:It seems any theory proposing such a massive shift in the ancient chronology would have attracted quite a bit of attention and yielded a lot of debate online and in scholarly journals like Archaeology, yet I can't find any reference to it. Help me out here!

The "old guard" is very dogmatic and vicious. An appalling amount of vitriol gets thrown, with very little good science. Peer-reviewed journals won't even consider publishing articles advocating the low chronology--there are to many reputations and egos at stake, for starters.

Quote:I did find one online paper that expounds this exact theory-- i.e. that the Egyptian chronology upon which the Greeks based their dating was widely off by three or more centuries, that everything pior this must be down-dated, and that the so-called Greek "dark age" was only a few decades at most, not three or more centuries. Trouble is, it was written by Immanuel Velikovsky, author of "Worlds In Collision," who is widely regarded by most historians as a total crackpot.

Right, that's the general theory, but also right that Velikovsky hasn't been much help to the "low chronology" side! This subject was one of his favorites, though he advocated a 500-year cut in the dates. He is generally believed to be an extremist who didn't really understand the issues clearly, and it should be kept in mind that he was NOT the first one to point out the chronology problems! They predate him by generations. There is a whole website with articles by him and his supporters which is worth a careful read, since he quotes one expert and archeologist after another who are puzzled by chronology problems all over the Mediterranean and elsewhere. It's a real eye-opener.

http://www.varchive.org/dag/index.htm

(And full of typos, by the way...) Apparently, one of his supporters, Edwin Schorr, was actually denied a degree and ended up leaving school, career in ruins, simply because he wanted to do his dissertation on the chronology problem. Reminds me of Gallileo...

As Dan says, "Centuries of Darkness" is the best work, and its writers pretty much stick with a 250-year reduction. Amazing book.

Khairete,

Matthew
Matthew Amt (Quintus)
Legio XX, USA
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.larp.com/legioxx/">http://www.larp.com/legioxx/
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