Гомер и история Восточного Средиземноморья

Summary

In their book, Homer and History of the Eastern Mediterranean, L. A. Gindin and V. L. Tsymburski suggest their own reconstruction of historical actualities underlying the myths concerning the great military expedition of the Achaean Greeks against the Trojan capital, Ilios. The authors combine traditional methods of historical analysis with the available archaeological data and profound research of the linguistic relicts which shed light on the early ethnical history of Troy.

In the introductory Chapter 1, History Belongs to a Poet, the authors explain their attitude towards the Homeric question in its two main issues: both concerning the genesis of the poems and their historical value for a researcher. The opinion is expressed according to which each of the three rival trends in Homerology (namely, analyticism, unitarianism and the point of view regarding the Homeric poems as a traditional kind of oral epos) reflects one actual corresponding aspect of the genesis of «The Iliad» and «The Odyssey». Thus, the folkloristic school of Homerology exposes characteristic features of the formulaic technique used by Homer in his versification, ranging from standard word combinations (or set expressions) to the repertory of traditional images and scenes. Analyticism reveals strife between different versions and variants in the pre-Homeric tradition; the strife that had been integrated by the Poet’s artistic intention — perhaps to the point of merger of the earlier epic portions into his discourse. Lastly, Unitarian approach explains the systems of images and plots of «The Iliad» and «The Odyssey» from the viewpoint of integrity of the Poet’s conception which is in many respects unique for ancient epic. This conception is determined by the two topics which coexist in either of the Homeric epics: the declared topic of a hero’s fate (e.g. fate of Achilles or Odysseus), and the implicit topic of the heroic epoch nearing its end. The most complicated and diverse interrelations of metaphorical and metaphysical nature are established between the two abovementioned topics in the discourse; as a result of this, the Homeric relation obtains the multitude of functional dimensions. Each of the delineated three trends in Homerology sees in the concept of «Homeric historicism» somewhat different meaning. For a supporter of the folkloristic school, historicism of Homer lies primarily in his use of the formulae/clichés which preserve some or other actualities of the long-gone past. For an analyst (meaning here a follower of the analytical school) the said historicism is in the dynamics of the interacting and developing earlier versions whose vague shapes can be discerned behind the Homeric text; in the dynamics reflecting those of history itself. Lastly, an Unitarian sees the Homeric historicism in the artistic skill using which the Poet reconstructs image of the epoch as of a space of time permeated with a single meaning, connected with a singe action that prevails over diversity of individual plots and stories.

In the Part 1, The Aegean and the Trojan War (Chapters 2 to 4), the authors seek to determine the true meaning of those developments which had come into Greek tradition under the name of the Trojan War in the context of the Late Bronze history of Asia minor and the Eastern Mediterranean — so far as that history can be reconstructed on the basis of the Hittite, Greek (Mycenaean) and Egyptian written records.

The Second Chapter, Hittite Evidence on the Achaeans in Anatolia of the 15–13 Centuries B.C., offers an analysis of the Hittite written sources mentioning the land of Aḫḫijawā; the authors see in the latter Mycenaean Greece including its Anatolian territorial possessions. Now that the works of H. Otten, A. Kammenhuber and F. Schachermeyr are available, the earliest of those documents (the so-called «Text Concerning Madduwatas») can be dated back to the end of the 15 century B.C., and the latest records (fragments of the time of Tuthalijas IV) to 1250–1220 B.C. The authors argue that the influence of Aḫḫijawā in Asia Minor was decisively getting stronger in the second half of the 14 century B.C. — after Mursilis II defeated the kingdom of Arzawa that had been the biggest state in the Western Anatolia. The heyday of Aḫḫijawā’s power came in the early 13 century B.C., when Hattusilis III in the «Letter Concerning Tawagalawas» addresses the king of Aḫḫijawā as an equal (if not regarding the latter as a stronger partner) and expresses in humble terms his regret for their contention of late and for the war waged to capture the city of Wiluša. He also names the city of Milawa(n)da (Miletus) in Asia Minor an Achaean possession.

Under the rule of Tuthalijas IV (the second half of the 13 century B.C.) the political picture undergoes major changes. Since that time the king of Aḫḫijawā is expunged from the document listing the «great kings», and the ruler of Milawa(n)da is regarded as a subject of the Hittite king; moreover all the dealings with that ruler are conducted without the prior consent of Aḫḫijawā. It is quite evident that certain developments taking in the Achaean metropolis of the Balkan Peninsula were apt to undermine the Achaean Greeks’ position in Asia Minor. The text KUB XIII, 13 is dated to that epoch. It informs us of the defeat suffered by the king of Aḫḫijawā in the Seha River Country (later Mysia) — this fact exactly corresponds to Greek tradition relating the inauspicious beginning of the Trojan war when invading by mistake Mysia instead of Troad, the Achaeans had been repelled by local population (a «Pseudo-Iliad» of a sort!). Using this evidence, we can correlate historical prototype of the Trojan war with certain crises of Greek history of the second half oft the 13 century B.C.

In Chapter 3, Wiluša-Ilios and Truiša-Troy, the authors follow the example of many scholars in identifying the Hittite period toponyms of Asia Minor — Wiluša and T(a)ruiša — with the Homeric Ilios and Troy. They also support this identification with a number of new arguments. Thus, the book demonstrates that the most important developments in interrelations between the Hittite kingdom and Aḫḫijawā in the late 14 and early 13 centuries B.C. were centred round Wiluša, the city viewed by Achaean kings as almost a part of the Greek world. It must be stressed that the overriding points of those interrelations came to be the extremely strong influence exerted by Aḫḫijawā in the Western Anatolia of the early 13 century B.C., as well as the power vacuum evident there by the end of the century, i.e. by the time of the Trojan war. That political vacuum was primarily due to the crisis suffered by Aḫḫijawā and to the inimical attitude towards the Hittites assumed by the natives of the Western Anatolia. The latter can largely be identified with the tribes referred to by Homer as the allies of Ilios in its struggle against the Achaeans. Besides that, the authors seek to substantiate a supposition that some personae featuring in the Trojan cycle epics — Agamemnon, Alexander/Paris, et al. — could have had their prototypes at a much earlier period of history (at the turn of the 14 and 13 centuries B.C.). By the time of the Trojan war they must have become vague figures of the past whose legendary deeds got later mixed with memories of the crucial epoch of the Mycenaean Greece.

In Chapter 4, The Achaeans, the Sea Peoples and the Heracleidae (The Fall of the Mycenaean Greece and Destruction of Troy), that crisis (the Hittite records imply its actual presence) is connected with the invasion of Greece ca 1240 B.C. by tribes from the northwestern Balkans which put an end to the era of Achaean supremacy. The authors refuse to accept the hypothesis of Schachermeyr and some other scholars, according to which, for several subsequent centuries, Greece was ruled by those northerners. Identifying the invasion in question with the «first coming of the Heracleidae» — Greek tradition dates it to the time of the Trojan war — Gindin and Tsymburski are inclined to give credence to (hat tradition when it informs us of an epidemic which had made the vast majority of the intruders withdraw and return to the north, and of their further unsuccessful attempts to invade Peloponnesus again. Archaeological evidence for the subsequent decades shows the picture of the Greeks’ massive influx into the littoral regions, islands and Asia Minor. The Trojan war which, almost immediately following the crisis in Greece, had destroyed the Troy VIIa is viewed as an attempt of the Mycenaean kings to enhance their prestige by making that massive exodus from Greece look like a solid military enterprise. Invasion of Egypt during the Pharaon Memeptah’s reign became a part of that expedition: the troops of the Sea Peoples were composed mainly of the Achaeans who joined the Western Balkanian forces and Troy’s neighbours, the Tyrsenians — ancestors of the Etruscans (vague memories of that attack against Egypt are to be found in Greek legends which date it to the time immediately after the burning of Troy). In the authors’ opinion, the Achaean migrations of that time were an actual combination of aggression and flight from ancestral homes which was reflected in the Trojan cycle myths resulting in a tangle of heroic and tragic motifs where no triumphant note of the victors can be discerned — that gives us the idea of the doomed Achaean world whose decline ensued after the great war.

In Part 2, Who Inhabited Troy? ethnolinguistic composition of Trojan population is being reconstructed — mainly that of the Troy VIIa («the Priam’s Troy»); i.e. of the peoples who were trying to resist the Achaean invaders.

While writing Chapter 5, Thrace and Troad, the authors were largely drawing on materials of L. A. Gindin’s book, The Oldest Onomasticon of the Eastern Balkans (Sofia, 1981). This chapter contains an onomastic survey of the Homeric Troad made in the form of a sui generis guide book which gives a description of the area. It becomes evident that the overwhelming majority of Trojan place-names from «The Iliad» are of archaic Thracian origin; many of them have their direct namesakes on the shores of neighbouring Thrace separated from Troad by the sea which was called in antiquity the Thracian Sea. Possessions of the Trojan rulers — as they were depicted in «The Iliad» — included a certain part of the Thracian littoral together with the city of Sestos. The Trojan nobles, according to Homerus, enjoy close relationship with the Thracian kings via conjugal ties; and during the Trojan war the latter help their neighbours and relations of Ilios. Some of the Trojan names of Thracian origin (e.g. the names of Wiluša-Ilios and Truiša-Troy) go back as far as the middle — if not the first half — of the 2nd millenium B.C. These conclusions are corroborated by the archaeological data according to which, in the 3rd millenium B.C., Troy was a part of the proto-Thracian cultural area.

As for the «Laomedon’s» Troy VI and «Priam’s» Troy VIIa (18–13 centuries B.C.), there seems to have seen a strong Greek-oriented ruling stratum in the city that exerted considerable cultural influence. However, even if we are to openly admit that Greek rulers could appear in Ilios in the beginning of the 2nd millenium B.C., the bulk of Troad’s population was composed of early Thracian ethnic elements whose influence on ethnolinguistic aspect of those who fought the Achaeans during the Trojan war was the strongest.

In Chapter 6, The Luwians at Troy, the authors substantiate their hypothesis concerning the survival of certain parts of the early Luwian tribes which still existed in Homeric Troy; their forefathers during the epoch of Troy II (2600–2300 B.C.) were moving southward from the city, to the place of historic abode of the Luwians. It seems probable that during the pre-Anatolian period of their history, those tribes (after they had come from the area of Black Sea steppes lying northwest of the Balkans) coexisted for some time with proto-Thracian ethnic units within the Eastern Balkan area. Therefore we have every right to consider the so-called proto-Thracian antiquities as the proto-Indo-European ones. The mysterious Lycians from the region of Zeleja (or «Trojan Lycia») are first to be mentioned among the relict early Luwian tribes of Troad. The ancient designation of that locality, *Luka, reflected in the local name of Apollo (Λυκη-γϵνής) in connection with the myth about his having been bom in Zeleja, is identical to the designation of a Luwian region in the south of die Hittite period Anatolia, Lukka. In a deeper perspective, the term is cognate to the name of the entire area of dwelling of the historical Luwians, Luwija. Self-designation of the Trojan Lycians attested by Homer, Τρῶϵς, exactly corresponds to the late name of one of the two Lycia’s languages (the so-called Lycian B), trujeli (that name was unlike those of other, southern, Luwian ethnic units). This fact makes one view the speakers of Lycian В as the Tread’s Lycians who moved south in the early 1st millenium B.C. That tribe had possible played an important part in the spread of Apollo’s cult in Lycia. Apollo’s name is attested for the 2nd millenium B.C. only in Wiluša-Ilios; according to Homer, he was also worshipped in the neighbouring Zeleja.

Other Luwian tribes had had a Trojan phase in their prehistory as well. Thus, the name of Sarpedon, the hero-protector of the people speaking Lucian A language, derives from the name of a headland situated in the south of Aegean Thracia, opposite Tread. Homeric figure of Sarpedon fighting the Achaeans for Troy returns this image to its historical and geographic origins. Another Luwian tribe, Cilicians, is known to Homer as a people that once inhabited the south of Troad. The authors explain their name as a derivative of their sanctuary’s name Κίλλα < Hitt.-Luw. ḫila «courtyard»; cf. Lyc. qla «temple’s fence». Luwian archaic terms of special kind are represented by the name of the mountain near Trojan Lycia Πϵιρωσσός, and the figure of its eponym mentioned by Homer — that of the supposedly coming from Thracia stone-throwing hero Πϵίρως; the terms in question continue the Hittite-Luwian series: Hitt.-Luw. pirwa «rock», Pirwa, name of the god worshipped on the rocks, Luw. Pirwašša «something belonging to Pirwa». Undoubtedly, the Luwians who came to Anatolia from the north in the 3rd millenium B.C. left a noticeable trace in Tread’s tradition (e.g. the name-title Πρίαμος < Luw. prijama «the first, the best»), and it is likely that a certain remainder of the Luwians still lived to the epoch of the Troian war in the northern and southern periphery of the area — in the Trojan Lycia and in settlements of the Trojan Cilicians whence comes the Homeric heroine Andromache.

Chapter 7, The Hittites in the Trojan Myths of Greeks, occupies in this part of the book a special place, since the Hittites have not been inhabitants of Troad. However, Greek tradition which places in Mysia (in Caicos) during the time immediately following the events of the «Pseudo-Iliad» the powerful people of the Ceteans/Keteioi (Κήτϵιοι), fully corresponds to the evidence of the Hittite annals concerning Hittite army’s entry in the River Seha Country from where Aḫḫijawā’s king had just been ousted. Homer’s words (Od. XI,519–521) concerning the Ceteans coming at the close of the war to Troy’s help and perishing «because of the women’s gifts» remarkably tally with the prescription of Hittite law about a «payment to a woman» (ŠA SAL kuššan) which was given to a widow of a killed mercenary. In Posthomerica by Quintus of Smyrna (that writing reflects the cyclical tradition) the Ceteans emerge as a powerful people ruled by the «great king» (μέγας βασιλϵύς = Hitt. LUGAL GAL). The Ceteans appearing on stage, the Trojans as Greeks’ adversaries fade into the background. It is not impossible that tradition about the Ceteans reflects an unsuccessful attempt of the Hittites to affect the course of the Trojan war at its final stage.

However, this historical reminiscence is complicated by mythological motifs whose provenance is to be sought in Asia Minor. Thus, tradition makes the Cetean king Eurypylus a son of the Mysian demigod Telephus who was a hero participating in the events of «Pseudo-Iliad». Telephus while fighting the Achaeans gets his feet entangled in a vine and being severely wounded in the thigh, flees overseas to Greece to show the Greeks the way to Troy in exchange for their healing his wound. The above story is doublessly a Greek revision of the Western Anatolian version of the Hattie and Hittite myth about the fertility god Telepi/Telepinus who shuns the world, sick and getting healed, furious and then placated. Under the influence of this calendar myth intruding in the historical legend, the «women’s gifts» for which the Ceteans-Hittites perish, turn into the fabulous golden grapevine which had supposedly been presented by Priam to the Cetean queen and became the bane of Eurypylus. The memory about the fighting between the Greeks and their fell Hittite foes (cf. the story of Hercules fighting the κῆτος-monster) merges with the motifs which had come to Greeks from traditions of the peoples of Asia Minor living near Troy.