Posted on 03/28/2006 10:59:23 AM PST by blam
Palace of Homer's hero rises out of the myths
From John Carr in Athens
ARCHAEOLOGISTS claim to have unearthed the remains of the 3,500-year-old palace of Ajax, the warrior-king who according to Homer’s Iliad was one of the most revered fighters in the Trojan War.
Classicists hailed the discovery, made on a small Greek island, as evidence that the myths recounted by Homer in his epic poem were based on historical fact.
The ruins include a large palace, measuring about 750sq m (8,000sq ft), and believed to have been at least four storeys high with more than thirty rooms.
Yannos Lolos, the Greek archaeologist who made the discovery, said he was certain that he had come across the home of the Aiacid dynasty, a legendary line of kings mentioned in the Iliad and the Classical Greek tragedies. One of the kings, Ajax (or Aias), was described by Homer as a formidable fighter who, at one point in the Trojan campaign, held off the Trojans almost singlehandedly while his fellow Greek Achilles sulked in his tent because his slave-girl had been taken away from him.
The city of Troy is believed to have fallen about 1180BC — at about the same time, according to Mr Lolos, that the palace he has discovered was abandoned and left to crumble. Ajax, therefore, would have been the last king to have lived there before setting off on the ten-year Trojan expedition.
“This is one of the few cases in which a Mycenaean-era palace can be almost certainly attributed to a Homeric hero,” Mr Lolos said.
Fellow archaeologists said that they believed that the ruins were indeed those of a Mycenaean palace. Curtis Runnels, Professor of Archaeology at Boston University, said: “Mr Lolos has really delivered the goods.”
The Mycenaean ruins appear to be at the site where Homer records a fleet of ships setting out to take part in the war on Troy. The Iliad is believed to portray conditions at the close of the dominance of Mycenae, the prime Greek power of the second millennium BC.
The ruins have been excavated over the past five years at a site near the village of Kanakia on the island of Salamis, a few miles off the coast of Athens.
The palace was built in the style of those of the period, including the vast acropolis at Mycenae.
“The complex was found beneath a virgin tract of pine woods on two heights by the coast,” Mr Lolos said. “All the finds so far corroborate what we see in the Homeric epics.”
Homer compares Ajax to a wall and describes him carrying a shield made of seven layers of thick oxhide. Unlike other heroes, he fights without the aid of deities or the supernatural. According to Sophocles, who wrote 800 years after the Trojan War, Ajax committed suicide after the fall of Troy without seeing his homeland again.
Several relics of oriental and Cypriot origin were found at the site at Kanakia, such as bronze armour strips stamped with the emblem of Pharaoh Rameses II of Egypt, indicating trade or possible war in the 13th century BC.
Salamis became famous as the site of a sea battle in 480BC in which the Greek navies destroyed the invasion fleet of the Persian king Xerxes and put paid to the Persian threat.
The other main site where archaeologists claim to have discovered relics of places recounted in the Iliad is at the castle of Pylos in southeastern Greece, believed to be the home of King Nestor.
FACT OR FICTION?
King and warrior who appears in Homer’s Iliad, the story of the Trojan War, and in Sophocles’ tragedy Ajax
In the Iliad, he is so big that when King Priam of Troy sees him, he says: “Who is that great and goodly warrior whose head and broad shoulders tower above the rest?”
In Sophocles’ play, Ajax goes mad after losing the prize of Achilles’ armour and eventually kills himself
ping
Something that I aways find striking about rich and powerful historic figures is their level of wealth compared to today.
Yes, that the Trojans were a Hittite outpost and that the Hittites were the ancestors of the Armenians. Note that the Hittite language WAS an Indo-European language.
Herman L. Hoeh?
AP whack at it.. :(')
Archaeologist Links Ancient Palace, Ajax ^
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1605822/posts
King Ajax's Palace and Ramses IIHieroglyphs spelling the name of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II appear at the bottom of a bronze piece from an ancient mail shirt, in this undated handout picture provided by archaeologist Yiannis Lolos . The find came from a 3,200-year-old palace on the island of Salamis, near Athens, Greece, which belonged to the mythical King Ajax, Lolos said on Wednesday, March 29, 2006. The hilltop site overlooks a small natural harbor. (AP Photo)
AP - Wed Mar 29, 10:48 AM ET
What with that?
A synchronism.
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"We established that there was a population exodus from Salamis, which was completely abandoned shortly after 1200 B.C. ... They must first have gone to Enkomi on Cyprus, which was already an established center." Salamis was founded around 1100 B.C., when Enkomi -- some 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) away -- was abandoned. "It was probably the refugees' children that moved there," Lolos said. The emigration theory would explain why almost no high-value artifacts were found at the Greek site, which bore no signs of destruction or enemy occupation. "The emigrants, who would have been the city's ruling class, took a lot with them, including nearly all the valuables," Lolos said. The rest of the population moved to a new settlement further inland that offered better protection from seaborne raids... Finds include pottery, stone tools, a sealstone and copper implements. Lolos is particularly pleased with a piece of a copper mail shirt stamped with the name of Pharaoh Ramses II, who ruled Egypt from 1279-1213 B.C."This is a unique find, which may have belonged to a Mycenaean mercenary soldier serving with the Egyptians," he said. "It could have been a souvenir, a mark of honor or even some kind of a medal."
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