Mycenae, Pylos and Troy

Catalog description

The Iliad of Homer recounts the tale of a great war fought by Greek and Trojan armies before the walls of Troy’s lofty citadel. This epic tells of gods, heroes, and magical places already part of a deep past when Homer’s work was set to writing, ca. 700 B.C. Does the Homeric story of the Trojan War have a basis in real events? Scholars have long pointed to the Mycenaean civilization, which flourished on the mainland of Greece in the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600–1200 B.C.), as the inspiration for the Homeric stories. In this course, we will examine the archaeology of the great centers of the Late Bronze Age in Greece and Anatolia, particularly Mycenae, Pylos, and Troy. Our main aim will be to better understand the social, political, and economic context of this Late Bronze Age world, which may shed light on the possibility that a “Trojan War” of some kind actually occurred. The primary focus on archaeology is supplemented by readings from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.