QuoteArchaeologists in Greece have discovered the ruins of an ancient palace with important archaic inscriptions dating back to the Mycenaean age, the culture ministry said Tuesday. The palace, likely built around the 17th-16th centuries BC, had around 10 rooms and was discovered near Sparta in southern Greece. At the site, archaeologists found objects of worship, clay figurines, a cup adorned with a bull's head, swords and fragments of murals.
from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/26/ancient-greek-palace-unearthed-near-sparta-dates-back-to-17th-century-bc
Other sites such as http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2015/08/25/Greece-announces-discovery-of-ancient-palace-near-Sparta/4061440533008/ add the detail that the palace was probably "destroyed in a fire in the late 14th or early 13th century B.C.".
Original press release (in Greek) with some photos at http://www.yppo.gr/2/g22.jsp?obj_id=62253
Interesting: being a palace 'near Sparta', one waits to see if Menelaus or any other famous names from the Iliad turn up in the inscriptions.
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 26, 2015, 12:04:31 PM
Interesting: being a palace 'near Sparta', one waits to see if Menelaus or any other famous names from the Iliad turn up in the inscriptions.
Unlikely given the suggested destruction date.
Quote from: Duncan Head on August 26, 2015, 12:12:31 PM
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 26, 2015, 12:04:31 PM
Interesting: being a palace 'near Sparta', one waits to see if Menelaus or any other famous names from the Iliad turn up in the inscriptions.
Unlikely given the suggested destruction date.
"
Researchers believe the palace was erected during the 17th or 16th century B.C., and destroyed in a fire in the late 14th or early 13th century B.C."
We shall just have to see what turns up, then.
If inscriptions to THAT Menelaus turn up will we have to invent the VERY long chronology...?
Just looking at the pictures - Wow! Makes me want to jump on a plane right now and visit...
http://news.yahoo.com/lost-palace-sparta-possibly-uncovered-140506834.html
Also reports finding some bronze swords and dates the destruction more definitively to the 14th century BC. Apparently the only records translated from Linear B so far are mundane financial and religious subjects; is it too much to hope for some hint of who destroyed the palace?
Also of interest is this is the earliest find of Linear B script, in close proximity to a contemporary Minoan site which makes the language transfer from Linear A Minoan to Linear B Greek more complicated.
Quote from: Dave Beatty on August 29, 2015, 10:54:16 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/lost-palace-sparta-possibly-uncovered-140506834.html
Also reports finding some bronze swords and dates the destruction more definitively to the 14th century BC. Apparently the only records translated from Linear B so far are mundane financial and religious subjects; is it too much to hope for some hint of who destroyed the palace?
A really tough audit? ;)
I would have thought they would settle for simple repossession.
What will be interesting is to see who the allocations in the Linear B records are made out to. In the Pylos Linear B tablets, in addition to the king there were two individuals - the e-qe-ta, who ranked with the king and the e-qe-re-wo, who outranked him - who received a cut of the revenues.
In Egyptian, heq ta means governor of the land and heq resu means ruler of upper Egypt. Tributes during the 18th Dynasty were traditionally paid in through the vizier of Upper Egypt.
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 29, 2015, 05:16:39 PM
I would have thought they would settle for simple repossession.
What will be interesting is to see who the allocations in the Linear B records are made out to. In the Pylos Linear B tablets, in addition to the king there were two individuals - the e-qe-ta, who ranked with the king and the e-qe-re-wo, who outranked him - who received a cut of the revenues.
In Egyptian, heq ta means governor of the land and heq resu means ruler of upper Egypt. Tributes during the 18th Dynasty were traditionally paid in through the vizier of Upper Egypt.
See my post on the murals from the vizier Rekhmire's tomb depicting tribute from Crete during the 18th dynasty... "Tribute accounting during the 15th century BC"
Thanks, Dave: an excellent rendering of the murals in Rekhmire's tomb. I should point out that 'Keftiu' in fact means Greece as a whole (Minoan and Mycenaean) rather than just Crete or, as some would have it, Cyprus, because a statue base discovered at Amenhotep III's temple at Kom Ombo lists 'Wilis' (Pylos) and 'Deghaias' (Tegea) as 'Keftiu names' - in addition to the more recognisable 'Tanaia' (Athens), Cythera and Mycenae.
Hence it looks as if the whole of Greece (or what then passed for Greece) was paying tribute.
Of course, there was a Tegea and a Mycenae in Crete:
Quote from: Velleius Paterculus I.1.2
Agamemnon, king of kings, cast by a tempest upon the island of Crete, founded there three cities, two of which, Mycenae and Tegea, were named after towns in his own country, and the other was called Pergamum in commemoration of his victory.
Pesky Greeks and their recycling of names...
Quote from: Duncan Head on September 07, 2015, 09:14:07 AM
Pesky Greeks and their recycling of names...
Indeed, although it makes a change from naming parts of Greece after oneself, which seemed to be all the rage previously.
The Kom Ombo statue base belongs to Amenhotep III (or did) and hence unless remarkably proficient at futurology would not refer to cities founded by Agamemnon in Crete following the Trojan War (no wonder his wife got tired of waiting if this is what he was doing on the way home!).
Unless the foundation story of these towns is misdated, which I wouldn't rule out - better to ascribe your city to someone famous.
Or unless Egyptian chronology's more shot than even you believe, of course :)
Then again, one would have to look very hard for an Athens and a Pylos on Crete ... Cythera is also one of the names on the Kom Ombo statue base. This suggests to me that including the Greek mainland along with the major islands is a must. Since the term 'Hellas' was invented, it has traditionally meant more than just the Greek mainland, and has tended to encompass everywhere Greeks lived, at least prior to their colonisation of Africa. I suspect 'Keftiu' was as much an ethnographic as a geographic expression.
The problem is that scholars are arguing themselves blue in the face trying to decide whether 'Keftiu' means Crete or Cyprus - I fear they will continue to argue without result until they broaden their horizons to include Greece.
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on September 07, 2015, 07:49:34 PM
Then again, one would have to look very hard for an Athens and a Pylos on Crete ...
True, but are Athenai and Pylos the only Greek (or indeed Eteocretan :) ) names that might be rendered as "Tanaia" and "Wilis"? The latter struck me as sounding more like Wilios/Ilios/Wilusa than Pylos. I know nothing about Egyptian transliterations - is P > W common?
Quote from: Duncan Head on September 07, 2015, 09:19:18 PM
I know nothing about Egyptian transliterations - is P > W common?
I think you do yourself a disservice, though B and W seem interchangeable in Egyptian (e.g. 'WenAmon' can just as easily be understood as 'BenAmon'). Slightly complicating the picture is a tendency to transcribe the Egyptian 'u' (the chick) as 'w', as in Wepawet, the Opener of the Ways, whereas the name's pronunciation seems to be closer to "Oop-out" and may even originally have been an onomatopoeic rendering of the cry of the Ethiopian wolf (the deity's symbol).
Back to the Kom Ombo cities: 'Wilis' gives us two likely candidates, namely Elis and Pulos (Pylos). The real question would seem to be whether Egyptians would, given the W-B crossover, have used a 'B' for a 'P'. In addition to the customary Grimm's Law guesses, we are told in a rare volume entitled
Ancient Egypt Speaks that during the 18th Dynasty the character for 'P' (the square') was usually pronounced as 'V' - which would explain why 'Amenhotep' is transcribed by Greek historians as 'Amenophis' - the original being putatively pronounced 'Amenhoev' (the 't' being silent). This suggests that a name with a straight 'P' could have been a challenge for the 18th Dynasty Egyptian, and 'Vilis' a likely pronunciation for 'Pulos'. This could give us an easy equivalent for 'Wilis' without having to worry unduly about 'B' and 'W' interchanges, assuming a slight lack of precision when originally dictating the foreign name to a scribe. (Variant pronunciation seems to have been fairly common: Biridia, governor of Megiddo in the Amarna letters and Shalmaneser III's nemesis 'Biridri' at Qarqar, variously wrote that he was defending 'Makida' and 'Magiidda'. This may have been the result of differing scribal transcription rather than Biridia having a cold. :)))
In choosing between Elis and Pylos, I am swayed by three considerations: firstly, it is unlike Egyptians to include a redundant or silent initial letter, which tips the scales against Elis (or for that matter Ilion). This might be offset by the early Greek usage of an initial diagamma, so it is not necessarily conclusive. Secondly, Pylos has records showing the appropriation of resources for the
heq-ta [e-ke-ta] and the
heq-resu [e-ke-re-wo], indicating that it was contributing resources both to an Egyptian governor (who ranked with the Pylian king) and to the Vizier of Upper Egypt (who outranked the king). It would be curious if the Egyptians were to omit a realm which was so clearly under their thumb in favour of one which might not have been. Thirdly, Pylos was or recently had been one of the prestige kingdoms of the era, a point which Nestor in the Iliad was fond of reminding his listeners.
This causes me to rate 'Wilis' as 90% likely to be Pylos and perhaps 10% likely to be Elis.
Quote from: Duncan Head on September 07, 2015, 09:19:18 PM
True, but are Athenai and Pylos the only Greek (or indeed Eteocretan :) ) names that might be rendered as "Tanaia" and "Wilis"? The latter struck me as sounding more like Wilios/Ilios/Wilusa than Pylos.
The overriding problem with 'Wilusa' is that it is on neither Cyprus nor Crete, unless the scribes of Hattusas or modern decipherers thereof managed to get their geography totally wrong. ;) Eteocretans incidentally seemed to give their cities dreary-sounding names like Dreros and Praisos, which seem to be unrepresented on the Kom Ombo statue base.
And that still leaves Cythera.