Hittites in the 6th century?

[Patrick Waterson]

Returning for a moment to weaponry, the Myceneans and MH.  I note you date the Mycenean era as Bronze Age and, indeed, weapons of similar types to those used by the Myceneans turn up further north in the more securely dated European Bronze Age.  Do you have an explanation as to why Bronze Age weapon types endured in the coastal levant, in order to be issued to the Greek mercenaries who are depicted on the MH reliefs?  Or are we assuming a class of weapons keeping the style of Bronze Age weapons developed in this area?

We can look at Assyrian swords for at least a partial answer to this one.  The basic short-straight Assyrian sword remains substantially unchanged from its earliest to its latest depictions, spanning several hundred years.  Before that, the preferred pattern seems to have been curved like the Egyptian khopesh, such as this example inscribed by Adad-nirari I http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/11.166.1.  The idea seems to be that once a good basic weapon has been found, it is retained.  The Egyptian khopesh similarly seems to have had a centuries long lifespan, and not to have changed substantially during that period.  Conversely, we have some examples of iron Egyptian swords but as far as I know only one in bronze (Ahmose's), despite plenty of references to s-n-n (dagger-type swords, as depicted here: http://tinyurl.com/bo6vmjk).

But let us look at some of these Mycenaean era weapons.  The classic is the Naue II sword, an example of which, found at Ugarit, is discussed by Jung and Menhofer here: http://tinyurl.com/bvnnyeu.  The weapon is carefully checked under typology, but then a problem emerges.

"One has to rely on indirect dating evidence for the hoard, as no finds are published from the stratum into which the hoard pit was dug, nor do we know anything about the level from which this pit was opened. "

Then it emerges that the Naue II type does not turn up in the Mycenaean era, or at least not in Mycenaean artwork, and not even in Mycenaean sites, until the few straggling examples listed on p.123.  And these seem to be so badly corroded that their shape has to be conjecturally reconstructed.  So at the very best this type is the exception rather than the rule for the Mycenaean period.

The key idea behind the propagation of the Naue II sword is that it spread from west to east with the 'Sea Peoples', but if we lay aside the conjecturally-derived dates for its first appearances in Europe, we might equally suppose that it spread from east to west with migrating Greeks of the tyrants-and-colonies era (8th-7th centuries BC), especially as the Ugarit blade being discussed seems to be at the beginning rather than the end of the development sequence of this sword type.

So if the type was developed in, say, Phoenicia around 800 BC, and was found to be useful, it could still be in use around 374 BC.

One other check on the Myceneans.  Your dating of the Trojan War puts it post Mycenean era.  This presumably fits with your discounting the Greek Dark Age, seeing a continuity from Mycenean directly into Geometric?  I assume you date thus because Homer clearly refers to two fighting styles for his heroes, so we assume that the war takes place at a time of transition?  Or do you have other sources e.g. Hittite?

Perceptive.    We may also observe that the Greek royal houses taking part in the Trojan War do not have extensive genealogies preserved in legend; most end within a generation or two, thus associating the Trojan War with the imminent demise of the Mycenaean era.  With the royal families disappearing (often through internal conflicts and rivalries resulting in a mutually assured destruction that would gladden the heart of a kabuki viewer, let alone a Greek tragedy), culturally one would expect Greece to pass directly from crowned heads to tyrants rather than to sink into absolute desolation for several hundred years and then spontaneously revive under tyrants.  This would also be consistent with there being no tradition about anything between the last of the kings and the first of the tyrants.

Then there is the matter of Grey Minyan pottery: this style was in use shortly before the end of the Mycenaean era, and is briefly in use when the geometric period (which features the tyrants) begins.  This suggests direct continuity from the one era to the other.

Hittites, however, have no materials to contribute on the Trojan war: the 'Hittite Empire' forms the northern part of the Neo-Babylonan Empire, flourishing c.610-540.  The frequent references to 'Ahhiya' and 'Ahhiyawa' in the Boghazkoi archives refer to a 6th century monarch, Alyattes of Lydia.  There are however references to contemporary Greeks, albeit of the 7th/6th centuries BC: 'Tawagalawas of Milwata' is Thrasybulus of Miletus, while 'Piyamaradus', another ally of Ahhiyawa who turns up with an army and a fleet, is Periander, tyrant of Corinth and builder of a navy that gave him supremacy over the Aegean.  We meet all these characters in Herodotus Book I.

Thank you for showing an interest.

Patrick

[Erpingham]

I do wonder why the resultant calibrated radiocarbon dates still need a 'confidence level', though.  The basic idea behind tying in with dendrochronology is to get a reliable set of data - I suppose it is the usual 'plus-minus' thing that somehow seems inseparable from the whole radiocarbon process.

C14 decay is a random process, so the result is expressed with a statistical  confidence level.  It's usually a two standard deviation 95% expression IIRC (i.e. the result is 95% likely to fall in the confidence interval).  If you run multiple dates of the same sample material (not the same sample - the sample is destroyed during the dating process) you can tighten the confidence interval.

[Erpingham]

The key idea behind the propagation of the Naue II sword is that it spread from west to east with the 'Sea Peoples', but if we lay aside the conjecturally-derived dates for its first appearances in Europe, we might equally suppose that it spread from east to west with migrating Greeks of the tyrants-and-colonies era (8th-7th centuries BC), especially as the Ugarit blade being discussed seems to be at the beginning rather than the end of the development sequence of this sword type.

So if the type was developed in, say, Phoenicia around 800 BC, and was found to be useful, it could still be in use around 374 BC.

Ex oriente lux - we are taking a trip down memory lane   As I understand it, mainly I admit from Google searching, the current understanding is that Naue II swords start off as bronze and are later copied in iron.  Phoenicia in 800BC is in the Iron Age, I presume ?  So, is there an assumption that the iron model is copied by Europeans in bronze? 

On the subject of Naue II swords and Mycenae, I'm not sure the idea that the Myceneans didn't use them would be accepted by everyone.  Take, for example, http://193.146.160.29/gtb/sod/usu/$UBUG/repositorio/10320368_Molloy.pdf which gives details of Naue II swords found with other swords in Mycenean contexts.  This does not, again from Google, seem to be an isolated view.  Would this not make a 800BC origin difficult in your schema, given that the Myceneans have given way to the Geometric by this point?  I accept that both these points can be covered  by 900-950 BC origin within your chronology.

Turning again to the MH reliefs, now that you propose that the weapon types in the images originated at latest in 800BC (and could be earlier), would not the apparent archaicism of the ships and other equipment suggest that this relief would fit earlier in your new timeline? 

[Patrick Waterson]

Jung and Meinhofer list the Naue II blades found in Mycenaean Greece; there are few of them compared to other types and they do not appear to be the mainstream variety of blade.  This is not to say that they were never used, but they do appear to be both late and peripheral, arguing an entry into Greece late in the era.

You rightly pick up that a putative date of c.800 BC for the origin of the type is not particularly harmonious: my use of it was more to say that it looks as if this may be a first millennium weapon from the end of the 'Bronze Age' rather than a second millennium weapon prevalent throughout the era.  About a century earlier is a much better starting point, but we might be able to refine it further: in the revised chronology Shalmaneser III burns much of Ugarit and expels the Greek (yamanu) part of the population in the mid-9th century BC so one can logically assume the weapon to have been developed prior to that point.  Somewhere in the 900-850 BC bracket (from Amenhotep II up to the reign of Akhenaten) is my best guess for when the weapon would have been developed, and thereafter found to be good (it may have debuted in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC where Shalmaneser was stalled by a coalition army, but this is pure conjecture).  Iron versions would follow, but not immediately.

While we are indeed getting into the Iron Age chronologically, it would be incorrect to view the transition between the ages as anything other than gradual and progressive: nobody waved a wand so that a world with bronze mirrors, brooches, weapons and accoutrements suddenly woke up the next morning with iron ones.    Iron gradually displaced bronze as the Anatolian mines came on stream (previous iron had been either rare meteroric material or laboriously teased out of ore in isolated locations at inadequate temperatures) and made Midas of Phrygia and his descendants rich in the 9th-8th centuries BC.  Assyria was a major market, and one notes that the last remnants of the Assyrian Empire, under Ashur-uballit, made their final stand (c.604 BC) in eastern Asia Minor, next to the sources of iron: Egypt, with its already extensive bronze industry, had more geographic challenge to obtain, and less immediate incentive to adopt, the new material.

The big technological breakthrough seems to have been not so much the iron itself (although Anatolian chromium could have played a useful part on Midas' metallurgy) as the development of the 'fiery furnace' necessary to achieve the 1,500 C degree temperature necessary for melting iron and in the process burning off many of the impurities, turning it from a brittle metal suitable only for axes to one viable for swords.  (Such furnaces had other uses in the hands of a cruel ruler: Daniel 3.19-23.)

Regarding the dating of the Medinet Habu reliefs, I see the 'archaisms' as more apparent than real: it would be nice if we could find some images of 5th/4th century Sidonian transport ships to compare with them.  There are two ship types represented on the Medinet Habu reliefs, or at least two of which I am aware: one is the Egyptian single-bank galley with a crew of 20-30 rowers and a dozen or so marines; the other is the single-masted, single-sail steering-oar-only (no propulsive oars) vessel carrying the Pereset and their allied or mercenary troops.

I am well aware that there are many who view pictures like this http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/images/ship71.jpg as equating to ships line this http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/images/ship32.jpg.  May I point out the differences: the Tiryns krater 'bird-boat' has curved stem and stern-posts, it has hull decoration quite unlike the Pereset vessel and it lacks the upper deck and towers, instead having a curious pile of circular objects in the centre.

Another rather hopeful 'similarity' is the Kynos fragment here http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/images/ship34.jpg, which is optimistically (and after a little surgery) compared with a carefully readjusted drawing of the Pereset vessel: http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/images/ship74.jpg.  Note how the towers B have been craftily added despite their complete absence in the original and how the 'rowers bulwark' (which looks more like an outrigger in the original) has been equated to the upper deck of the Pereset ship.

Much has previously been made of certain features of Egyptian design being 'archaic', notably the 'hog truss', which served the function of the hypozomata of the Athenians, connecting the bow and stern under tension and so preventing the ship from sagging and stressing the timbers amidships.  Examination of such pictures of the Egyptian galleys on the Medinet Habu reliefs as I can find fails to reveal a single hog truss: it is conceivable that they might be obscured by the numerous prisoners sitting on deck, but one would expect at least a hint of them to be showing, bearing in mind the Egyptian artistic tradition of depicting something of everything that mattered.  This suggests that what we see at Medinet Habu is late-period construction, perhaps even using the hypozomata to provide internal tensioning and resilience (Athens sent a force to aid the 460 BC Egyptian revolt - the ships were stranded when the Persians diverted the Nile and the hypozomata could have become known to the Egyptians at that time).

Patrick

[Erpingham]

  This suggests that what we see at Medinet Habu is late-period construction, perhaps even using the hypozomata to provide internal tensioning and resilience (Athens sent a force to aid the 460 BC Egyptian revolt - the ships were stranded when the Persians diverted the Nile and the hypozomata could have become known to the Egyptians at that time).

Patrick

Presumably the Athenian ships were triremes.  Why then did the Egyptians not copy them, rather than using the design lessons to produce the obsolete triaconter?

[Patrick Waterson]

I would suggest for two reasons.

1) When Egypt revolted against the Persians c.390 BC, it perforce cut itself off from the main Mediterranean supplies of shipbuilding timber, and triremes need a fair amount of wood in their construction whereas lembi-type vessels allow more warships to be built for much less timber, perhaps an important consideration if one little 30-man galley is considered sufficient to defeat a troop transport.

2) Ramses seems to have planned to fight his battle on the River Nile itself.  Small riverine rather than large seagoing galleys might have best answered that need.

Patrick

[Jim Webster]

The trouble with this is that this doesn't explain why the Persians haven't got Triremes, after all, you're the one who reckoned the Persians didn't need much more than triremes to shift an army to Marathon

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

And the Athenians used triremes to shift their expeditionary force to Syracuse.

The problem here would be that with Diodorus' 220,000 troops to carry, even the usual Persian allowance of 600 triremes is never going to be able to carry more than half, even at full stretch.  And a good part of the Persian trireme fleet would have been held back in case it was needed to cut down a Greek hegemon ('The Isles' being 'restless' at the time).  Enter the troop transports.

So why not accompany them with some triremes?  This might have been done, but if the triremes were in the van and the Egyptians attacked the transports from the rear, the triremes would be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  More likely, the Persian triremes were employed to escort the transports as far as the mouth of the Nile, but not up it for 'administrative reasons' (a trireme would want to beach at the end of each day and facilities for that on the banks of the Nile were rather limited, not to mention alive with bellicose Egyptians, and there is the tactical problem that a trireme needs masts and sails up to travel up the Nile but masts and sails down in order to fight).  It is quite conveivable that maritime - or rather riverine - opposition was not expected or, if it was, it was thought that the troops on the transports could take care of it.  A sturdy sailing vessel with numerous trained infantry should have nothing to fear from puny little galleys about the size of a triakonter.

The novel Egyptian tactics - grappling the top of a mast and then rowing away in order to capsize the target vessel - negated the ability of the troop transports to defend themselves.

Patrick

[Jim Webster]

I'm sorry but this is beginning to look like special pleading. The naval technology the Persians are apparently employing is so massively obsolete that the crews would probably have refused to sail in them
And sending unescorted transports into an assault situation is also hardly the done thing. The idea that the escorts would not be sent up river doesn't win me over, they would be shallower draught than the ships they were escorting.

Similarly a ship with a ram can soon punch a hole in the side of one of these transports, they're not great high sided 'men of war' but barely more than open boats.

I'm afraid you don't win me over. Whilst it is possible to portray this as a 4th century engagement, it takes too much special pleading and too many exceptional circumstances, Ockham's razor wins out for me in this one. It fits better with the traditional dating or thereabouts.
Similarly the scenes of 'Sea Peoples with their 'carts/chariots' and families fighting on land don't look desperately 4th century either I'm afraid

Jim

[tadamson]

Another intermittent visit, some thoughts re dating.

Dating by radioactive decay is, by its very nature, never going to give an exact date. We can reduce the +/- by identifying the changes in atmospheric C12:C14 ratios. This is being done at a global level by testing the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores, but there will still be regional variations.  There is also some work going on re isotope analysis of decay products, and chemical mobility analysis can improve the measurement of current C12:C14 ratios, but there will always be the inherent date range for small samples (if we could destroy kilogrammes of organic material you could have tighter dates).

I am, I have to admit, utterly unconvinced by attempts to place the MH illustrations in a 6th C context.

Tom..

[Patrick Waterson]

The naval technology the Persians are apparently employing is so massively obsolete that the crews would probably have refused to sail in them

What is the basis for this statement?  The 'obsolescence', I mean.

And sending unescorted transports into an assault situation is also hardly the done thing. The idea that the escorts would not be sent up river doesn't win me over, they would be shallower draught than the ships they were escorting.

As far as I can reconstruct they were surprised en route to Memphis, not sent 'into an assault situation'.

Where does draught come into this, by the way?

Similarly a ship with a ram can soon punch a hole in the side of one of these transports, they're not great high sided 'men of war' but barely more than open boats.

But none are shown doing so in the reliefs, so I question that statement.

I'm afraid you don't win me over. Whilst it is possible to portray this as a 4th century engagement, it takes too much special pleading and too many exceptional circumstances, Ockham's razor wins out for me in this one. It fits better with the traditional dating or thereabouts.
Similarly the scenes of 'Sea Peoples with their 'carts/chariots' and families fighting on land don't look desperately 4th century either I'm afraid

Actually they do: take a look at this Sidonan dishekel http://www.ancientcash.info/page-3/phoenicia-title-18.html and note the style of vehicle in which the Persian king is riding.  He qualifies for horses and spoked wheels rather than oxen and solid-looking wheels, but the style of the vehicle is remarkably similar.

Or are there some other 4th century vehicles you would like to show? 

Patrick

[Patrick Waterson]

Another intermittent visit, some thoughts re dating.

Dating by radioactive decay is, by its very nature, never going to give an exact date. We can reduce the +/- by identifying the changes in atmospheric C12:C14 ratios. This is being done at a global level by testing the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores, but there will still be regional variations.  There is also some work going on re isotope analysis of decay products, and chemical mobility analysis can improve the measurement of current C12:C14 ratios, but there will always be the inherent date range for small samples (if we could destroy kilogrammes of organic material you could have tighter dates).

I am, I have to admit, utterly unconvinced by attempts to place the MH illustrations in a 6th C context.

Tom..

That seems a fair assessment of the capabilities and limitations of radiocarbon dating at present.

However a more attentive reader would have noted the Medinet Habu reliefs being identified as belonging to the 4th century BC, not the 6th. 

Patrick

[Jim Webster]

Obsolete?
The 'keel' shape for a start, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrenia_ship shows a 'near contemporay'

In river battles draught is even more important, and triremes will tend to be lighter draft than merchant ships.

As to the lack of ramming attacks in the reliefs, that is my entire point. There aren't any. Yet the basic design of the Greek warship was to ram. Hence there are no Greek warships here (of Persian warships). And given the circumstances I'd suggest this means there are no Greeks and pesians either.

The coin looks to show a standard heavy wheeled chariot.
I think really you ought to explain why the Persians equipped their Greek mercenaries with funny hats and ox carts :-)
http://www.american-buddha.com/bibleunearth.195e.gif has some pictures.

[Patrick Waterson]

Obsolete?
The 'keel' shape for a start, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrenia_ship shows a 'near contemporay'

There is a nice 3D reconstruction of the Kyrenia ship here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_E5A00pEuo.  It is patently a Greek merchant vessel and not a Sidonian troop transport.

I have finally managed to locate some Phoenician ship pictures, and they are interesting.  The source is http://phoenicia.org/ships.html and the pictures are these:

Merchant: http://phoenicia.org/imgs/ships2.jpg

Warship: http://phoenicia.org/imgs/ships6.jpg

Now the merchant is depicted with oars, which the Medinet Habu ships are not, but the keel line is noteworthy, as is the general layout.  One might also observe that if one added the 'double bird head' motif of the warship stem/stern posts to the merchant, one would have the Medinet Habu transport pretty much to a 'T'.

In river battles draught is even more important, and triremes will tend to be lighter draft than merchant ships.

I agree entirely here, but what is the point of mentioning this?  The difficulty with taking triremes up a hostile Nile is: how and where do you park them for the night?  How do you put the crews ashore when hostile Egyptians are waiting to swoop?  Can you anchor them against the current?  Can you guard them effectively against fireships (Ramses III refers to a 'wall of flame' being prepared against the invaders).  And so on.

As to the lack of ramming attacks in the reliefs, that is my entire point. There aren't any. Yet the basic design of the Greek warship was to ram. Hence there are no Greek warships here (of Persian warships). And given the circumstances I'd suggest this means there are no Greeks and pesians either.

But why would any Greek warships be present in a battle fought between Egyptians and a Persian invading force?  The Egyptian galleys have rams, but are not shown using them.

The coin looks to show a standard heavy wheeled chariot.
I think really you ought to explain why the Persians equipped their Greek mercenaries with funny hats and ox carts :-)
http://www.american-buddha.com/bibleunearth.195e.gif has some pictures.

This particular relief seems to depict the annihilation of the Persian garrison of Memphis as it was retiring towards the Egyptian border.  Note that the reliefs show three different campaigns: in the first, Egyptians, Persians and 'Sea Peoples' (Greek/Lydian mercenaries) combat Libyans.  In the second, Egyptians and 'Sea Peoples' (Greeks) fight Persians.  In the third, Ramses scores his naval success against Persians and 'Sea Peoples' (Greeks) together.

The point of the coin is that the 'standard heavy wheeled chariot' is very similar in configuration to the ox cart, unless we are going to assume a generic ox cart that changes little through the millennia, which is perhaps not an unreasonable view but which would remove the evidential value of these vehicles for any sort of cultural association or dating.  Take your pick.

Now for the 'funny hats' - one may note that in the first campaign (against the Libyans) and the second (against the Persians) the helmets in question have horns and discs between the horns.  In the final campaign, the discs between the horns are all gone - every single one of them, and the helmets are Enkomi 'warrior god' pattern.

So do we have one - just one - barbarian tribe with this degree of uniformity?  Not to mention clean-shaven.

I am puzzled why some people seem to cling like leeches to the Medinet Habu reliefs when there is a wider world around them.  Still, it is throwing up material very useful for the revised chronology, so my thanks to those involved.  This thread was actually begun to look at the 6th century BC, and nobody as yet asked: "What about the 26th Dynasty pharaohs?  If Ramses II and the 19th Dynasty are to move to the 663-525 BC slot, what about Psamshek, Nekau and Ahmose II?"

Patrick

[tadamson]

The point of the coin is that the 'standard heavy wheeled chariot' is very similar in configuration to the ox cart, unless we are going to assume a generic ox cart that changes little through the millennia, which is perhaps not an unreasonable view but which would remove the evidential value of these vehicles for any sort of cultural association or dating.  Take your pick.

2 Wheeled ox carts remain virtually unchanged throughout history.  The wheels vary (solid, spoked, steel with rubber tyres) and steel axles have started to appear in the last 150 years.  The central axle, low bent pole, yoke "whip and nose ring" control system are unchanged for thousands of years.  Incidentally the very earlies examples (from the steppes) have spoked wheels.  The heavy chariot has key differences: larger diameter wheels, higher body and pole, a body wider than its length.

I am puzzled why some people seem to cling like leeches to the Medinet Habu reliefs when there is a wider world around them.  Still, it is throwing up material very useful for the revised chronology, so my thanks to those involved.  This thread was actually begun to look at the 6th century BC, and nobody as yet asked: "What about the 26th Dynasty pharaohs?  If Ramses II and the 19th Dynasty are to move to the 663-525 BC slot, what about Psamshek, Nekau and Ahmose II?"

Patrick

We see you use this as core evidence for your theory and we all see massive problems with this. Not least that Ramses II is clearly fighting Bronze age enemies, not 7th-6th c BCE Persians.

If there is other 'evidence' that you'd like to discuss, remembering that we are primarily military history types ?

Tom..