Though Odysseus’ tales to Eumaios and Aninoos in Odyssey 14.199–359 and 17.417–44, respectively, are presented as fictional tales within Homer’s larger myth, some elements have striking analogs in Late Bronze–Early Iron Age reality. This article examines these portions of the hero’s false ainoi within their fictive context for the purpose of identifying and evaluating those elements. Particular focus is given to Odysseus’ declaration that he led nine successful maritime raids prior to the Trojan War; to his twice–described ill–fated assault on Egypt; and to his claim not only to have been spared in the wake of that Egyptian raid, but to have spent a subsequent seven years in the land of the pharaohs, during which he gathered great wealth. Through a comparative examination of literary and archaeological evidence from the Late Bronze–Early Iron transition in the Eastern Mediterranean, it is shown that these aspects of Odysseus’ stories are not only reflective of the historical reality surrounding the time in which the epic is set, but that Odysseus’ fictive experience is remarkably similar to that of one specific member of the ‘Sea Peoples’ groups best known from 19th and 20th dynasty Egyptian records: the ‘Sherden of the Sea.’

The tumultuous transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age in the Eastern Mediterranean was marked by a change in the iconography of warriors and warfare, particularly in Egypt and in the Aegean world. It is also at this time that the Helladic oared galley makes its first appearance, where it is used as an instrument of naval warfare in the first true sea battles in recorded history. This paper investigates these earliest representations of naval combat, with a special emphasis on the appearance and employment of new maritime technology and its effect on maritime operations and naval warfare. Also considered are what modes of fighting were utilized in, and what changes had to be made to adapt to, this earliest form of ship-based combat.

In 1920, a small wooden ship model was discovered in a shallow tomb in Gurob, near the Faiyum oasis in Middle Egypt. Incorrectly assembled (twice) but perceptively labeled as a “Pirate Boat” by the overseer of its excavation, Flinders Petrie, the model was paired in antiquity with a pavois and a wheeled cart, likely signifying its use as a cultic object. Following two brief mentions by Petrie (in 1927 and 1933), the model was largely forgotten until the turn of the millennium, when it was “rediscovered” in the Petrie Egyptological Museum and republished by in 2013 by Shelley Wachsmann, who recognized the small model as representing a Helladic oared galley of the type known from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. The galley’s introduction was a critical inflection point in the history of ship architecture, as its design allowed for unprecedented freedom of movement on the seas. Adopted around the Eastern Mediterranean, the Helladic galley ultimately spawned both the Phoenician bireme and Greek dieres, and its use was critical to these cultures’ Iron Age exploration, expansion, and colonization. The Gurob model, which dates between the mid-13th and mid-11th centuries BCE, is the most complete three-dimensional evidence we have for this important vessel type, as well as the only polychromatic representation found to date. As such, it confirms much that has been theorized about these vessels, while also providing new evidence for their construction and adornment, including the use of color – a facet of Mycenaean seafaring that had only previously been accessible in Homeric epithets like μἐλας ‘black’ and κυανόπρῳρος ‘dark-prowed’, as well as the less-well-understood μιλτοπάρῃος ‘red-cheeked’ and φοινικοπάρῃος ‘purple-cheeked’ descriptors. The latter are only used in the Homeric epics to identify the vessels of Odysseus, and the uniquely polychromatic nature of the Gurob ship-cart allows to understand them much more fully than in the past. This lecture discusses the Gurob model and its significance for our understanding of Mycenaean seafaring and Homeric ship descriptions, and includes three-dimensional representations, composed by the Institute for the Visualization of History, of this ship-cart model as discovered and as reconstructed. Additionally, the design, spread, and influences of the Helladic oared galley are discussed in their internationalist Eastern Mediterranean context, with particular emphasis on framing Odysseus’ maritime to Egypt, vividly recounted in the hero’s ‘second Cretan Lie,’ within the larger context of the epic’s fictive date in the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age transition.

This lecture was given at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology (Brown University) on April 30, 2018. The topic is a condensed version of the 2017 book "Black Ships and Sea Raiders: The Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Context of Odysseus' Second Cretan Lie" (Lanham: Lexington): https://www.academia.edu/35561019/Black_Ships_and_Sea_Raiders_The_Late_Bronze_and_Early_Iron_Age_Context_of_Odysseus_Second_Cretan_Lie

The Late Bronze Age ended with a bang in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean: palaces and empires collapsed, from Greece to Egypt; coastal territories were beset by pirates and marauders; migratory peoples were on the move across land and sea; and geopolitical lines were permanently redrawn – conditions reflected, in many ways, by the world portrayed in Homer’s Odyssey. The notorious ‘Sea Peoples,’ mysterious groups of warriors who were credited by the pharaoh Ramesses III with destroying empires across the Near East at this time, fit into this puzzle in some way, although their exact role continues to be hotly debated. In the Odyssey’s various subplots, Odysseus himself carries out activities that are that highly reminiscent of the Sea Peoples, as he engages in raids and skirmishes while circuitously making his way back from Troy. Though it is presented as a falsehood within Homer’s master narrative, one such subplot, the “Second Cretan Lie” (Odyssey xiv 191–359) is striking in its similarity to the experience of one specific Sea Peoples group, whom Egyptian pharaohs referred to as the "Sherden of the Sea", and whose seaborne attacks they claimed that “none could withstand.” This book marshals documentary, pictorial, and material evidence to examine Odysseus’ Second Cretan Lie in the context of the Late Bronze–Iron Age transition, with particular emphasis on changes in the iconography of warriors and warfare, social and economic upheaval, and remarkable innovation in maritime technology and tactics. Particular focus is given the hero’s description of his frequent raiding activities, including an ill–fated attempt on the Nile Delta, and on his description of seven subsequent years spent in the land of the pharaohs, during which he claims to have gathered great wealth. Setting the evidence for the Sherden of the Sea against this Homeric narrative demonstrates not only that Odysseus’ Second Cretan Lie fits into the temporal framework of the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age transition, but that there were historical people who actually lived that which Odysseus falsely claims as his own experience.

One of the most noteworthy, and most discussed, groups of material finds from Beth-Shean comes from the site’s Northern Cemetery, where the remains of at least 50 clay anthropoid coffins were uncovered in eleven tombs dating mainly to the 13th and 12th centuries BC. Five of these in particular, from Tombs 66 and 90, are unlike anything known from the corpus of anthropoid coffins in Canaan or the greater Egyptian world. While the view of these coffins as representations of Sea Peoples has fallen out of favour in recent years, this paper argues that this specific coffin group—and site—should be separated from the larger phenomenon of anthropoid coffin burials in Canaan as well as in Egypt and Nubia, and that this iconographic and chronological connection adds to the evidence for a presence of individuals connected to the Sea Peoples’ tradition in the Egyptian garrison at Beth-Shean in the 12th century BC.

The appearance of the brailed rig and loose–footed sail at the end of the Late Bronze Age revolutionized seafaring in the eastern Mediterranean. The most famous early appearance of this new technology is found in history’s first visual representation of a naval battle, on the walls of Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu. In this monumental combat scene, both Egyptian and Sea Peoples ships are depicted with this new rig, as well as top–mounted crow’s nests and decking upon which shipborne warriors do battle. The identical employment of these innovative components of maritime technology by opposing forces in this battle suggests either some level of previous contact between the invaders and those responsible for designing and constructing Egypt’s ships of war, or shared interaction with a third party, perhaps on the Syro–Canaanite coast. This article examines the evidence for the development of the brailed rig in the eastern Mediterranean, and explores the possibility that at least one group of Sea Peoples, who may have comprised a key part of the international economy of the Late Bronze Age in their role as “pirates, raiders, and traders” (Georgiou 2012: 527) – Artzy’s “nomads of the sea” (1997) – played a similarly integral role in the transference of maritime technology between the Levant, Egypt, and the Aegean.

The intrusive nature of the Philistine material culture, which suddenly appears in southern coastal Canaan in the first half of the twelfth century BCE, has never been in doubt. Moreover, it is widely acknowledged that the origin of this material culture is to be found in the Aegean/Mycenaean world, which, by the end of the thirteenth century, encompassed much of the eastern Mediterranean region. Precisely how the Philistines transported themselves and their material culture from their original to their adoptive homeland, however, has never been adequately explained. A cursory glance at a map quickly reveals that travel from most proposed Philistine homelands (i.e., mainland Greece, the Aegean Islands, Crete, Cyprus) to southern coastal Canaan require travel by sea; however, travel from two others (i.e., coastal Asia Minor, Cilicia) do not. A large-scale, overland migration from these latter regions, although possible, would have been extremely difficult because of the geographic barriers present along this route. More telling is the pattern of sites that have produced the so-called, Sea Peoples material culture: they are all located on or near the coast, thus strongly suggesting that the settlers of these sites arrived by sea. An examination of the excavation and survey data relating to southern coastal Canaan at the time of the Philistine settlement indicates the influx of a large, foreign population. The question remains, however, was maritime capability ca. 1200 BCE commensurate to the task of transporting a great number of people across considerable distances? Evidence contained in texts, iconography, and the results of underwater archaeology pertaining to Late Bronze Age seafaring indicates that, indeed, it was. A secondary source of data for the Philistine migration is later, better documented, seaborne migrations, such as the Greek colonization of the western Mediterranean. Contemporary histories combined with extensive excavation of the settlement regions provide a clearer picture of most aspects of these later migrations by sea than is available for the Philistines. Finally, the application of migration principles generated in other social scientific fields to the context of the Philistine settlement leads to a broader understanding of the process of the Philistines’ migration.

Primary sources from the end of the Bronze Age have long been read as suggesting a time of chaotic transition, particularly with regard to threats from the sea that the established powers had no means of combatting. While the scale and severity of seaborne attacks seem to have increased in the late 13th century, these were not in themselves new phenomena, as a state of maritime threat seems to have been a constant for coastal polities and mariners in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. However, a combination of internal and external factors in the late 13th and early 12th centuries combined to make these attacks more effective than they had been in the past, and polities more vulnerable to them. These included the rapid spread of improvements in maritime technology, particularly from the Aegean and the Levant, via high–intensity ‘zones of transference,’ as well as an increase in the scale of ship–based combat operations, due in part to the displacement of people during the Late Bronze Age collapse. This paper addresses this in two parts, beginning with the ‘background’ evidence for a constant state of maritime threat in the centuries leading up to the end of the Bronze Age, and concluding with the ‘foreground’ evidence for zones of transference and the transmission of groundbreaking elements of naval technology in the years surrounding the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age transition.