Гомер и история Восточного Средиземноморья

In Chapter 4, The Achaeans, the Sea Peoples and the Heracleidae (The Fall of the Mycenaean Greece and Destruction of Troy), that crisis (the Hittite records imply its actual presence) is connected with the invasion of Greece ca 1240 B.C. by tribes from the northwestern Balkans which put an end to the era of Achaean supremacy. The authors refuse to accept the hypothesis of Schachermeyr and some other scholars, according to which, for several subsequent centuries, Greece was ruled by those northerners. Identifying the invasion in question with the «first coming of the Heracleidae» - Greek tradition dates it to the time of the Trojan war -Gindin and Tsymburski are inclined to give credence to that tradition when it informs us of an epidemic which had made the vast majority of the intruders withdraw and return to the north, and of their further unsuccessful attempts to invade Peloponnesus again. Archaeological evidence for the subsequent decades shows the picture of the Greeks' massive influx into the littoral regions, islands and Asia Minor. The Trojan war which, almost immediately following the crisis in Greece, had destroyed the Troy Vila is viewed as an attempt of the Mycenaean kings to enhance their prestige by making that massive exodus from Greece look like a solid military enterprise. Invasion of Egypt during the Pharaon Memeptah’s reign became a part of that expedition: the troops of the Sea Peoples were composed mainly of the Achaeans who joined the Western Balkanian forces and Troy’s neighbours, the Tyrsenians - ancestors of the Etruscans (vague memories of that attack against Egypt are to be found in Greek legends which date it to the time immediately after the burning of Troy). In the authors’ opinion, the Achaean migrations of that time were an actual combination of aggression and flight from ancestral homes which was reflected in the Trojan cycle myths resulting in a tangle of heroic and tragic motifs where no triumphant note of the victors can be discerned - that gives us the idea of the doomed Achaean world whose decline ensued after the great war.

In Part 2, Who Inhabited Troy?, ethnolinguistic composition of Trojan population is being reconstructed - mainly that of the Troy Vila («the Priam’s Troy»); i.e. of the peoples who were trying to resist the Achaean invaders.

While writing Chapter 5, Thrace and Troad, the authors were largely drawing on materials of L.A. Gindin’s book, The Oldest Onomasticon of the Eastern Balkans (Sofia, 1981). This chapter contains an onomastic survey of the Homeric Troad made in the form of a sui generis guide book which gives a description of the area. It becomes evident that the overwhelming majority of Trojan place-names from «The Iliad» are of archaic Thracian origin; many of them have their direct namesakes on the shores of neighbouring Thrace separated from Troad by the sea whicji was called in antiquity the Thracian Sea. Possessions of the Trojan'rulers - as they were depicted in «The Iliad» - included a certain part of the Thracian littoral together with the city of Sestos. The Trojan nobles, according to Homerus, enjoy close relationship with the Thracian kings via conjugal ties; and during the Trojan war the latter help their neighbours and relations of Ilios. Some of the Trojan names of Thracian origin (e.g. the names of WiluSa-Ilios and Truifa-Troy) go back as far as the middle - if not the first half - of the 2nd millenium B.C. These conclusions are corroborated by the archaeological data according to which, in the 3rd millenium B.C., Troy was a part of the proto-Thracian cultural area.

As for the «Laomedon’s» Troy VI and «Priam’s» Troy Vila (18-13 centuries B.C.), there seems to have seen a strong Greek-oriented ruling stratum in the city that exerted considerable cultural influence. However, even if we are to openly admit that Greek rulers could appear in Ilios in the beginning of the 2nd millenium B.C., the bulk of Troad’s population was composed of early Thracian ethnic elements whose influence on ethnolinguistic aspect of those who fought the Achaeans during the Trojan war was the strongest.

In Chapter 6, The Luwians at Troy, the authors substantiate their hypothesis concerning the survival of certain parts of the early Luwian tribes, which still existed in Homeric Troy; their forefathers during the epoch of Troy II (2600-2300 B.C.) were moving southward from the city, to the place of historic abode of the Luwians. It seems probable that during the pre-Anatolian period of their history, those tribes (after they had come from the area of Black Sea steppes lying northwest of the Balkans) coexisted for some time with proto-Thracian ethnic units within the Eastern Balkan area. Therefore we have every right to consider the so-called pr<to-Thracian antiquities as the proto-Indo-European ones. The mysterious Lycians from the region of Zeleja (or «Trojan Lycia») are first to be mentioned among the relict early Luwian tribes of Troad. The ancient designation of that locality, Luka, reflected in the local name of Apollo (Autoi-yei/i'ic) in connection with the myth about his having been bom in Zeleja, is identical to the designation of a Luwian region in the south of the Hittite period Anatolia, Lukka. In a deeper perspective, the term is cognate to the name of the entire area of dwelling of the historical Luwians, Luwija. Self-designation of the Trojan Lycians attested by Homer, TpcSec, exactly corresponds to the late name of one of the two Lycia’s languages (the so-called Lycian B), trujeli (that name was unlike those of other, southern, Luwian ethnic units). This fact makes one view the speakers of Lycian B as the Troad’s Lycians who moved south in the early 1st millenium B.C. That tribe had possible played an important part in the spread of Apollo’s cult in Lycia. Apollo’s name is attested for the 2nd millenium B.C. only in WiluSa-Ilios; according to Homer, he was also worshipped in the neighbouring Zeleja.

Other Luwian tribes had had a Trojan phase in their prehistory as well. Thus, the name of Sarpedon, the hero-protector of the people speaking Lucian A language, derives from the name of a headland situated in the south of Aegean Thracia, opposite Troad. Homeric figure of Sarpedon fighting the Achaeans for Troy returns this image to its historical and geographic origins. Another Luwian tribe, Cilicians, is known to Homer as a people that once inhabited the south of Troad. The authors explain their name as a derivative of their sanctuary’s name KCXAa < Hitt.-Luw. hila «courtyard»; cf. Lyc. qla «temple’s fence». Luwian archaic terms of special kind are represented by the name of the mountain near Trojan Lycia ITeipGioadc, and the figure of its eponym mentioned by Homer - that of the supposedly coming from Thracia stone-throwing hero ITetpaJc; the terms in question continue the Hittite-Luwian series: Hitt.-Luw. pirwa «rock», Pirwa, name of the god worshipped on the rocks, Luw. PirwaSSa «something belonging to Pirwa». Undoubtedly, the Luwians who came to Anatolia from the north in the 3rd millenium B.C. left a noticeable trace in Troad’s tradition (e.g. the name-title IIp(ap.oc < Luw. prijama «the first, the best»), and it is likely that a certain remainder of the Luwians still lived to the epoch of the Troian war in the northern and southern periphery of the area - in the Trojan Lycia and in settlements of the Trojan Cilicians whence comes the Homeric heroine Andromache.

Chapter 7, The Hittites in the Trojan Myths of Greeks, occupies in this part of the book a special place, since the Hittites have not been inhabitants of Troad. However, Greek tradition which places in Mysia (in Caicos) during the time immediately following the events of the «Pseudo-Iliad» the powerful people of the Ceteans/Keteioi (Kt^tclol), fully corresponds to the evidence of the Hittite annals concerning Hittite army’s entry in the River Seha Country from where Ahhijawa’s king had just been ousted. Homer’s words (Od. XI.5I9-521) concerning the Ceteans coming at the close of the war to Troy’s help and perishing «because of the women’s gifts» remarkably tally with the prescription of Hittite law about a «payment to a woman» ($A SAL kuSSan) which was given to a widow of a killed mercenary. In Posthomerica by Quintus of Smyrna (that writing reflects the cyclical tradition) the Ceteans emerge as a powerful people ruled by the «great king» (n^yac (^iaaiAe"uc = Hitt. LUGAL GAL). The Ceteans appearing on stage, the Trojans as Greeks’ adversaries fade into the background. It is not impossible that tradition about the Ceteans reflects an unsuccessful attempt of the Hittites to affect the course of the Trojan war at its final stage.

However, this historical reminiscence is complicated by mythological motifs whose provenance is to be sought in Asia Minor. Thus, tradition makes the Cetean king Eurypylus a son of the Mysian demigod Telephus who was a hero participating in the events of «Pseudo-Iliad». Telephus while fighting the Achaeans gets his feet entangled in a vine and being severely wounded in the thigh, flees overseas to Greece to show the Greeks the way to Troy in exchange for their healing his wound. The above story is doublessly a Greek revision of the Western Anatolian version of the Hattie and Hittite myth about the fertility god Telepi/Telepinus who shuns tie world, sick and getting healed, furious and then placated. Under the influence of this calendar myth intruding in th'e historical legend, the «women’s gifts» for which the Ceteans-Hittites perish, turn into the fabulous golden grapevine which had supposedly been presented by Priam to the Cetean queen and became the bane of Eurypylus. The memory about the fighting between the Greeks and their fell Hittite foes (cf. the story of Hercules fighting the KfjToc-monster) merges with the motifs which had come to Greeks from traditions of the peoples of Asia Minor living near Troy.