On Dating the Trojan War by Steven Robinson Suppose that the 'New Chronology' for Egypt's Third Intermediate Period is sound (allowing for a margin of uncertainty at the earlier end): what consequences would this have for the chronology of Mycenaean Greece? This was the question David Rohl began to address in the last Review [1]. After expounding several reasons why the received chronology was unsatisfactory, he suggested that the date of the Trojan War - virtually the only historical event of the Mycenaean period - should be lowered from c.1200 to c.900 BC. The present writer believes that an even lower date is required. We can approach the problem from a number of directions, perhaps the most obvious one being to look amongst the ruins of Priam's Troy for some archaeological synchronism with the history of Egypt. But as Rohl observes, the site of Hissarlik affords two candidates for Priam's Troy: the city at level VIIa and the earlier city at level VI; and while one might prefer the latter on the grounds that in the level above it pottery from the LH IIIC period was found, showing that the fall of city VIIa postdated the fall of Agamemnon's and Nestor's own palaces at the end of LH IIIB, it is unclear at what point in the LH IIIB period city VI came to grief [2]. Nor is it easy to determine when, in relation to Egypt's history, the LH IIIB period itself ended. We can date its beginning to shortly before the accession of Ramesses II on the basis of Mycenaean pottery found at Gurob in the Faiyum, but no such unequivocal correlation can be made for the end of the period [3]. Another approach, suggested by Rohl in a recent letter to Workshop [4], is to quantify the interval between the war and some later known date by reference to dynastic or genealogical lists. In 490 BC, for example, when Leonidas became king, Sparta could trace the beginning of its dual monarchy through 17 names (inclusive), from Leonidas back to Eurysthenes in the Agiad dynasty, and from Leotychidas II back to Procles in the Eurypontid dynasty. Eurysthenes and Procles led the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese, and according to Thucydides the invasion took place 80 (60 + 20) years after the Trojan War [5]. Now when Rohl examined fourteen dynasties from chronologically established periods of ancient history, he found that the shortest average length of a king's reign was 10 years, the longest 23 years, and the average overall 16.4 years. Thus, applying these findings, we can work out the latest probable date of the Trojan War as follows: starting point 490 16 kings x average 10 years 160 interval between invasion and war 80 730 BC By a similar calculation, the earliest possible date would be 938 BC - long after the latest date at which it could have occurred in the received chronology. The strength of such an argument, of course, is no greater than the dependability of the tradition it uses. It could be objected that the lists might be incomplete, or that Eurysthenes and Procles might have been credited with leading the Dorian invasion only after the truth had been forgotten. However, it is possible to make two cross-checks on the results. Alexander the Great claimed he could trace his ancestry back to Heracles. If this was through Caranus, the founder of his dynasty, then from Caranus to Alexander inclusive we can count 17 names and 14 generations, and we know from the Parian Marble, corroborated by Euphorus and Theopompus, that Pheidon, the brother of Caranus, belonged to the tenth generation after Heracles; thus we have a total of 24 generations [6]. Since there were five generations inclusive from Heracles to the Dorian invasion, the lower limit for the Trojan War, assuming an average 20 years per generation, would be 791 BC, and the upper limit, assuming an average 30 years per generation, 981 BC. Herodotus dated Heracles about 900 years before his own time, and almost certainly arrived at that figure in the same manner, allowing either 40 years for a generation or, as on one occasion, 33 years [7]. Thus if he used the former figure he must have counted 22 or 23 generations; if the latter, 27. But in either case his estimates for the length of a generation seen excessive, although it is difficult to say by how much. If instead we were to estimate 20 years and in accordance with Greek tradition allowed two generations between Heracles and the Trojan War, we would obtain a lower limit of either 850 or 950 BC; with an estimate of 30 years, an upper limit of either 1050 or 1200 BC. At first sight the latter figure may appear to lend substance to the received date of the Trojan War, but it should be pointed out that when Herodotus lists the kings of Sparta from Leonidas to Heracles he counts only 19 generations - compatible with 22 generations before his own time if he counted inclusively, but not with 27 [8]. Even 19 may be too high a figure, since the genealogies available to Herodotus may have included, unbeknown to him, a number of parallel generations, as is the case with the 17 names from Caranus to Alexander. The relationships which linked one name with another may not have been expressly stated. Indeed, given that the only houses likely to have preserved lists going back to the Dorian invasion would have been those of past or present kings, the inclusion of a number of parallel generations is very probable. A king may have been succeeded, for instance, by his brother rather than by his son. This of course is why the average length of reign over a period is almost invariably lower than the average length of a generation. But we must ask ourselves why Herodotus is inconsistent in his estimate of a generation, and why does he generally prefer the higher, less plausible figure? The only occasion when he explicitly allows 33 years per generation is when he is discussing the enormous length of Egypt's history (just before the reference to Heracles). Apparently he supposed that the Greeks, before having children, lived longer than the Egyptians, a supposition that had the advantage of reducing, at least by a little, the disparity between the two histories. For, somewhat to their disappointment, the Greeks could trace their nation back only 25 generations, to Hellen son of Deucalion, whereas the Egyptians, he discovered, could trace theirs back more than 341 generations - and could support their antiquity with statues, inscriptions and other documents. If one recounted no further than the Trojan War, Greece had only genealogies with which to measure the distance. Not wishing, then, to concede to Egypt more antiquity than he had to, and perhaps mindful of certain synchronisms between the two histories which required Greece's to be lengthened relative to Egypt's, Herodotus allowed himself some latitude in his choice of denominator. Egypt's testimony had to be taken into account, and when succeeding historians came to date the Trojan War they broadly followed Herodotus's framework [9]. Their elongation of Greece's history, far from being coincidental with the Egyptians' elongation of theirs, was a consequence of it. Mycenae's chronology has always been linked with Egypt's, ever since Herodotus became the first to investigate it. And of course it still is. To the extent that the scheme inherited from the Greeks has been corroborated, it has been corroborated only by further correlations with Egypt, of an archaeological kind. The one chronology perpetuates the errors of the other. It is therefore of great significance that on one occasion Herodotus did not estimate, but saw documents which apprised him exactly how long the genealogy had lasted. Before king Gyges, he tells us, the Heraclids ruled Lydia, being descendants of Heracles by a certain slave-girl, and they reigned for 505 years or 22 generations, son succeeding father all down the line [10]. Now although the claim that Heracles was their ancestor is hardly more credible than the other fanciful claims that the Lydians made about themselves [11], the figures look authentic enough. And they wholly support the argument that 33 years (let alone 40) is an excessive estimate. The average which these actual figures yield is 23 years. There is also a third consideration bearing on the date of the Trojan War, namely the period when Homer composed the Iliad. Rohl outlined in his article why this is still a somewhat vexed question. While most scholars place Homer in the eighth century, the war and the Bronze Age with which Homer shows such a close acquaintance are placed in the thirteenth or early twelfth century, separated from the poet by a vast, Lethean 'Dark Age'. However, the chronology which Rohl proposes does not fully resolve the difficulty. Placing the Trojan War c.900 BC and the floruit of Homer c.740, he claims that "Homer is now singing his epic poetry to audiences whose fathers witnessed the disturbances at the end of the Bronze Age. It is only c.50 to 100 years since the fall of Troy. Details of the siege, the armour and social structure of Mycenaean civilisation are still fresh in the memory." To be fair, Rohl may have intended to say 'c.50 to 100 years since the end of the Bronze Age', the end of the Sub-Mycenaean period, which he places about 90 years before Homer. But would Mycenaean civilisation still be fresh in the memory after 90 years? Not in Homer's memory, certainly. Either the Sub-Mycenaean period and, by implication, the Trojan War, occurred later, or Homer composed the Iliad earlier. But there are sound reasons for leaving Homer where he is. Herodotus, to cite him once more, estimated that the interval between himself and Homer was no greater than 400 years, that is, no greater than 10 generations [12]. Thus the substitution of a more realistic 25 years per generation would suggest that Homer flourished (very approximately) about 700 BC. The tradition that the poet Terpander, who flourished about 660 BC, lived two generations after Homer also indicates such a time [13]. On the other hand, dating the war c.900 BC might seem to tie in very well with certain Hittite tablets from the reign of Hattusilis III, a contemporary of Ramesses II. Within the orthodox chronology Michael Wood is especially attracted to this view. He points out that a kingdom called 'Ahhiyawa', probably that peopled by Homer's Achaiwoi, is mentioned twenty-two times in the tablets. The name of the Achaean kings' brother, Tawagalawas, who resided in Miletus until Hattusilis took the city, looks like the name Eteocles, or Etewokleweios as it was found spelt at Pylos. In a treaty from the time of Muwatallis, who preceded Hattusilis, the king of Wilusa is named as Alaksandus, 'which strikingly recalls Homer's prince Alexandros (Paris) of Wilios' (or Ilium). Wood sums up his case: "These vague resemblances do not look like mere chance; Achaiwoi/Ahhiyawa [in reverse order]; Alaksandus/Alexandros; Wilusa/Wilios; Taruisa/Troia: each in isolation presents problems, but four resemblances is pressing coincidence too far." [14] We might add that other scholars have been struck by the similarity between Atreus, father of Agamemnon, and a certain 'Attarisyas, the man of Ahhiyava', who was ravaging Cyprus a few decades after Hattusilis. But Wood does not mention this coincidence, for the very good reason that Atreus belongs to the wrong generation. Although plausible, the identification would only undermine the case for linking the Trojan War to the time of Ramesses II. In fact, 'Wilusa' might be Ilios and 'Taruisa' Troy independently of such a link. The only functional identification in this argument is that between Alaksandus, king of Wilusa, and Alexander, and it is not a convincing one. In Homer the king of Troy is not Alexander but Priam, and the heir apparent is Priam's son Hector. Alaksandus of Wilusa is a vassal of the Hittites, whereas in Homer there is not a hint of Hittite suzerainty. The effect of the Wilusa/Ilios identification is rather to preclude any synchronising of the Trojan War with Ramesses II, at least with the early part of his reign. And since there is no evidence that Troy was ever a Hittite dependency after the War, the War must be dated later rather than earlier. Indeed, this conclusion agrees with the Egyptians' own dating of the event. According to all version of Manetho, Troy was captured at the end of the 19th Dynasty in the reign of Thuor, or Twosre. So direct an answer to the question we have been discussing should not be lightly rejected. Enjoying regular commercial and diplomatic contact with Agamemnon's Greece, Egypt was in a position to know, and Manetho's remark that Thuor appears in Homer as the Polybus who with his wife gave gifts top Menelaus and Helen (Odyssey iv, 126ff) lends further credit to the tradition. Homer expressly says that after the War the couple spent some time in Egypt, which according to Herodotus is also what the Egyptians averred. For when he asked them if there was any truth to the Trojan War, they replied that they had first learned about it from Menelaus himself, who, having eventually been forced to accept the protestations of the Trojans that they did not hold Helen, had found her staying with a king named Proteus in Memphis [15]. Now Homer also mentions a Proteus in this context. Homer's king, however, is the well known god of Pharos, the island off Egypt's coast. It seems Herodotus has got the names confused, calling Polybus Proteus, and Proteus (who in his narrative is the warden of the Canopic mouth of the Nile) Thon. Is Thon, then, another name for Polybus? For again, Homer also mentions a Thon in this context, and again he is a different person, being the husband of Polydamna, another Egyptian who gave gifts to Helen. Is Thon perhaps a corruption of Thuor, Homer supposing that Thon and Polybus were different persons as a result of the Greeks dubbing Thuor Polybus? Although Twosre was a woman, the Greeks, and probably also the Egyptians by the time of Herodotus, clearly thought that she was a male pharaoh. Moreover, if the Proteus of Herodotus is Twosre, then Rhampsinitus, who the historian says succeeded Proteus, is presumably Ramesses III [16]. Twosre reigned only seven years. Consequently in the framework of Egypt's New Chronology we can date the sack of Troy with some precision to c.860 BC. This is in harmony with one further piece of evidence, the tradition that Aeneas escaped the ensuing massacre of the Trojans and made a new home in Italy. Certainly this was no late invention of the Romans. The belief that Aeneas escaped initially to Mount Ida went back at least as far as the epic poet Arctinus, just one generation after Homer. Vergil's story that he ended up in Italy derived from an equally ancient Etruscan tradition - as witness an early 7th century bronze found at Politorium, showing Anchises his father coupled with Aphrodite his supposed mother [17]. The Etruscans venerated Aeneas as their ancestor, which in some sense he may well have been. For it is difficult to see how one can otherwise explain so strong and popular a belief. The Etruscans appear in the archaeological record from about the end of the 9th century. That they possibly stemmed from a marriage of the indigenous 'Rasna' people with refugees from Troy, who, as they settled in Etruria instructed them in the ways of their more advanced civilisation, is no longer a chronological absurdity. For the same reason, finally, we should also reconsider the oldest tradition concerning Rome's origins, namely that the Romulus who founded her - who became her first king - was a grandson of Aeneas. For the first and probably best informed historian to look into the matter, the Greek Sicilian Timaeus, dated the foundation of Rome not to 753 BC (Livy's date) but to 814, on the grounds that it occurred about the same time as the foundation of Carthage. Why he should have linked the two cities in this way is not known, but certainly he was not influenced by any connection between Rome's foundation and the wanderings of Aeneas. The tale that Aeneas visited Carthage on his way to Italy, anomalous by any chronological scheme, was an invention of Vergil's. No Greek or Roman historian put the Trojan War later than the 12th century, whereas Timaeus dated the foundation of Carthage not by generations but from annals which he saw at Tyre, Carthage's mother city. Thus, if the Trojan War took place c.860 BC, the tradition that Rome was founded by a grandson of Aeneas would be entirely compatible with Timaeus's date. On several grounds, then, it would seem better to synchronise the Achaean sack of Troy with the end, rather than the middle of Egypt's 19th Dynasty. This, in turn, entails that the end of the LH IIIB period be brought down to c.850 and the end of LH IIIC, when the Dorian invasions took place, to c.780 BC. Homer, who flourished after the Dorian invasions but was probably born into the Mycenaean world, composed his epics some time between 750 and 700, the Iliad first. 'Attarisyas' in the Hittite tablets may well be Atreus; and Alaksandus of Wilusa, I venture to suggest, since he cannot be Paris, was probably the long-lived Priam. For as Wood observes [18], the names of nearly all the Trojan heroes are those which the Greeks bestowed on them, and if Priam is one exception, being genuinely Trojan, we know that in his younger days he had a different name - in Greek, Podarces. As fathers are wont to do, Priam may have given his son the name Alexander after himself. Notes and References 1. C & C Review XI (1989), pp. 43-48 2. Michael Wood debates these questions in In Search of the Trojan War (London, 1985), a stimulating and wide-ranging introduction to the whole subject 3. On the LH IIIC period see bibliography in note 392 of JACF 1 (1988) 4. Workshop 1989:1, p. 37, borrowing from D. A. Courville: The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, vol. 2, (Loma Linda, 1971), p. 280 5. Herodotus says that the Spartans themselves differed from the common tradition in believing that the invasion was led by Aristodemus, the father of Eurysthenes and Procles 6. See D. A. Courville: op. cit., vol.2, pp. 284-286 7. Herodotus assumes 40 years per generation in The Histories I, 14-25, 106 and 130 (for example), 33 years in II, 142. For Heracles, see II, 145 8. Herodotus: The Histories, VII, 204 9. For a brief synopsis of their various dates see Appendix 2 of N. G. L. Hammond: A History of Greece (London, 1957) 10. Herodotus: The Histories, I, 7 11. See Michael Grant: The Etruscans (London, 1980), pp.72 and 75 12. Herodotus: The Histories, II, 53 13. the date of Homer is discussed, for example, by R. Lattimore in his introduction to The Iliad (Chicago, 1951), pp. 28ff 14. Wood: op. cit., p. 207 15. Herodotus: The Histories, II, 112 et seq. 16. Not that the resemblance of these two names counts for much. The chronology of Herodotus goes seriously awry after Rhampsinitus, after whom he places the famous Cheops of the 4th Dynasty 17. Grant: op. cit., pp. 99ff, 175 18. Wood: op. cit., pp. 20, 122, 250 _________________________________________________________________ \cdrom\pubs\journals\workshop\w1990no1\11war.htm