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Bronze Age Aegean:

 

"Bull Leaping" fresco from Minoan palace at Knossos, c. 3000-1450 BC. Lyrical, free form Minoan art depicts an acrobatic dance performed with a live bull. Archaeologists believe this to have been a common form of popular entertainment. 

Dendra Panoply, Bronze panoply of armor found in Mycenaean warrior’s grave at Dendra, near Mycenae, c. 1200 BC. Panneled armor permitted Mycenaean warriors to engage in combat, as described by Homer. Moreover, boar’s-tusk helmet likewise confirms Homeric tradition for Mycenaean warriors constructing their helmets from hunting trophies.

 

 

STRATIGRAPHY AT TROY The site of Hisarlık is renowned for its association with Homer's Iliad and the tradition for the Trojan War. The site is situated on the northwest coast of modern Turkey (Anatolia) on a fertile plain at the southern entrance to the Dardanelles (the ancient Hellespont). For millennia the Hellespont served as the chief shipping lane between the ancient urban civilizations of the Aegean and the grain-producing region of the northern Black Sea Coast (modern day Ukraine). The presence of arable land, potable water, and a strategic waterway caused this location to be occupied repeatedly during the course of the ancient experience. Initially excavated in the 1860s by Heinrich Schliemann and continuing under archaeological investigation by German, Turkish, American teams to this day, the site, abandoned since antiquity, exhibits twelve identified levels of human habitation. Based on the presence of Mycenaean pottery and inscribed Egyptian scarabs, the level that conforms most to the Trojan War era (c. 1250-1220 BC) is generally recognized to be that of Troy level VIIa.

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