A Tale of Two Cities

Mistaken identity or sour grapes?

In our version of the Iliad, there is a mention of “Egyptian” Thebes. In Wrestling with Proteus, I commented in a footnote that this must be an interpolation because in context, Boeotian Thebes is clearly meant. I then remarked how the text came to say Egyptian Thebes was a topic for another essay. This is that essay.

Keywords: Homer, the Iliad, Thebes, Orchomenos, Medizing, Greco-Persian Wars, Egypt and Mycenaean Greece.

Acknowledgements: As always, I am deeply indebted to Cynthia Gralla of Royal Roads University for her kind assistance and support in the creation of this work, including help with research, excellent editorial suggestions and many insightful comments. Without her encouragement, these essays could not have been written.

Introduction

Welcome to what might be considered another digression from my main thesis. Aside from my acknowledged love of digressing, I’ll offer my belief that such topics are worth investigating because at times they exert an outsized influence. In this case, a single word in the Iliad has been seized upon to help date the epic, and also to suggest Homer’s awareness of the wider world with implications for the Iliad’s relationship with the Cyclic poems, particularly the Aethiopis. That’s a lot of weigh to place on a single word. How sure is it that weight is being attached correctly?

The word I’m talking about is the Iliad’s reference to “Egyptian” Thebes, which occurs in Book 9, lines 381-4. Rejecting Agamemnon’s offer of wealth, Achilles says:

Not if he gave me ten or twenty times as much as he now owns,
and if more were to come from other quarters
not as much as is brought into Orchomenos, or Egyptian Thebes,
where the greatest abundance of wealth is stored in houses… (Caroline Alexander’s translation)

According to this, Homer was aware that Egyptian Thebes was a place of fabled wealth; hence, he must have known other things about Egypt, which could then include, Memnon, King of Aethiopia, who comes to the Trojan’s aid in the Aethiopis, and is the proximate cause of Achilles’ death, rather than Hector. (It’s even been argued by the Neoanalysts, another school of Homeric scholarship, that Hector was based on Memnon, not the other way round. That too is a topic for another day.) It’s been suggested the passage could show knowledge of the sack of Egyptian Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 663/4, which brought the wealth of that city once again to the fore. Martin West uses this as part of his argument that the Iliad was composed closer to the middle of the 7th century rather than the end of the 8th.¹ (This is the second time I’ve taken issue with West’s argument for dating the Iliad; I also take issue with another point of his, but will set that aside for now.) So the belief Achilles indeed means Egyptian Thebes has a significant impact on how the Iliad is viewed.

From a historical perspective, however, it seems questionable that Homer, composing in the last half of the 8th century, would have such knowledge of Egypt. His view of the Aethiopians is clearly mythical; to him they are a fabled people who live far to the east by the River Ocean where the gods go for feasts. We might recall Perseus went there also, to rescue Princess Andromeda.² Aside from the name, there is no hint here of a relation to the kingdom of the Nile, and Greece at that time had been cut off from Egypt and much of the Mideast for centuries. That would change in the century after Homer and by 610 the Greeks would establish a trading post at Naucratis in Egypt. After that, Egypt would grow in the Greek consciousness, becoming popular in art, literature and even history, with the advent of Herodotus.

Is that enough to dismiss Egyptian Thebes in the Iliad as an interpolation? Perhaps not. With that in mind, let’s review Mycenaean Greece’s involvement with Egypt in the late Bronze Age.

Egypt and the Mycenaeans

As I briefly discussed in Wrestling with Proteus, the ancient Near East was a highly interconnected “globalist” international order and Mycenaean Greece was not left out. We know the Mycenaeans traded widely with other states and exchanged embassies. Faience plaques with the cartouche of Amenhotep III (1390–1352)³ have been found at Mycenae and Tiryns (Wiener 2020, 308; Kelder 2020, 45; Cline 1991). A painting of what is thought to be Mycenaean mercenaries has been found in Egypt, along with Mycenaean trade goods, and an Egyptian statue has carvings around the base that may represent Minoan and Mycenaean cities, possibly including Thebes, arranged so as to suggest a trade route.

Under these conditions, it’s likely there were Egyptians living in Greece, especially in a major center like Thebes; there is no reason to rule it out. As mentioned previously (see Wrestling with Proteus), Bronze Age societies exchanged artisans, physicians and other such “professionals” as well as goods. Trevor Bryce has noted there were Anatolian scribes (needed for diplomatic purposes) and artisans in Mycenaean palace centers (Life and Society in the Hittite World. 2002, 256; from Kelly 2006, 328), while the “Greek word for Egyptian (Αιγύπτιος) appears as a personal name (a₃-ku-pi-ti-jo) in the [Linear B] Knossos tablets” (Kelly 2006, 325).

Egyptian texts from the reigns of Thutmoses III (1479-1425) and Amenhotep III refer to a kingdom on the Greek mainland called Tnj (Tanaju), the king of which sent messengers with “greeting gifts” to the pharaoh’s court at least once. However, no further textual reference to Tanaju has yet been found from after the reign of Amenhotep III. (Kelder 2010, 2), suggesting that relations may have tapered off after this time.

Kelder goes on to say that during Merneptah’s reign (1213-1203), the name “Ekwesh” appears as one of the Sea Peoples, possibly the Egyptian pronunciation of “Ahhiyawa,” the Hittite name for Greece. This has been seen to indicate that Greek refugees, fleeing the collapse of Mycenaean civilization, made up some of the Sea Peoples who attacked Egypt and many other places in the eastern Mediterranean during this period.

At that point, Greece had already been cut off from Egypt for decades. As a result of their war with Ramesses II (1275-1269), the Hittites drove the Egyptians from the Aegean and, as Griffith observes, “Never again until the Greeks founded Naucratis around 610 did they reencounter Egypt.” But he adds a footnote: “Well, almost never: there is an 8th century ‘Isis grave’ at Eleusis with a figurine of the Egyptian goddess as well as other objects of Egyptian provenance.” (Griffith: 224). The footnote is significant: it shows that Egyptian goods sometimes made their way into Greece in the 8th century but not that the Greeks had much, if any sense, of where they originated. The Greeks were in contact with the Phoenicians – this is when they adapted their alphabet – and it’s most likely the goods reached them through such intermediaries.

So it would seem that by Homer’s day, Egypt was far in Greece’s past, yet so was the Trojan War and legends of it survived. Could memories of Egypt have been passed down, beyond the (apparently mythical) name Homer knew? It’s a fair question. Adrian Kelly, who wrote a 2006 article on the very question I’m addressing (he includes the line numbers of Achilles’ statement in the title: “Homer and History: Iliad 9.381-4”), certainly believes so. He states that Bronze Age contacts between Egypt and the Mycenaeans were “frequent and pervasive, so the idea that Egyptians could have entered the poetic consciousness during that period is at the very least plausible.” He adds that the appearance of Egyptian in the Knossos tablets “surely” implies “there was enough preservative force to the poetic memory during the intervening period to keep alive some reminiscence of this famously rich land and its inhabitants.” (Kelly 2006, 325-6.)

To this, I might add the role Egypt played in the era to which I assign the Trojan War. Tarkhundaradu, the Arzawan king known from the Amarna letters, was considered a great king, at least in Egyptian eyes. (Kelder 2010, 26; Woudhuizen 2018, 115.) Apart from Hittite texts, a letter from Egyptian El-Amarna was apparently written to him, while another was sent from Arzawa to the pharaoh’s court. (Kelder 2010, 21.) Woudhuizen comments that “the main role in Amenhotep III’s containment policy was attributed to the Arzawan king Tarkhundaradu, who is addressed in these letters as an equal and therefore recognized as a great king and with whom an alliance is solidified by the intended marriage of Amenhotep III to a daughter of Tarkhundaradu.” (Woudhuizen 2018, 115.)

Amenhotep III was pharaoh during the early period of Mycenaean involvement in western Anatolia. The Aššuwan revolts and the campaigns of Atreus (Attarissiyas) happened in the reigns of his father and grandfather, Thutmose IV and Amenhotep II; the first Aššuwan revolt could have been late in the reign of his great-grandfather, Thutmoses III. Given Amenhotep III’s stature and historical reputation, he could well have made a lasting impression, as could his capital, Thebes.

The Colossi of Memnon, 19th century photograph. (Public Domain.)

Hypothesis 1: Mistaken Identity?

Kelly feels this could have invited comparison to Boeotian Thebes, the second most powerful – if not the most powerful – city in Greece at that time, and possibly the richest.⁴ He notes an interesting coincidence regarding this:

The wealth of Egyptian Thebes was at its most marked in the New Kingdom, especially during the initial phase of the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295) at least until the Amarna period (c.1352- 1336). When the political as well as administrative centre moved to Memphis after the death of Akhenaten, Thebes nonetheless remained deeply significant as the chief site for the worship of the national deity Amon. Its Bronze Age apogee is generally dated to the reign of Amenhotep III (1390-1352), and this matches precisely that period in which Boeotian Thebes was becoming an international power (Kelly 2006, 327).

Kelly then suggests that “a Greek might well equate the most notable city in Egypt with the most notable in his own country, and call it the ‘Egyptian version or counterpart of Thebes’.” He cites some modern examples of that formulation, which includes a charming comment by his fellow scholar, Stephanie West: “Presumably some adventurous Greek traveler mistook the name of a prominent temple or a district, or a descriptive phrase, for the name of the city; the range of possible misconceptions is vast – we may recall the story of the foreign visitor who concluded that the most popular British drink was ‘same again’.”

Kelly’s argument is quite detailed and definitely worth reading. He agrees with me (or I with him) that Achilles’ statement must have originally applied to Boeotian Thebes: “It would of course be possible to argue here that 9.381 on its own is a Bronze Age relic, for it is almost certain that the expression did refer originally to [Boeotian] Thebes.” (page 325), and proposes that considering the line in a Bronze Age context explains the “onomastic equation” between the names of the two cities and also why Greek Thebes came to be replaced by its Egyptian namesake. He concludes by saying: “… the memory behind Iliad 9.381-4 seems to reflect both the politics and economics of the Bronze Age, specifically the period between the early fourteenth century and the first third of the thirteenth century.” (Kelly 2006, 330.)

That last statement seems to me to be quite true. The part of Kelly’s argument I’m unsure about is a point others have raised to explain why Egyptian Thebes appears in the text: the fact that Boeotian Thebes was sacked around the middle of the 13th century and, since this is often thought to be before the Trojan War, as portrayed by Homer, Boeotian Thebes would no longer be eligible to be considered a place of great wealth. Kelly follows this reasoning, saying “the city’s suitability for a comparison of quasi-proverbial wealth with Orchomenos was diminished” at this time (mid 13th century), and while he allows that Egyptian Thebes being substituted “does not have to depend on the decline of its [Boeotian] counterpart,” he still feels the substitution “is certainly well explained by the events of the late Bronze Age.”

View of Thebes by Williams Hugh William. (Public Domain.)

Hypothesis 2: Sour Grapes?

This assertion by Kelly strikes me as questionable for two reasons. First, I will say that pairing Thebes with Orchomenos clearly indicated Boeotian Thebes was intended, as it would make no sense to associate a rich foreign city with the second richest city in Boeotia when Thebes was the first, and I take this to be the basis of Kelly’s statement the line must have originally said Boeotian Thebes. But my concerns with his hypothesis are:

1) That when Boeotian Thebes was destroyed (1250-1230 BC), Gla and Orchomenos also “went to wrack and ruin” in the words of Fred Woudhuizen (Woudhuizen: Review of Kelder). It doesn’t seem likely that line in the Iliad would have been altered to reflect some brief period when Thebes was destroyed (thus “ineligible”) while Orchomenos was still rich enough to be a “quasi-proverbial” seat of great wealth, even if there were a few years when this was true, which seems doubtful. From the perspective of a tradition that would make such a change, Orchomenos and Thebes would have been destroyed in the same period, and thus both be ineligible to be seen as icons of wealth.⁵

2) The ineligibility argument assumes the legend of the Trojan War places it after the mid 13th century, while I contend the source legends’ origins lie before, in the 14th and early 13th centuries. The phase of war in which Achilles fights is when Paris (Alexandros/Alaksandu) is prince/king of Troy, the 1280s, though his legend may well encompass events going back to the mid 14th century. Thebes was taken over by Mycenae around 1350 – part of the Bronze Age “Wars of the Roses” I suggested – but by around 1300 (at latest), it had regained its place as a powerful kingdom. So while the 1350 event may (possibly) explain the Epigoni (the sons of the Seven who attacked Thebes and lost) being in the Iliad, it doesn’t seem to be a viable explanation for why Thebes would be “demoted” in favor of Egyptian Thebes and Orchomenos retained.

I’m therefore going to offer another possible solution to the issue, based on much later history. Recall that the poems related to the Trojan War were first assembled into a series in Athens between 560 and 527 – the Pisistratean Recension – but probably closer to the later date, as current opinion is that it was likely done at the behest of Pisistratus’ son, Hipparchus. Solon, the early 6th-century Athenian statesman, has also been cited as a possibility (Finkelberg 2020, 16).

In 499, the first phase of the Persian Wars, the Ionian Revolt, began (499–493). They would climax with the Greek victory at Salamis in 480, followed by the Battle of Plataea a year later which, along with the naval Battle of Mycale, ended the second Persian invasion of Greece. The Wars of the Delian League would then last from 477 to 449, when the (purported) Peace of Callias ended hostilities between Greece and Achaemenid Persia.

The significance for my purposes here is that during these wars, Thebes “medized” – that is, they took the side of the Persians against the Athenians, Spartans and their allies; there was a history here, as the Thebans were hostile to the Athenians as far back as the late 6th century. Herodotus (484-425) mentions this, and includes other Boeotian cities who went along with Thebes. Other places Herodotus says medized are Thessaly, Argos, and the island of Aegina. Thucydides (460-400) also talks about the Thebans medizing. At the Battle of Plataea, Thebans fought for Xerxes. Thebes’ behavior was understandably looked upon as an act of betrayal by the Athenians and its allies, and they removed Thebes from its leadership of the Boeotian League. The bad blood between Thebes and Athens continued, and Thebes suffered a correspondingly bad reputation in Athens for quite a long time after the wars.

Throughout this whole period, which includes the Trojan War poems being organized into a formal, comprehensive cycle around 350-320, Athens effectively “owned” them. I suggest that at some point in this process, in which the Athenians are thought to have made other editorial changes to the epics, someone removed the hated Thebans from the Iliad and replaced their city with Egyptian Thebes, changing the description from “seven-gated” to “hundred-gated” to match.⁶ This two-word edit saved Athenian listeners from having to hear the hero of their beloved and increasingly Panhellenic epic that had become a cornerstone of their civilization, speak of a “wretched hive of scum and villainy” – that is, a nest of traitors – in a positive light. Egypt, in contrast, held great fascination for the Greeks, and having their greatest hero proclaim he’d turn down even their riches may have given the line added cachet. That would seem like a win-win.

Orchomenus had a long contentious rivalry with Thebes and by the 4th century had become distinctly anti-Theban. The Boeotian League sacked Orchomenos in 364 and Thebes sacked it again in 349. The role Orchomenus played during the Persian wars is obscure; it is not listed among the Persian’s Greek allies but it is not prominent among those who fought with the Greeks at the major battles of Thermopylae and Plataea either. (It is not to be confused with Arcadian Orchomenus who did send soldiers to both Thermopylae and Plataea to fight against the Persians, according to Herodotus.) This combination of factors could have insulated Orchomenus from the opprobrium that attached to Thebes, allowing it to retain its place in the epic as a legitimate icon of fabled wealth.

There you have it. What’s your opinion? Is this a case of “mistaken identity,” as I might call Adrian Kelly’s hypothesis? Or Athenian “sour grapes” over Thebes “bad behavior”? Is there another explanation? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Works Cited

Cline, Eric. “An Unpublished Amenhotep III Faience Plaque from Mycenae.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 110, no. 2 (1990): 200–212. https://doi.org/10.2307/604526.

Finkelberg, Margalit. “18. The Formation of the Homeric Epics” In Homer and Early Greek Epic: Collected Essays, 182-196. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter (2020).

Kelder, Jorrit M. “A Thousand Black Ships: Maritime Trade, Diplomatic Relations, and the Rise of Mycenae.” In Empires of the Sea: Maritime Power Networks in World History, edited by Rolf Strootman, Floris van den Eijnde, and Roy van Wijk, 39–51. Brill, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv2gjx041.6.

Kelly, Adrian. “Homer and History: ‘Iliad’ 9.381-4.” Mnemosyne 59, no. 3 (2006): 321–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4433744.

West, Martin. “The Date of the ‘Iliad.’” Museum Helveticum, vol. 52, no. 4, 1995, pp. 203–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24819564.

Wiener, Malcolm H. “‘Helladic Greece from the Middle Bronze Age to c. 1350 BCE’, From Past to Present: Studies in Honor of Manfred O. Korfmann, 2020, Pp. 279–331.” STUDIA TROICA Monographien 11 2020 (2020).

Woudhuizen, Fred. “Review of Kelder,” BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXVIII, no. 1-2 (Januari-April 2011): 140-146. http://www.academia.edu/7287913/Review_Kelder_2010.

Footnotes

1. Walter Burkert suggested this 1976 and it gained wide currency. Not only did Martin West follow it, but also Jonathan Burgess and a number of other prominent scholars (Kelly 2006).

2. For those who need a brush-up on that story, Andromeda was the daughter of Cepheus, king of Aethiopia, and Cassiopeia, his queen. Cassiopeia imprudently boasted she was more beautiful than the Nereids, whose queen, by the way, is Thetis, Achilles’ mother. Taking umbrage, Poseidon send Cetus, a sea monster, to ravage the coast of Aethiopia. To save his kingdom, Cepheus had Andromeda chained naked to a rock on the shore for the monster’s delectation. (Monsters always prefer their morsels unwrapped.) Perseus arrived, killed the monster and won the princess, making artists and their patrons happy ever since. The couple went on to found Mycenae. I’ll note in passing that almost the exact same story is told of Heracles rescuing the daughter of Laomedon, king of Troy and Priam’s father, after he cheated Poseidon and Apollo. But instead of marrying the princess, Heracles gave her to a subordinate and took some horses. Go figure. The princess became the mother of the Greek’s famous archer, Teucer, who fought with Ajax in the Trojan War.

3. The dates of Egyptian pharaohs vary, depending on the chronology used, so take these as no more than an approximation.

As an aside, it will be of interest later that Amenhotep III has been proposed as the model, or inspiration, for Memnon.

4. See my discussion in Wrestling with Proteus for more on the likelihood of Thebes being the dominant kingdom in Greece during at least part of the period spanning the mid 15th to early 13th centuries.

5. Kelly gives a range of times when he thinks this change could have happened, but he does seem to lean toward it being after Thebes’ sack in the mid 13th century.

6. Interestingly, Emily Wilson’s 2023 translation called Egyptian Thebes the “city of seven gates” from which 20 men march forth with chariots, while Alexander’s translation says 200 men with chariots. Wilson comments in her notes that the line conflates the two cities, and suggests “a later composer may have added a line to the text.” (page 642.) She thus appears to be supporting the interpolation theory. I’ll note that Wilson and Alexander used different Greek texts; Alexander used the Teubner edition edited by Martin West; Wilson began with a much older one, the Oxford Classical Text (3rd ed., 1920), and consulted several others, including the Teubner edition. As a tiebreaker, I consulted Fagles’ 1990 translation; it agrees with Alexander’s. He appears to also have used the Oxford Classical Text (edition not listed), so Wilson’s use of “seven gates” seems anomalous. Neither Alexander or Fagles address the line in their notes.