/r/MycenaeanMemes
Ancient memes Circa 1300 BC Mycenaean Greece
/r/MycenaeanMemes
If we believe the Homeric sagas (as all the Greeks did) in about 1194 BCE 1000 ships, with perhaps 30 men in each, armed to the teeth, sail to besiege and sack Troy - whether for revenge or riches - and ten years later finally succeed. Many of their leaders, - like Achilles - are killed in the battles. The survivors return to Mycenaean Greece, many encountering storms and misfortunes on the way. Arriving home with booty and captives, they find their kingdoms in chaos, with usurpers, unfaithful wives, rebellious sons, invaders etc. etc. or example, Odysseus has to fight off his wife’s suitors, Agamemnon is killed by his unfaithful wife Clytemnestra, his son Orestes kills the usurper. Helen returns with Menelaus, but on his death is driven out by her stepsons, and killed on Rhodes. Odysseus is killed by his own unrecognised son, Telegonus, on a raiding party. Dorians tribes move in from the North, as far South as Sparta. All this speaks of chaos in the Palace culture. The old order is breaking down. What more natural for the triumphant, well-armed and war-hardened veterans of Troy than to go a-raiding again, like Vikings, in search for adventure and more loot.. Odysseus (Odyssey, Ch.14) tells a tale of just such an expedition, attacking Egypt, but defeated by the Egyptian army, exactly as described by Rameses III. Other raiders are more successful. Interestingly, after 1066 CE the victorious Norman knights do the same, seeking adventure and conquests in Ireland, Sicily and Jerusalem. Constantinople was sacked in 1204 CE. So the Trojan War may have been the catalyst for this general calamitous breakdown in many previously ordered, but ultimately fragile societies around the middle and eastern Mediterranean, around 1077 BCE. I blame that lecherous rogue Paris.
I have a project about a Mycenaean character. I need a good quality reference for shoes, boots or sandals.