hephaestus 151
remarkable ships of the Phaeacians, inhabitants of the technologically
marvelous land encountered by Odysseus, in Homer’s Odyssey (7– 8).
Phaeacian ships require no rudders or oars, no human pilots, naviga-
tors, or rowers, but are steered by thought alone. The Homeric myth
envisions the vessels as controlled by some sort of centralized system,
with access to a vast data archive of “virtual” maps and navigation charts
of the entire ancient world. King Alcinous boasts that his unsinkable
ships can travel very long distances under any weather and sea con-
ditions and return to his port on the same day. The ships themselves
“understand what we are thinking about and want,” explains Alcinous,
“They know all the cities and countries in the whole world and can tra-
verse the sea even when it is clouded with mist, so there is no danger
of being wrecked or coming to any harm.” To transport Odysseus back
to Ithaca, the ships simply “need to be told his city and country and
they will devise the route accordingly.” Odysseus marvels at the steady
course of the pilotless Phaeacian ship, as swift as a falcon, as it carries
him across the sea to his home island. The analogy to modern Global
Positioning Systems (GPS) and automatic pilot and navigation systems
is inescapable. 35
Incidentally, a group of ancient Egyptian tales describe ships powered
by artificially animated oarsmen. The texts are found in fragments of
demotic papyrus pages dating to the Ptolemaic- Roman period (fourth
century BC– fourth century AD). Set in the historical time of Ramses
II, these stories tell how evil sorcerers make wax models of ships and
rowers and command the figures to carry out tasks. It is interesting that
the rowers are not only animated but apparently capable of independent
thought and actions while completing their missions. 36
Hephaestus’s self- moving tripods and automated female servants have
piqued the interest of historians of robotics. Their glamor overshadows
yet another set of automated objects that have received less attention,
although they too perform specialized labor in Hephaestus’s forge. 37 In-
vented in antiquity to deliver more air to increase combustion and heat,
real bellows technology was crucial in the development of metallurgy,
which requires extremely hot fires. Later in the Iliad scene (18.468– 74),