Apparently, however, the argument must look far beyond the Byblos rapier and
the Aegean. As will be set forth in detail toward the end of this chapter, Type A
rapiers (see Figure 3.3) considerably earlier than either the one from Byblos or
the many from Crete (to say nothing of those from the Mycenaean Shaft Graves)
have been found much further to the east: in kurgans and other burials south of
the Caucasus. How the rulers of Crete could have learned about the Type A rapiers
of southern Caucasia is unknown, but one possibility is fairly obvious. Late in the
MM/MH II period, that is, the rulers at Knossos may have begun employing a
few south Caucasian chariot crews, to help with policing Crete and the coastlands
opposite Kolonna and Ayia Irini.
Along with the Middle Minoan rapier in the rich grave at Kolonna was a boar’s-
tusk helmet, or more specifically plates that had been sawn from boars’ tusks, and
then had been perforated on both ends and sewn to a leather cap. The tusks of
many boars were required for the making of one such helmet,^100 and the man who
wore the helmet was obviously a person of importance. Helmets made from boars’
tusks came dramatically into fashion in the Aegean toward the end of the Middle
Bronze period, but they may have been preceded by decorative artifacts that
included boar’s-tusk plates. In her excavations at Eutresis, Hetty Goldman found
perforated boar’s-tusk plates on the floor of an MH II house, and although she
suggested that “[t]hey doubtless came from a leather helmet, like the boar’s-tusk
helmet of Mycenae,”^101 it is not certain where they came from. George Mylonas
found the remains of what he thought was a boar’s-tusk helmet, along with a dagger,
in a “warrior’s grave” at Eleusis that pre-dates the Shaft Grave period, but a recent
review raises doubts whether the fragments of boars’ tusks came from a helmet,
and whether indeed the man buried in the grave was a warrior.^102 The boar’s-tusk
helmet has been described as an Aegean invention, and Cretan commanders may
well have been the first to wear them. Long before boar’s-tusk helmets were worn
in the Aegean, however, boar’s-tusk plates had been worn along the northern shore
of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, surely for decoration and ostentation rather
than for protection in battle.^103
The boar’s-tusk helmet and the Type A rapier tell us that on Crete and in the
Aegean islands some kind of military display had become important by the end
of the Middle Minoan II period. Such ostentation, however, is not necessarily
evidence for warfare. The absence of fortification walls at the Cretan palaces
suggests that the MM II rulers had no worries about war close to home. Their
control of the Aegean islands and some coasts of the Greek mainland may have
depended, for all we know, on the display rather than on the exercise of military
power.
Warfare on the Greek mainland in the Middle Helladic period
It appears that on the Greek mainland—unlike in the Cretan palaces or in Cretan
outposts abroad—any kind of military display was very rare through most of the
Middle Helladic period. As mentioned above, in his survey of Aegean bronze
artifacts from the Early Bronze and Middle Bronze (before the Shaft Graves)
Warfare in Western Eurasia 79