46 THE MYTHS OF CREATION: THE GODS
which are unmistakably Mycenaean and of the thirteenth century (the period of
late Troy VI or Troy Vila). It is difficult to resist the identification of this ceme-
tery as that of the camp of the invading Greeks and Besika Bay, from which the
island of Tenedos can be seen about six miles away, as the harbor where the
Greeks anchored and encamped. Nearby is the headland of Yassi Tepe (formerly
named Cape Troy) where there rises a great cone-shaped tumulus, Besik Tepe
(now called Sivri Tepe), which most certainly goes back to the Bronze Age and
very probably is the great tumulus mentioned by Homer. It must also be the
mound, believed in classical times to be the tomb of Achilles and visited by
Xerxes and Alexander the Great, who was inspired by his love of the Iliad and
saw himself and his comrade Hephaestion as a second Achilles and Patroclus.
In the epic cycle of saga, the great leaders of the Mycenaean kingdoms
banded together to sail against Troy and, even though the historical facts remain
a matter of conjecture, the romance of this poetic legend has a reality too. Until
it is disproven with certainty (an unlikely prospect), we have every right to be-
lieve that there once was an Agamemnon and a Clytemnestra, a Hector and an
Andromache and an Achilles, who lived and died, no matter how fictitious the
details of the story that they inspired; and handsome Paris and beautiful Helen
ran away together in the grip of Aphrodite, providing the inciting cause for a
great war that has become immortal. The final results of the re-excavation of
Troy will, we fervently hope, provide some secure answers at last. The scien-
tific, contemporary archaeologist and historian will settle for nothing less than
written proof; dare one expect some such confirmation of the Trojan War now
that a sample of writing has been found in Bronze Age Troy?^14END OF THE MYCENAEAN AGE AND HOMER
The destruction of the later phases of Troy VII (Vllb, to the beginning of the
tenth century B.c.) marked the troublesome period of transition from the Late
Bronze Age to the Age of Iron. The Greeks, we are to assume, returned from
Troy in triumph. Yet not long after their return, the Mycenaean Age in Greece
was brought to a violent end, perhaps precipitated by internal dissension. The
widely held theory that the destruction was entirely the work of Dorians in-
vading from the north and east has been questioned. Some historians not very
convincingly associate the destruction of the Mycenaean kingdoms with the "sea
peoples" mentioned in an Egyptian inscription put up by the pharaoh Rameses
III in the twelfth century B.c., but there is still no certainty about the details of
the end of the Bronze Age in Greece.
Darkness descends upon the history of Greece, a darkness that is only grad-
ually dispelled with the emergence of the two great Homeric epics, the Iliad and
the Odyssey, in the eighth century B.C. The stories of the earlier period were kept
alive by oral recitation, transmitted by bards like those described in the epics
themselves. "Homer" almost certainly belongs to Asia Minor or one of the is-