1. From Thutmose III to Homer to Blackadder: Egypt, the Aegean, and the “Barbarian Periphery” of the Late Bronze Age World System

Although numerous studies have focused on various aspects of Late Bronze Age interconnections (such as the exchange of objects, raw materials, animals and plants, specialist craftsmen, artists, and even diplomatic marriages), the role of the military in the exchange of technologies and ideas has remained remarkably understudied. By highlighting a number of artifacts that have been found throughout the eastern Mediterranean, this paper seeks to explore the role of the military and especially mercenaries as a conduit of knowledge and ideas in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean and beyond.

A Stone Mace-Head in the Age of Bronze

Few sites illustrate the close Bronze Age relations between the Aegean, Cyprus, the Levant, and Egypt as well as the Uluburun shipwreck.¹ The ship, measuring approximately twenty meters, was probably of Levantine build and on its way to the north when it sank soon after 1305 BC (if the dendrochronological data may be believed).² Its cargo was preserved at the bottom of the Gulf of Antalya (south of present-day Antalya Province, Turkey), providing a unique insight into the complexity of Late Bronze Age long-distance exchange and the sheer scale and variety of objects and materials that were transported (fig. 1.1). Apart from a whopping ten tons in copper oxhide, bun-shaped and oval ingots, the ship carried Canaanite vessels (containing pistacia resin among other things), glass ingots of uncertain (possibly Egyptian) origin, ebony and ivory, silver and gold jewelry from Egypt and the Levant, and a smaller group of objects that came from the Aegean world, including eighteen stirrup jars and a flask, two Mycenaean-type swords, razors, and two glass relief plaques, which are thought to have been part of two pectorals. Cemal Pulak, the excavator of the wreck, has proposed that these Aegean objects were the personal effects of two high-ranking Mycenaeans, who may have been acting as emissaries of a Mycenaean king.³ Although this interpretation must remain conjecture, the cargo of the ship does indeed resemble many of the items that are listed in the Amarna Letters as part of diplomatic gift exchanges.⁴

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What may lend further credibility to Pulak’s suggestion is the presence of a remarkable diptych. The materials of this folded writing board—choice boxwood and ivory—suggest that it was not a mere trader’s log but rather a diplomatic passport, perhaps including a list of the gifts that were to be presented at court (like those we know from the Amarna archive).⁵ This does not necessarily require its bearer to be a Mycenaean, although Martien Dillo has observed that the signs engraved on the diptych’s edges seem to represent Mycenaean numerals.⁶ It thus seems reasonable to assume, with Pulak, that the Uluburun ship was indeed laden with diplomatic gifts destined for one of the palatial centers in the Mycenaean world and that at least two of its passengers were Mycenaean diplomats, escorting their precious cargo.

The voyage to and from the Levant (or even further south, to Egypt) was not without its risks, as indeed is demonstrated by the very fact that the Uluburun ship sank. But apart from bad weather, human factors could also imperil the Late Bronze Age traveler. There is ample evidence for this in contemporary texts, in which there are references to rulers detaining foreign diplomats, trade embargoes prohibiting ships from entering port (such as the so-called Sausgamuwa Treaty), and—more frequently—piracy.⁷ The messengers on board the Uluburun ship may have prepared for such eventualities. Both appear to have carried swords, and they may have even had their own escort. These Mycenaeans were not the only conspicuous people on board. Pulak has suggested that a remarkable stone mace-head of a type known from the Carpathian-Pontic region found in the Uluburun wreck may have belonged to a—clearly important—northerner (fig. 1.2).⁸ Several other objects—including a particular type of dress pin, a bronze sword with central Mediterranean (but also Balkan) parallels, and various spearheads of a type that was common in Macedonia—may also have belonged to this person (or perhaps even several “northerners”).⁹ In view of the quantity of weapons, it is unlikely that this “northerner” was a merchant or envoy himself; instead he may have been on board as a member of the Mycenaeans’ cortege. Heavily armed, he could have served as their bodyguard, although the presence of the mace-head may point toward a more ceremonial task as “mace-bearer”—announcing the arrival of, and instilling awe for, his Mycenaean companions (in the manner of Amirullah the mace-bearer, employed by Josiah Harlan on his voyages through Afghanistan in the nineteenth century).¹⁰

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Mercenaries from the Edge of the World?

Could the “mace-bearer” have been a mercenary from the edges of the Mycenaean palatial world? Although the Bronze Age in the Balkans to a large extent remains an archaeological terra incognita, recent research suggests that the regions to the north of Greece—Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and especially the Carpathian basin—were involved in the Mediterranean world to a far greater extent than has hitherto been thought. Though the precise nature of the area’s relations with the Mycenaean world remains unclear, one can be reasonably sure that Mycenaean demand for metals played an important role in these connections. The Carpathians were rich in gold, silver, and copper, and there is good evidence for extensive mining and metalworking (and related lead pollution) in the region during the Late Bronze Age and, indeed, even before that.¹¹ In exchange for metals and finished objects (for the skills of the Carpathian smiths were considerable), as well as objects and materials from regions further to the north, such as amber, Aegean traders provided their Carpathian neighbors with materials and objects from the Mediterranean, the Near East, and beyond.¹² In such a context of relatively close connections between the Mycenaean world and its northern neighbors, it is plausible to assume that Mycenaean elites employed foreign mercenaries from the Balkans.¹³ The fact that a significant portion of the Mycenaean imports (or possible local imitations of them) in southern Bulgaria consist of swords and spearheads may further support such a scenario.¹⁴

The Mycenaeans would not have been alone in their practice of employing foreigners in their army, for the tradition was already well established throughout the Near East by the fourteenth century BC. There, too, mercenaries typically came from the “periphery”—regions that were perceived as uncivilized and dangerous—and it is precisely for those qualities that their inhabitants made such good soldiers. One of the earliest references to the recruitment of mercenaries is a text from the reign of Zimri-Lim (ca. 1779–1761 BC), king of the powerful city-state of Mari (in northern Mesopotamia), who recruited five thousand soldiers from the Hana, a generic term for nomads. These bedouin were clearly preferable as soldiers to the “civilized” people of Mari itself, as contemporary texts emphasize their qualities as soldiers and their capacity to deal with wild animals such as lions.¹⁵

Egypt, too, had a long tradition of incorporating foreign specialists into its army. There, though, they appear to have been drawn mostly from conquered people, from territories that fell under pharaonic control. The best-known example for this practice is the inclusion of Nubian archers in the Egyptian army. But other specialist corps, such as the Medjay, were similarly relied on.¹⁶ By the time of the New Kingdom (ca. 1550–1069 BC), Egyptian texts mention other foreigners in the Egyptian army, including Libyans, Canaanites, and Sherden—the last known mostly from texts dating to the end of the Bronze Age, in which they are part of the invading “Sea Peoples,” a collection of various peoples whose origins are still unclear but who seem to have coalesced, at least occasionally, into larger seaborne raiding parties. It remains unclear how most of these foreigners entered the Egyptian army, though in the case of the Sherden the texts indicate that they were forced into service following their defeat at the hands of the Egyptians.

Faith and Technology

The Sherden are of particular interest as an example of how mercenaries served as a conduit for the introduction of military technologies. Though they are probably first mentioned in a letter in the Amarna archive (EA 122) from Rib-hadda, mayor of Gubla (Byblos), as še-er-ta-an-nu, they appear in Egyptian iconography only during the reign of Ramesses II, half a century or so later. They are shown wearing a distinctive type of horned helmet with a curious globular crest on top and carrying a circular shield with multiple (metal?) bosses while wielding a sword of an uncertain, though definitely un-Egyptian type, perhaps related to the Naue II sword, which originated in Europe in the fifteenth century BC. The Sherden ships were unlike anything the Egyptians had seen before. Like the “northerner” on the Uluburun ship, the Sherden were, after their defeat and incorporation into the Egyptian army, valued as bodyguards and accompanied Ramesses II at the Battle of Kadesh (fig. 1.3).¹⁷

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Although the precise terms of their employment in Egypt are unknown, it is clear that many Sherden never left the land of the Nile. Instead they settled there, acquired land (presumably in payment for their military service), and Egyptianized to a remarkable extent. Nevertheless, there is evidence that they retained some of their own cultural characteristics and—a century after their first appearance in Egypt, early in the reign of Ramesses II—still stood out from the Egyptians. Papyri from the reigns of Ramesses V (the Wilbour Papyrus) and Ramesses IX (the Adoption Papyrus) still identify Sherden among the Egyptian population, in particular at the site of Gurob.¹⁸ There is some archaeological evidence to support this. W. M. Flinders Petrie, during his excavations at Gurob, was struck by the quantity of imports at the site, especially Mycenaean pottery, as well a number of peculiar features, notably various groups of burnt objects, which, he suggested, might indicate Aegean cremation customs.¹⁹ This suggestion has recently been questioned,²⁰ and Petrie’s so-called Burnt Groups may be more plausibly identified as the remains of looted graves, probably dating to the Third Intermediate Period (the burning may be explained as a crude attempt by the looters to extract any metal). Although Petrie’s argument for a Mycenaean tradition of cremation at Gurob thus seems questionable, various other finds at Gurob do suggest a foreign presence at the site. They include the occurrence of non-Egyptian names on coffins, including a certain Anen-Tursha, who, despite his name, seems to have risen to prominence in the pharaonic administration, eventually attaining the position of deputy overseer of the royal harem.

Most significant and spectacular is a wooden ship-cart model (fig. 1.4a–b).²¹ Petrie, when he discovered the remains of this model, assumed that it represented an Egyptian barge. A recent study by Shelley Wachsmann has now shown this to be wrong; instead, he notes, it “represents a land-based cultic ship (cart) that had been patterned after an actual ship, in this case a pentakonter. Put simply, the Gurob model is a copy of a copy. And while the Gurob model was thus twice removed from the original war galley that served as its prototype, the information that the model supplies regarding the transfer of cult in the seam between the Late Bronze and Iron Ages cannot be overemphasized.”²² The ship, then, is a remarkable example of religious syncretism, for while in Egypt models of barges are known from religious processions, in which they were usually carried on long poles by priests, the example from Gurob is a novel, foreign type of ship that—in Egypt at least—was clearly associated with the Sea Peoples, in particular the Sherden. As such, the Gurob ship model not only serves as an example of religious syncretism but also demonstrates the role of foreigners in the transfer of military naval technology.

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In a series of important publications, Jeffrey Emanuel has demonstrated the importance of the Sea Peoples as a catalyst for maritime innovation.²³ While various novel features, such as the loose-footed, brailed sail and the top-mounted crow’s nest, were already known in the Levant from the fourteenth century BC onward, it appears that their full military potential, especially in combination with the new (Aegean?) type of war galley, like that represented by the ship model from Gurob, was first realized by groups such as the Sherden. It was only after encountering the first groups of Sea Peoples early in the reign of Ramesses II that Egyptian shipwrights took notice of the value of innovations and started implementing them in their own designs. The change can be traced, as Emanuel has shown, in various Egyptian reliefs of the 19th Dynasty. While Egyptian ships at the time of Ramesses II’s first encounters with the Sherden were typically Egyptian, those that were deployed by Ramesses III (as shown on the walls of his temple at Medinet Habu), although still based on Egyptian riverine ships rather than the Aegean galley, are otherwise remarkably similar to the ships of their foes, with a top-mounted crow’s nest and a loose-footed, brailed sail. Thus the arrival in Egypt of the Sea Peoples—despite the havoc they wrought—is also associated with a number of remarkable breakthroughs in ship design that, in many ways, influenced the shipbuilding traditions in Greece and Phoenicia in the millennium to come.²⁴

Traveling Soldiers, Traveling Tales

It seems reasonable to assume that mercenaries were important agents in the transfer of military technology, tying the peripheries of the ancient world to the centers of urban societies. This process of transfer, however, extended both ways. Plate armor appeared in temperate Europe during the thirteenth century BC, at around the same time that the Naue II sword came to Greece.²⁵ It is quite likely that other, less tangible or archaeologically demonstrable know-how traveled with these new types of weapons, including, as N. K. Sandars has suggested,²⁶ foreign combat tactics, but one may also think of popular stories of love and war, the type of stories that would have been recited or sung around a traveler’s or military campfire. Indeed, the “northern mercenary” on board the Uluburun ship may have been one of those who brought new ideas from the Balkans to the Aegean.

Mycenaean Greece was dotted with palatial centers that were home to a literate elite. From Hittite texts, we know that Mycenaean rulers were involved in high-level diplomacy, participated in royal gift exchange, and personally knew highborn Hittite officers and probably even Hittite royalty.²⁷ Tawagalawa/Ete(w)okle(we)s, the brother of the king of Ahhiyawa, for example, reportedly rode together with the personal charioteer of the Hittite king. The Mycenaeans themselves may have served as foreign mercenaries.²⁸ A sword that was captured during a Hittite campaign against the Assuwa League of western Anatolia, for example, is of a clearly Aegean-inspired type (even though its dedicatory inscription indicates that it was used by a soldier of, and probably forged in, Assuwa²⁹), and two texts from the Hittite vassal state of Ugarit suggest that, at least toward the end of the Bronze Age, the Hittites may have employed soldiers from the Mycenaean world (although the exact identification of the men from Hiyawa and the nature of the PAD.MEŠ [metal supplies, payment, foodstuff?] they are expecting, is debated).³⁰ Similarly, there are indications that Mycenaeans served in the Egyptian pharaoh’s armies from at least the Amarna period onward. The famous pictorial papyrus found at Akhetaten (Tell el-Amarna) offers a rare glimpse of these Aegeans, who wear boar’s-tusk helmets but are otherwise dressed like Egyptians (fig. 1.5a–b).³¹

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Archaeology offers some additional evidence in the form of a piece of just such a boar’s-tusk helmet that was found at Pi-Ramesse, in the Nile Delta.³² The Gurob ship model, moreover, may similarly hint at a Mycenaean presence, for even though the origins of the Sherden remain murky, the ship they used is clearly Aegean-inspired. In fact, its black and red paint is so idiosyncratic that both Wachsmann and Emanuel pointed out the similarity to the ships of the Achaeans in Homer’s Iliad. Emanuel writes: “This preserved polychromatic schema not only makes the model unique among known representations of Helladic ships, but it aligns with—and helps us visually understand—both Homer’s description of the Achaeans’ ships as μέλας ‘black,’ his reference to Odysseus’ ships specifically as μιλτοπάρῃος ‘red-cheeked.’ Odysseus’ ships are also referred to as φοινικοπάρῃος ‘purple-cheeked,’ but most noteworthy is the fact that only Odysseus’ ships are identified by the ‘red-’ and ‘purple-cheeked’ epithets.”³³ It is likely that, like Odysseus, at least some of these Mycenaean mercenaries entered Egyptian service voluntarily or, at the very least, were able to leave Egypt after their period of service ended. A piece of scale armor of a type worn by Near Eastern charioteers, stamped with the cartouche of Ramesses II—a rare find on the island of Salamis, off the coast of Athens—may have belonged to one of these returning soldiers.³⁴

There can be no doubt that these returning warriors were held in high regard and had a special status in their communities. Apart from bringing souvenirs such as scale armor with them, they doubtless told stories about their experiences in distant lands. These stories, of course, were embellished with fantastic elements, hearsay, and pure fantasy that served as a conduit for literary topoi. The remarkable parallel between the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep II, who showed off his military prowess by shooting arrows through a copper ingot, and Odysseus’s ability to shoot an arrow through a row of twelve ax-heads, may be understood through the prism of such storytelling, whereby an original Egyptian story was transferred to Greek epic.³⁵ Odysseus, in particular, seems to have had quite a few Egyptian-inspired tricks up his sleeve. Apart from his abilities with his bow, his famous trick with the Trojan horse is remarkably similar to the Egyptian story of the general Djehuty, who served under Thutmose III and is reported to have captured the enemy city of Joppa by concealing his soldiers in large baskets offered to the ruler of the city as tribute.³⁶

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Not all of these literary elements need to have come to Greece via returning mercenaries, of course, though it would make sense for precisely this type of adventurer to be familiar with heroic stories—having learned them, perhaps, from foreign comrades at the campfire—and to integrate them into their own songs of glory and fame. The similarities between Near Eastern stories about Gilgamesh, Djehuty, Amenhotep II, the Greek epic cycle, and—eventually—northern European epics, such as the song of Beowulf, can be seen in the context of these Late Bronze Age military connections (see fig. 1.6). Elements of these shared topoi (perhaps even some sort of shared warrior ethos) are preserved even in contemporary culture. As such, we may perhaps be forgiven in considering Baldrick’s catchphrase in the BBC television series Blackadder, “My Lord, I have a cunning plan,” as a late twentieth-century (AD) reflection of a story that originated in early fourteenth-century (BC) Egypt and entered European lore through the Greek and Roman epic cycle.