In Search of the Trojan War (44 page)

The great eastern bastion of Troy VI.

Arthur Evans in a 1907 painting by Sir William Richmond.

The throne room at Knossos after the excavation in April 1900. Evans stands in front of the tent on the right.

Reconstructing the palace of Knossos in the 1920s.

Troy, the plain from the city, 1893. This gives a vivid impression of the steep height of the citadel.

Seagoing ships from the Thera frescoes (
c
.1500 BC). Though earlier than the Trojan War period, these give an idea of the kind of boats that may have been used in the heyday of the Mycenaean ‘empire’.

A Linear B tablet from Pylos. ‘Thus the watchers are guarding the coasts’ – the beginning of the end for Nestor’s dynasty, the victors of Troy?

The citadel of Mycenae.

A Mycenaean bridge below the citadel. At the head of the valley is mount Prophitis Ilias, the site of a beacon post and watchtower, where, according to the fifth-century poet Aeschylus, the news of the fall of Troy reached Mycenae by a chain of fires lit across the Aegean.

The entrance to the Treasury of Athens, the giant bee-hive tomb of one of the rulers of Mycenae c.1300 BC.

Midea, the third great fortress of the Argolid and comparable in size to Mycenae. The cult of Hippodamia, the mother of Atreus and grandmother of Agamemnon, was later observed at a tomb here.

Boghaz Köy, one of the four main forts within the circuit of the city wall at the Hittite capital of Hattusas.

The southern defences of Boghaz Köy in early November.