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MYTHS OF CRETE & PRE-HELLENIC EUROPE

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Skinwalker
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« Reply #795 on: February 27, 2010, 12:28:49 pm »

In this connection special interest attaches to our own legends about the invading giants who gave their names to Alban (Albion) and Erin. It seems probable that these giants symbolized the folks who overran Great Britain and Ireland in the early Bronze Age. "Alban" (genitive of "Alba") or "Albion" and "Alps" are derived from a common root, signifying "white". Were the invaders of ancient Britain "Whitelanders", i.e. an Alpine folk?
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« Reply #796 on: February 27, 2010, 12:29:01 pm »

The Mycenæan period of Greek civilization was remembered as that of the third or Bronze Race of Hesiod.

p. 332

"Their gear was of bronze, they had bronze houses; they tilled the soil with bronze; black iron there was none." Nestor, in the Iliad, refers to the Bronze Age folk as the heroes of an earlier generation who were greater than Agamemnon and his host.
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« Reply #797 on: February 27, 2010, 12:29:17 pm »

I lived with men, and they despised me not,
Abler in counsel, greater than yourselves.
Such men I never saw, and ne'er shall see,
As Pirithous and Dryas, wise and brave,
Cœneus, Exadius, god-like Polypheme,
And Theseus, Ægeus' more than mortal son.
The mightiest they among the sons of men. . . . 1
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« Reply #798 on: February 27, 2010, 12:29:31 pm »

Another element which entered into the ethnic fusion in Mycenæan Greece was the Danubian. The influence of Danubian culture extended as far south as Thessaly, where the Achæans were predominant. These Achæan pastoralists were drifting southward into the Peloponnesus as early as the Late Minoan I Period, and some of them may have reached Crete. But their greatest migration appears to have occurred at the close of the Pelopid Dynasty, and it is probable that they were the late conquerors of Mycenæ and Tiryns. After holding sway in the Peloponnesus for a period of uncertain duration, they were overthrown in turn by the Dorians.
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« Reply #799 on: February 27, 2010, 12:29:51 pm »

About the time that the legendary Pelops secured the ascendancy of his stock on the Greek mainland, Crete was in a state of decay. In Egypt the brilliant reign of Amenhotep III marked the zenith of Egyptian power in the Nile valley and Syria. Mitanni, in northern Mesopotamia, which was ruled by kings with Indo-European names, was being threatened on one side by the growing power of Assyria, and on the other by that of the Hittites.

p. 333
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« Reply #800 on: February 27, 2010, 12:30:00 pm »

After Akhenaton, the dreamer king, ascended the Egyptian throne and inaugurated his religious revolution, the kingdom of Mitanni was overthrown, and the Egyptian Empire in northern Syria went to pieces. The Hittites had leagued themselves with the Amorites, and were pressing southward, gaining control of the trade routes from Babylonia and Egypt.
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« Reply #801 on: February 27, 2010, 12:30:12 pm »

The eastward expansion of the Hittites was accompanied by a shrinkage of their power in the west. Reinforced by folk-waves from Thrace, the people of the Phrygian area then began to gather strength, and asserted themselves later as the Muski, 1 the forerunners of the historic Phrygians. The sixth city of Troy also came into prominence. It was contemporary with Mycenæ and Tiryns, and like these cities owed its rise to the fusion of Danubian and Ægean cultures, the latter predominating.
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« Reply #802 on: February 27, 2010, 12:30:20 pm »

This was Homer's Troy, and so powerful did it become that when the Achæans entered into possession of the Peloponnesian centres of Mycenæan culture they found that it constituted a serious menace to their ascendancy.
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« Reply #803 on: February 27, 2010, 12:30:32 pm »

As in Egypt, descent in Crete and its colonial settlements was by the female line. The Achæan chiefs therefore followed the example of Atreus by marrying a royal princess, so as to secure the succession of their descendants to the thrones of the various States which they overpowered. Menelaus had married Helen, Queen of Sparta, and departed overseas on an expedition. During his absence, Priam, King of Troy, abducted Helen, who became the wife of his son Paris. The Trojans were thus enabled to claim Sparta as part of their dominions. On his return, the Achæan monarch found it necessary to fit out a great

p. 334
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« Reply #804 on: February 27, 2010, 12:30:42 pm »

expedition and inaugurate the famous siege of Troy, so as to recover the queen by whose right he held the Spartan throne. Such appears to be the historical germ of the Homeric narrative.
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« Reply #805 on: February 27, 2010, 12:30:53 pm »

The Greeks dated the period of the Trojan war as from 1194 till 1184 B.C. This appears to be an accurate calculation. A few years previously, in 1200 B.C., the second great sea raid on Egypt took place during the reign of Rameses III of the Twentieth Dynasty. Perhaps the absence of Menelaus was not unconnected with this adventure.
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« Reply #806 on: February 27, 2010, 12:31:16 pm »

The first sea raid occurred about a quarter of a century earlier, during the reign of Merne-ptah, son of Rameses II. It was conducted in conjunction with the Hittites, and taken part in by the Shardana, who may have given their name to Sardinia; the Akhaivasha, usually identified with the Achæans; the Shakalsha, who may have been Cretanized Sicilians; and the Tursha, perhaps the Turseni, who were represented in Etruria. The piratical peoples were probably remnants of the Cretans and their conquerors. They were defeated by Merne-ptah, but some settled in Libya and became mercenaries in the Egyptian army.
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« Reply #807 on: February 27, 2010, 12:31:36 pm »

The second raid was of great dimensions. It included the Danauna, the Danaans, the Shakalsha, the Tursha, the Tikkarai, who may have come from Zakro in Crete, and the Pulesti, the Philistines. The sea force which sailed south by Cyprus was supported by land raiders from North Syria and Anatolia. Among the latter were the Philistines, who gave their name to Palestine. Rameses III won victories on sea and land, being assisted by the raiders' kinsmen, the Shardana mercenaries.

It is suggestive to find that the siege of Homer's Troy occurred a few years afterwards. The conquerors of pre-Mycenæan Greece, having been foiled in their attempt to

p. 335
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« Reply #808 on: February 27, 2010, 12:32:06 pm »

overrun Egypt, sought expansion eastward, and had first to strike down the Phrygian city which threatened their supremacy.

Troy VI had been built about 1500 B.C., that is, about the beginning of Crete's Late Minoan II or Palace Period. It was surrounded by great stone walls 16 feet thick and 20 feet: high, which were surmounted by first a brick and then a stone parapet, which added another 6 feet to them. The walls were flanked by three great towers about 30 feet in
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« Reply #809 on: February 27, 2010, 12:33:10 pm »

height. As the stone-work has Egyptian characteristics, it is possible that the builders were imported from Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty. There were at least three city gates, and these were all on the southern side. Wells were sunk to the water-bearing strata of the hill.
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