THE CRISIS OF THE SEA PEOPLES (4)

Alaksandu of Wilusa and the Prince Alexandros of Troy

A PLAUSIBLE HISTORICAL CONNECTION

 by Carlos J. Moreu (2022)

 

ABSTRACT

The historical background of the Trojan War can be found in the end of Troy VIIa, a city that was burned during an armed conflict; but not in the end of Troy VIh, destroyed by an earthquake some 90 years earlier. However, it is plausible that the legendary Prince Alexandros or Paris was based on the historic figure, recorded in a Hittite tablet, of Alaksandu of Wilusa, which is dated to the age of Troy VIh. Some classic authors, different from Homer, connected this Trojan nobleman with a certain Motylos (identifiable with the Hittite King Muwatalli II) and with the Egyptian King Proteus or Ketes (identifiable with Pharaoh Seti I). Both sovereigns were contemporary, at least during five years, to the young Alaksandu when he could be still a prince, instead of a king. In the Odyssey, Homer mentioned the Egyptian Proteus as a prophetic and marine divinity, and he also cited a King Polybos of Egypt, identified by Manetho with the last pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty, who reigned in the period that better fits the destruction of Troy VIIa. Therefore, it is very probable that two oral traditions, originated in different periods, were mixed in the epic cycle of the Trojan War.         

 

 

INTRODUCTION

In the decade of 1930 the archaeologist Carl Blegen, who excavated in Hissarlik (northwest Turkey), verified that the stratum VIh of Troy was destroyed by an earthquake and thus the following stratum Troy VIIa, attacked and burned during an armed conflict, may have been the city destroyed by the Achaeans or Mycenaean Greeks, as the legendary Hellenic tradition recalled.

The end of Troy VIIa was dated by Blegen to the 13th century BC, but more recent studies, based on the pottery, have stated that the city was burned down at the very beginning of the Mycenaean IIIC period. Perhaps the most useful source for dating this event is the classic work written by the Egyptian historian Manetho during the third century BC, titled Aigyptíaka. According to this author, the destruction of Troy by the Achaeans took place during the reign of the last pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty, named Thuoris, identifiable with the Queen Twosret (the stepmother of Pharaoh Siptah). Therefore, the fall of Troy should have occurred during the years 1202-1200 BC, if we accept the high chronology of Egypt, or during the years 1188-1186 BC in the low chronology. These dates fit very well the beginning of the Mycenaean IIIC period, which is the date proposed by modern archaeologists.

Seeing that the end of Troy VIIa was contemporary to the so-called “Crisis of 1200 BC” that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean, the interest of the ancient work written by Manetho also lies in the fact that this Egyptian historian may have known the inscriptions and reliefs of Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Ramesses III. The main events of this crisis were recorded in the great inscription of Medinet Habu, located on the second pylon of the temple, and the wall reliefs show the peoples who menaced the Egyptian empire at the beginning of the reign of Ramesses III, ten years after the destruction of Troy VIIa. Among the enemies of Egypt there was a coalition of Sea Peoples, or the “countries of the sea”, who had moved from the Syrian region of Amurru (according to the great inscription) travelling by land and by sea. The peoples that moved by land are depicted in the northern wall of the temple, travelling with women and children in ox-carts, as well as in some battle-chariots. The war ships of those who travelled by sea are also depicted in another relief of the northern wall. In both scenes, these foreign peoples are fighting against the Egyptians.

The key to understanding the Sea Peoples’ crisis was published as early as in 1929 by Harold H. Nelson, and also by Nancy K. Sandars in her classic and brilliant study on this subject (published in 1978). After the full epigraphic study of the inscriptions and reliefs of Medinet Habu, Nelson concluded that the eastern Mediterranean crisis was basically a chain of conflicts and migrations. He expounded this idea in the following text: “about 1200 BC the tide of invasion from Europe had swept across Asia Minor, broken up the Hittite empire, and spread out over the peninsula. In all this turmoil, elements of the older populations were dislodged from their places; and if they were not caught up by the advancing wave of invasion, they fled before it in search of new homes. Many of these northerners, both newcomers and vanquished, were well acquainted with the sea.” Nelson believed that the Sea Peoples who arrived in Canaan came from Anatolia because they were “dislodged from their homes by the newcomers from Europe” and thus they “moved southward not only in a military invasion but in a comprehensive migration, with their families and possessions, to seek new homes in the Asiatic provinces of Egypt.” Sandars also explained the arrival of the Sea Peoples in Canaan as the end of a chain reaction. She suggested that these groups moved from Anatolia, Cyprus and northern Syria because they had been harassed by other bands that came mostly from the west.

In fact, the great inscription of Medinet Habu can be read in this way (see Moreu 2003, p. 112). The text initially mentions some northern foreigners who lived in islands and/or coastal lands and who invaded the territories of Anatolia, Cyprus and Syria that had belonged to the Hittite empire during the late 13th century BC. It clearly expresses the fall of the Hittite empire, which was undoubtedly a historical fact. Although this paragraph of the inscription does not specify the identity of those invaders, it can perfectly refer to the inhabitants of the European coasts of the Aegean Sea, which are just located to the north of the Eastern Mediterranean (i.e. Mycenaean Greece and other territories of Macedonia and Thrace that were inhabited by the proto-Phrygian people). After a short lacuna in the inscription, the text mentions a “camp in one place of Amurru”, which was the frontier between Syria and Canaan; and then it is said that a coalition of five peoples moved from this camp towards Egypt. Seeing that these peoples travelled with women and children, according to one of the main wall-reliefs, it is more logical that they belonged to the side of the defeated people, whose lands had been attacked by the foreign northerners mentioned at the beginning of the inscription, and thus they were not the same peoples who had invaded those regions of the Hittite empire (as has been wrongly interpreted by many scholars). According to this view, the camp in Amurru was not properly a military camp, but more probably a camp of refugees.

The correct interpretation of the great inscription tells us the same story that was summarized in the conclusions expounded by Harold Nelson and Nancy Sandars, in their classic studies on Medinet Habu and the Sea Peoples, and it is also the documentary source that proves the historical background of the legendary Trojan War. Even the first Egyptologists who studied the inscriptions of Medinet Habu, Emmanuel de Rougé and François Chabas, connected the events narrated in the temple with the famous Greek myth. In fact, one of the five Sea Peoples cited in the great inscription, who had been defeated by the European aggressors, were the Tjeker, whose name is very similar to that of the Teukrians, another classic denomination of the Trojans; and one of the Asiatic lands invaded by them is called Arzawa, also mentioned in some Hittite sources as an extensive area of western Anatolia that included the kingdom of Wilusa (equated to Ilios or Troy my most scholars).

More recently, Shirly Ben-Dor has explained that a special Egyptian term applied to the Tjeker and the Peleset in the temple inscriptions, which is normally translated as “warriors”, was used by the Egyptians when they specifically referred to the foreign warriors that served as auxiliary troops in the Hittite army. We know that the so-called Peleset were the main ancestors of the Philistines, who occupied the coastal strip of southern Canaan during the Iron Age. Seeing that the appearance of the Peleset was practically identical, in the reliefs’ depictions, to that of the Tjeker and the Denyen (identifiable with the Teukrians from the Troad and the Danuna from Cilicia, respectively), it is very likely that all these peoples had their origins in the coasts of Anatolia. The other two groups of the Sea-Peoples’ coalition, cited in the great inscription, are the Weshesh (perhaps coming from Iassos, in Caria) and the Shekelesh (from Sagalassos in Pisidia or from the River Shekha in Mysia, but not from the more distant island of Sicily).

It is not strange that historians and archaeologists were very cautious to accept the historicity of the mythical Trojan War, but it is less justifiable that some reputable scholars question the historical basis of the Egyptian records from the temple of Medinet Habu and that they even consider one of the narrated campaigns of Ramesses III (which took place in Syria) a complete fiction. In a paper recently published in the American Journal of Archaeology, A. Bernard Knapp and Sturt W. Manning refer to these important sources as “Ramesses’ propaganda”, arguing that they “typically were motivated by politico-ideological concerns and intended for rhetorical effect rather than reasoned argument”, and adding that “at least some Egyptologists have been skeptical about the historicity or chronological place of the Medinet Habu inscription, while some Assyriologists regard the Sea Peoples’ episode as a narrative condensation of several minor skirmishes that took place over many generations into a couple of imaginary battles for propagandistic ends suited to pharaonic purposes.”

It can be accepted that the Egyptian pharaohs sometimes exaggerated the success of their campaigns, as probably occurred in the narration of the battle of Kadesh, but it is untenable the idea that those campaigns and battles were completely fictional or imaginary. Perhaps this hypercriticism is due to the fact that those skeptical scholars were misled by the wrong interpretation of the great inscription of Medinet Habu. In the article written by Knapp and Manning (p. 118) we can also read that “according to Ramesses III’s Medinet Habu inscription, the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh devastated the polities of Hatti and Arzawa (in Anatolia), Qodi (in Syria) Alashiya (Cyprus) and Carchemish.” However, we have already seen that this is not the authentic text of the inscription (either in the translation by J. H. Breasted, or by J. A. Wilson or more recently by K. A. Kitchen). The quoted phrase of the article is based, instead, on the mistaken assumption that the five Sea Peoples who moved to the frontiers of the Egyptian empire (actually named in other different paragraph of the inscription) had been the same peoples that are imprecisely mentioned at the beginning of the text: the foreign northerners who lived in islands (or in coastal lands) and who are not identified in the inscription with their own ethnonyms. In conclusion, Knapp and Manning reject the historical background of the Ramesses III’s inscription, considering it simple propaganda, because they ignore the real significance of this text. It is also noteworthy that, in the eleven pages of the bibliography included in their paper, the relevant study by H. H. Nelson is absent, as well as some other works that followed his logical ideas.

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH AND THE LITERARY SOURCES

Turning back to the question of the Trojan War, there is a remarkable coincidence between the archaeological data and the ancient stories compiled by the Greek tradition:

1) We know that the end of Troy VIh was caused by an earthquake, some 90 years before the end of Troy VIIa, and we find in Strabo I, 3,17 a striking story that was firstly recorded by Democles, relating the earthquake and seaquake that took place in the Troad at the age of Tantalos, the great-grandfather of Agamemnon: “And he (Demetrios of Scepsis) recalls on this points the words of Democles, who records certain earthquakes, some of which long ago took place about Lydia and Ionia as far north as the Troad, and by their action not only were villages swallowed up, but Mount Sipylos was shattered in the reign of Tantalos. And lakes arose from swamps, and a tidal wave submerged the Troad.”

It is possible that the Lydian hero Tantalos, or perhaps his mythical son Pelops, was the alter ego of an Anatolian rebel, called Piyamaradu by the Hittites. A daughter of Piyamaradu married an Achaean governor of Milawata or Miletos, who was his ally against the Hittites, and he finally migrated to the Hellenic land of the Achaeans, fleeing from the prosecution of the Hittite king. In the Greek legends, Pelops also migrated from western Anatolia to Greece, where he married an Achaean princess. However, this is only a hypothesis that should be corroborated with new data. Some scholars have related the name Piyamaradu with Priam, but it is more likely that the name of the famous king of Troy was the Luwian name Pariyamuwa (which was also used in Cilicia).

2) We also know that between the last years of the Mycenaean IIIB period and the beginning of the IIIC period there were various destructions in some regions of southern Greece and central Greece, that mainly affected the cities of Thebes, Pylos, Mycenae and Tiryns, and these events can be linked with the Hellenic legends that narrated a first incursion in the Peloponnese by the Heraclids, who were not completely victorious, and the subsequent destruction of Thebes (a city closely related to Heracles) by the Epigons. One of these seven heroes was Diomedes, king of Argos, who later fought in the Trojan War. In the Iliad, Homer mentions the city of Hypothebes, instead of Thebes, referring to the lower city that surrounded the citadel named Cadmeion, which was destroyed by the Epigons. However, the archaeological finds show that the Mycenaean civilization continued to exist in Greece after those internal conflicts, during the IIIC period, and that some Hellenic regions probably flourished in the first half of the 12th century BC.

3) The city of Mycenae, which had been attacked at the end of the IIIB period, suffered an earthquake some 30 years later, and it was attacked again around 1120 BC (1105 BC if we adopt the low chronology of Egypt). This new destruction, caused by war, matches very well the final invasion of the Peloponnese by the Heraclids, which occurred three generations later (some 90 years) than the first attempt of invasion. According to Greek tradition, the grandson of Agamemnon named Tisamenos was the last Achaean ruler who belonged to the Atreid dynasty, because his son Cometes migrated to Asia. These Heraclid invaders were identified as the Dorians, another Hellenic tribe that had originally lived in northern Greece and previously settled in the region of Doris, in central Greece, not far from Thebes. The son of Heracles, named Hyllos, had ruled the Dorians, and this is why the three Dorian heroes who finally conquered the main part of the Peloponnese were the descendants of Hyllos and they were also considered “Heraclids”. The main archaeological finds in southern Greece that can be related to the settlement of the Dorians are the cist tombs, which had been used in northern Greece during the Late Bronze Age. However, the best proof of the historicity of the Dorian invasion is the linguistic change from the Mycenaean Greek to the Dorian dialect in the regions conquered by the Dorians (Messenia, Laconia and the Argolid).

4) The stratum VIIb of Troy, that followed the stratum VIIa, was occupied by some newcomers of Balkanic origin who lived together with the Trojan survivors, possibly subdued by those foreigners. They used a different type of pottery, called Coarse Ware or Handmade Burnished Ware by the archaeologists, which can be related to the handmade pottery found in Gordion, the capital city of the Phrygians from the 11th century BC. The Phrygians of Thraco-Macedonian origin are considered the main responsible for the end of the Hittite domination in central Anatolia, and they can have allied with the Mycenaean Greeks in order to confront the powerful Hittites and their vassals of coastal Anatolia and Syria. In the Homeric Iliad, the Phrygians were allies of the Trojans but this is a possible anachronism, seeing that Homer also cited the Halizones and the Keteans, two peoples that can be identified with the Hittites, as allies of the Trojans.

However, the Lydian historian Xanthos believed that the Phrygians had moved from Europe to Asia Minor after the fall of Troy, when the north-west of Anatolia was ruled by Scamandrios, a son of Hector and successor of Priam who was one of the Trojan survivors, according to some versions of the myth. And Strabo reported that the Phryges or Phrygians who arrived in Anatolia were the same people as the Bryges, who lived in Thrace (a region located to the north of the Aegean Sea). He also pointed out the settlement of Phrygian immigrants in some areas of the Troad, after the Trojan War. In this case, the oral tradition recorded by Xanthos and Strabo fits better the archaeological data from Troy than the Homeric version of the myth.

5) Shortly after the fall of Troy, other coastal cities of southern Anatolia and Cyprus were put to the torch. The best examples are Tarsos in Cilicia and Enkomi in Cyprus. We find again a correspondence with the Greek legend, seeing that the Achaeans who had taken Troy (or some of them at least) later moved to Pamphylia, Cyprus, Cilicia and Syria as far as the borders of Phoenicia. One of their leaders was the seer Mopsos, who founded a dynasty in Cilicia according to some inscriptions dated to the Iron Age, and who was buried in Cilicia, according to the Hellenic tradition. Other legendary hero was Teukros, the half-brother of Ajax, who was a Greek nobleman born in the island of Salamis, although he was named Teukros because his mother was a Trojan princess. Teukros migrated to Cyprus and he founded a city called Salamis, which may have been the rebuilt city of Enkomi, surely inhabited by the Mycenaean Greeks. In the Marmor Parium, an ancient stele, this event was dated 7 years after the fall of Troy. A son of Teukros founded Olbe in Cilicia, as well as other Hellenic heroes (Leonteus, Polypoetes, Amphilochos, Agapenor and Demophon) settled in southern Anatolia and Cyprus. The archaeological finds show that, during the 12th century BC, Mycenaean IIIC pottery was locally made in many cities of western Anatolia, southern Anatolia, Cyprus and Syria. Other cultural innovations, related to the Mycenaeans, appeared in that regions at the same time. Furthermore, the archaeologist Vassos Karageorghis believed that the hellenization of Cyprus began around the date of the Eastern Mediterranean crisis (ca. 1200 BC).

6) The ancient Cypriots had maintained very good relations with the Mycenaean Greeks until the annexation of Cyprus to the great empire of the Hittites, enemies of the Mycenaeans, which was followed by the Achaean conquest of the main Cypriot centres in the early 12th century BC. According to some Hellenic authors, King Cinyras of Cyprus had promised Agamemnon fifty ships for his expedition against Troy, but he sent only one real ship and forty-nine small ones, made of terracotta, which the captain launched as he approached the Greek coast. This imaginative story clearly expresses that the Cypriots, formerly friends of the Mycenaeans, did not rebel against the Hittites and finally had to choose the Asiatic side in the conflict.

7) In Tell Kazel, in Syria, the ancient city of Sumur has been excavated. It was the main centre of the ancient kingdom of Amurru. Some Trojan Grey Ware has been found, dating exactly to the years of the crisis. The great inscription of Medinet Habu states that the Tjeker (Teukrians or Trojans) set up a camp in Amurru, together with other four Sea-Peoples. Another Egyptian source, the report of Wenamun, informs that the Tjeker finally settled in Dor, a coastal city of northern Canaan, and his ruler was named Beder. Although the Trojan Grey Ware has not appeared in Tel Dor, to date, some Philistine bichrome pottery has been found there, together with a lion-headed cup, of possible Anatolian origin. In Lachish, another ancient city located near Philistia, some Trojan Grey Ware has been also found, and it can be dated around the years of the crisis. In the Philistine cemeteries of Azor and Ashkelon, the cremation in pithoi and jars was practised in the Iron Age, and this special type of burials had been usual in the Troad during the 14th and 13th centuries BC. The legendary tradition recalls the migration of Trojan survivors, such as Aeneas and Elymos, to other coastal regions, although these lands were located in the central Mediterranean, instead of the eastern Mediterranean. However, in some Sicilian cemeteries the cremation in pithoi also became a well-known funerary practice.

In conclusion, the coincidences between the archaeological data, the Medinet Habu inscriptions and the legendary Greek tradition are numerous and, therefore, the historical background of the Trojan War must be beyond doubt. From a statistic or probabilistic point of view, all these coincidences can be only explained if the Achaeans or Mycenaean Greeks really attacked and burned Troy, as well as Tarsos in Cilicia, Enkomi in Cyprus and Ugarit in Syria. Therefore, the Anatolian Sea Peoples were not the true destroyers of these cities; they were victims of the Achaean aggression.

ALAKSANDU OF WILUSA AND ALEXANDROS OF TROY

The Hittite tablets mention three kings of Wilusa: Alaksandu, Kukunni and Walmu. The name of the first one is very similar to that of Alexandros, an alternative name for the Trojan hero Paris, son of Priam. However, the legendary Prince Alexandros or Paris never reigned in Troy, according to the epic cycle of the Trojan War.

King Alaksandu was the successor of King Kukunni, who is clearly different from King Priam, and we know that Alaksandu lived around 100 years before the destruction of Troy VIIa, the stratum that corresponds to the historical Trojan War. Walmu lived some decades later than the age of Alaksandu and some decades before the end of Troy VIIa. Therefore, we cannot discard that the reign of Walmu was followed by the reigns of Laomedon and Priam, the two kings recorded by the Hellenic tradition. The names of Kukunni and Walmu are rather similar to those of Kyknos and Elymos, who were two noblemen of the Troad at the age of the Trojan War (according to the Greek legends). Kyknos was the ruler of Colonae, a city different from Troy, and Elymos was the half-brother of Aeneas. It is possible that the Trojan elites of the Late Bronze Age belonged to the same families, and thus some typical anthroponyms were probably used by nobles who lived in different periods.

Alaksandu concluded a treaty with King Muwatalli II of the Hittites, and this must have occurred before the battle of Kadesh, seeing that the Trojans joined the Hittite army against the Egyptians. They were named Derdeny or Dardanians (another Homeric denomination for the Trojans) in the Egyptian sources that narrated this great battle.

However, there is a very interesting information in the Ethnika, a compilation of ancient toponyms (and their associated legends) that was written by Stephanos of Byzantion in the 6th century. Referring to the city of Samylia, in Caria, this author tells us that it was “a foundation of Motylos who received Helen and Paris”. The similarity of the name Motylos to Muwatalli makes it possible that the legendary Prince Paris or Alexandros was actually based on the historic figure of Alaksandu, before he became the king of Troy. An oral tradition on the youth of this Trojan prince and his adventures in Sparta and other Mediterranean lands, including the abduction of Helen, may have been introduced in the epic cycle of the Trojan War as a fictional cause for the conflict, although it was not a contemporary event. We know that King Mursili II, the father of Muwatalli II, had conquered the Carian city of Miletos during a Hittite campaign in western Anatolia. According to the archaeological research in Miletos, the Hittites rebuilt and fortified this city in the second half of the 14th century BC, and thus the Hittite presence in other areas of Caria, at the beginning of the reign of Muwatalli II, is also plausible.

This hypothesis can be linked with another story narrated by Herodotos (II, 112-119), relating the arrival of the fugitives Alexandros and Helen in Egypt, in the following text:

“This King Proteus has a very attractive and well-appointed temple precinct at Memphis, south of the temple of Hephaistos. Around the precinct live Phoenicians of Tyre, and the whole place is called the Camp of the Tyrians. There is in the precinct of Proteus a temple called the temple of the Stranger Aphrodite; I guess this is a temple of Helen, daughter of Tyndaros, partly because I have heard the story of Helen’s abiding with Proteus, and partly because it bears the name of the Foreign Aphrodite: for no other of Aphrodite’s temples is called by that name.

When I inquired of the priests, they told me that this was the story of Helen: After carrying off Helen from Sparta, Alexandros sailed away for his own country, but violent winds caught him in the Aegean and drove him into the Egyptian sea; and from there (as the wind did not let up) he came to Egypt, to the mouth of the Nile called the Canopic mouth, and to the Tarikhías. Now there was (and still is) on the coast a temple of Heracles; if a servant of any man takes refuge there and is branded with certain sacred marks, delivering himself to the god, he may not be touched. This law continues today the same as it has always been from the first. Hearing of the temple law, some of Alexandros’ servants ran away from him, threw themselves on the mercy of the god, and brought an accusation against Alexandros meaning to injure him, telling the whole story of Helen and the wrong done to Menelaos. They laid this accusation before the priests and the warden of the Nile mouth, whose name was Thonis.

When Thonis heard it, he sent this message the quickest way to Proteus at Memphis: ‘A stranger has come, a Teukrian, who has committed an impiety in Greece. After defrauding his guest-friend, he has come bringing the man’s wife and a very great deal of wealth, driven to your country by the wind. Are we to let him sail away untouched, or are we to take away what he has come with?’ Proteus sent back this message: ‘Whoever this is who has acted impiously against his guest-friend, seize him and bring him to me, that I may know what he will say.’

Hearing this, Thonis seized Alexandros and detained his ships there, and then brought him with Helen and all the wealth, and the suppliants too, to Memphis. When all had arrived, Proteus asked Alexandros who he was and whence he sailed; Alexandros told him his lineage and the name of his country, and about his voyage, whence he sailed. Then Proteus asked him where he had got Helen; when Alexandros was evasive in his story and did not tell the truth, the men who had taken refuge with the temple confuted him, and related the whole story of the wrong. Finally, Proteus declared the following judgment to them, saying: ‘If I did not make it a point never to kill a stranger who has been caught by the wind and driven to my coasts, I would have punished you on behalf of the Greek, you most vile man. You committed the gravest impiety after you had had your guest-friend’s hospitality: you had your guest-friend’s wife. And as if this were not enough, you got her to fly with you and went off with her. And not just with her, either, but you plundered your guest-friend’s wealth and brought it, too. Now, then, since I make it a point not to kill strangers, I shall not let you take away this woman and the wealth, but I shall watch them for the Greek stranger, until he come and take them away; but as for you and your sailors, I warn you to leave my country for another within three days, and if you do not, I will declare war on you.’

This, the priests said, was how Helen came to Proteus. And, in my opinion, Homer knew this story, too; but seeing that it was not so well suited to epic poetry as the tale of which he made use, he rejected it, showing that he knew it. This is apparent from the passage in the Iliad (and nowhere else does he return to the story) where he relates the wanderings of Alexandros, and shows how he and Helen were carried off course, and wandered to, among other places, Sidon in Phoenicia.”

Herodotos tells next that, according to the priests of the temple, the taking of Troy by the Greeks was useless for Menelaos, because his wife Helen was not living in the city. From the beginning of the siege, the Trojans had informed the Greeks of this fact, explaining that she was in Egypt, but the Greeks did not believe it. Once Menelaos verified that the Trojans were right, he sailed south to meet Proteus in Egypt, and Herodotos continues the story in this way:

“Menelaos then went to Egypt and up the river to Memphis; there, relating the truth of the matter, he met with great hospitality and got back Helen, who had not been harmed, and also all his wealth, besides. Yet, although getting this, Menelaos was guilty of injustice toward the Egyptians. For adverse weather detained him when he tried to sail away; after this continued for some time, he carried out something impious, taking two native children and sacrificing them. When it became known that he had done this, he fled with his ships straight to Libya, hated and hunted; and where he went from there, the Egyptians could not say. The priests told me that they had learned some of this by inquiry, but that they were sure of what had happened in their own country.”

Once this narration has been expounded, we need to know who was King Proteus of Egypt, whose name has been usually explained as a simple Greek transcription of a title used by the Egyptian pharaoh. In his second book, Herodotos also wrote that the successor of Proteus was Rhampsinitos, who can be identified with Pharaoh Ramesses II, because Ramesses II was the main builder of the temple of Ptah in Memphis, mentioned by Herodotos (in his history of Rhampsinitos) as the temple of Hephaistos. The old belief that Rhampsinitos was Ramesses III is based on the identification, no longer valid, of Ramesses II and Sesostris, who is also named by Herodotos in a previous chapter; but the Sesostris of Herodotos, who was a great conqueror, surely was a mixture of two pharaohs: Senusret III and Tuthmosis III, seeing that their victorious campaigns in Canaan and Syria extended the Egyptian domination to the Levant.

If Rhampsinitos is Ramesses II, King Proteus can be perfectly identified with Seti I, his father and predecessor. This identification is confirmed by another text written by Diodoros of Sicily (I, 62), in which he refers to “a man of obscure origin” that was king of Egypt and “whom the Egyptians call Ketes, but who among the Greeks is thought to be that Proteus​ who lived at the time of the war against Ilion.” According to Diodoros, the successor of Ketes was Remphis, whose name is similar to that of Rhampsi(nitos). The obscure origin of Seti I can be explained because his father was a military chief named Paramessu who had become the right-hand of Pharaoh Horemheb and finally reigned in Egypt, for a very few years, with the name of Ramesses I (the founder of the 19th Dynasty). Diodoros surely followed the work of Herodotos and, therefore, he also was wrong when he identified Proteus or Ketes (Pharaoh Seti I) as the ruler of Egypt at the age of the Trojan War, seeing that Seti I had died 100 years before the end of Troy VIIa.

However, the main result of this analysis is the chronological coincidence that has been established between three historical figures who were also connected by the ancient Hellenic authors: Alaksandu of Wilusa (the Trojan Prince Alexandros or Paris), Pharaoh Seti I (the Egyptian King Ketes or Proteus) and the Hittite King Muwatalli II (identifiable with Motylos of Samylia). In fact, the last five years of the reign of Seti I coincide with the first years of the reign of Muwatalli II, and it is very probable that Alaksandu of Wilusa was still a prince at that time, instead of a king. If this is not convincing enough, there is an additional connection: some Greek authors wrote that Helen and Alexandros had three sons and a daughter, but the three sons were killed at Troy by the collapse of a roof, which may have been due to the earthquake that destroyed Troy VIh, probably during the last years of the reign of Muwatalli II. The names of the three sons were Aganos, Bunomos and Idaeus, and the daughter was called Helen, like her mother.

Therefore, the logical conclusion is that the legendary Prince Alexandros, identifiable with the historical Prince Alaksandu, actually lived in a different period to that of the Trojan War, as well as Helen and Menelaos (if they were also historical figures). The priests who informed Herodotos in Egypt may have talked about some events that occurred at the age of Seti I, basing on their own knowledge and deductions. The basic story possibly was that a Teukrian or Trojan prince, who had sacked a Greek city and kidnapped its ruler’s wife, visited Egypt (as probably did the Aegean and Anatolian merchants) but the Egyptian authorities seized the stolen goods, expelled the young foreigner and took under their protection the noble woman, until she finally reunited with her husband in Egypt. Perhaps the Teukrian prince, who feared the revenge of the Achaeans, had tried to obtain the protection of the powerful sovereigns of Hatti and Egypt by sailing first to Caria and then to the Nile Delta (not necessarily driven by wrong winds). It is also possible that a Mycenaean king of Sparta had established good relations with the Egyptian pharaoh in that time, due to commercial interests, and thus this king was helped by the Egyptian authorities. Be that as it may, the priests of Memphis who talked with Herodotos were not aware that the misdeeds of the ancient Trojan prince took place more than a century before the authentic date of the Trojan War.

There are historic sources from the Late Bronze Age that give information on the maritime raids carried out by other Sea Peoples from western Anatolia in the coasts of Cyprus, Syria and Egypt, such us the Lukka from Lycia, the Sherden from Lydia and the Shekelesh from Mysia. The latter were accused of having captured a subject of the Hittite king, according to a letter found in the archive of Ugarit. These are some real events that are not very different to the acts of piracy attributed to the Prince Alexandros, in the Homeric poems, which were confirmed by the priests of Memphis who talked with Herodotos.

With regard to the Achaean city of Sparta, where the young Alexandros or Paris took advantage of Menelaos’ hospitality, an important Mycenaean settlement has been recently excavated at the archaeological site of Agios Vasilios, not far from modern Sparta. According to the published reports on the excavations, some buildings of that city were burned around 1300 BC, and this is just the age in which Alaksandu of Wilusa lived. However, it is too early to draw any conclusions from these interesting findings.

Anyway, if the youth’s sins of the Prince Alaksandu/Alexandros originated an epic tale recorded by the oral tradition, in which the Trojan prince had fallen in love with the beauteous Greek queen, this was surely mixed with another epic tale on the war between the Achaeans and the Trojans, which was due to a very different cause.

In the 13th century BC, the enmity between the Hittites and the Achaeans, which is evident in the Hittite tablets, had increased during the reigns of the last kings of Hatti, who conquered the island of Alasiya (or Cyprus) and blocked the Mycenaean trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, with the help of their coastal vassals. Therefore, the main purpose of the Mycenaean Greeks was to regain control over the maritime trading routes, especially in the area of Cyprus, an island that was very rich in copper. However, this objective led them to confront the Hittite empire, including the peoples who occupied the coasts of western Anatolia and were also allies of the Hittites. Troy was probably the most difficult city to conquer, because a long siege was necessary, but the Mycenaeans could not occupy Cyprus and the nearby Asiatic coasts if they did not dominate before the eastern Aegean, with the probable support of the proto-Phrygian people named Mushki (in the Assyrian sources). In conclusion, the real cause of the Trojan War was economic and geopolitical, the same cause of most historical wars.

Turning back to Herodotos, this classic author expressed his own criticism on the Homeric version of the Trojan War in the following text (Book II, 120):

“The priests of Egypt said this, and I myself believe their story about Helen, for I reason thus: had Helen been in Ilion, then with or without the will of Alexandros she would have been given back to the Greeks. For surely Priam was not so mad, or those nearest to him, as to consent to risk their own persons and their children and their city so that Alexandros might cohabit with Helen. Even if it were conceded that they were so inclined in the first days, yet when not only many of the Trojans were slain in fighting against the Greeks, but Priam himself lost to death two or three or even more of his sons in every battle (if the poets are to be believed), in this turn of events, had Helen been Priam’s own wife, I cannot but think that he would have restored her to the Greeks, if by so doing he could escape from the evils besetting him.”

THE EGYPTIAN PHARAOH IN THE HOMERIC POEMS

Finally it is interesting to investigate who was, according to Homer himself, the Egyptian pharaoh at the age of the Trojan War.

In the Odyssey, Homer referred to Proteus as a prophetic and marine divinity of the island of Pharos, in the Nile Delta, and not properly as a king who reigned in Egypt, and Proteus was also called “the old man of the sea”. Homer mentioned Polybos as the ruler of Egypt in the years previous to the Trojan War, and the wife of Polybos was named Alkandra. He also mentioned Thonis (the warden of the Delta) and his wife Polydamna. The name of Polybos is Greek, and it clearly refers to the abundance of cattle in Egypt. Therefore, it could be applied to any historic pharaoh.

Now, the Egyptian historian Manetho identified his Pharaoh Thuoris with Polybos in the following text: “Thuoris, who in Homer is called Polybos, husband of Alkandra, and in whose time Troy was taken, reigned during 7 years”.

This is undoubtedly the last reign of the 19th Dynasty, which actually lasted 7 or 8 years. However, Pharaoh Siptah was a sick child and thus the real rulers were Queen Twosret, his stepmother, and Chancellor Bay. In the year 5 of Siptah, Bay died, and Siptah himself died in the next year, when Twosret finally assumed the throne for the last two years of this special period. Manetho must have believed that Thuoris (or Twosret) had been a man, instead of a woman who was regent of Egypt and who actually was the last pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty. This is why this historian identified Thuoris with the Homeric King Polybos.

Notwithstanding, the Hellenic name of Alkandra, the imaginary wife of Polybos in the Odyssey, may have been a corruption of the Egyptian Akhenra, which means “beauty of Ra” and we can find it in the full throne-name of Siptah: Akhenra Setepenra Merenptah Siptah. If this hypothesis is correct, Homer was also referring, in an unaccurate way, to the last reign of the 19th Dynasty. Therefore, the chronologies of the two historical events on which the epic cycle was based (the Trojan War and the more ancient acts of Prince Alexandros/Alaksandu) can be both reflected in the Homeric poems by the figure of Polybos (Pharaoh Siptah) and the more fabulous figure of Proteus (Pharaoh Seti I, according to Herodotos and Diodoros).

It is also noteworthy that, using the low chronology of Egypt, the date chosen by Herodotos for the taking of Troy (1250 BC) is not close to the age of Siptah, but it is closer to the age of Seti I (1294-1279 BC). However, the alternative date used by Eratosthenes (1184 BC) is very close to the age of Siptah and Twosret (1194-1186 BC) and also to the crisis of the Sea Peoples, and this is the authentic chronology of the historical Trojan War.

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