The Mask of Troy

by David Gibbins

  Dillen stared hard. ‘Here’s a thought, then. The Mycenaean Greeks were not like the Egyptians, or the Hittites. They were never a single kingdom, and if we’re to believe Homer, they were only ever united for this famous expedition, under a single paramount leader.’

  ‘You mean Homer’s king of kings. Agamemnon.’

  Dillen nodded. ‘Each of the Mycenaean palaces we know about - Mycenae itself, Athens, Pylos, Thebes, the others - was a kingdom unto itself, controlling its own fiefdom like a feudal barony. The clay tablet archives from those places show that the armaments industry, bronze-making, was tightly controlled by each palace, but not centralized across the Mycenaean world. There was no Enfield factory, no Springfield arsenal, but instead lots of smaller arsenals, controlled by individual palaces but under no central armaments directive, all keeping up with each other broadly in technology but with small differences. Some of the differences could even have been deliberate, to give the weapons of a particular kingdom a clear identity.’

  ‘I’m thinking of the ship list in Homer’s Iliad,’ Jeremy murmured. ‘All the different kingdoms sending ships and men, rallying to the cause.’

  ‘And then all of them standing shoulder to shoulder on the beach, men of Mycenae, Pylos, Tiryns, a hundred other kingdoms, showering the walls of Troy with arrows.’

  Jeremy bent down again until his face was nearly touching the deposit, staring, murmuring numbers to himself. He then shuffled back and put the thumb and forefinger of his left hand in front of the arrows, measuring them up. He kept his hand exactly where it was, fumbled in his shorts pocket with his other hand and pulled out a compass, holding it flat and squinting along it. He rolled away and jumped up to his feet, then peered over the rampart wall at the plain of Troy before the citadel, a flat alluvial landscape of fruit trees and vegetable plantations extending towards the distant shoreline of the Dardanelles. He sighted the compass, then looked at Dillen, grinning. ‘As Jack would say, I’ll be damned.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, the angle of impact shows that these arrows were shot at pretty well maximum trajectory. When Jack and Costas were here fifteen years ago doing their famous excavation on the ancient beach line, they found a charred fragment of an archer’s bow. Well, Costas found it, to be exact. As he’ll never cease telling you. He showed it to me, and I made a replica. I’ve shot it using arrows with bronze heads based on those British Museum examples. The compass bearing on these arrowheads points almost exactly to the place where the heli pilot showed me the remains of their trench, about two hundred and forty degrees from here, almost a kilometre away. It’s a long shot, but plausible for a Bronze Age bow with a really strong following wind, the kind the pilot said you sometimes get from the north-west coming off the sea, a real storm wind. Maybe there was one of those on the day of the assault when these arrows were fired.’

  ‘What’s the dating evidence for this type of arrowhead?’

  Jeremy pursed his lips. ‘Late Bronze Age, definitely, but that could mean anywhere between about 1500 BC, when bronze took over from obsidian for arrowheads, and about 1000 BC, when iron took over from bronze. But even that latter date’s contentious. Scholars used to think references to iron in the Iliad were anachronisms, showing that Homer was writing about his own world in the Iron Age, around the eighth century BC. But iron arrowheads have now been found at Troy too. It’s possible that there was corroded iron in Schliemann’s excavation that he just didn’t see when he hacked his way down. Another black mark against treasure-hunting.’

  ‘It sounds like Troy,’ Dillen said. ‘Just when you think you’re there, that grey shroud of uncertainty settles over the whole thing again.’

  ‘But it’s still fantastically exciting,’ Jeremy said. ‘It’s this room that gives those arrows a date. If it’s Troy VII, then that’s Homeric Troy. The arrows were fired together from the beach line. They’re different types, from different places. These aren’t just raiders. There’s an army out there. A big, besieging army, from many different places. A Mycenaean army. It all adds up. You just need a tiny dose of faith.’

  Dillen rocked back on his haunches and smiled. ‘Sometimes, you know, when I’m up here alone at night, I think I can hear music, very distant, like the backbeat to an epic,’ he said. ‘It seems to be telling me all I need to know, as if all this scientific detail, the proof, is just confirmation.’

  Jeremy grinned, then pointed to a shrouded form in the corner of the trench. ‘I was wondering when you were going to bring music up. Looks like you have a hobby of your own.’

  Dillen looked over. ‘Oh, that.’ He got up, stretched, walked over, and picked the object up. ‘It’s a lyre, a hand-harp, meant to be a replica of a Bronze Age lyre. I made it myself, over the last few months. It’s based on all the literary and artistic evidence I could muster, and a few archaeological discoveries.’ He carefully removed the cover, revealing a tortoiseshell soundbox with two raised arms curving outward and forward from it, with a crossbar at the top and strings leading down from it to another bar on the shell, forming a bridge. ‘The different notes come from the thickness of the strings, which are made of animal gut. All the ancient poets, the bards, used a lyre. I realized I could never hope to understand Homer without trying it.’

  ‘Will you play?’

  Dillen replaced the cover. ‘Maybe when the digging’s over. Rebecca’s been badgering me to put Homer to music. I’m not sure if she knows quite what I mean. Sometimes I think the music is meant just to be in my head.’

  ‘Oh, I think she knows. When we’re together she often refers to things you’ve said. You and she seem to be on much the same wavelength.’ Jeremy cocked an ear. ‘Speaking of Rebecca, I forgot to say. I can hear someone approaching. She wanted me to warn you so you’d know she wasn’t Hiebermeyer and wouldn’t get into a panic about tidying up. I’m sure that’s her coming up the path now.’

  3

  There was a scrambling sound on the path, and Dillen and Jeremy turned to see a tall, slender girl appear, wearing hiking boots, shorts and a T-shirt with the IMU logo, her long dark hair boots, shorts and a T-shirt with the IMU logo, her long dark hair tied back under a baseball cap. She was carrying a suspended silver tray holding little glass cups filled with tea. She stepped into the trench, saying nothing, and solemnly handed one to Dillen, then another to Jeremy.

  ‘Teshekkur ederin.’ Dillen smiled, holding up the glass and taking a sip, trying not to recoil from the powerful liquid. Rebecca bowed, put down the tray and took off her sunglasses. Dillen looked at her fondly. He had taught her mother as well as Jack, and Rebecca had inherited much from both of them, Jack’s long limbs and angular features, her mother’s dark beauty. A wave of sadness came over him when he thought of Elizabeth, but he put it from him and focused on the continuity he saw in Rebecca, the familiar eyes and vivacious manner. Rebecca had remarkable determination, but they all knew they had to work with her to overcome the pain of her mother’s death, to focus on the future and stave off a past that could engulf her. She squatted down, arms on her knees. ‘So, guys. How’s the bard?’ She spoke with an American accent from her upbringing and schooling before her mother had died, but with English idiom she had picked up from Jack and the IMU crew.

  Jeremy looked at her, then glanced quizzically at Dillen. ‘Bard? Your lyre? I thought you didn’t play.’

  Rebecca shook her head. ‘No. I don’t mean Professor Dillen. I mean the bard. Over there. Maurice gave me a lightning tour when I arrived this morning, and it was there.’ She pointed at the excavated wall of the room behind them, covered by the plastic sheet.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Dillen got up. ‘I haven’t shown Jeremy yet. We’ve been talking about my arrowheads.’ He reached over and carefully rolled up the plastic sheet, placing it on top of the masonry. Jeremy gasped. The image below was extraordinary, a life-sized fresco on white plaster, reminiscent of Bronze Age paintings from other sites around the Aegean. It showed a person in a white robe sitting on
a rock, holding a lyre, as if in readiness for playing. The background and the skin of the player were dark; the rock was off-white, covered with swirling tendrils of green leaves, and above it was a stylized bank of clouds.

  ‘Now I see,’ Jeremy exclaimed. ‘A lyre-player. It’s wonderful.’

  ‘It’s astonishing corroboration for my lyre,’ Dillen said. ‘I’ve only uncovered this painting in the last two days, but I finished my lyre several months ago. I think I got it right.’

  Jeremy peered closely, shading his eyes. ‘Is that a man or a woman?’

  ‘Impossible to say,’ Dillen replied. ‘You might expect it to be a man, but that may just be wrong. There were doubtless men and women.’

  ‘So you think this is a bard, a poet?’

  ‘There’s only one other image of a lyre-player like this, from the Mycenaean palace of Pylos in Greece,’ Dillen replied. ‘I think it’s possible.’

  ‘Could there be an inscription?’ Jeremy said. ‘Still concealed below, where the arrows and earth cover the plinth?’

  ‘If there is, it’d probably be in Luwian or Hittite, the languages of Anatolia, or perhaps in early Greek, the language of Mycenaean Linear B. I know Rebecca’s just done an essay on that for school.’

  ‘Linear B was the syllabic script of the Greeks before they adopted the Phoenician alphabet,’ Rebecca said. ‘The Mycenaeans borrowed it from the Minoans. Trouble was, it was basically designed for palace records: numbers of sheep, bronze-workers, and so on. It would have been an awkward script for recording anything else. And almost all the Linear B finds have been on baked clay tablets. Maybe we just haven’t found others yet, but it doesn’t seem to have been used for inscriptions on stone or walls.’

  Dillen nodded. ‘Another problem is, there doesn’t seem to be a Linear B word for bard, for poet. Maybe we’re missing something, mis-translating another word, but it just doesn’t seem to be there. So even if there were an inscription here, it might be unreadable.’

  Rebecca took a swig from her water bottle. ‘While I’m here, Dad mentioned this fragment of ancient text you found referring to a shipwreck during the Trojan War, a ship of Agamemnon. What he and Costas are searching for now. I really need to be got up to speed. I only came in on the flight before Jeremy. I was in school two days ago and I shouldn’t even be here now. We have an art trip in France beginning in a couple of days’ time. Bottom line is, apart from Maurice’s twenty-minute tour and Dad on the phone, when he was mostly telling me off for getting a flight here without telling him, I have just about no idea what’s happening.’ She took another swig. ‘Well?’

  Jeremy glanced at her. ‘You haven’t heard it yet?’

  ‘Dad said to get Professor Dillen to tell me.’

  ‘You won’t believe it. It’s just about the greatest clue to treasure ever found,’ Jeremy said.

  Dillen took a deep breath, his eyes gleaming. ‘It’s been a truly remarkable find. The most important of my entire career.’ He paused. ‘As well as the Iliad and the Odyssey, there’s a mass of fragments known as the Trojan epic cycle, poems that purport to fill the gaps in the story of the Trojan War. Most date from the Hellenistic and Roman period and are edited compilations of fragments, some perhaps genuine Homer, some by lesser poets attempting to emulate him. Some of the most famous stories of the Trojan War are known mainly this way, such as the Trojan Horse. One of those poems is called the Ilioupersis, “The Destruction of Troy”. Before now, only a few fragments of that survived, and only a few scholars thought it was by Homer.’

  ‘And now?’ Rebecca said.

  ‘And now we have the genuine Ilioupersis, a complete poem of very early date that may have been deliberately concealed, and is now revealed for the first time since the Dark Age that followed the Trojan War.’

  ‘It was found three months ago,’ Jeremy said to Rebecca. ‘Maria and I were back in Herculaneum to work on the final clearance of the ancient Roman library. The archaeological superintendency are now planning to shore it up and make the tunnel accessible to the general public, who’ll be able to look through a glass front right into the Emperor Claudius’ secret study itself.’

  ‘That was my mother’s job in the superintendency, to oversee the villa,’ Rebecca said quietly. ‘That’s the last time she and Dad spoke, when he saw her in the excavation, the day before the Mafia took her. Her own family. Her brothers and uncles.’

  Dillen put a hand on hers. ‘You have a new family now.’

  Rebecca gave him a fathomless look, and then stared intensely at Jeremy. ‘So it was you who actually found the text?’

  ‘Glued into the back of one of Claudius’ notebooks, a collection of material we think he’d been planning to use in his huge History of Rome, for a volume on the founding of the city. It was with material related to the Trojan hero Aeneas and the exodus of survivors from Troy, really fascinating stuff that seems to prove that Rome really was founded by Trojan warriors fleeing west. These pages, the Ilioupersis, were actually part of a very old text of Book 12 of the Odyssey. They were recycled, a palimpsest, evidently at a time when papyrus was scarce, before the classical era. Maria spotted the faded ink underneath the Odyssey text and we took the pages for an X-ray spectrometry scan, which revealed about three hundred lines. There’s little doubt it’s the entire poem, as it ends mid-page. The lab is refining the scan line by line, and as each few lines are finished I’m sending them to James for translation. I’ve got some more for him with me.’

  Dillen pulled an iPod from his pocket, clicked it and then passed it to Rebecca. ‘That’s only a small fragment of it, but you can see the letters. They’re separately spaced, careful, a little awkward, as if the scribe is not entirely familiar with the symbols, at pains to get it right. You see the letter A? It’s sideways, toppled over. That’s what really excited me. It’s the Phoenician letter A, the way it looked in the earliest version of the alphabet adopted by the Greeks. Archaeologists have found a few potsherds from the Greek Dark Age scratched with letters like this, but no other actual script of Greek this early.’

  ‘So what’s the date of the text?’

  ‘The iambic hexameter is Homeric in form, and that makes it at least eighth century BC. But I’ve always argued that the hexameter is much older than that, as old as the early Bronze Age, from the time of the first epic bards. The bards continued to use it through to the dawn of the classical era, when people began to write it down. Add to that the Phoenician letters, and we may be looking at something incredibly early.’

  ‘Dad says you’ve always thought Homer was earlier than the eighth century.’

  Dillen nodded. ‘I believe there was indeed a Homer who wrote down the Iliad and the Odyssey as we have them. I say a Homer, not the Homer. I see Homer not as one genius, but as one in a line of gifted poets - consistently, extraordinarily gifted - who shaped and transmitted the poems, a lineage that may have ended about the eighth century BC with the advent of wider literacy and the demise of the bardic tradition, so that those later poets who emulated Homer had none of that spark. I see the Homeric bards, the earlier ones, almost as shamans or seers, maybe as a family line, possibly both men and women, with an inherited poetic genius nurtured from childhood. There are plenty of parallels in the bardic traditions of other cultures.’

  ‘The Trojan War took place about 1200 BC,’ Jeremy said, staring pensively at the arrows. ‘Civilization out here pretty well collapses. Invaders sweep down from the north. It’s a dark age, a time of destruction and hopelessness unparalleled in history. But then small communities hidden away in mountain refuges begin to rebuild. Iron technology takes over. The survivors pull away from the brink, and the classical age dawns. So where does this poem fit in to all that?’

  Dillen replied quietly. ‘All of my instinct puts this text no later than 1000 BC. It may even be a century earlier. I can barely believe I’m suggesting it, but this text could have been written by a bard who actually witnessed the fall of Troy, who actually saw those arrows be
ing fired, who felt the heat of that beacon fire burning into the night sky, above these very ramparts where we are now.’

  Rebecca whistled, then looked at the bronze arrowheads embedded in the trench, and at the solidified mass of ash. ‘That’s awesome. Seriously awesome.’

  ‘And that,’ Jeremy announced, ‘is also a triumph of textual scholarship, because our radiocarbon result for the papyrus has just come through.’ He had been quickly checking his BlackBerry, and passed it to Dillen, who read the screen and broke into a smile. Jeremy turned to Rebecca. ‘The problem was getting a sample of the papyrus that wasn’t impregnated with later ink and glue from when it was reused, but the IMU dating lab seem to have done it.’

  Dillen handed back the BlackBerry. His voice was quavering. ‘Eleven fifty BC, plus or minus seventy-five years. I knew it. I just knew I was reading poetry written in the Bronze Age.’

  ‘That’s so cool,’ Rebecca said, putting her hand on his shoulder. ‘Remember when you were my age, dreaming of finding something like that.’

  Dillen looked at her, his eyes welling up. ‘I’m always that age. It’s what I told your dad. Never give up on those dreams.’

  ‘And one day they may come true,’ Rebecca said, leaning over and kissing him gently on the forehead.

  ‘One question,’ Jeremy said, putting away his BlackBerry. ‘The Ilioupersis. The destruction of Troy. That’s the biggest event in the whole Trojan epic cycle. Why do we only now have this text? Why is the destruction only hinted at in the Iliad and the Odyssey?’