Pictured left: Minoan snake goddess from the palace of Knosses, Crete. Knosses is where King Minos kept the man-eating minotaur in the labyrinth until his daughter, Ariadne, helped Theseus slay it.
In an attempt to gain control of their lives, they gave the heavens, the earth, the seas and the winds names. These names became gods or goddesses and the people worshipped them, made sacrifices and gave them gifts so they would protect their crops, their cattle and their families from the harsh elements that could undo them. The gods were said to walk among men during the Golden Age.
Pictured left: Lions Gate at Mycenae, Tomb of Agamemnon. Agamemnon and his brother, Menelaus, would destroy Troy in the name of Helen, wife of Menelaus, who left with or was taken by Paris of Troy as a gift from Aphrodite after Paris declared her the most beautiful of the goddesses.
As their farming techniques improved and the gods blessed men with abundance, their farms expanded, their lands spread farther and their cattle increased in number. The farmer with the greatest wealth and status become the tribal chief. However, with greater wealth came a greater need for protecting one's possessions from those chiefs or tribes who wished to steal them. And so a weapon was created, from smelting copper and tin ores into a bronze sword and even armor. They would also domesticate the horse to travel great distances and charge their enemies in greater speed with their swords.
Pictured left: Etruscan helmet. The Etruscans would be the forefathers to the Roman Empire.
The Bronze Age would change Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, and the lands that surrounded the sapphire blue Mediterranean sea: Persians in Mesopotamia, Mycenaeans in Greece, Minoans in Crete, Etruscans in Italy, Egyptians by the Nile, Phoenicians in Africa. It was the beginning of the kingdoms, of the city states, where chiefs became kings, where raids became wars. It was a bloody, ruthless time that only found a glimmer of hope through the songs of the traveling bards who turned the tragedy of war into the tales of heroes. The Bronze Age was also the age when men could be made immortal by their deeds.
Pictured left: The Code of Hammurabi, Babylon. The code or laws is where 'an eye for an eye' originated. One of the seven wonders of the ancient world is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Their neighbors, the Sumerians, also had a heroic tale called the 'Epic of Gilgamesh.'
Other people were undergoing similar changes in China and India but this is a story of your ancestors so I must take you, dear nephews, through the developments of Western civilization.
Pictured above: A page from the Iliad. The Greeks would fight the Trojans for the beautiful Helen but neither side could claim an advantage until clever Odysseus came up with the gift of the Trojan horse. When the Trojans saw the Greek ships gone, they took the gift inside their city walls and celebrated victory. That night, as the Trojans slumbered, the Greeks slipped out of the hollow horse and defeated Troy with a surprise attack. The lesson of the Trojan horse is to never trust the gifts of your enemies.
One of these bards, Homer, weaves a tale about the Trojan war in his 'Iliad' where young warriors, like Achilles, see war as their chance at heroic immortality yet soon discover it is an unfathomable horror where dear friends perish and the conscience is heavy from killing good men, like Prince Hector of Troy, and seeing their families destroyed all for the greed of kings and the amusement of the gods. Homer then turns to his equally world weary hero, Odysseus, who after the war, does everything in his power to return home and to his family in the 'Odyssey' after the horrors of war. Homer immortalizes the heroes on both sides but he also leaves us with a strong image of the heroes heavy price.
Pictured above: Coin of Dido, Phoenician Queen of Carthage (now Tunisia). In Virgil's Aeneid, Dido offers Aeneas of Troy her hand in marriage but he abandons her to found the city of Rome. In despair, Dido commits suicide on a funeral pyre, a sword driven through her heart. Similarly, Egyptian Cleopatra would die by the bite of a poisonous asp after her lover, Marcus Antonius of Rome, falls to Octavius, the first Roman Emperor Augustus, at the Battle of Actium.
In addition to Homer, there was another writer, Hesiod, who wrote about farming in 'Works and Days' and the genealogy of the Greek gods and goddesses in 'Theogony' which lead us to our ancestors.
Until next time...
Good night!
xx
