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  1. Home
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  3. The Cambridge Ancient History
  • Cited by 3
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
1975
Online ISBN:
9781139054270
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521086912
Subjects:
Ancient History, Classical Studies
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - Ancient History & Classics
Series:
The Cambridge Ancient History
Information

Book description

Volume II, Part II deals with the history of the region from about 1380 to 1000 B.C., and includes accounts of Akhenaten and the Amarna 'revolution' in Egypt, the expansion and final decline of the Mycenaean civilization in Greece, the exodus and wanderings of the Israelites, and the Asstrian and Hittite empires.

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Contents

Page 2 of 2

Contents
  • (b) - THE LITERARY TRADITION FOR THE MIGRATIONS
    pp 678-712
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Archaeological evidence affects the attitude towards literary tradition. Continuity of literary tradition was maintained between the Mycenaean period and the archaic Greek period by the recitation of epic lays. The movements of the Dorian group are all anterior to the so-called Dorian invasion. They afford some insight into the way of life of these primitive people. This chapter presents the traditions of Dorians and Heracleidae before the Trojan War, as well as the traditions of Dorians and Heracleidae between the Trojan War and their entry into the Peloponnese. The Dorians chose to attack Melos and Thera first before other conquests, presumably because these islands were on the way to their friends in east Crete, Rhodes and the Dodecanese and also because they held important positions on the trade routes to the Levant. The chapter also talks about the invasions of Thessalians, Boeotians, and Eleans, and ends with a note on the effects of the invasions on the Mycenaean Greeks.
  • CHAPTER XXXVII - THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN
    pp 713-772
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter presents the history of the following countries and regions in the Western Mediterranean during the period 1380-1000 BC: Italy, Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, Corsica, Southern France, Spain, Portugal, and North Africa. The first Neolithic societies with a mixed farming economy have so far been found in quantity only in the south-east and in Liguria, though traces are beginning to turn up in Calabria also. At the end of the fifths millennium BC, South France was occupied by small semi-nomadic groups of hunters and fishers and collectors technically known as Mesolithic people. The cardial wares are restricted in distribution in South France to the littoral and extend a short way up the Rhone valley. In the North African region, we find no great flourishing of Late Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures, nothing to compare with Los Millares and El Argar, with the Nuraghic civilization of Sardinia and the Torrean civilization of Corsica.
  • CHAPTER XXXVIII - GREEK SETTLEMENT IN THE EASTERN AEGEAN AND ASIA MINOR
    pp 773-804
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In the Aegean many centuries constitute the Dark Age that preceded the Greek Renascence of the later eighth century. On the west coast of Asia Minor, the people who set the pace were the Greeks. It was not till the seventh century, long after they had consolidated their possession of the coastlands, which the Greeks of Asia began to meet opposition to their inland penetration. The schematic prose traditions of the migrations to the East Aegean after the Trojan War seem in general to have been compilations of the fifth century BC. Aeolic expeditions to Lesbos and the Aeolis are recorded, under the leadership of sons and descendants of Orestes. Two main ancient sources for the foundations in Ionia are Strabo and Pausanias. Pausanias, in a more circumstantial account, makes Neleus the second son of Codrus and, together with his younger brothers, the leader of the lonians in their overseas migration.
  • CHAPTER XXXIX (a) - THE PREHISTORY OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE
    pp 805-819
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Historic Greek may be defined as the language as it is known from texts and monuments from the eighth century BC onwards. All Greek dialects exhibit certain features in common, and these are numerous and particular enough for us to be able to presume a common origin for them. This chapter presents a list, which though incomplete, can give some indication of the features which distinguished Greek from the other languages of the Indo-European family in the second millennium BC. These are divided on the basis of phonology, morphology and syntax, and vocabulary. It has been customary to regard the three main dialect groups, Doric, Ionic and Achaean, as corresponding to three separate waves of invaders, who brought to Greece their distinct dialects of the Greek language. All Greek dialects share a number of words borrowed from unknown languages, and some of these show differing forms in the dialects which prove that the borrowing took place in prehistoric times.
  • CHAPTER XXXIX (b) - THE HOMERIC POEMS AS HISTORY
    pp 820-850
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Oral tradition in an age of illiteracy also included oral poetical tradition. The Iliad and Odyssey are traditional poems which incorporate elements from the Bronze Age background of their formal subjects, from the Ionian environment of the singers to whom the poems in their developed form belonged. The evidence of language takes on a new importance against the background of archaism and innovation. The Homeric language is an artificial amalgam, in which a predominantly Ionic dialect is interspersed with Arcado-Cypriot, Aeolic, and even a few Attic forms. The degree of detailed Bronze Age knowledge preserved in the poems does suggest that heroic poetry on this subject must have established itself at least within some two or three generations of the final Mycenaean cataclysm around 1125 BC. The chapter also discusses the continuity and discontinuity of tradition from Bronze Age down to Homer, before ending with a note on the poems during the Dark Age and after.
  • CHAPTER XL - THE RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY OF THE GREEKS
    pp 851-905
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In order to complete the prolegomena to historical Greek religion, this chapter indicates what is known of the religion of the Minoan and Mycenaean peoples, and attempts an estimate of how far the religion of these times survived in the Homeric poems and in later Greece. Representations of Greek myth and belief have been eagerly sought in Minoan-Mycenaean art, but amount to little more than a probable Europa on the bull and a possible Zeus with the scales of destiny. On the other hand the mythological links connecting Greece with Crete are many and important. If the myths suggest an origin in the Mycenaean age, so does the cult, for often the same places retained an unbroken sanctity from Mycenaean to historic times. A cosmogonical idea preserved by Homer is that of the origin of all things from water. This is expressed mythologically by calling Oceanus, the river which encircled the earth's disc.

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