Christopher Nolan\u2019s new film adaptation of the Odyssey<\/em> is an exciting development, since it will introduce new audiences to a classic epic reimagined for our time. This not only sparks interest in the ancient world but also continues a tradition of how people have encountered and reinvented this story over the past three thousand years.<\/p>\n The Odyssey<\/em> is a work of historical fiction set in the Late Bronze Age, around 1200 BCE. The events take place in the eastern Mediterranean, including coastal areas of Greece and Turkey. The narrative follows the wily Odysseus, a veteran of the Trojan War, who, after 10 years of conflict, spends another decade wandering at sea, longing to return home to his island kingdom of Ithaca. During his absence, his queen, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, must contend with persistent suitors who wish to seize his throne.<\/p>\n The epic is part of a broader tradition about the Trojan War and its aftermath, including the Iliad<\/em>. Set before the events of the Odyssey<\/em>, the Iliad<\/em> focuses on the conflict between the Greek warrior Achilles and his commander, the Mycenaean king, Agamemnon, during the final year of the 10-year siege led by Greek allies. Related works, like Aeschylus\u2019s Agamemnon, <\/em>a Greek tragedy, and the Roman epic the Aeneid, <\/em>reimagine familiar characters in new stories, ancient versions of fan fiction set in the Trojan War universe. Even in antiquity, people shaped these traditions for their own times, just as we do today.<\/p>\n When a modern reader picks up a printed copy of The Odyssey<\/em>, it is important to understand what the book represents, since it provides an illusion of more certainty than exists.<\/p>\n It is not known exactly when the stories were originally composed, but they were transmitted for centuries before being written down. Scholars generally believe that the compositions were passed along by singer-storytellers in a folk tradition, with each performance reshaping the lyrics, even after written versions appeared.<\/p>\n The epic represents the collective voices of countless ancient people still singing to us from the past.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Medieval manuscripts from the Byzantine Empire, the Greek-speaking continuation of the eastern Roman Empire, carried forward texts shaped by earlier editions from the Hellenistic period, the centuries following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BCE. The Odyssey<\/em> is a product of centuries of retelling, variation, copying and selection rather than a straightforward literary composition produced at a specific time in the past.<\/p>\n Modern books of the epic are printed with the name Homer on the cover, but ancient and modern understandings of authorship can be quite different. This is a curious tradition because, even if a historical Homer existed, he did not write the stories printed on the pages. Instead, the epic represents the collective voices of countless ancient people still singing to us from the past.<\/p>\n The film adaptation contains multiple references to a terrifying threat lurking just beyond the frame. \u00a0Here, the script draws on historically attested seafaring raiders and migrants collectively known by scholars as the \u201cSea Peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n Scholars debate their origins and identities, but there is historical support for these raiders. Around 1200 BCE, they roamed the region and were blamed for widespread mayhem in royal inscriptions and reliefs at Medinet Habu, the Egyptian mortuary temple where pharaoh Ramses III claimed victories over them. With enigmatic names such as the Peleset and Tjeker, scholars have tentatively proposed connections with known groups, including the Philistines or the Mycenaean Greeks.<\/p>\n The activities of the so-called Sea Peoples coincided with regional collapse at the end of the Bronze Age.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n No one knows precisely what led them to migrate or raid coastal cities. The activities of the so-called Sea Peoples coincided with regional collapse at the end of the Bronze Age, a catastrophic period during which great states, including those of the Mycenaean Greeks and the Hittites, who ruled a major empire in modern-day Turkey, disintegrated \u2014 ushering in what has traditionally been described as a civilizational \u201cdark age.\u201d<\/p>\n As echoed in the film, the Trojan War traditions themselves cast the returning Greek victors as lawless, seaborne raiders. For example, Odysseus and his crew traditionally begin their voyage with an unprovoked attack on Ismarus, a coastal city whose wealth and women they attempt to carry away. The returning heroes are mobile bandits, evoking the upheavals of the age.<\/p>\n Archaeological research has revealed that the literary landscape of the\u00a0Odyssey<\/em> is not purely mythological. In the late 19th century, a wealthy German businessman and amateur archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann set out to find the legendary places of the Trojan War. A man of his time, he unsystematically excavated Hisarlik, ancient Troy, in northwestern Turkey beginning in 1870, before turning his attention to Mycenae in Greece in 1876.<\/p>\n At both locations, Schliemann\u2019s local collaborators discovered extraordinary Bronze Age artifacts. Ever the showman, he gave the golden artifacts sensational names like \u201cPriam\u2019s Treasure\u201d and the \u201cMask of Agamemnon.\u201d While later research showed that the gold artifacts didn\u2019t date to the traditional timing of the Trojan War, the truly contemporaneous remains are significant and informative. Subsequent research confirmed what many once considered the realm of myth: Troy and Mycenae were powerful cities that flourished during the Late Bronze Age.<\/p>\n Scholars don’t know if there was a real Trojan War, although it seems plausible that it is a literary construction of ongoing conflicts, dramatized as a single war. Siege warfare is well documented in the Late Bronze Age, and 13th-century BCE diplomatic records from the Hittite Empire appear to record Mycenaean involvement in western Anatolia, supporting the idea that the war is a literary composite.<\/p>\n Equally, the historical identity of Helen, whose face launched a thousand ships, is unknown.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Equally, the historical identity of Helen, whose face launched a thousand ships, is unknown. In Trojan War accounts, she is an ideal, mythologically beautiful woman who provoked the war. Some traditions identify her as the Spartan queen who fell in love with Paris, a Trojan prince, and chose to leave everything behind for a new life across the sea. Others portray her as abducted, with the war an effort to free her.<\/p>\n Skeptics doubt the stories about Helen having inspired a war, dismissing them as romantic or far-fetched. They instead theorize about real motives, such as political strategy, trade interests and regional dominance. But history also shows that wars have been fought over far less.<\/p>\n This summer\u2019s popular film adaptation is introducing new audiences to Odysseus\u2019s adventures through its stunning visuals and fresh take on some of humanity\u2019s oldest stories. Among the gods, heroes, and magic of the texts, originally performed as songs, history and archaeology recover traces of a distant past.<\/p>\n An ancient epic like the Odyssey<\/em> still matters not because it is faithful to an \u201coriginal\u201d or older story, but because we continue to make it part of our own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n An ancient epic like the Odyssey<\/em> still matters not because it is faithful to an \u201coriginal\u201d or older story, but because we continue to make it part of our own. It is living art that keeps us in conversation with real people in the past, who also struggled with war, loss and longing and expressed themselves through art.<\/p>\n By reinterpreting their stories to meet the challenges of our own time, we continue an enduring tradition. As a final thought, if faithfulness to the original Odyssey <\/em>had been desirable \u2014 or attainable \u2014 as a goal, the film should have been a musical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UCF Associate Professor Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, historian and archaeologist, examines the influences that shaped one of ancient literature\u2019s great epics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":154498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[17071,17023,35201,54984],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-154492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","tag-arts","tag-college-of-arts-and-humanities","tag-department-of-history","tag-tiffany-earley-spadoni"],"yoast_head":"\nA Song of Times Long Past<\/h2>\n
The Late Bronze Age Collapse and the People of the Sea<\/h2>\n
Digging Up Troy<\/h2>\n
Setting Sail Into the Unknown<\/h2>\n
Why the Odyssey<\/em> Still Matters<\/h2>\n