Shield of Achilles

In "On Dance", Lucian names as the birthplace of Greek dance the island of Crete, were according to Myth, Rhea, the Mother of Zeus, being enchanted by this art, taught the Curetes in Crete how to dance...

Few days ago I read a very interesting article called "Circular Platforms at Minoan Knossos" which was published by Peter Warren in "The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 79 (1984)". 

The article first describes the discovery of three circular platforms located on a hillside at the edge of Knossos.

It then proceeds with proposing that these were threshing floors, which are still found all over mediterranean.

But it then dismisses this explanation and proposes that the discovered structures were dancing floors. And it then goes on to point at various depictions of dancing people found among Minoan artefacts as the evidence that points at these circular structures being dance floors. For instance, this object from the site of Kamilari which depicts four figures holding each other by the arms and shoulders, surrounded by a low wall decorated with Horns of Consecration. Most archaeologists concur that this group is one of the earliest depiction of people dancing. 

In a walled circular structure. Which to me looks very much like a stone walled threshing floor...

There are of course much much earlier depictions of dancing, from other parts of the world. Like this depiction of people dancing holding hands...

Vase fragment, 5th - 4th millennium BC. Discovered at Rayy = Rei (?), Tehran region, Iran. Currently in Louvre, Paris.

Basically this, just 6000 years earlier...

Some people say the above Minoan object could be a depiction of people pressing grapes in a vat? Like it is still done in Duro valley in Portugal

However the structures discovered in Crete were too big to be grape vats...So...

I mean why could the circular structures discovered in Knossos not have been both threshing floors and dance floors? 

Many Greek villages have a flat place called χοροστάσι (αλώνι-χοροστάσι)(Chorostasi/Khorostasi/Horostasi), where dances, weddings and other events used to take place. 

The term "αλώνι-χοροστάσι" denotes "threshing floor", the place where the threshing of wheat was done. This is how this is done in Croatia. Horses are tied to the central pole and walk around it trampling the sheafs of grain and breaking off the seeds.

After the end of threshing, and until the next harvest, it was clean and empty and hence a natural place for celebration. 

Dancing Linđo (images from this video) on an threshing floor in the village of Mrčevo, Croatia...

As I said, in mountain villages threshing floors were usually the only flat platforms suitable for social gatherings...

I give few more examples of the dancing on threshing floors from the Balkans in my post "Sacred marriage on a threshing floor", where I also talk about the fact that threshing floors were sacred places of Inanna (Sumerian Mother of Grain) and Demeter (Greek Mother of Grain)...

Apparently the word χοροστάσι comes from χοροσ+τάσι (dance+tray) and literally means "a tray like place where singing and dancing takes place". 

According to ethnographic research from the Balkan mountains inhabited by Serbs, conducted in the 19th century, threshing floor was the place where all the village meetings, celebrations and ceremonies took place.The ethnographers say that this is because "threshing floors were the only flat smooth surfaces big enough to accommodate many people". 

But was this the only reason? Were threshing floors places where village meetings, celebrations and ceremonies took place because they were considered to be the sacred ground? The place where god lived on earth? I believe so.  

In 1950, Serbian ethnographer Nenad Janković published a book on folk astronomy called "Astronomija u predanjima, obicajima i umotvorinama Srba" (Astronomy in legends, customs and oral and written tradition of the Serbs). In it he expressed his great surprise at the ability of ordinary illiterate peasants to tell exact date and time without calendars and clocks. Professor Jankovic states that one of the main instruments used for these calendar and time calculations was the threshing floor. By looking at the shadow cast by the stožer, the central pole at sunrise, they were able to tell the date. And by looking at the shadow cast by the stožer, the central pole during the day they were able to tell the time. Threshing floor is a universal solar observatory, which at the same time can tell the date and the time. The main parts of this solar observatory were solar circle and its center, solar pole, stožer. Or if viewed from above, from heaven, the way Sun God would see it, a circle and a dot representing its center, solar pole, stožer. This is the symbol found all over the world and in Egypt it was the symbol of the sun, Ra. 

This circle, the symbol of the sun, Ra, is usually interpreted to mean sun disc, but I believe that it actually means sun circle, solar year, the manifestation of the Ra's power on earth...

That I am correct can be seen from the fact that this symbol, known as "sun hieroglyph" is used in the Ancient Egyptian language hieroglyphs as a determinative to refer to events of time, for example when referring to '"day xx" (of month yy'). For example, in the 24th century BC Palermo Stone, the sun hieroglyph is used to identify dates, or specific "day-events", ..."day of ....".

It also means "threshing floor", "solar observatory" and if you are a sun worshipper that equates to "temple"...Because it is from threshing floors that the Sun God was observed and his movement was interpreted as seasons, date and time...Threshing floors were the first sundials...And interestingly Greeks called the central pole of the sundial "gnomon" meaning the one which knows. This was because the central stake "new" the time and date.

How can threshing floor be used as a solar observatory?

What you are actually observing is the shadow made by the central stake. At the sunrise and sunset the shadow will be long enough to cut the circle at the opposite end. This is extremely precise way of marking the sunrise point. Which is very useful if you want to determine solstice and equinox points. And for instance align your temple with the true east, or winter or summer solstice...

Did you know that the orientations of the central courts of the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia and Gournia were to the rising sun...

You can also observe the shadow during the day and use that to determine the hour of the day...

A place like this, where sun and grain were directly connected, must have been seen as sacred by the Greeks. We know they were seen as sacred by the Serbs. 

Rituals were performed on the threshing floor, at winter solstice, the birth of the new solar year, and some at the beginning of the threshing. During these ceremonies, sacrifices were performed on the central pole. 

There are some ethnographers who believe that this pole was the earthly representation of the Sun God...That this pole was a totem pole...I talked about this in my post "God's threshing floor".

Interestingly, at the same time Serbian folk tradition says that threshing floors are a favourite meeting place of demons and witches and one of the main places that should be avoided during the night. Witches come to threshing floors to dance. This is typical reversal of positives into negative which was a favorite method of brain washing used by Christians during forced conversions. Old gods become devils and demons, and places where people gathered to celebrate Sun God through circular solar dance, become the place where demons and witches gathered to dance. What is interesting is that people believe that witches only live on unused threshing floors. Once people stop visiting god's house on earth, the god leaves as well, and demons move in....

In Montenegro, young people, wearing flower wreaths on their heads, would gather on "Vilino Gumno", Fairy threshing floor, on the Feast of Ascension to sing songs about fairies and dance a circular dance kolo, oro. 

Christ's ascension to heaven? 
Marked by a circular solar dance? 
On a solar observatory? 

The fact that threshing floors were used as solar observatories just made me think of something...What if the word χοροστάσι was originally ὥραστάσις (horastasis) which can be broken into ὥρα+στάσις?

ὥρα - "any defined period of time, season, climate, year, time of day, hour, some specific time: right time, time for something, time of life: youth..."
στάσις - "Standing stone, pole"

Time pole...

Can we have a better description of a solar observatory? All it is is a pole stuck in the ground with a circle drawn around it...Like a threshing floor...

And because threshing floors were also sacred places where things like village councils, weddings...were held, often accompanied by dancing, the ὥραστάσις were also χοροστάσι...

Anyway...

Warren ends his article with the mention of The Shield of Achilles:

The Shield of Achilles is the shield that Achilles uses in his fight with Hector, famously described in a passage in Book 18, of Homer's Iliad. In the poem, Achilles lends Patroclus his armour in order to lead the Achaean army into battle. Ultimately, Patroclus is killed in battle by Hector, and Achilles' armour is stripped from his body and taken by Hector as spoils. The death of Patroclus prompts Achilles to return to battle, so his mother Thetis, asks the god Hephaestus to provide replacement armour for her son. He obliges, and forges a shield with spectacular decorative imagery. Homer gives a detailed description of the imagery which decorates the new shield.

This is the shield's design as interpreted by Angelo Monticelli, from Le Costume Ancien ou Moderne, ca. 1820.

One of the things Homer says was depicted on the shield was "a dancing-floor where young men and women are dancing"...

Here is the part of the Book 18 which describes the dance scene from the Shield of Achilles:

The renowned one [= Hephaistos], the one with the two strong arms, pattern-wove [poikillein] into it [= the Shield of Achilles] a place for singing-and-dancing [khoros].

It [= the khoros] was just like the one that, once upon a time in far-ruling Knossos, Daedalus made for Ariadne, the one with the beautiful tresses [plokamoi].

There were young men there, and young women who are courted with gifts of cattle, and they all were dancing [orkheîsthai] with each other, holding hands at the wrist.

...

Half the time they moved fast in a circle, with expert steps, showing the greatest ease...

The other half of the time they moved fast in straight lines, alongside each other....

A huge crowd stood around the place of the song-and-dance [khoros]...

Two special dancers [kubistētēre] among them were swirling...in their midst...

Now this is very very interesting.

Circular dances with the name like "horos" are found in all Balkan and East Slavic countries as well as in Romania and Turkey. One of the places is Montenegro where we find circular dance called "oro". 

Anthropologist Chris Boehm spent 3 years, between 1963 and 1966, doing fieldwork in Montenegro in Gornja Morača region. He called the people that he encountered there "Mountain Serbs of Montenegro".

One of the pictures taken by Chris Boehm has this capture: "All important tribal events took place on the plateau in front of the church. Oro (traditional circle dance) was often part of the event."

In the past, before churches, these events were held on threshing floors, "the only flat piece of ground in the mountain villages"...

The oro dance is typically danced at the weddings and celebrations of the Serbian Orthodox population in Montenegro and Herzegovina...

Now, in "The Geographical Journal, Volume 4, Issues 2-6 Royal Geographical Society", published in 1894 we can read

So local people believed that the name of the dance "oro" meant "eagle" dance??? Which was dismissed by the author of the above article...

But there is something remarkable about this mountain dance...It is identical to the description of the dance from Iliad:

Half the time they moved fast in a circle, with expert steps, showing the greatest ease...

The other half of the time they moved fast in straight lines, alongside each other....

A huge crowd stood around the place of the song-and-dance [khoros]...

Two special dancers among them were swirling...in their midst...

You can see the Montenegrin oro dance performed here.

Is this the kind of dance Homer saw depicted on The Shield of Achilles?

Legendary battle

The so called "The Griffin Warrior" is a person buried in the Bronze Age, Mycenaean shaft tomb dating to around 1450 BC, which was discovered near the ancient city of Pylos in Greece. This is what the content of the tomb looked like:

This warrior was buried in his best clothes and with all his best weapons and jewellery and status objects. This burial practice stems from the ancient belief that the things buried with the dead will be transferred with the dead from "this world" to "the other world"...

All the weapons were positioned to the right of the body: a magnificent one meter long sword with a golden hilt, under which lay a similarly designed dagger...

A classic Mycenaean boar tusk helmet was also found. The helmet was made from about 20 or more wild boar tusks which were split lengthwise. This is another boar tusk helmet found earlier in another Mycenaean burial, so you can see what these helmets looked like in real life...

We were able to reconstruct these helmets because we have found many depictions of them being worn by Mycenaean warriors...Like this one from the silver battle krater from shaft grave IV at Mycenae...

Have you ever thought how would you make a helmet like this? Well first you would have to kill at least 10 wild boars...Have you ever seen what a fully grown wild boar looks like? This is the beast you had to kill WITH A SPEAR...10 OF THEM!!!

Do you think that each warrior wearing one of these helmets had to kill the wild boar himself in order to have the helmet made? I think so. Which leads me to believe that these boar helmets were a status symbol which meant: I am a tough mother f*cker...

"Wild boar mating season is November to January... Prior to mating, the males develop their subcutaneous armour (!!!) in preparation for confronting rivals". If you went to kill wild boar during the main hunting season, winter, you were confronting an armoured killing machine...

"The boar's testicles double in size during the mating period, and the glands secrete a foamy yellowish liquid" I would say that if you were a Mycenaean hero, you were definitely going to be hunting boar then. To show you have "bigger balls" than the beast... :)

Griffin Warrior was buried with 50 seal stones, made of semiprecious materials, with Minoan designs (!!!) 

Most of the stones were found on the warrior’s right side, some probably worn as part of bracelets, and others gathered in a bag or pouch that decayed long ago...

The seal stones were originally used by the Minoans for administrative purposes. They were used as personal (family) stamps. 

Why was a Mycenaean Griffin warrior buried with a collection of Minoan seal stones???

I believe that each one of these seals was a war trophy. Each one represented a dead Minoan warrior...Killed personally by this man...

A war trophy brought to Mycenae from Crete during a war that was fought to avenge a defeat of the Mycenaeans by the Minoans depicted on the now famous Combat Agate seal stone from the Griffin warrior tomb...

E what??? 

Ever since I saw the Combat Agate, a magnificent Minoan made (according to all archaeologists) gem, found in a Mycenaean warrior grave, I was troubled by what I was looking at...

Because what I was looking at was a Minoan warrior (judging by the way he is dressed and by his hairstyle), killing a kilt wearing Mycenaean warrior (judging by his helmet), while another kilt wearing Mycenaean warrior lies dead...This made no sense to me at all...Until today...

These kind of gems (according to archaeologists) were worn like bracelets. They were drilled through and a string or a leather strip was pulled through and tied around the wrist. Combat agate was one such gem...

Well, Minoans seemed to have worn them like this. As can be seen on the Combat agate. Here is a detail of the scene depicted on it. The Minoan warrior wears a gem bracelet around the wrist of the hand grabbing the Mycenaean warrior's helmet crest (according to archaeologists)...

By the way, this is a perfect example why having anything that sticks out of your helmet in order to make it look cool, is really really bad idea in combat. The warrior on the left has grabbed the really cool looking crest on the helmet of the warrior on the right and has twisted his neck around. If the guy on the right is not already dead because his neck has snapped, he will be, when the guy on the left stabs him. Which is why any helmet that is not for show has nothing sticking out, as anything sticking out can be used as a leaver to twist your head around or sideways and basically break your neck or put you into disadvantaged position...

Back to the main theme of the article.
It is kind of obvious that if this gem was made by Minoans that it depicted Minoan victory...Which is the main reason why I think that Combat Agate and all the other Minoan gems found in Mycenaean Griffin Warrior grave were war trophies...Taken off dead Minoans...

And Combat agate was a very special gem stone. Because the scene depicted on it is not any random Minoan victory over Mycenaeans. It was a "famous", "legendary" Minoan victory over Mycenaeans. Why? Because this is not the only depiction of this scene found so far...

The combat scene in this gold cushion seal (from Grave III of Grave Circle A in Mycenae) closely resembles the one in the Pylos Combat Agate...Again we have long haired Minoan warrior killing Mycenaean warrior wearing helmet...

We find the same scene depicted on this gold seal ring with military scene, from tomb IV of mound A of Mycenae, 16th century BC...

This was not just any battle between any two heroes. This was a stuff of legends. A legendary victory for Minoans. And a legendary defeat for Mycenaeans...

The defeat which Mycenaeans could not forget and which they had to, and they did, avenge one day. And I believe that the Griffin Warrior was one of the avengers. Maybe even the leader of the avengers...At least judging by the fact that one of the objects found in the "Griffin warrior tomb" was a staff with a bull's head top...Status symbol definitely. But what kind of status? Priest? King? Priest King?

And taking the Combat agate, which celebrated that legendary defeat of the Mycenaeans, off the dead cold hand of the Minoan warrior who wore it as a symbol of the legendary victory of the Minoans, was the ultimate symbol of revenge...

Now here is something very interesting. In "Mycenæ: a narrative of researches and discoveries at Mycenæ and Tiryns" published in 1880, Schliemann talks about this legendary duel of heroes. Except he doesn't see Minoan and Mycenaean warriors. He sees this:  

Ha!!! 

What are we looking at here? Was there another much older legend talking about Minoan-Mycenaean wars which later became Iliad? Was there another legendary battle between (to us) unknown Minoan hero and unknown Mycenaean hero which later became battle between Achilles and Hector? 

We know that legends, as they are passed from generation to generation, change with times. New elements are added, names, identities, religion, reason for existence and actions of heroes change to reflect the identity, beliefs, hopes and fears of people who retell these legends..

Is this what we have here?