War and peace in Mycenaean Greece
Linear B tablets indicate that the palaces maintained large chariotries. The palace at Pylos must have counted on well over 200 chariots, and Driessen has calculated a minimum of 310 chariot boxes and 335 wheel-pairs inventoried by the Knossos scribes.56 Given the peaceful scenes painted on the chariot kraters, however, many archaeologists doubt the military purpose of these chariots. Discussion of warfare in the late MH and most of the LH periods is necessarily and frustratingly speculative, but we may begin with the generalization that although military chariots in the Near East must initially have been used against the long line of an ERIN.MES plodding along on foot, by the middle of the seventeenth century bc chariot warfare was well under way. This kind of warfare was to last for over 400 years and in it one kingdom’s chariots were deployed against another kingdom’s chariots. A military force arriving in Greece shortly before 1600 bc would have encountered neither an ERIN.MES nor a hostile chariotry. The arriving force, I suppose, would have had little or no opposition from native mainlanders as it established control over eastern Attika, the Argolid, the western coast of the Peloponnesos, and other desirable places. If, as seems likely, parts of the mainland had been required to pay tribute to Knossos the native population may even have given a tepid welcome to the military intruders. The “shock and awe” that must have been a prime factor in the takeover of the carpathian basin may also have made a takeover of parts of the Greek mainland a relatively bloodless affair.
It must be assumed that military newcomers would have had to confront the Cretans who until then had—perhaps with the assistance of a very few chariots— controlled and exploited eastern Attika and several other mainland coasts. Even this conflict, however, may have been brief and on a relatively small scale: in order to profit from the Laurion mines the newly arrived military men must have found a modus vivendi with at least some Cretans, who alone had sufficient experience not only with managing the mines but also with the manufacture of bronze and silver artifacts and with the trading of these and other goods in Levantine and Egyptian ports. The town at Ayia Irini on the offshore island of Keos seems to have continued its close relationship with Crete through much of the LMI period. It could hardly have remained subject to a Cretan ruler in the LMII period, however, since by that time Crete itself had fallen under the control of Greek overlords. The frescoes recovered from Ayia Irini, fragments of which were found in the (earthquake) destruction level from the end of the LM II period, are very much in the Minoan tradition, but items of dress are more Mycenaean than Minoan.57 The frescoes depict a ceremonial procession of some kind, in which at least two teams of chariot horses are included.58 If a force from the mainland had taken control of Keos by the beginning of the LM II period, as is very likely, it must have done so with limited damage to the town at Ayia Irini and with limited disruption of the town’s material culture.
The conquest of Crete, at the end of LM I (when the palaces except for Knossos were destroyed), must have entailed considerable bloodshed. By ca. 1450 bc the rulers of Crete must have assembled a modest chariotry with which to defend their kingdom, and the first true chariot battles in the Aegean world may have been fought on the Messara and the smaller plains of Crete. After the conquest of Crete was completed the mainlanders’ chariots would have had little more to do on the island, but opportunities for battle were evidently sought on the coast of Anatolia.
More chariot warfare may have occurred when regional military forces in Greece became rivals. Violence of some sort may have accompanied the synoikismos of Attika, which seems to have occurred at the end of LH II (ca. 1400 bc) and to have shifted power from eastern Attika (Thorikos and Marathon especially) to Athens.59 Similar centralizations may have happened in Messenia and Boiotia. Finally, if—as it seems—the rulers of Mycenae did indeed become Great Kings, their consolidation of power at Mycenae must have required the subordination of a constellation of petty kings.
In the IIIA and IIIB periods Mycenaean chariot armies must have served primarily as a deterrent or as an offensive threat against any pharaoh or Great King in the Near East who was hostile to the Great King of Achaea. Relevant here is the vaunt that shortly before 1350 bc Amenhotep III had inscribed on a statue base in his mortuary temple at Kom el-Hetan, across from Karnak.60 Inscriptions on four other bases from Kom el-Hetan refer to Syria and Mesopotamia, each listing cities in those lands that Amenhotep boasted were subject to him. The fifth base referred not to Syrians or Mesopotamians but to k-f-tj-w (Crete and Cretans) and tj-n3- jj-w, the Egyptian name for the Greek mainland.61 In apposition to the names k-f- tj-w and tj-n3-jj-w were eight place-names that Egyptologists have with some confidence identified as Amnisos, Knossos, Kydonia, Kythera, Lyktos, Messena (or Methana), Nauplia and Mycenae. We have, of course, no reason to think that Amenhotep III ever reduced any of these places to vassalage, but he clearly wished his subjects and his gods to believe that he had done so.
Also relevant is the chronic hostility between the Achaean and Hittite kings. This was centered on the coast of western Anatolia, and especially at the cities of Miletos and Troy. These two small kingdoms seem several times to have changed their allegiance between Hatti and Achaea, and “Hittite texts show that from the late 15th until the third quarter of the 13th century BC, the kings of Ahhiyawa were in a position to threaten Hittite interests in Western Anatolia.”62 Various Hittite kings also had ambitions to subdue cities across the sea. The Hittite kings were especially keen to have vassals in Cyprus, rich in copper, an island in which the kings of Achaea also had an interest. According to the Madduwatta text, a Hittite king late in the fifteenth century bc—probably Arnuwanda I—claimed that Cyprus (Alashiya) belonged to him. As Hans Ghterbock observed, however, “We do not know on what grounds Arnuwandas could claim Cyprus for himself.”63 In any case, the island obviously did not remain under Hittite control. According to a clay tablet found at Hattusha, shortly before 1200 bc Suppiluliuma II, the last Great King of Hatti, defeated ships of Alashiya and then conquered the island, removing the king of Alashiya, his wives and his children. In Ghterbock’s translation of the tablet, Suppiluliuma claims that “the country of Alasiya, however, I [enslaved] and made tributary on the spot,” imposing on the man he installed as king of Alashiya an annual tribute of gold, copper and other valuables.64 It is most unlikely that Suppiluliuma did in fact conquer or re-conquer Cyprus, although it may well be that one or two cities on the island became tributary to him. In any case, it is clear that the Great Kings of both Achaea and Hatti had continuing designs on cities abroad.
Threats or possibilities of that kind were very likely what required the Great Kings of Ahhiya/Achaea to maintain sizeable chariotries during the LH IIIA and IIIB periods. It has often been deduced that the Mycenaeans’ chariots could not have been intended for use in battle because most of the Greek terrain was unsuitable for chariot warfare. That deduction rests, however, on the false premise that Bronze Age warfare was essentially the work of infantrymen, who could fight in all types of terrain. It is certainly true that in much of the Greek (and Cretan) landscape chariots would have been useless, but a Mycenaean king had no need to worry about such parts of the landscape. Although “barbarians” in the hills may have occasionally required retaliation by the king’s warriors on foot, such barbarians were a nuisance rather than a lethal threat. Kingdoms worried about other kingdoms, and a king had chariots in order to defend his realm against another king’s chariots. Offensive infantries being still in the future, a Mycenaean king assumed with good reason that if and when he would be required to fight a real battle, it would necessarily be in a place where chariots could be deployed. Like other deterrents in other times, the LH IIIA and IIIB chariots may seldom have been used. When at the end of the Late Bronze Age great and unprecedented danger did finally come to the Aegean, the Mycenaean chariotries were no more effective against hordes of raiding “runners” than were the much larger chariotries of the Egyptian and Hittite kings.
