Beware archaeologists bearing gifts
The hieroglyphs seem to solve some of the great mysteries of the ancient world. Who were the Trojans defeated by Homer’s Greek heroes? Were they connected to the Sea Peoples, the unknown warriors who ravaged the shores of the Mediterranean in the 13th and 12th centuries BC?
But at the same time they pose a third question: are they too good to be true?
When James Mellaart, one of the most celebrated but controversial British archaeologists of the last century, died five years ago, researchers were stunned to find a 100ft-long series of hieroglyphs among his papers that seemed to revolutionise our understanding of Homer’s Mediterranean.
The hieroglyphs appeared to piece together scattered accounts of the fabled Sea Peoples, give an explanation for the wars that seemed to ravage the region and provided hints as to the origin of the myth of Troy.
Many in the field, though, now speculate that they might themselves be an academic Trojan Horse, left among the effects of the archaeologist to posthumously prove a pet theory.
The inscriptions are in the language of the ancient Luwian people and were supposedly copied from tablets found by a French archaeologist in the 19th century in Turkey, subsequently built by villagers into the foundations of a mosque.
Over the decades the copies were themselves copied, and forgotten, until - when Mellaart died, aged 86, in 2012 - they were found by his son.
They have now been translated by a Dutch scholar, Fred Woudhuizen, one of the handful of academics worldwide who can read Luwian, and published in the journal of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society.
The Luwian people inhabited what is now western Turkey, including the ancient city popularly believed to be Troy. The inscriptions describe the 12th- century BC reign of a King Kupanta-kuruntas, and the naval exploits of Prince Muksus. That coincides with the period said by more romantic scholars to be a possible date for the Trojan War.
Could this be an account of the "Sea Peoples", recorded on the walls of Egyptian temples plundering cities? Could the Trojan war recorded by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey be a folk memory of a retaliatory raid by the Greeks against the Luwian people?
So perfectly does the inscription fit that Mark Weeden, an expert at the School of Oriental and African Studies, says he prefers to think of it as a "fantasy". "I think forgery is too grand a word," he told The Times. He also says the writing contains errors that conform to misreadings of Luwian by early translators in the 1950s and 60s.
Mellaart’s archives are exactly where such a record might be found. The son of an art dealer, he achieved fame in the 1960s by discovering the remains of the world’s earliest settlement at Catalhoyuk in central Turkey, dating back to before 7000BC. However, he was also an eccentric, whose reputation was severely damaged by controversy.
He later published drawings of wall paintings he said he found in Catalhoyuk, which disintegrated into dust when exposed to light. His insistence that they were genuine, despite their originals having been seen by no one other than himself, were a precursor to the current academic row. For it turns out that no other living scholar has seen, nor any other dead scholar left behind, any independently verifiable copies of the original Luwian inscription. Neither are there contemporary accounts of their being found.
So are they real? Alan Mellaart, who found the hieroglyphs, said while he was himself no expert, he found it hard to believe his father spent his retirement years composing Luwian inscriptions. "I know my father was clever, and I can testify that I saw him drawing hundreds of maps, but I never saw him writing Luwian. It seems unbelievable." In 2007, the University of Bristol studied 3000 people and their New Years’ resolutions.
The results showed that 88 per cent of them failed to keep their resolutions, although women in the study who made their goals public and got support from friends had a 10 per cent higher chance of doing so.
I’m keen to lower my Personal Resolution Risk Factor so I’m herewith making my 2018 New Year’s resolutions public on the – possibly rash – assumption that a few readers will qualify as ‘‘friends’’ for the purpose of the exercise.
Even if I exclude readers who have written to the editor or telephoned her to complain about references to sex and religion in this column, enough of you should remain to guarantee that my risk of failing to keep the following New Year’s Resolutions will be a mere 80 per cent:
RESOLUTION 1: SURVIVE 2018 is My Year of the Pension. Come February, if I’m not six feet under, I will be in receipt of superannuation, and in possession of the Gold Card which has glittered enticingly just out of reach for so long.
Therefore, my very first and most important, resolution this year is to stay alive.
My present state of apparent health augurs well for my survival for at least a couple of more months. As far as I know, I have only the usual age-related physical niggles, including a recentlydeveloped thwop-thwop noise which seems to emanate from my left hip when I walk. Naturally, my eyes are no longer keen.
Without glasses I can’t read type that less than 64pt, or recognise anyone standing more than 10 metres away. Enchanted evenings when I could ‘‘see a stranger across a crowded room’’ are long gone. My memory’s OK as long as I don’t ask it to remember anything: the tip of my tongue is a semi-permanent traffic-jam of place names, the titles of books and movies that refuse recall ... plus the name of that thingamajig ... you know ... that whatchamacallit.
RESOLUTION 2: MORE FIDGETING In the past I’ve castigated myself for being so distractible. But in 2018 I’m forgiving myself for this particular foible. Partly because self-criticism is bad for the soul and the psyche, but mainly because female fidgeters live longer.
A UK-based study of over 12,000 women found that fidgeting lowers ‘‘the risk of all-cause mortality’’ for women in sedentary occupations like writing. Unfortunately, it seems that that sitting down for hours at a time still promotes fat storage in the buttocks.
RESOLUTION 3: STOP wholesale slaughter of ants.’’ That sounds about right.
RESOLUTION 5: MORE WATERI hate drinking water and I seldom feel thirsty. In case my body is therefore living a life of quiet desiccation, I gave myself a SodaStream machine for Christmas.
The fizz makes the water more palatable so I intend drinking more water in 2018. I amalso resolved to swim in the stuff. The water in NZ is usually too cold, and too wet for my taste, but I promise myself to take the plunge at least once this summer.
RESOLUTION 6: MORE AFFORDABLE LUXURY I will continue to drink coffee in 2018. By which I mean extra hot lattes served in a local cafe. Five dollars is very fair exchange for a coffee made to your liking, a pleasantly sociable setting, a free paper and mags and someone else to do the dishes.
Other affordable luxuries: pedicures, rollerball ink pens, three-ply toilet paper. Free luxury: a walk with the dog on the Back Beach at Tahunanui.
RESOLUTION 7: THE RELAXOMATIC PROJECTAmI going to get myself into a lather over missing, or misplaced apostrophes in 2018? Nope. I’m no longer going to waste time fretting over matters like these which have vexed me in the past.
Instead, I’m going to relax my vigilance and be kinder to myself, and to others (except ants – see 4 above) in the coming year. I watched my grandparents become more and more intolerant as they got older until they pickled themselves in a brine of curtaintwitching paranoia and sat at home smoking themselves into a late grave.
That’s not the kind of pensioner I want to grow up to be. Read more at www.greyurbanist.com