An etherealgirl's Adventures in Cyberland

Friday, October 07, 2005

archeologists find odysseus' tomb in ithaca

Ancient Eyes for Current Times has posted on the find and provides a link to the report as well: Archeologists make historic discovery

An amazing and exciting discovery and the dramatic ending to a legendary search:

Archeologists have long and often times looked for evidence of Odysseus on modern Ithaca, but never found anything significant from the Bronze Age. This led many scholars to dismiss Homer’s version of Ionian island geography as strictly a literary creation.

But two pieces of fairly recent evidence suggest archeologists were looking in the wrong place. In 1991, a tomb of the type used to bury ancient Greek royalty was found near the hamlet of Tzannata in the hills outside Poros. It is the largest such tomb in northeastern Greece, with remains of at least 72 persons found in its stone niches.

One find there is particularly telling. In Book XIX of the “Odyssey,” the just-returned and still disguised Odysseus tells his wife (who may or may not realize who she’s talking to; Homer is deliberately ambivalent) that he encountered Odysseus many years earlier on the island of Crete. He describes in detail a gold brooch the king wore on that occasion.


Read the rest here.

Posted by etherealfire :: 4:51 PM :: 1 Comments:

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