In 1951, archaeologists excavating a thirteenth-century-BC tomb at Mycenae in Greece accidentally stumbled on another burial. This one was even older, dating from about seventeen hundred years BC.
In that older burial site, a woman’s remains were found, clothed in all the finery befitting a princess. She was buried with a man, presumed at first to be her husband. Also in the tomb was a stunning electrum face mask, made from an alloy of gold and silver, which—archaeologists again presumed—belonged to him. Yet recent DNA testing revealed that the pair were brother and sister. The mask, furthermore, was laid in the tomb closer to her than to him; it seems more likely that it was hers. What does this mean? Was she the local ruler after all, rather than her brother? Or did she at least have significantly higher status than we might associate with Bronze Age women?
In her new book, Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It, Classicist Emily Hauser looks at archaeological revelations to complicate the choppy and incomplete stories of women that we receive from the Homeric epics. This is a quest for the historical women of early Greece, an attempt to discover what their lives and experiences were really like. Hauser brings quiet, two-dimensional characters into three-dimensional reality filled with color and emotion. In the process, we get to know the epic characters better, along with the historical women’s experiences that they reflect. The archaeological evidence Hauser uncovers helps us to better understand a tension implicit in Homer’s epics between women’s apparent powerlessness and their documented historical and political significance.
Hauser’s book is an important contribution to our growing knowledge of the world of Bronze Age women. Its one major weakness is that the specter of transgender ideology rears its ugly head on occasion, marring what is otherwise a superb work of scholarship and storytelling. In spite of this, Christian and Jewish readers—for whom the study of ancient women’s lives is motivated by more than mere curiosity—will find the book particularly meaningful. Through an acknowledgement of the significance and suffering of Bronze Age women, we can affirm the human dignity of all persons, male and female, as created in the image of God.
A Homeric Paradox
Throughout the book, Hauser explores the paradoxical status of women in Homer’s epic. As she puts it, there is a
fundamental incompatibility between the claim the epics make that women don’t matter, and the fact that in every case they are essential to the story and the myth. There wouldn’t be an epic without a Muse. There wouldn’t be a Trojan War without a Helen. The Iliad wouldn’t begin without a Briseis. The Odyssey wouldn’t end without a Penelope.
The action of the epics, in other words, declares that women matter much more than the (often-derogatory or dismissive) words of the male heroes suggest.
Hauser draws on external sources—particularly archeological findings—to supplement the brief descriptions of women found in Homer’s epics. In each chapter, Hauser focuses on a different female character from the Iliad or the Odyssey. We meet Briseis (the slave), Chryseis (the daughter), Andromache (the wife), Cassandra (the prophet), Hera and Aphrodite (seducers and matriarchs), Thetis (mother), Penthesileia (the warrior), Nausicaa (the bride), Arete (the host), Eurycleia (the handmaid), and so on. Yet the stories Hauser tells are more complicated than simply “Homer said X, and archaeology shows Y.” As she demonstrates, Homer’s readers have often overlooked what was there in plain sight, downplaying the importance of women in his work.
Consider the story of Helen. Other ancient sources make it clear that Helen was the ruler of Sparta. Her husband Menelaus only became king when he married her. No wonder Menelaus was so eager to go to war to get Helen back! Without her as his wife, he had no home or royal title. Yet Helen, “the face that launched a thousand ships,” is a relatively minor character in the Homeric epics. Most modern readers of Homer assume that the war was fought over the abduction of Helen, but also readily refer to Menelaus as the king of Sparta, without considering Helen’s role in conferring that power on her husband by marriage. Yet the story of Helen’s powerful role in Sparta reminds us that if we read carefully, looking more attentively at the presentation of the women in the epics, we may learn more than we expect.
Both of Homer’s epics open with a proclamation of male heroes as their subjects. Yet this rhetorical device, too, reveals more than a casual reader might assume. In the case of the Iliad, the first word is “wrath,” referring specifically to the wrath of Achilles, while the Odyssey opens with the word “man,” referring to Odysseus. In the lines that follow, the young Telemachus, son of Odysseus, tells his mother, Penelope, to be quiet, leave the banquet, and go weave. This kind of exchange occurs repeatedly in both epics. While we see the women now and again, we rarely hear them speak. Achilles’ talking horse gets more lines than most female characters do. Most do not speak at all. When they do, women like Penelope and Helen receive regular commands from the men around them to be quiet and obey. Goddesses don’t fare much better. In the Iliad, for example, king of the gods, Zeus, threatens his own queen, Hera, into silence.
And yet, when we look again at those proclamations of the heroes as subjects with which the epics open, another picture emerges. We cannot overlook that the opening invocations are addressed to the Muses. “Sing, Muse,” Homer implores, or “tell me, “Muse.” Without these female goddesses’ speech, there will be no epics. We would not know the stories of these men without the inspiration of the female goddesses. The same can be said about much of women’s work, both in Homer’s stories and in the Bronze Age history they echo. It may be easy to overlook the essential role of women, but that does not mean it is accurate to do so. Such has been always the plight of the quieter works of care and service women perform, as opposed to the more visible heroes’ exploits on the battlefield.
Archeology and Ideology
Modern archaeology provides us with more information about the Homeric world than ever before—including its women. Those whose speeches in life have not come down to us now speak volumes in death, through their bones and other contents of their graves. To the high-tech data provided by contemporary DNA analysis, we can also add sources like wall paintings, ancient tablets, and literature from roughly the same period in other ancient civilizations. A good historian makes creative use of all sources available, and Hauser’s book is a masterclass in this art.
As Hauser’s work demonstrates, the stories archaeology reveals are tantalizing, offering us glimpses into the concrete daily lives of women of every social class, from birth to death. The latter for many, alas, came much too early. Given inadequate rations, especially of protein—a reality documented in inventory tablets from some ancient sites—women were more likely to be chronically malnourished in certain periods of the Bronze Age. This, in turn, stunted growth in puberty and led to difficult pregnancies, increasing the risk of poor outcomes for both mother and child. Thus, when women in the Iliad and the Odyssey express fear for their sons or husbands, they speak as ones who have known death intimately. Everyone in their world did. The women of the Bronze Age did not have easy lives, despite remaining home while their men were at battle. Arthritic finger bones remind of the damage that weaving, that aristocratic activity of queens like Penelope, wrought upon those who engaged in this work for years. Such injuries from work are magnified manifold for enslaved women who did even heavier labor.
In spite of the wealth of information it offers, however, it is important to remember that archaeological research, like literary and historical interpretation, is not an exact science. The assumptions a researcher brings to a document or piece of evidence can either help or hinder understanding. Sometimes, these assumptions can lead us terribly astray.
Consider, for example, the story that Hauser tells of early-twentieth-century British archaeologist Arthur Evans’s work at the Minoan site at Knossos on Crete. I remember visiting Knossos myself for the first time as a graduate student, two decades ago. The vivid colors of the frescoes shone on walls, and the buildings looked as if they had been recently built, rather than being three and a half millennia old. The appearances here aren’t lying. Evans significantly reconstructed the site, resorting to fanciful imagination. His heavily reconstructed Minoan women on the frescoes, in particular, became fashionable European ladies of the Victorian era, with cinched waists, demure hairstyles, and artful lipstick. “La Parisienne,” indeed.
This is a cautionary tale for all archaeologists and historians. The temptation to see too much of ourselves in the past can lead us astray. Sadly, Hauser herself is guilty of this very sin. Her book is marred by several brief sections that deviate from what is otherwise an exemplary study of both literature and archaeology. In those sections, Hauser relies on the anachronistic framework of transgender ideology. The work of Judith Butler, which Hauser mentions in brief as authoritative, is accepted as such by most contemporary scholars of sexuality and gender. Yet it is utterly foreign to Bronze Age cultures. Using it as a lens leads Hauser to put forth several unfortunate—and obviously erroneous—interpretations. This is particularly obvious in the chapter on Athena, the shapeshifting goddess, who Hauser is determined to see as gender-fluid.
Scholars should resist the temptation to impose our own modern ideologies on the ancient world, especially where ancient authors readily supply their own explanations. For instance, in discussing one tomb of a male Bronze Age warrior, who had been buried with a necklace, hair combs, and a mirror, Hauser suggests that such “burial artefacts can bear material witness to fluid gender.” Another interpretation, however, is more likely. We know from many sources, including Homer and Herodotus, that Greek warriors always aimed to look their best in battle. In Herodotus book 7, chapter 208, we get a story about a Persian spy who went to sneak a peek at the Spartan camp the night before the battle of Thermopylae began. He found the Spartans, the greatest warriors of the Greek world, sitting there combing their hair. The strict uniform checks dreaded by modern soldiers offer a parallel to this historical reality—one that has nothing to do with gender fluidity.
Why Bother with History?
So what is the value of books like this one? Why do we even need to recover the women of the Homeric world? Aren’t the gorgeous epics on their own good enough? Upon concluding this book, I realized that my answer to these questions differs from Hauser’s.
While Hauser sees this project as inspiring us to build a better feminist future, I contend that honesty to our historical and literary characters is a virtue that shapes our own character. By reading the epics more closely—as Hauser herself encourages us to do—and paying attention to the details already there, we see significantly more stories of women than we had expected.
Their stories should remind us yet again that Greco-Roman pagan antiquity was a place where unspeakable cruelty was commonplace, and no framework for valuing all people unconditionally existed. All pagan systems of thought, whether ancient or modern, devalue and sacrifice the weak for the sake of the strong. This always includes women and children. As Thucydides’s Athenians would cruelly tell a tiny island state, Melos, in 416 BC, the laws of nature allow the strong to do what they will, and the weak to submit. Justice for the weak, in such a framework, only matters if the strong recognize such a claim upon them and then are willing to uphold it.
The history of Homeric women—both in the epics and in archaeology—confirms this reality. And so, whenever we consider the plight of ancient women and wonder why their dignity is not respected (with the few exceptions of some queens), we should remember the uniqueness of Judaism and Christianity not only among all world religions, but also among all historical systems of thought. The Judeo-Christian worldview is the only vision of reality that recognizes the beauty of weakness, and the value of every person as God’s treasured child.
As the story of Penelope reminds us, after every war, there will be a homecoming—but only if there is a home, lovingly kept by a homemaker, to come back to.
