The notion that Mycenaeans were great seafarers voyaging across the Mediterranean is widely held among scholars who focus on the Greek world, engendered by the broad distribution of Mycenaean artifacts as well as the influence of the Trojan War epics. For an earlier generation of scholars, it was Minoan and then Mycenaean sailors, merchants, and craftsmen who forged the link between the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean and managed cross-cultural trade between these areas (Kantor 1947). This was partly (over)compensation for prevailing ex oriente lux frameworks proclaiming the diffusion of knowledge from the civilized Near East to a barbarian Europe (e. g., Childe 1925). In recent years, the archaeological basis for assigning the Mycenaeans such a prominent role in eastern Mediterranean maritime networks has been deconstructed and reassessed (Bass 1998), and the Homeric epics have been decoupled from a historical Bronze Age context (Bennet 1997; Morris 1997; Raaflaub 2006). Near Eastern And Egyptian texts, along with the strong Syro-Canaanite character of the Ulubu-run and Gelidonya shipwrecks, have counteracted the Hellenocentric bias. Yet the pendulum continues to swing back and forth: world-systems theory was exploited initially to characterize the Aegean as a dependent “periphery" to a dominant Near Eastern “core." Subsequently, Nick Kardulias has restored some agency to the Aegean with concepts of “negotiated peripherality" (Kardulias 2007) and “linked maritime exchange cycles" in which Minoans and Myce-naeans participated in eastern Mediterranean trade on relatively equal footing (Kardulias 2009). The applicability of world-systems approaches remains a matter of vigorous debate (papers in Parkinson and Galaty 2009a) and many are not convinced (Burns 2010: 18—19; Cherry 2009; Cline 2009).
Moving beyond theoretical characterizations, the empirical evidence for Mycenaean long-distance voyaging beyond the Aegean is indirect and mostly circumstantial. No Bronze Age boat or part thereof has survived that is unequivocally a Mycenaean vessel. No indisputable evidence exists that Mycenaean ships visited Egypt or the farthest reaches of the Levantine coast, as opposed to trading through Syro-Canaanite or Cypriot middlemen. The case against visits to Egypt involves a qualitative change: after the Minoans were depicted as Keftiu bearing gifts to Pharaoh on wall paintings in tombs from the reigns of Hatshepsut (reign circa 1479—1457) to Amenhotep II (reign circa 1427—1400), the Mycenaeans were not depicted in the same way, nor were they mentioned in the Amarna archive at a time when large quantities of Mycenaean fineware pottery reached Akhenaten's capital of Akhetaten (Tell el-Amarna). As noted above, there is a lag of about a century between the Mycenaean occupation of Knossos circa 1450 and the widespread appearance of LH IIIA2 pottery at Amarna and many other sites (Judas 2011). It took even longer — until the end of the fourteenth century — before Egyptian exports to the Aegean found their way to the mainland more abundantly than to Crete.
There is some evidence for direct contact with Egypt, however. The so-called Aegean List inscribed on the back of one of five statue bases at the mortuary temple complex of Amenhotep III (reign circa 1390—1352) is a roster of place names from the Aegean. Following the ethnics Tanaja (thought to refer to mainland Greece) and Keftiu (the Cretans) are the names Amnisos, Phaistos, Kydonia, Mycenae, Thebes, Kato Zakro, Methana, Messana, Nauplion, Kythera, Ilios (Troy), Knossos, Amnisos again, and Lyktos. The list has been interpreted as the itinerary of a royal diplomatic mission, perhaps to reaffirm relations with old Minoan trading partners and to visit the mainland centers during the transition from Minoan to Mycenaean control of sea routes into and out of the Aegean (Cline 2007: 194; Hankey 1981). Cline (2007: 194) even links a number of faience plaques, faience scarabs and seals, and a frit vase, found mainly at Mycenae and all inscribed or painted with the cartouche of Amenhotep III or his wife Tiyi, with this same diplomatic mission. These objects, most of which were found in later (LH IIIB) contexts, could equally have arrived at various times and in diverse ways. At the very least, however, the Aegean List does show that the Egyptian court was aware of the most important LBA centers on Crete and the mainland. A final bit of intriguing evidence comes from Amarna. A papyrus fragment dated roughly to the mid-fourteenth century by an associated LH IIIA2 stirrup jar bears a painted scene in which a group of Mycenaean-looking soldiers rush to the aid of a fallen Egyptian (Schofield and Parkinson 1994). If this scene reflects a real state of affairs, it suggests the presence of Mycenaean mercenaries in Egypt. According to one recent hypothesis, the imported Mycenaean stirrup jars at Amarna, shown to have been manufactured in the Argolid, held olive oil presented to Akhenaten's royal court as part of a diplomatic exchange, the first of many such exchanges that led to the widespread cultivation of the olive in Egypt (Kelder 2009).
Many favor the Cypriots as the principal intermediaries between Mycenaean Greece and the Near East in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries (e. g., Bell 2005: 368; Hankey 1967; Mee 2008: 377; Sherratt 2009: 97—98). There are solid arguments for this position. Cypriot pottery is distributed alongside Mycenaean fineware at Levantine sites like Ugarit, Sarepta, and Tell Abu Hawam, but in greater quantities. The amount of Mycenaean pottery at Cypriot sites like Enkomi is considerably greater than is found at the Levantine sites, but the vessel types are quite similar. Significantly, Cyprus had a history of relations with the Aegean, adopting Cypro-Minoan script and importing pictorial kraters and amphoras specially made in the Argolid for the Cypriot and Syro-Canaanite market. Susan Sherratt (2009: 97—98) proposes that in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries, it was Cypriot small-scale commercial traders who linked the central and eastern Mediterranean in an unprecedentedly direct way, bringing Sardinia and the head of the Adriatic into contact with the eastern Mediterranean. According to Sherratt, the Cypriots not only distributed Mycenaean pottery in the eastern Mediterranean, they came to the Aegean to get it, visiting other Aegean ports of call such as Kommos regularly (Rutter 1999). Against Sherratt's notion is the fact that while Mycenaean pottery imports in Cyprus peaked in LH IIIA, Cypriot exports to the Greek mainland did not become substantial before LH IIIB (Cline 2007: 196).
Until a few years ago, the Mycenaeans were absent in Canaanite archives, but now scholars have identified two letters of the late thirteenth or early twelfth century at Ugarit that appear to give the Akkadian version of the Hittite name for the Mycenaeans, Ahhiyawa (Cline 2009: 178; Lackenbacher and Malbran-Labat 2005: 237—38; Singer 2006: 250—52). It is possible that these documents establish some sort of presence for the Mycenaeans at Ugarit.
Another key text implies that the Mycenaeans may have ventured east beyond Cyprus. In a letter to King Sausgamuwa of Amurru, on the northern Syrian coast, Hittite King Tudhaliya IV (reign circa 1237—1209 BC) instructs his vassal to prevent the ships of Ahhiyawa from coming into contact with the Assyrians through the ports of Amurru (Cline 1991; Gtiterbock 1983: 136). The obvious implication is that the ships of Ahhiyawa (i. e., Mycenaeans) had reached these ports in the past.
Cline (2009: 170—73) is steadfast in his opinion that Mycenaean ships were making direct voyages to Egypt and the Levant, although he acknowledges that the evidence is inconclusive. He emphasizes that the Minoans and Mycenaeans did not lack the navigational or organizational skills to make these voyages; thus, the rules of eastern ports or actions like the Hittite embargo may better explain the presence or absence of Mycenaean merchant ships. Often lost in the discussion is the fact that few scholars have expressed doubts that from LH I, Mycenaean ships were sailing to Italy and Sicily. Although maritime routes to the west did not involve a lengthy open-sea voyage similar to that from Crete to Egypt, there were plenty of environmental and navigational challenges along the routes across the Ionian and Adriatic Seas to southern Italy, Sicily, the Aeolian Islands, and eventually Sardinia. An implicit assumption about Mycenaean engagement with the west is that the indigenous inhabitants of the central Mediterranean did not possess the requisite seafaring technology or economic organization to travel east, an impression strengthened by the virtual absence of their finished goods in the Aegean. Whether or not this assumption is correct, the same cannot be said about Minoan or Mycenaean navigational capabilities. It is worth considering instead that the Mycenaeans were able to obtain the commodities they wanted most — Cypriot copper, tin from further east, luxury materials such as ivory — from visiting Eastern ships or by sailing to emporia on Cyprus or the northern Syrian coast, which served as collection points for products from far and wide. In these circumstances, the Mycenaeans may have had little need to make direct voyages to Egypt, which accordingly would have been infrequent.
World History
