Page 381 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

3^8 Bronze andiron [1230-1160 b.c.]

the melting pot these days. The Moski, and the Phrygians who
had followed them from Thrace, had of late been pushing deep
into Hittite territory, and the Hittites had withdrawn their garri­
sons from the outer provinces to man a defensive line not far
west of their capital, Hattusas itself. The princedoms of western
Asia Minor, formerly tributary to Hattusas, had banded together
for protection into a loose confederacy. Of this confederacy
Troy, which had never been subject to the Hittites, was perhaps
the most influential member.
But in the heart of this confederacy lay the Achaean realm of
Lydia. In the coming war between the Peloponnesian and the
Trojan confederacies, for which the gauntlet had here been
thrown down, the prize was to be not only the queen of Sparta
but also the Achaean kingdom in Asia Minor.

It was in the year 1193 b.c. that the confederate army em­
barked for Troy. Menelaus was thirty-seven years old, his brother
a couple of years older, his wife ten years younger. It was the
greatest army, and the greatest fleet, that had ever sailed from
the Greek mainland. Not merely the men of the Peloponnese were
there, but also allies from many of the other princedoms. The
redoubtable Odysseus, son of Laertes of the Western Isles, had
brought his warriors, and young Achilles, rather a mother’s
darling and an unknown quantity, led a contingent of north­
country men whose fighting qualities no one doubted. The
Achaean king of Crete had thrown in his lot with the main-
landers, as had many of the princes of the Aegean islands.
They sailed against Troy in 1193, and in 1183 they were
still encamped about its walls. In the absence of trained siege
engineers, the walls of Troy had proved as unscalable as they
looked. Trained siege engineers could only be found in the
armies of the Hittites and of Egypt, and both countries had
other uses for their troops. In 1192, and in 1190 and again in
1186, the kings of Libya had organized the seafaring peoples of
the Mediterranean in their long-awaited attacks upon Egypt.
But for all that Egypt had been weakened by ten years of civil
war, it had proved impossible to develop the raids into a bridge­
head, still less an occupation. Setnakt, a resolute general of Tanis