Page 403 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

340 Bronze and Iron [11130-1160 B.C.]
they deal with. Moreover, modern archaeological investigations
at Troy, Mycenae, and Pylos have confirmed the central fact
that Troy was taken by storm at a date which could well be the
traditional one of 1183 b.c., and at the same time have disclosed
parallels to many of the minutiae of the epics: vases and bowls
and swords and shields and house types and burial customs cor­
responding exactly to those described by Homer. Finally, the
decipherment of the Cretan Linear B script has enabled us to
read many tablets found at Knossos, Mycenae, and in particular
Pylos. These tablets, though largely inventories and storekeepers9
records, tell of a political and social structure existing at the
time of the Trojan War which corresponds very closely to that
depicted by Plomer, and tell of it moreover in turns of phrase so
similar to those found in the epics that it has seriously been
suggested that the bards of the Achaeans were also the court
scribes and storekeepers.
The whole question of the historicity of the Homeric poems,
and particularly the Iliad, is discussed in detail in D. L. Page's
History and the Homeric Iliad.