Does archaeology reveal homer?

Abstract

Homer is celebrated as a renowned epic composer who belonged to the 8th century B.C.E. of Archaic Greece. One of his surviving epics is “The Iliad” where he refers to a historical incident, believed to have happened in the Mycenaean era of Greece, which is placed around the 12th and the 13th centuries of Greece, in a romantic narrative manner of writing. In “The Iliad”, he narrates the last year of the Trojan War where the Mycenaeans invaded Troy. This epic is the premiere written record of a historical happening which was orally transmitted for a considerable period of time. The archaeologists who have done researches at the palace grounds and sites, where the epic heroes of Homer lived, have revealed many sites and artifact which Homer composes in his epics. The aim of this research is to observe how Homer’s composition on the Mycenaean era corresponds to the archaeological findings of the modern day. This study focuses on how the modern archaeological findings at the sites, where Homer’s epics are based on, support the ‘history’ in Homer and his epics. The study provides the reader reliable archaeological findings while taking exact phrases where Homer discusses the same fact in his epics. The discussion is conducted based on selected sections from Homer’s “The Iliad” and relevant readings from history. The arguments would be substantiated by pictures on archaeological findings, which includes the sites, buildings, and many other findings.