Hi, thanks for tuning in to ancient Greece declassified.

Episode 42, the Hittite Homer Connection.

In the almost 3,000 years since Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were first composed, they have

had a tremendous influence on Western literature. Homer is often thought of as the OG

of epic storytelling. But is it possible that the Iliad and Odyssey were in turn deeply influenced by the stories of other civilizations to the east of Greece?

That's what we're going to find out today.

I figured you guys could use another detour or interlude from our ongoing series on Plato's Republic,

and this is a topic that's intrigued me for a very long time, so I'm excited to finally explore it with you.

This episode is also being released on YouTube, so if you're a visual person and prefer

to watch interviews, head on over to YouTube.com slash Lantern Jack, where you'll find this

conversation, and you can subscribe for more video content in the future.

For thousands of years, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were the oldest

epic narratives that Europeans knew of. But since the mid-1800s, archaeology has

enabled us to peer through the depths of time and give us access to the amazing and

colorful world of the late Bronze Age. We're talking roughly 1600 to 1200 BC.

During that time period, one of the greatest empires around was that of the Hittites who

controlled most of Anatolia, namely what's now the territory of Turkey. If there ever was a

Trojan war, the Hittites would have almost certainly been involved as

adversaries of the Greeks, since Troy is part of the region they lay claim to.

Now, one recent scholar, who is an expert on both ancient Greek epic and Bronze Age Hittite texts,

has gathered evidence that suggests that the Mycenaeans, i.e. the Bronze Age Greeks,

and the Hittites not only vied for control over

...