APPENDIX:

The Pylos Rower Tablets

Unless we accept that raising a fleet requiring six hundred rowers was a normal occurrence at Pylos, the rower tablets strongly suggest that something out of the ordinary—something exceptional—was taking place at Pylos just before its demise.1 This impression is further strengthened by textual references to the collection (and scarcity) of metal to make weapons, the possibility of human sacrifice, and particularly the o-ka tablets, which refer to “watchers” who are guarding the coast.² To these considerations must be added one final and obvious one: soon after these tablets were written, the palace of Pylos was indeed destroyed.

Assuming for the moment that the rower tablets do indicate a state of crisis at Pylos in anticipation of a danger approaching from the sea—a view that is held by some but not all Linear B scholars—what purpose might the fleet of galleys have served?

The large numbers of men mentioned in An 610 and An 724 have been interpreted by some scholars as evidence of the mustering of a Pylian war fleet. Fleets of oared ships bring to mind thoughts of Troy, Salamis, and Actium, of battles and piracy. This equation of “oared ships” with “warships” seems so obvious that little consideration has been given to alternative reasons for the massing of oared ships.

There are other, nonmilitary, contexts where we might expect to find records of numerous rowers. For example, Hatshepsut seems to have required about a thousand rowers just for the towboats pulling her obelisk barge from Aswan to Karnak.³ Many paddlers, or rowers, would have been required for flotillas taking part in pageants or races during cultic festivals, as at Thera (Figs. 6.46–47). And since trading was also done on merchant galleys, fleets of oared ships would have also required enlisting many rowers (Figs. 2.2, 11).⁴

Herodotus relates that the Phocaeans used penteconters in their voyages of exploration and trade.⁵ In doing so, he emphasizes the commercial aspects of this extended navigation by his reference to Tartessus, the Biblical Tarshish, a site noted by Ezekiel for its metals.⁶ Assyrian reliefs frequently depict Phoenician trading galleys (Fig. 7.6).⁷ An Iron Age Cypriot terra-cotta model depicts a deep and round merchant galley with a row of oar-ports on either side of the hull.⁸

Oared ships could also be used in expeditions of colonization or for mass forced migrations when insurmountable forces threatened. In Classical times, penteconters were used to transport entire populations and their movables when danger threatened. Miltiades escaped from Tenedos before the approaching Phoenicians in five galleys (trieres) laden with his possessions.⁹

Undoubtedly, the most informative example of this phenomenon is Herodotus’s description of the Phocaean escape from Ionia before the advancing Persian army: “The Phocaeans launched their fifty-oared ships, placed in them their children and women and all movable goods, besides the statues from the temples and all things therein dedicated save bronze or stonework or painting, and then themselves embarked and set sail for Chios; and the Persians took Phocaea, thus left uninhabited.”¹⁰

Sennacherib describes a similar waterborne flight, this time from the viewpoint of the invader: “And Lull, king of Sidon, was afraid to fight me (lit. feared my battle) and fled to Iadnana (Cyprus), which is in the midst of the sea, and (there) sought a refuge. In that land, in terror of the weapons of Assur, my lord, he died. Tuba’lu I placed on the throne of his kingdom, and imposed upon him my royal tribute.”11

In his palace at Nineveh, Sennacherib’s artists recorded Luli, together with his retinue, escaping Tyre by ship from Sennacherib’s superior forces (Fig. 7.6).¹² Luli’s fleet consists of warships with waterline rams as well as round merchant galleys. The heads of men and women passengers peeking out from above the bulwarks suggest that both types of ships were used in this waterborne migration.

The prophet Ezekiel, in the lamentation for Tyre in which he compares that city to a merchant ship rich in cargo that has sunk to the bottom of the sea, includes both oarsmen and soldiers among the ship’s crew.¹³ The prophet may be speaking here of either—or both—types of ships in Sennacherib’s reliefs, for both fit the bill, being oared biremes that carried soldiers.

Which of these explanations best fits the evidence of the rower tablets at Pylos? Do they refer to a military fleet, a cult ceremony, a massive trading venture, or perhaps an act of flight and migration?

PY An 610 and An 724 may record preparations for a shipborne emigration—at least of the upper levels of Pylos’s stratified society—to escape an expected overwhelming attack. Most of the oarsmen of PY An 610 are classified as “settlers,” “new settlers” or “immigrants,” while one of the men absented in PY An 724 is defined as a “settler who is obligated to row.”¹⁴ Such terms could also make sense if these documents record an act of overseas migration, in which the rowers are among those migrating to the new location. If so, such a situation would parallel that of the Phocaeans as described by Herodotus.

This explanation also fits well into what we know of the Mycenaean world at the end of the thirteenth century B.C. In the Late Helladic IIIC period, as their world fragmented, Mycenaeans fled their cities, establishing numerous colonies and settlements abroad.

The fact that the oarsmen in An 610 and An 724 are differentiated into “new settlers” and “settlers” seems to presume the previous establishment of a site. Perhaps the documents refer to the enlargement of a preexisting Pylian settlement or region, already organized and controlled by the palace at Pylos.

In archaeological terms, what might we expect to find at Pylos if it had been abandoned and destroyed by its inhabitants instead of attacked and pillaged by invaders?

• It is reasonable to assume that the migrants would have attempted to take their most valuable possessions with them, together with those items and livestock most needed to begin life in a new location. Items of lesser importance would have been left behind because of the lack of space on board the transports. Furthermore, fleeing inhabitants, realizing there was no return, might themselves destroy as much as possible of what they had to leave behind to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

A study of the artifacts found on the acropolis indicates that all the valuable metal vessels listed in the Linear B documents had been removed from the palace before it was burned: not a single metal vessel of value was discovered in the palace.¹⁵ Explaining this “housecleaning” as the work of invading pillagers is possible, but I believe it does not account for the fact that strata that have been destroyed and, presumably, pillaged in the process will normally still contain some valuables. Pillagers are not infallible. And although metal hoards—at least some of which must have been interred for safekeeping with the intention of later recovery—are a particularly common feature of Mycenaean sites in the thirteenth century B.C., no hoards were found at Pylos.¹⁶

The vast majority of artifacts recovered consists of large quantities of pottery, abandoned in the palace pantries in mint condition.¹⁷ The vases, which had been stacked neatly according to type, collapsed in groups as the fire that swept the palace burned away the wooden shelves on which they were stored. Pottery, easily made from local clay at any given destination, is unlikely to have been allotted valuable (and limited) shipboard space.

• No struggle would have taken place. The invaders, if and when they arrived, would find the palace abandoned, empty of valuables, and perhaps even burned to the ground. Despite the massive excavations at Pylos and the many skeletal remains retrieved there, not a single bone can be identified as human, leading the excavators to conclude that the inhabitants had escaped Pylos before the burning of the palace.¹⁸

Thus, the archaeological evidence fits well with the interpretation of Pylos having been abandoned instead of destroyed by external enemies. The ease with which the later Phocaeans took to their ships to leave their homeland when threatened by superior military forces suggests that they were not the first in the Aegean world to choose this option in times of crisis. This interpretation of events at Pylos might aid in explaining the psychological and organizational mechanisms at work behind the phenomenon of mass seaborne Aegean migrations to the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Late Bronze Age, of which Pylos may be a microcosm.

Indeed, the “northwesterners” who settled in Cyprus, Syria, and Israel (whether for the short term or for the long) during the upheavals of the twelfth century B.C. must have originally left somewhere. To do so, therefore, required at least some form of bureaucratic organization and preparation. The Pylos rower tablets may reflect one—palace-oriented and therefore highly organized—form of preparation for a seaborne migration. Given the size of the estimated population of the kingdom of Pylos, the expedition registered on An 710 and An 724 probably would have been only one (and perhaps the last) of many such expeditions required to transport even a small portion of the people of Pylos, together with their servants, belongings, and livestock, to the new location.19

If the above working hypothesis for the meaning of the rower tablets—and with them, for the last days of Pylos—is correct, it would have a profound effect on our understanding of the other Linear B documents found there. But perhaps the most intriguing question that would arise if the people of Pylos abandoned and perhaps torched their own palace before sailing off into the horizon is this: where did they go?²⁰