Professor Edith Hall

speaker

337 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 13 Jul

Professor Edith Hall’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Dan Snow's History Hit · The Real History Behind The Odyssey · 13 Jul 2026 podcast

And what they come back with, these oarsmen,

are spices, material resources, and slaves.

Women and children, slaves.

So the idea in the Iliad that we're going to come back with all these concubines is completely fitting into that palatial civilization and the place names in the Homeric catalogue of ships

are ones where we, you're quite right, have dug up extensive evidence of Mycenaean palace civilization.

Notably, you've already said them, Pylos, Mycenae, Argos, Knossos in Crete.

These are where these kings were, and the Linear B evidence also shows many names, personal names, that there are actually people who are called things like Orestes in those inscriptions.

Now, that wasn't discovered until we cracked Linear B in the 1950s.

And it was a total revelation in terms of the historicity of the Mycenaean world portrayed.

Let's talk about that phenomenon.

Yes, all the evidence is that this Greek identity was absolutely grounded in a sense that they were the masters of the sea.

In fact, they weren't the only masters of the sea.

They learned an awful lot from the Phoenicians who were building incredible fleets of trading ships as well as warships at the same time.

If we knew more about the Phoenicians, sadly, Scipio burnt down the great library at Carthage.

A few hundred years later, if we knew more about the Phoenicians, I think an awful lot more about the maritime culture and the Odyssey would come clear.

The Phoenicians make sinister appearances, pirates.

They're the sort of people who are brilliant ships, but will suddenly turn up on the horizon and abduct you and sell you into slavery.

But the Greeks, it's sailing and swimming.

Just being in control of the water is so crucial to the Greek mentality.

The word for mind and ship has come from the same root.

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