When watching Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, I noticed something interesting. Nolan seems to place Odysseus and the other returning heroes of the Trojan War firmly within the world of the Sea Peoples: the mysterious seaborne warriors who swept across the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BC and even challenged the mighty Egyptian Empire.
It’s an attractive idea. The Trojan War is traditionally dated to roughly the same period as the Bronze Age Collapse, and some of the peoples mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions have even been linked to the Greeks who fought at Troy. Perhaps Odysseus and his crew were themselves among the Sea Peoples. As it turns out, Nolan is far from the first to make that connection.
Continue reading “Does the Odyssey contain memories of the Sea Peoples?”