Thousands of years after Homer first made reference to the Trojan horse in a short passage of The Odyssey, an Italian archaeologist now claims that the mythical wooden creation was actually a boat, according to reports appearing this month in Italian media. Francesco Tiboni, a naval archaeologist at the University of Marseille, published an article in Archaeologia Viva claiming that the story of the Trojan Horse was nothing more than a mistranslation of one key word in Homer. The horse, best known from a late version in the Aeneid of Virgil, is first recorded in Homer’s Odyssey, where it is alluded to in two places: What endurance too, and what courage he displayed within the wooden horse, wherein all the bravest of the Argives were lying in wait to bring death and destruction upon the Trojans. (4.271f.) It is fair enough to dismiss post-Homeric stories as later developments, but the allusions in Homer show that the story was already familiar enough by 750 BCE that he could allude to it and expect his listeners to know the tale. According to Tiboni, the horse was not hippos, the Greek word for “horse,” but hippos, a Phoenician term for a type of warship with a curving prow. This is based ultimately on a retrofitted legend recorded by Pliny the Elder, who in Natural History 7.57 wrote that “Hippus, the Tyrian, was the first who invented merchant-ships.” Hippus was, likely, the back-formed eponym of a type of boat called in Greek (but not necessarily Phoenician) the hippos, the first true plank-built cargo ship, and one long associated with Phoenicia. In academic literature, a curved Phoenician trading vessel is usually called a “hippos ship,” but it is not, to my knowledge, a Phoenician term. It’s a Greek one, because the ship’s curving prow resembled the curves of a horse’s head. It seems to be the general consensus that such a name is of Archaic or Classical origin and does not extend back to the Bronze Age. Whether it was in common use in Homer’s day is unknown to me, though an image of one on the Balawat Gates c. 850 BCE shows that the type of ship existed at the time, regardless of what it was called. The ships are believed to derive from those of the Sea Peoples, which are depicted in Egyptian art from around 1160 BCE in the mortuary temple of Ramses III in a clearly related but somewhat different form. No record of the Mycenaean word for those ships exists, and our Greek evidence is primarily late, notably Strabo (3.3.4), so the argument must remain speculative. "From the lexicographic perspective, it appears evident that the appearance of the horse resulted from a translation error, an inaccuracy in the choice of the corresponding term, which, by actually altering the meaning of the original word, led to the distortion of the entire event,” Tiboni wrote, in my translation. Since Tiboni’s argument is not yet available in English, I will present a bit more of his claim in translation from excerpts appearing in Italian news reports, beginning with his argument that by rewriting the Odyssey with the horse as a ship, we can revise the mythic story into a historical one: "If, in actuality, we examine the Homeric texts, reintroducing the original meaning of ‘ship’—certainly known to his contemporaries—not only does it fail to change the meaning of the story in any way, but the [Greeks’] deception tends to take on a less surreal dimension. It is certainly more likely that a vessel of great dimensions could conceal soldiers inside, and that they could exit rapidly from doors which are clearly visible on the hull and are in no way suspicious to the eyes of the beholder.” Now, I would take issue with Tiboni’s claim, since the story of the Trojan horse has both a literal and a symbolic meaning. His claim would preserve the literal meaning, provided that we assume that the boat was also meant as a votive statue and not an actual functional merchant vessel, but destroys the symbolic meaning. The horse was the symbol of Poseidon, and the emblem of Troy, and it is for that reason that the Trojans accepted it as a symbolic gesture of goodwill. By rendering it into a boat, there is no longer as much of a symbolic level to the story. Tiboni counters that the hippos ship was originally used to carry treasure and thus could be remembered in myth as a divine votive after the old Phoenician term fell out of common use. But since the change makes no difference to the story, since a boat can be the shape of a votive offering as easily as a horse, there is little advantage to choosing this option except that Tiboni studies ships professionally and would prefer to see them everywhere. Tiboni continues: Homer knew the maritime issue perfectly, so much so that he left us a great deal of information on the construction technology of ancient ships. [...] However, the very ease with which he used technical language led the post-Homeric poets to whom his works were handed down to be led astray by some of his passages. For Homer, talking about a ‘hippos’ was equivalent to indicating the Phoenician ship of this type. For his epigones, lacking knowledge of maritime things, it became a true horse. The underdevelopment – for it lay far in the future – of naval archeology, understood as the ability to analyze the various sources available to scholars for the recognition and study of the types of ancient ships, could have resolved this centuries-long equivocation, which, today, naval archeology can finally resolve. The argument stands or falls, basically, on whether (a) the Greeks called a Phoenician merchant ship a “horse boat” in Homer’s day, c. 750 BCE, and (b) whether the Greeks forgot this for 600 or 700 years until Strabo remembered it again. I can’t answer (a), but (b) is so self-evidently wrong that it knocks a pillar out of Tiboni’s train of logic in claiming that the post-Homeric poets had never heard of hippos (hippoi) ships, despite the fact that Homer supposedly knew of them before these poets, and the Hellenistic writers knew of them afterward.
The claim is not impossible, but neither is it convincing given the number of problems that have to be resolved in order to make it work.
30 Comments
Not convincing, to say it politely. The symbolism does not work any more, a boat could not be brought into the city.
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Jim
11/15/2017 11:54:58 am
A boat ?,,, it's enough to think they were so naive as to not check the inside of a statue of a horse, but a boat, by it's very design is meant to carry cargo or people. Who wouldn't check out the inside ?
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Bob Jase
11/15/2017 01:58:32 pm
What? Am I the only one who thinks it was a giant rabbit?
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Americanegro
11/15/2017 03:23:30 pm
As the Phantom said "Not a dog, a wolf."
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bear47
11/15/2017 10:03:57 pm
Like that nasty killer rabbit from the Monty Python film about the holy grail? Works for me.
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Americanegro
11/15/2017 02:44:19 pm
Troy was close enough to the sea that a boat would work, especially if fitted with a false deck.
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Only Me
11/15/2017 03:20:02 pm
Let's say Tiboni is correct. Homer clearly says part of Odysseus's army sailed away before the Horse is brought INSIDE Troy by the Trojans themselves. If the Horse is actually a boat, that part of the story makes no sense.
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Americanegro
11/15/2017 03:37:46 pm
You're accepting the "great dimensions" characterization which has no basis. As an exercise, throw that out. Also, as an exercise, throw out the part about "doors".
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11/15/2017 04:17:16 pm
It is my understanding that many, but not all, such boats had a horse's head. Others had different animals, according to accounts I've read.
Only Me
11/15/2017 04:22:18 pm
What you said is true, but I'm accepting Tiboni's argument as presented. He says it wouldn't change the meaning of the story when it would. He needs to clarify what the hippos actually is. Is it a boat or a vessel of great dimensions? 11/15/2017 05:11:57 pm
I believe the argument is that the Greeks created a votive offering in the shape of a boat, similar to the Trojan horse, but not horse-shaped, something like the symbolic boats that the Egyptians carried their gods around in and that the Minoans depicted their gods riding in.
Only Me
11/15/2017 05:43:27 pm
Thank you, that makes more sense. Like you pointed out in the post, the argument rests on assuming the boat was meant as a votive offering and not a functional vessel that was a part of the fleet. I suppose it may been just that and Odysseus had it converted to accomplish his goal.
Jim
11/15/2017 04:02:32 pm
What if it was neither horse nor boat, but instead a wooden hippopotamus !
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Bob Jase
11/16/2017 01:37:17 pm
Then they would have left it alone as hippos are known to be hungry, hungry.
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11/15/2017 06:17:25 pm
I am still waiting for Ancient Aliens to tell us that the Trojan horse was really a star gate which teleported the Greeks inside the walls
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Americanegro
11/15/2017 07:22:25 pm
They're never going to TELL you that. They'll say "What if?"
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Ken
11/15/2017 07:42:22 pm
You mean "What if? .... as ancient astronaut theorists maintain ..."
BigNick
11/15/2017 08:28:17 pm
The greeks were proto templars. The part of the story that the Smithsonian is covering up is that the Greeks killed all the Trojans by crushing their heads with runestones.
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Americanegro
11/15/2017 09:57:11 pm
And who ran Desert Storm? General Schwartzkopf. Can you say "black head"? Is there any doubt it was a Templar operation?
bear47
11/15/2017 10:07:37 pm
No doubt they left some Masonic symbols behind so future travelers would know who had done the deed.
Jim
11/15/2017 10:19:45 pm
Yup, It's something only the Templars could pull off, with their secret knowledge of measuring latitude and longitude using the phases of Venus and being master sailors only they were capable of returning to the shores near Troy and landing in the dead of night.
BigNick
11/16/2017 12:14:15 am
The hooked X is obviously a symbol representing the Trojans horse with Greek soldiers inside.
Scott "Longitude" Wolter
11/16/2017 12:25:25 am
I don't know and who can say and that by itself is proof! Please do not post anonymously. Ponce de Leon left me a cup of coffee in the bus station mens' room. Hamilton Burger's bowtie sends secret signals from my Masonic brothers.
Jim
11/16/2017 06:05:44 pm
How do we know that David, sometime after killing Goliath, didn't bring his forces and use the wooden horse ruse to conquer the Trojans ? There are some serious gaps in the historical record of King David. He could have easily done this.
Pierre Cloutier
11/16/2017 01:18:35 pm
The earliest image I know of the Trojan Horse seems to date from c. 670 B.C.E. See https://xochipilli.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/caballotroyamiconosdetalle.jpg.
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Bob Jase
11/16/2017 01:39:55 pm
Good image though I expect a real,one wouldn't have those windows.
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Kal
11/16/2017 01:46:06 pm
Maybe he meant 'workhorse' often a term to describe vehicles, ships, large cargo haulers, etc? (Since Plato and Homer did not have cars, and chariots would not make sense).
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Americanegro
11/16/2017 04:56:28 pm
You do understand that everything in the bible is a lie, right?
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historicus
12/26/2017 02:08:00 pm
The comment of Jason Colavito is exellent, very realistic,and something like this : -Sinožić in his book Our Troy (NAŠA TROJA in Croatian) -write about very old legend from island Krk,nearby Istria,Croatia,-the legend whitch talk about pirates who deceptioned the citizens with the wooden trunk,after the truce.-Pirates came with a trunk,like a gift into the city,and opening sides of trunk,takes the swords and spears and surprising our defenders,and conqering our city.This legend is just one of many from :-"Vejske povede"(-in English -"Feacs stories"). I think it is very interesting,and only one original trail of Homeric story about wooden horse.The soldiers in this story were outside of trunk,not inside,and it is realistic,because Odisey in his stories give us many fantasticly accounts.People from island Krk was the refugies from Troy,and Troy was placed in Istria.Today it is the city of Motovun.My English is not very well,but i try to explaine some stories. Greetings from Croatia...
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HISTORIAN
9/30/2019 01:14:21 pm
Acheans Retreat from Troad: An army retreating usually can leave something behind is path, for example one of the Boats.
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