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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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When I look up ancient literature in the Bronze Age I don’t see anything from Greece - how much do we really know about these people, how they felt, and what they thought?

It is true that we do not have literature, poetry or historical chronicles of Bronze Age Greeks. Maybe they never existed, maybe they were never written down, maybe they were written on perishable material.

But we have lots of detailed bureaucratic records, similar to ones from Near Eastern states.

We can know a lot about these centrally planned, militaristic, theocratic and bureaucratic societies, we can know well that stereotypical Bronze Age man was not wild barbarian looting, raping and pillaging from horizon to horizon, but conscientious office worker dutifully filing all the forms on clay tablets in triplicate.

We know well that while Troy existed and was destroyed at the time, the plot of Iliad is pure fantasy - real Briseis would be given number and personal file in archive, assigned to workplace and issued clothing and ration card like any other laborer.