CACHE member Dr Susan Lupack discusses her passion for the real Mycenaeans and her latest book project, Mycenaean Religion: The Creation and Expression of a Society’s Ideology.
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When I started my graduate work I wanted to study the real Mycenaeans – not the legendary Mycenaeans as they are depicted in the Iliad and the Odyssey (although those epics did help to inspire my desire to learn more about them), but rather the people who actually lived at Pylos and Mycenae in palaces decorated with rich frescoes, and who actually went to battle wearing real boar’s tusk helmets. But the thing that most intrigued me and pulled me into the study of the Late Bronze Age culture was the script the Mycenaeans used to represent their language, which happened to be Greek – the Linear B script deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952. I wanted to learn how to read those tablets whose strings of symbols seemed so mysterious and full of promise. It was for this that I left behind my native New York City for the University of Texas at Austin, so that I could study with Thomas Palaima and Cynthia Shelmerdine, two experts in the field of Mycenology.
And learn to read them I did. I was very fortunate because I was entering into a scholarly field that was, and still is, relatively new – a field whose foundations had been laid, but whose basic tenets were still being debated. One of those basic tenets formed soon after the decipherment of Linear B was that the Mycenaean wanax, or king, with the help of his hierarchy of officials, held a very firm, controlling grip on all the constituents of Mycenaean society and its economy. It is certainly understandable how the scholars of the time came to this view – after all, the tablets do detail a few industries, such as textile manufacturing, that were very closely monitored by the palatial administration. Because the wanax sent a variety of offerings, including grain, honey, perfumed oils, and occasionally gold vessels, to various sanctuaries and deities in his realm, it was thought that the sanctuaries and their priests and priestesses were also under the control of the wanax. The palatiocentric viewpoint understood the offerings as constituting the day-to-day sustenance of the religious personnel, and if the wanax was supporting the sanctuaries, then they were economically dependent on the wanax. This concept has significant implications, because those who are economically dependent are not likely to be politically independent, and indeed, the Mycenological academic community thought the sanctuaries were under the direct political control of the wanax.
In my research, however, I have found that if we look more closely at the tablets, we see that sanctuaries, in addition to the individuals recorded with religious titles (such as priest, priestess, sacrificing priest, keybearer), actually hold and manage economic resources of their own. For instance, the priestess of the sanctuary Sphagianes (the Place of Sacrifice) is recorded as holding as much land as the most prominent palace officials, and she is recorded as defending the classification of her land as “for the deity.” One may infer from this that land classified as “for the deity” conferred some benefit upon its holder – perhaps the priestess was asserting the land’s status as being free from the tax obligations that applied to the more common, secular plots of land.
In addition to holding sizeable plots of land, sanctuaries and religious personnel are recorded as possessing flocks of sheep and pigs, and as managing several different types of industrial work, including textile manufacture, perfumed oil production, and bronze-working. They are also noted as managing the workers in these workshops. It seems then that religious personnel had various ways in which they were able to support themselves, which indicates that they were not financially dependent on the palace. I think this economic independence would have enabled the religious sphere to wield an influence in their communities that was not based solely on their role as representatives of the deities. Indeed, I think that the consequence of such active participation in the economy was that the religious sector constituted an economic and political force within Mycenaean society distinct from the palatial administration. This work was the subject of my first book, The Role of the Religious Sector in the Economy of Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece.
Now here at Macquarie, I am working on my next book, Mycenaean Religion: The Creation and Expression of a Society’s Ideology, which is concerned with wider themes such as the development of Mycenaean religion from the Helladic and Minoan cultures, the significance of the sanctuaries and their religious personnel within Mycenaean society, and the elements of Mycenaean religion that appear to have been retained through the Early Iron Age into the religion of the Archaic and Classical periods. Ancient Greek religion is also being put front and center in my new archaeological project focused around the Sanctuary of Hera at Perachora.
To find out more about Dr Lupack's research go to https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/susan-lupack
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