Helen among ruins

Helen of Troy palace found among ruins

March 15, 2002

AN archaeologist claims to have found the palace from which Helen of Troy was abducted at the dawn
of European history, triggering the Trojan War. Theodore Spyropoulos, a regional official of Greece’s
Central Archaeological Council, said that more than 20 years of excavation near the small village of
Pellana, 15 miles north of modern Sparta, brought to light formidable building foundations dated to
around 1200 BC, close to the probable date of the Trojan War. The scale of the biggest building,
approximately 40 ft by 95 ft, indicates that it must have been a palace, he said.

“I am absolutely certain beyond the slightest doubt that Pellana is the Homeric site of the palace of
Menelaus,” Professor Spyropoulos told the newspaper Eleftheros Typos.
In Homer’s epics, Menelaus, King of Sparta, was the husband of the famously beautiful Helen.
Furious at her abduction by the Trojan prince Paris, a palace guest, he helped to organise the Greek
military punitive expedition known as the Trojan War – the first known East-West conflict.
There are signs of workshops and storerooms, the foundations of a mile-long fortification and a road
almost as wide as a modern motorway around the palace remains – all evidence, Professor Spyropoulos
says, that the complex must have been the most important in the region.
“There are ten times as many finds here as there have been at Mycenae,” he said. Mycenae, 70 miles
to the northwest, was the centre of a Bronze Age Greek civilisation that collapsed in the chaos left by
the war.

But Professor Spyropoulos’s claim goes against generally held archaeological opinion, which places
Menelaus’s palace three miles northeast of Sparta, at the Menelaion, a Bronze Age mansion where
Menelaus and Helen were honoured as demigods for centuries. David Blackman, director of the British
School of Archaeology in Athens, said: “We’re awaiting more evidence and confirmation.” The school
has for years been excavating the Sparta area, including the Menelaion.

But he added: “We have never taken the line that no other alternative to the Menelaion could be
considered.”  Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History at Cambridge University, said that the claim
was interesting but would require further and more detailed evidence and documentary substantiation.
“Professor Spyropoulos is a respected excavator and his claim is very interesting. But as yet there is
no firm proof that this was Menelaus’s palace, let alone the place whence Helen was abducted.
“The ancient Spartans would have been surprised to discover that Helen was not from Sparta but from
Pellana, farther to the north.”

According to Homer’s Odyssey, Helen repented of her unfaithfulness and the ten-year bloodletting that
it caused. In an account that sounds too good to be true, she returned to Menelaus and their palace,
remaining thereafter a model wife.

Source:

John Carr in Athens
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-236259,00.html
http://www.esoterica.gr/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1789
Greece 4594 Μηνύματα Απεστάλη: 25/07/2003, 07:31:05  

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