10 Artefacts Connected to the Iliad and the Odyssey

Well, fancy finding you here. These are some of the most famous archaeological artifacts ever discovered. A gold funerary mask from Mycenae, helmets made of boar tusks found in the graves of ancient warriors, a treasure fit for the most beautiful woman in history, tablets that mention a conflict over an ancient city on the coast of Anatolia, and a vase depicting scenes from the fall of a city. Together, these discoveries are all connected to the world and events that inspired Homer's epic poems of the Iliad and the Odyssey. A few of them have even been proclaimed, incorrectly, as evidence that the Trojan War actually happened. What do they actually tell us about the Bronze Age Greeks and Trojans? What are their stories? How do they support, or challenge, that these events happened? Join me and my friend Dig It With Raven as we explore 10 Homeric discoveries from the ancient world, investigating the archaeological objects and sites that may connect us directly to the ancient world of Achilles, Helen, Agamemnon, and Odysseus. Don't forget to check out the video on Raven's channel that we've also made about whether or not the Trojan War actually happened. Let's dig in! The Mask of Agamemnon is one of the most famous gold artifacts from the Greek Bronze Age, and I would say from Greek history in general. It's made out of a single thick gold sheet, heated and hammered against a wooden background, with the details later on incised onto it with a sharp tool. It was found atop a burial in a shaft grave at the site of Mycenae in 1876 by German, capital A amateur, archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, whose entire archaeological ambition was to find proof that the Iliad and the Odyssey actually happened. He'd already found and excavated Troy, and his goal at Mycenae was to then find the grave of Agamemnon. Upon excavating multiple shaft graves within Gray Circle A, all filled with precious gold objects and other treasure, including four other world masks, Schliemann sent a telegram to the king of Greece saying, With great joy I announce to your majesty that I have discovered the tombs which the tradition proclaimed by Pausanias indicates to be the graves of Agamemnon, Cassandra, Eurymedion, and their companions, and all slain at a banquet by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegistus. There is also a popular story that he sent another message to a Greek paper saying he'd gazed into the eyes of Agamemnon. However, he never actually identified this specific mask as Agamemnon's when he first found it, but since it was the finest of the specimens, it became associated with the hero later. If you read his book on the excavation, on page 289, he describes it as a massive golden mask of the body at the south end of the first sepulchre. It's actually incredibly unclear which masks he's talking about when in his book. I mean, this could have also been the face of Agamemnon as well going by his logic because there is actually like nothing to support that this was Agamemnon in the grave. The mask isn't helpfully stamped with belongs to Agamemnon, also there was no evidence that everyone was killed at the same time as a part of a banquet. Even within his lifetime, Schliemann accepted doubts about the mask's true owner. But his tendency to exaggerate and embellish the truth has also led to claims that the mask is a forgery that he planted at the site, although most archaeologists accept that it's genuine. Later examination of this mask and the tombs at Grave Circle A have revealed to us that they actually predate the Trojan War by about 300 years or more. Nevertheless, it is an exquisite example of the early embossing technique and likely belonged to a warrior king or someone of extreme wealth and importance in early Mycenaean culture. Interestingly, death masks like the one found at Mycenae have not been found at any other site from the Mycenaean world... yet. So it is entirely possible that Agamemnon's true death mask is still out there waiting for archaeologists to find it. Perhaps one of the most famous finds from the site of Troy is Priam's treasure. On May 31st, 1873, during his third excavation campaign at Troy, Heinrich Schliemann uncovered a cache of gold and silver jewelry and vessels, essentially where this tree is located if you look at this photo I took back when I was excavating there in 2022. Describing the discovery in his autobiography, Schliemann wrote, I loosened the treasure from its hard rock surroundings, an undertaking that was highly perilous for the large retaining wall threatened to tumble down upon me at any moment. But the site of so many objects, each one of which had to be of immeasurable value for archaeology, made me foolhardy and erased the thought of danger from my mind. Typical archaeologist, in my opinion, but that never would have been allowed with today's safety standards. Regardless, out of the ground came gold and silver pitchers and cups, a copper shield, axes and daggers, and, inside a silver vase, two golden diadems, over 8,000 gold rings, six gold bracelets, and two gold goblets, among other things. Schliemann called this find Priam's Treasure, christening the diadems the jewels of Helen. The discovery was so great and so exciting that he began promoting it publicly even before the excavation season was finished. Now, I've already done a full-length video on this treasure and all of the political intrigue and mystery surrounding it, but to give you the long and short of it, Schliemann, not wanting to hand over such a famous find to the Anatolian authorities, smuggled it out of the country and back to Germany, and no one knew until his wife Sophia was seen wearing Helen of Troy's golden diadem and necklaces out in public. The Ottomans were, of course, rightly upset about the whole ordeal and arrested Amin Effendi, the official who was assigned to watch over the excavation. The government then revoked Schliemann's permission to dig and even sued him for their share of the gold. Schliemann did eventually trade some of the treasure with the Ottoman government in exchange for permission to dig at Troy again, and you can see it in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum today. The rest of Priam's gold was acquired by the Royal Museums of Berlin in 1881, and it stayed there until it was handed over to the Soviet Art Committee after World War II. The treasure was then flown to Moscow, where for decades the Soviet government denied any knowledge of where Priam's treasure ended up. It wasn't until 1994 that the Pushkin Museum finally admitted to possessing the artifacts, and that is where they remain today. All that being said, there have been some doubts raised about the authenticity of Priam's treasure and the story of its discovery. Firstly, the lairs of Troy in which the cache was found dates to much earlier than the alleged date of the Trojan War and when King Priam would have lived. Secondly, it's rather likely that the treasure as a whole is a composite of multiple finds across the site rather than one large hoard. It's known that Schliemann exaggerated and falsified his initial description of the whole discovery, so we may never know the complete truth. A lack of written evidence from Troy itself means that we have to search further afield for contemporary written evidence. This brings us to the archives of Hattusha, the capital of the Hittite Empire, which was a major power in Anatolia during the time that the Trojan War might have happened. Over 30,000 cuneiform tablets and fragments have been recovered from Hattusha and other Hittite sites, and a few of them suggest a link between the Hittites and a city called Lusa, which we think is the Hittite name for Ilion slash Ilius, which is another name that means the poem about Ilius. Both names are used interchangeably to refer to the ancient city. This tablet from Bogazkoi, dating to 1280 BCE, speaks of a political alliance between the Hittites and Alexandu, aka Alexandros, the ruler of Lusa. Alexandros was the birth name of Paris, the son of King Priam and the abductor of Helen in the Iliad. However, this Alexandu lived at least 50 years before the historical period that we tend to associate with the Trojan War. Additionally, one of the three gods guaranteeing the terms of the treaty on the side of Alexandu is the storm god of the army, Apollounas, who is usually equated to Apollo, who is portrayed in the Iliad as the divine champion or chief god of the Trojans. Then there is the Tawagalawa letter from 1250 BCE, where the Hittite king refers to former hostilities between the Hittites and the Ahiyawans over Lusa, which had now been resolved amicably. The similarity of the word Ahiyawa to Achaia, one of the names Homer uses to refer to what we now call Greece, has led scholars to think that the Ahiyawans and the Mycenaeans are one and the same. Other diplomatic letters mention Lusa as well, giving us an overall picture that at this time the western coast of Turkey was at the center of back and forth territorial claims between the Hittites and the Greeks. It's plausible that Troyliosa was caught up in this struggle and perhaps this conflict is a blueprint for the war. A few years ago, I came across a claim from a newly deciphered Hittite song referencing the Trojan War, but upon further research, it appears that this was an April Fool's joke. You can find out more about that in Raven's video. The only evidence that we have of Bronze Age writing at the site of Troy is this tiny bronze seal with Anatolian hieroglyphs used to write the Illyrian language on it. It was found in layer Troy 7b1 and is inscribed with the name of a woman on one side and a name of a man who worked as a scribe on the other. While it doesn't have the name of Wilusa on it, this seal is important to our potential identification of the site of Troy being Wilusa and somewhat connected to both the Hittites and the Trojan legend. The seal is very small and portable, so it could be likely that it was brought to Troy from somewhere else and then it was just dropped and abandoned at the site. And while it doesn't confirm that everyone at Troy would have spoken Luwian, its presence indicates that there is at least a chance that some portion of the population did. What's even more puzzling about this find is that by the time of Troy 7b1, palace bureaucracies had largely disappeared, meaning there wasn't much official documentation on things. So seals weren't required as much anymore. It's possible that it was brought to the site by a freelance scribe or maybe even the woman who's named on it, and it could have also belonged to an earlier lair or context and have just gotten mixed up in the excavation. Either way, this connection with the Hittite tablets can't be ignored, no matter how small. Our next discovery comes not from Greece, but Egypt at the site of Oxyrhynchus, one of the most important cities in Greco-Roman Egypt. This city has an extensive history stretching back to Nubian rule in Egypt between 747 and 656 BCE and possibly earlier. After Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, the settlement became popular with Greeks and quickly became a major city. It connected the Mediterranean to the oases in the west, serving as an instrumental pit stop for traders and travelers. Excavations at Oxyrhynchus have found reams of papyri in rubbish piles, tombs, and even stuffed within mummies as garbage-like filler as a part of the embalming process. But in 2026, archaeologists found something a little bit different. One of these papyri was a fragment of the Iliad placed, not stuffed, on the abdomen of a Roman-era mummy as part of the embalming ritual 1,600 years ago. Other papyri written in Greek had been found before at the site in similar positions, but they all contained magical or ritualistic content. A literary text like this had never before been found. It had been carefully preserved in a packet closed with clay embalmer seals, and it contains parts of a passage called the Catalogue of Ships, which lists various elements of the naval forces and their prominent commanders primed to invade Troy. This may seem rather repetitive to me and you, but for the ancient Greeks this was a highly valued part of epic poetry as it connected them to a shared mythical origin and a common Greek identity. Initially, the researchers thought the Iliad papyrus was effectively scrap paper that was used to stuff the mummy, but since it appears to have been folded, sealed, and placed on top rather than inside, something which has been rather inconsistently reported across the wider news, this actually changes our interpretation of it significantly. What was it used for? Ritual use is obviously always a possibility, but what do you think another use of it might be? I like to think that it was this person's favorite book, or perhaps they had a special link to one of the ships that was listed. When we think of ancient helmets, the first that come to mind are usually made of metal. This one is plastic, it's just an example. Sometimes they have a visor or some other movable part, and if we're being fancy, they have a plume or a hackle decorating the top. But if we want to be more historically accurate in imagining what the great heroes like Achilles or Odysseus would have actually been wearing in Bronze Age Greece, look no further than the Mycenaean boar's tusk helmets. While it may not be the most attractive looking helmet, though my opinion is that Brad Pitt could totally have pulled it off, helmets made from the ivory of boar's tusks were used in the Mycenaean period from around the 18th or 17th centuries BCE up until the 10th century BCE. We've found remnants of these helmets in contexts like shaft graves, and they were made by attaching rows of slivers of boar tusk to a leather base that was padded with felt. What adds even more authenticity to these kinds of helmets being worn by Greek heroes like Odysseus is that we have mention of them in the Iliad. In book 10 it says, Marioness gave Odysseus a bow, a quiver, and a sword, and put a cleverly made leather helmet on his head. On the inside there was a strong lining of interwoven straps onto which a felt cap had been sewn in. The outside was cleverly adorned all around with rows of white tusks from a shiny-toothed boar, the tusks running in alternate directions in each row. It's literally right in the text, but Hollywood constantly refuses to be biblically accurate when it comes to these helmets. Like, I get it, but I also just want one, one instance where they try it out and see how it looks. I think it would go over rather well, and we would educate the masses at the same time. Although these helmets wouldn't have provided as much protection to their metal counterparts, it's believed that they may have been worn by some leaders as a status symbol or for means of identification. This makes some sense as Homer specifies that the helmet given to Odysseus was an heirloom that had been passed down through the generations, hinting at its value. And I wouldn't be surprised if these were extremely valuable and expensive in the ancient world because it took anywhere from 40 to 140 ivory plates to cover an entire helmet, and it's estimated that 40 to 50 boars would have had to be killed to get that much ivory, just for one. Not every, and in fact most, artifacts aren't shiny gold treasure, and oftentimes the ones that look the most mundane can turn out to be more than we expected. This is the case with a clay tablet found during excavations at the site of Olympia in Greece, which was engraved with verses from the Odyssey. Olympia is more than just the home of the Olympic Games. It was also a religious center hosting temples to Hera and Zeus, the king and queen of the gods. The Odyssey tablet was discovered during a geoarchaeological survey of Roman remains a short distance from the sanctuary of Olympia. When it was first found, it was described as an inscribed brick from a heap of discarded building material. Closer inspection revealed that it contains the first 13 verses from Book 14 of the Odyssey, where the cunning adventurer Odysseus finally returns home to Ithaca after 20 years and is reunited with his trusted slave and swineherd, Eumaeus. Based on the style of its lettering, the researchers have dated it to the 3rd century CE at the latest. It's of enormous significance because even though it's so late, relatively speaking, that makes it the oldest written extract of the Homeric epic known to survive to modern day. What the item was originally used for remains a mystery, but it's worth noting that clay tablets like this were a common writing medium in the Greco-Roman world. Given the location where it was found, it might have been intended as an offering to the gods and then later was reused for construction building material. We can't talk about artifacts and discoveries relating to the Odyssey without heading to the infamous Greek island of Ithaca, the destination that haunted Odysseus for over 10 years, the home that he fights to return to. Well, it turns out that people have been traveling to Odysseus's homeland to honor him as a hero since as early as the 9th century BCE. Early 20th century archaeologists uncovered multiple objects that were likely left as offerings to Odysseus in a seaside cavern in the northwest side of Ithaca. For example, there were bronze cauldrons dating to the 9th or 8th centuries BCE that evoke the ones given to Odysseus by the Phaeacian people in the Odyssey. And there was also a piece of a clay mask dating to around 100 BCE with the words a vow to Odysseus inscribed on it. For all intents and purposes, it appears as though a hero cult of some sort was operating out of this cave for hundreds of years. There was a general trend across the Hellenistic and Roman worlds for such hero cults, especially for Homeric heroes, so of course it would make sense that one would crop up on Odysseus's home island of Ithaca. In 2025, archaeologists from the University of Ionina, reassessing some finds from the school of Homer, also known as Agios Athanasios in northern Ithaca, identified what is now widely believed to be a sanctuary of Odysseus himself. The site is a monumental complex, and researchers identified an incised dedication stating to Odysseus and two stamps with of Odysseus on roof tiles dating to the late Hellenistic period. Alongside these tiles, there was also a small bronze bust of Odysseus from the Roman period, 34 fragments of clay votives, loom weights, gold and bronze jewelry, and over 100 coins originating from multiple city-states. This was a significant religious site for over 1,000 years from the 3rd century BCE to the 2nd century CE, and archaeologists are now stating that these finds are conclusive evidence that the school of Homer was a shrine to the hero cult of Odysseus, known as the Odysseyon. Both locals and pilgrims from all over the ancient Mediterranean came to this Odysseon, and a discovery like this brings us even closer to the ancient public reception of Homer's epic myths. It also gives us more insight into the importance of Odysseus as a myth, a person, and a deity-like figure. Ancient Greeks didn't question whether or not the Trojan War actually happened, exactly as Homer described it, and the archaeological record is full of later objects that reference the epic poems, but interestingly, depictions of one of the story's main centerpieces, the wooden horse, are uncommon. In fact, Homer doesn't even detail its construction in the Iliad. Instead, he only mentions it in the Odyssey. The rarity of Trojan horse images is part of what makes the Mykonos vase such an interesting artifact. Despite the name, it's not actually a vase. It's a pythos, a storage vessel. In this case, it was found with human remains inside of it. Measuring in at 1.34 meters tall, like that's almost as tall as me, it was found in 1961 on the island of Mykonos. It dates to the archaic period around 670 BCE, so roughly 500 years post-Trojan War and within maybe about 100 years or so of the composing of the actual poems. Its design is divided into distinct segments, with the neck featuring the wooden horse as a wheeled gigantic statue. Small windows or portholes reveal the faces of warriors inside, some of which are handing weapons to other warriors outside the horse. These warriors are all equipped with gear typical for the period, round shields, as well as helmets and spears. They are also equipped with swords that can almost certainly be identified as a type of blade that was common in Greece at this time. The main body of the pythos has three rows of poised figures in scenes that all appear to relate to the fall of Troy, with an emphasis on the defeated women and children that are suffering at the hands of the conquerors. The scenes don't show a single Trojan soldier, instead the artist shows the battle as one against the defenseless inhabitants of the city. This scene in the second row features a veiled woman, who is probably meant to be Helen, as Homer frequently describes her as wearing a bright shining white linen veil, which symbolically marks her as a respectable cloaked woman of high social status. The bottom of the vessel has been left blank. What makes the Mykonos vase unique is its perspective. It steps away from glorifying the war to focus on the victims. For scholars, this aesthetic choice is a statement of intent. One author thinks that this object was displayed in a wealthy home or public space to remind the ruling elite of the dire consequences of failing to adequately protect their city. This doesn't explain how it came then to be used as a burial urn, but these unanswered questions don't diminish the importance of this vessel as one of the earliest surviving images of a myth that would become one of the most well-known stories in history. These objects might not look very Odyssey or Homeric-like, but this is a Telemachus tie-in and one of the most interesting potential Odyssey-related objects. These are Linear B tablets from the site of Pelos. In Book 3 of the Odyssey, Odysseus' son Telemachus ventures to the kingdom of Pelos on mainland Greece where he plans to seek the guidance of King Nestor. As his boat approaches the shore, Telemachus is greeted by the sight of a crowd of 4,500 people who are participating in sacrificing 81 bulls to the god Poseidon. That's a lot of bulls and a lot of people. Now, scholars have taken this section of the story and believe that a reference to it is recorded on 13 of the 1,200 Linear B clay tablets that were found in an archive room at the palace of Pelos. The tablets contain an inventory of chairs, knives, altars, and large tables that were used during a mass sacrifice. If you aren't convinced by that, the tablets were also discovered near a cache of burned cattle bones belonging to up to 19 separate animals that were around five years old when they died. Five is mentioned repeatedly in Homeric epics as the ideal age for sacrificing bulls. Of course, the sacrifice mentioned in these tablets is not the exact one that Telemachus witnessed. The tablets state that all the listed equipment was used to celebrate either the political appointment or the funeral of a man named Augewas. Scholars believe that this official might have been the inspiration for King Augeas, whom Nestor mentions in the Iliad. This sort of evidence lends credence to the theory that many real-life people could have served as inspiration for the legendary characters of the Homeric epics. Furthermore, it's possible that a momentous sacrifice, such as this one for Augeas, was an ancient tradition that was woven into the story. Alright everyone, time to pack up our discoveries and hang up our shovels. That's everything for this video. Did you like it? Which discovery was your favorite? Don't forget to comment, like the video, and subscribe to both of our channels before you leave. If you are feeling extra generous, you can give me a super thanks on YouTube or go to my Ko-fi page and give me a donation there. If you like the look of my bookshelves or perhaps you're curious about what titles are on it, I have an Amazon storefront where I've listed everything. 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