Naissance de la Grèce: De Minos à Solon

Mondes anciens

by Brigitte Le Guen, Maria Cecilia d'Ercole, Julien Zurbach

De Minos à Solon, d un roi mythique à l un des Sept Sages de la Grèce ancienne, ce volume retrace l histoire des mondes égéens depuis leur origine, dans un cadre méditerranéen élargi à l Europe et au Proche-Orient. Il embrasse la totalité des cultures archéologiques qui se sont succédé pendant l âge du Bronze. Cette très longue période, déployée sur plus de deux millénaires, est riche d inventions et de bouleversements de toute sorte, de la pratique de l écriture (linéaires A et B, puis mode alphabétique) à la guerre de Troie et à ses suites, dont se nourrissent l Iliade et l Odyssée. À la lumière des recherches les plus récentes, avec pour guides d éminents connaisseurs du monde mycénien (du xve au xiie siècle) et de l époque archaïque (du viiie au vie siècle), le lecteur est invité à Cnossos, premier palais crétois à être fouillé, à Troie, à Mycènes, à Tirynthe, à Delphes, à Délos, à Tarente, et dans bien d autres sites. Il découvrira des cultures, des sociétés et des formations politiques aussi mystérieuses qu originales ; il rencontrera Athéna, Zeus et Poséidon, déjà présents sur les tablettes en linéaire B de l âge du Bronze... À l ombre des palais, des villes, des ports et des sanctuaires du monde égéen, c est une histoire plurielle et inventive, totalement renouvelée que propose ce livre, enrichi par une splendide iconographie et une cartographie originale.

Genres: Nonfiction

688 pages, Paperback

Published April 24, 2019

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 'Mondes Anciens'/Ancient Worlds- series from the French publisher Belin offers thorough overviews of specific periods and cultures in history, with up-to-date bibliographical material and, above all, many illustrations. This volume, which covers the earliest Greek history (roughly from around 2500 BCE to 510 BCE), also meets this requirement reasonably well. However, editorially, it's not the best in the series: the editing isn't always streamlined, making the hand of various authors clearly recognizable. And what bothered me most editorially is that the usual archaeological time indications (for example, MM2a, standing for Middle Minoan second period, first half, specifically 1800-1750 BCE) are hardly explained in the articles. Nevertheless, as a popular overview, this is quite enjoyable, and of course very interesting. More in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Sense of History]

It may be nitpicking, but the title of this beautifully edited French book “NAISSANCE DE LA GRECE”/The Birth of Greece, suggests a little too much that there is a direct line from the earliest Bronze Age cultures in what later became the Greek area, to classical Hellas. I mean that the cultures of the Cyclade islands (roughly 2,800-2,300 BCE), Minoan Crete (roughly 2,000-1450 BCE) and the Mycenaean mainland (roughly 1600-1200 BCE) can not necessarily be considered as direct predecessors of classical Greek high culture (roughly from 500 to 300 bce). There are only very limited indications that certain cultural elements from that earliest period were subsequently resumed in the classical period. And above all: from nothing, absolutely nothing from the third and second millennium BCE can be unequivocally deduced that the Aegean area would grow into such a high culture in the first millennium BCE.

“Yes, but...”, I can hear you say, “... didn't the classical Greeks regularly hark back to that early time, and even portray it as a heroic period? Just think of Homer and the Trojan War.” Certainly, but that was merely a nostalgia fed identity cultivation, grown from the deep-rooted cultural feeling (which characterized many ancient cultures) that the past was a golden period, and things had only gone downhill since then. Our romantic historians and archaeologists of the 19th and early 20th centuries went along with this and created an attractive narrative in which the Minoans and Mycenaeans were depicted as heralds and for-bearers of later Hellas. And despite decades of solid archaeological and historical research that continually corrects this view, this mythological representation, which fits neatly into the rise-bloom-fall scheme, still remains strongly anchored in our way of thinking.

Fortunately, this book does not adhere to the classical mythical vision, but attractively presents the characteristics of the various Bronze Age cultures in the Aegean region and their interactions. It adheres very well to what can be sensibly inferred from the archaeological finds and (limited) textual sources, and constantly emphasizes how limited that material is. The latter makes it very difficult to interpret that material, leaving many essential questions about those Bronze Age cultures unanswered, or at most stuck in the phase of probable hypotheses.

The other chapters, covering the period from approximately 1000 BCE to approximately 500 BCE, are more disparate in nature. While they do contain essential information on political, economic, social, and cultural developments, it's clear they were written by different authors, resulting in considerable repetition and sometimes even (at first glance) contradictory statements. Occasionally, there are interesting insights, such as the use of the term "swarming" (“essaimage”) instead of the (now long-deprecated) term "colonization." Strange, then, is the epilogue, in which events around the year 500 BCE in Athens, early Rome, the Celtic world, Illyria and Thrace are linked together to form a caesura that marked the whole of Europe: “In the last decade of the century, a convergence of political, social and economic transformations drew a communal history which marked very diverse spaces and the changes which lay at that moment in the Mediterranean and just as Europe was in the midst of a major historical transition. » This is, to say the least, strange.

[Florenceg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Très bonne synthèse. Nombreuses illustrations, cartes et photographies du matériel archéologique découvert avec des explications claires. Un ouvrage de grande qualité comme tous ceux de cette collection.