Penelope's Bones

"Three millennia ago, in an ancient Greece where men spoke and women were silenced, some of the world's first epics were born: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. But these are not just tales about heroic men. There are scores of women as well-complex, fascinating women whose presence is pivotal to the stories. Essential reading for anyone who loves the novels of Madeline Miller, Pat Barker, or Natalie Haynes, this riveting new history reveals the real women of the Bronze Age Aegean, offering a groundbreaking reassessment of women in the ancient world. Following in the footsteps of Helen, Briseis, Cassandra, Aphrodite, Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso, and Penelope, award-winning classicist and ancient historian Emily Hauser pieces together compelling evidence from the original texts and archaeological excavations. Readers will learn about era-defining discoveries such as the excavation of Troy and the deciphering of Linear B tablets, as well as more recent finds such as the tomb of the Griffin Warrior at Pylos, whose grave goods inspire reconsideration of traditional gender attributes; DNA evidence showing that groups of Thracian warriors buried with their weapons and steeds were in fact female fighters; a prehistoric dye workshop on Crete that casts fresh light on "women's work" of dyeing, spinning, and weaving textiles; and a superbly preserved shipwreck off the coast of Turkey whose contents tell of the economic and diplomatic networks crisscrossing the Bronze Age Mediterranean"--