THE ARMOR OF ACHILLES

Agatha Christie once said, ‘Archeologists are the detectives of the past.’ Unfortunately, detective Axel Persson did not have enough ‘clues’ to come to the right conclusion. In May 1960, a joint expedition of Greek archeologists, led by N.M. Verdelis and C.G. Stirenius, and their Swedish colleagues, led by Paul Åström, while excavating the Dendra necropolis found a complete bronze suit of armor (panoply, or πανοπλία in Greek, means ‘full suit of armor’) dating to the end of the fifteenth century BCE in one of the tombs (dome tomb №12).

Among the bronze parts of the panoply was the New Type of Mycenaean Helmet, which turned out to be one of the two shoulder armor pads and not a helmet. It is interesting that in his time, Professor Persson dug a trial trench right above the roof of this tomb without noticing it. Had he positioned his exploration pit a little to the west, he would have found an open entrance mine and would have been able to explore tomb №12, thus avoiding the reconstructions of the New Type of Helmet.

However, having solved the ‘helmet’ mystery, the discovery immediately generated a few other questions, which were soon clarified. The armor was made of bronze plates, which were first cast and then hammered into the desired shape. The thorax part of the panoply comprised large plates designed to protect the chest and back. These were held together by a hinge on the left side, suggesting that it opened up to allow the warrior to put it on. The shoulder armor pieces were worn on top of the thorax, and triangular plates to protect the warrior’s armpits when his arms were raised were attached. A separate massive collar protected the neck. Three pairs of curved plates were attached to the front and back of the thorax with ox leather belts, protecting the groin and hip area.

The armor also included greaves for the legs and bracers for the arms. Holes measuring around 2 mm, designed for attaching a leather lining, were found on the edges of all of the pieces. Indeed, the decaying remains of the lining were also found along with thread made from goats’ wool. All the parts were connected together using leather belts, for which slightly bigger 4 mm holes were used. Together with the armor, which was clearly very expensive in its time and likely belonged to someone very affluent, a relatively simple helmet featuring protective plates made from boars’ tusks was also found.iLink to our article about boars’ tusk helmets

The panoply was made for a warrior who was about175 cm tall and weighed between 60 and 65 kilograms, so he was quite a slim person. However, the weight of the armor, depending on the lining materials used, was 15–18 kilograms. Historians immediately began to speculate about what it was that they had actually found, especially as the armor did not look at all comfortable. Perhaps it was ceremonial armor for a king, which was not meant for battle but only for standing around and looking great. But then why was the helmet so simple? Did such a distinguished warrior not have enough money for just a little bit more bronze?

The mystery of the helmet was solved very quickly. Mycenaean palaces had their own armories for warriors to obtain the necessary equipment for military expeditions. They used a ‘signed for’ system of sorts, where a tablet was stamped to mark the material being issued. Thus, soldiers didn’t have to buy their own ammunition, and money wasn’t really the issue. It is possible that in our case, the warrior was not a king, but the act of burying him with the issued armor points to a special position of the deceased in the local hierarchy. Incidentally, the single shoulder armor plate found by Persson in another grave could be a singular find and not due to ancient tomb robbery. It is possible that it was placed there to mark the status of the person, symbolizing the full armor that that particular warrior was not supposed to take with him into the afterlife.

However, if the panoply was really used in combat, how did it work? The warrior would look like a robot, with the heavy armor limiting movement. Historians have suggested that this type of armor was worn by a charioteer, and a Mycenaean tombstone depicts a warrior in similar armor. Standing on a chariot, he is shown piercing a foot soldier with a long spear.

In 2018, an experiment in which a foot soldier used this type of armor was carried out. The Greek archeologist Spyros Bakas carefully reconstructed the suit of armor, and an exact copy of the bronze panoply was made, cast according to ancient standards. This gave historians the opportunity to evaluate the mobility of the warrior wearing it while using a spear and a sword. It turned out that the suit of armor was rather well suited to combat despite its weight and complex construction.

In 2024, researchers from the University of Thessaly in Greece, led by Professor Andreas Flouris, conducted a new experiment with replicas of the suit of armor from Dendra and various weapons from the Mycenaean era. The experiment was based on a very detailed description of ten days of the Trojan War from Homer’s Iliad. The volunteers were thirteen Greek marines, who were chosen because their anthropological parameters matched those of the men from the twelfth century BCE, and they were also of the same age as the heroes of the Achaean Eon. People were shorter then, but more wiry, and not many made it to old age.

The marines were required to follow a diet followed in ancient Greece, consisting of meat and red wine in the evenings only. During the day, they could only consume bread, goat cheese, olives, and water. They were also trained to use ancient weapons and practice fencing maneuvers of that era following pictures and descriptions that have survived to this day. Daily combat episodes were acted out from descriptions in the Iliad, including start and finish times for combat, ideal weather conditions, et cetera. If Homer is anything to go by, the battles started around 7 a.m. and finished around 6 p.m. This means that the Greek marines were facing eleven hours of active ‘combat’ in the heat while wearing Mycenaean bronze, though accompanied by small snack breaks, as Homer’s Achaeans did as well.

While healthy young men exercised with swords and spears, perfecting the elements of ancient combat, scientists took samples and evaluated their overall condition. It turned out that the type of armor found in Dendra was perfectly suited to foot combat. The soldiers wearing it only suffered from minor chafing and raised body temperature, which is, of course, not surprising.

The suit of armor did not really work for archers as it was too cumbersome and limited their movement while using a bow and arrow. Charioteers, however, felt very comfortable wearing this type of armor. In addition, the armor, reconstructed in accordance with Mycenaean samples, cannot be penetrated by bronze swords, spears, or arrows, very much like a personal Bronze Age ‘tank’ of sorts.

At this point, an attentive reader may wonder what on earth this armor was doing in the Iliad because all the sculptures, ancient vase art, and even modern children’s books depict the Achaeans wearing beautiful muscled thoraxes and bronze crested helmets, but here we have some impossible antiquity.

The thing is that all the illustrations depicting scenes from the great poems appeared much later than the events described in them. Even in ancient times, these images appeared long after the glory of the heroes of the Trojan War became widely known. The first images preserved to this day appeared no earlier than the eleventh to eighth centuries BCE, approximately 300–400 years after the Trojan War.

Of course, the creators of those pictures dressed their warriors in armor used at their own time as archeology was not a thing then and a historical understanding of these things did not quite exist. However, blacksmithing and metallurgy had advanced by that time, allowing for the creation of much lighter and anatomically ergonomic armor.