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not bear to kill her. The enigmatic figure who sailed back to Sparta while Paris’ body smouldered on the Trojan plain, back to a daughter whom she had left motherless, back to a bed she had left cold. The creature – flawed and yet strangely dignified – who demonstrated that female beauty was something to fear as well as to crave.
    But Helen was not just a finely drawn character from the Greek epics, not just a ‘sex-goddess’ in literary terms. She was also a demi-god, a heroine, worshipped and honoured at shrines across the Eastern Mediterranean. She was perceived as an integral part of the spiritual landscape. Men and women made propitiation to her earthy power. In Sparta she was invoked by young virgins; in Egypt she had uxorial duties, caring for newlyweds and old wives; and in Etruscan society her half-dressed form was carved on the funerary urns of high-born women – a valued companion for the journey into the afterlife. 35 Some scholars believe that a mortal Helen never existed, but that she is, instead, simply the human face of an ancient nature-goddess, a full-blown divinity, a pan-Hellenic spirit of vegetation and fertility. A visceral force that brings with it both life and death.
    Then there is the ‘
shameless whore
’, 36 the ‘
traitorous bitch
’ 37 ; the ‘
Aegeyan bitch, her of the three husbands, who bare only female children
’; 38 the ‘
strumpet
’; 39 the beautiful, libidinous creature irresistible to men; the pin-up, golden-haired, phantom Helen, lambasted in theological texts and draped across the art galleries of Europe, an erotic
eidolon
– a Greek word meaning a ghost, an image or idea – an idol of female beauty and sexuality, both lusted after and despised. 40

    I believe that all three incarnations – princess, goddess and whore – find their root in a Bronze Age Helen, that the template for Helen of Troy was provided by one of the rich Spartan queens who lived and died on the Greek mainland in the 13th century BC ; a woman who slept at night and woke at dawn, a flesh-and-blood icon, an aristocrat responsible for
orgia
– secretive, mysterious fertility rites – a woman so blessed, so honoured, so powerful, she appeared to walk with the gods. A mortal who, down the centuries, has become larger than life.
    Because Helen is such an alluring figure of fantasy, because she dazzles as she goes, she can make it hard to see the women of substance who walked through the Bronze Age palaces of the Eastern Mediterranean. But ongoingarchaeological and historical projects demonstrate that these women were prominent and significant: broken writing tablets tell us that female aristocrats were used as diplomatic trading chips, highly valued commodities passed from one state to another, the Bronze Age equivalent of the Black Tulip. Within the context of her world, Helen is a historical possibility.
    Greece and Anatolia had a complicated, fractious and intense relation-ship at the end of the Bronze Age. Magnates from both sides married each other’s women, fought over each other’s territories and joined together in trade. In Turkish waters divers have found Bronze Age ocean-worthy vessels laden with precious goods, which sank as they made the journey between the Greek mainland and Asia Minor. Official letters sent across the Aegean from one great leader to another can flatter or they can simmer with scarcely contained fury. Stockpiles of sling-shot have been discovered at the walls of Troy. And the civilisations that Helen and Paris represent – the Mycenaeans (based on the Greek mainland) and the Hittites (in command of much of Turkey and the Middle East), along with their allies such as Troy – imploded in a dramatic rush of flame and confusion at the end of the 13th century BC . At the height of their power, something or someone brought these giants to their knees.
    Slowly pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are fitting together. As more Bronze Age texts are translated, as more material