Penelope's Bones: A New History of Homer's World Through the Women Written Out of It

Weaving together literary and archaeological evidence, Emily Hauser illuminates the rich, intriguing lives of the real women behind Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly in the past three millennia. But these are not just tales about heroic men. There are scores of women as well--complex, fascinating women whose stories have gone unexplored for far too long.

In Penelope's Bones, award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser pieces together compelling evidence from archaeological excavations and scientific discoveries to unearth the richly textured lives of women in Bronze Age Greece - the era of Homer's heroes. Here, for the first time, we come to understand the everyday lives and experiences of the real women who stand behind the legends of Helen, Briseis, Cassandra, Aphrodite, Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso, and Penelope. In this captivating journey through Homer's world, Hauser explains era-defining discoveries, such as the excavation of Troy and the decipherment of Linear B tablets that uncover thousands of captive women and their children; more recent finds like the tomb of the Griffin Warrior at Pylos, whose tomb contents challenge traditional gender attributes; DNA evidence showing that groups of warriors buried near the Black Sea with their weapons and steeds were, in fact, Amazon-like 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.

Essential reading for fans of Madeline Miller or Natalie Haynes, this riveting new history reveals the women of the Bronze Age Aegean as never before, offering a ground-breaking reassessment of the ancient world.

Author: Emily Hauser
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 06/13/2025
Pages: 496
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
ISBN: 9780226839684

About the Author
Emily Hauser is a senior lecturer in classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of three novels reimagining the women of Greek myth: For the Most Beautiful, For the Winner, and For the Immortal. She is also the author, most recently, of How Women Became Poets.