7 results
Conclusion
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- By Richard Reid, Department of Veterans’ Affairs, C.J. MacKie, La Trobe University, Antonio Sagona, University of Melbourne
- Edited by Antonio Sagona, University of Melbourne, Mithat Atabay, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi, C. J. Mackie, La Trobe University, Victoria, Ian McGibbon, Ministry of Culture and Heritage, Wellington, Richard Reid, Department of Veteran Affairs
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- Anzac Battlefield
- Published online:
- 05 December 2015
- Print publication:
- 05 January 2016, pp 244-245
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Summary
After five years of field surveys, commencing in 2010, the Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey (JHAS) of the Anzac battlefield has now completed its work. This book is one product of the work that was done. The JHAS was the first systematic attempt in recent times to chart and record some of what has not weathered and eroded away of the Anzac battlefield a century after the fighting there ceased.
The only other archaeological survey conducted before the JHAS was that which accompanied the Gallipoli Peninsula Peace Park project. In the Foreword to the two-volume publication, the culmination of an international competition compiled by Raci Bademli, Suleyman Demirel, the then Turkish president, noted: ‘The Republic of Turkey, wishing to keep these legendary battles fresh in the memory of the future generations and to show that no war is cause for permanent hostilities, but can serve as a basis for friendships as well, has made the decision to turn the Battlefield of Gallipoli into a Memorial for World Peace.’
Since the 1915 campaign Turkey, Australia and New Zealand have been certainly drawn closer together with an increased mutual respect and understanding. Even so, and despite the immense value of the Peace Park publication, the fine-grained archaeological analysis of the Anzac battlefield had yet to be undertaken.
The Anzac site also has a history beyond the conflict itself. That story embraces the manner in which Turkey, Australia and New Zealand have woven different narratives of historical meaning and national symbolism around the experiences of their soldiers in that small area in 1915. The Ottoman Empire's virtual collapse in late 1918 initially allowed the Allies to place their interpretation of events, virtually unchallenged, on the old battlefields of Gallipoli. The creation of the ‘Anzac area’ meant that here was a part of Turkey that was not quite Turkey – sacred ground somewhat beyond that nation's full control, dedicated to the memory of the Allied dead who lay in its soil, both the missing and those with identified graves. With a couple of exceptions, Ottoman memorials marking their successful expulsion of the Allied armies at Anzac were destroyed.
2 - The Gallipoli campaign: History and legend
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- By Sarah Midford, La Trobe University (Melbourne), Ian McGibbon, The Ministry for Culture and Heritage in Wellington, C.J. MacKie, La Trobe University, Reyhan Körpe, 18 March University
- Edited by Antonio Sagona, University of Melbourne, Mithat Atabay, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi, C. J. Mackie, La Trobe University, Victoria, Ian McGibbon, Ministry of Culture and Heritage, Wellington, Richard Reid, Department of Veteran Affairs
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- Anzac Battlefield
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- 05 December 2015
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- 05 January 2016, pp 24-35
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Summary
For Ottoman Army Second Lieutenant Muharrem Efendi, the battle to defend his homeland began shortly before 4.30am on 25 April 1915. A platoon commander in the 2nd Battalion of the 27th Regiment, he was waiting with 60 of his men in a trench on the high ground just above Arı Burnu point, a few kilometres north of Gaba Tepe. Peering into the darkness, he was startled to discern boats being pulled by steamboats approaching the point. His men immediately opened fire, only to be swept by return fire from a machine gun in one of the steamboats. Muharrem Efendi fell wounded and was forced to seek medical help, sustaining another wound on the way.
Once their boats were grounded, the invaders, Australians of the Australian Imperial Force's 9th Battalion, rushed up the slope. They overran the trench and headed up the slope onto the plateau above. Most of Efendi's men died, either in the trench or on the slopes above as they sought to retreat. A quarter of an hour after the first boats were grounded, another batch arrived, going ashore just north of the point. These men, under fire from Efendi's compatriots to the north, also pushed up the steep slope above them and headed inland.
This clash represented the first shots of a battle that would last eight months and would have a profound impact on all participants – and on the national identities of three countries in particular.
ORIGINS OF THE GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN
The Gallipoli campaign had its roots in the Ottoman Empire's decision to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers and the belief in London and Paris that this decision was not wholehearted. When the war erupted in early August 1914, the Ottoman Empire faced a momentous choice: to enter the war or stand aside. A sense of insecurity underlay the approach of those who directed the empire's affairs in Constantinople. Conscious of longstanding Russian, British and French designs on imperial territory – the British were already in possession of Egypt – the Ottomans saw in Germany a source of support and protection.
Introduction
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- By Antonio Sagona, University of Melbourne, C.J. MacKie, La Trobe University
- Edited by Antonio Sagona, University of Melbourne, Mithat Atabay, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi, C. J. Mackie, La Trobe University, Victoria, Ian McGibbon, Ministry of Culture and Heritage, Wellington, Richard Reid, Department of Veteran Affairs
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- Anzac Battlefield
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- 05 December 2015
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- 05 January 2016, pp 1-3
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This book deals with the transformation of the Anzac landscape at Gallipoli. We seek to explain how a rugged piece of land, remote and overlooking the Aegean Sea, was quickly and dramatically turned into a scene of intense conflict on 25 April 1915. Within eight months Allied and Ottoman forces changed this land, which is actually quite small in size, into a battleground, scarring it with a complex labyrinth of military earthworks. Then, a few years after the conflict ceased, silence descended upon it once more. Gallipoli entered its third stage of development, as a cemetery – the last resting place for thousands of soldiers who lie buried within its soil.
In terms of preservation, no other First World War battlefield can match Anzac. Whether trenches or tunnels, dugouts or terraces, much of the Anzac battlefield still survives beneath a canopy of vegetation. Battered by cold northerly winds in winter, which often bring with them copious quantities of rain, this coastal fringe and its hinterland have suffered much erosion over the last hundred years, as any comparison with photographs will show. Even so, this fragile site endures. Despite the fact that more than one million people visit the battleground each year as tourists and pilgrims, there is as yet little ‘development’ in the modern sense of that word. Reference to other coastal locations in the west of Turkey, such as Bodrum, reminds us just how well preserved the battlefields actually are. You can stand at Lone Pine today looking south towards Cape Helles and scarcely see a building or structure of any kind.
Violence and aggression extend back to the very roots of humanity. Long before any written records, prehistoric warfare conducted by stateless societies has been attested many times over by archaeologists working in every corner of our planet. Five thousand years ago, when writing was invented, conflict became a continuous feature of literature and religion. Yet, in all instances of conflict before the First World War, the scope was localised, even if the motives and the trauma it caused victims still resonate in today's hostilities. The First World War was something quite different. It ushered in war that was both global in scale and industrial in its operations.
1 - Boundary and divide: The antiquity of the Dardanelles
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- By C.J. MacKie, La Trobe University, Mithat Atabay, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi, Reyhan Körpe, 18 March University, Antonio Sagona, University of Melbourne
- Edited by Antonio Sagona, University of Melbourne, Mithat Atabay, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi, C. J. Mackie, La Trobe University, Victoria, Ian McGibbon, Ministry of Culture and Heritage, Wellington, Richard Reid, Department of Veteran Affairs
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- Anzac Battlefield
- Published online:
- 05 December 2015
- Print publication:
- 05 January 2016, pp 4-23
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‘All history has passed through the Hellespont, from the expedition of the Argonauts and the Trojan war down to the recent Great War.’
Ximinez, Asia Minor in Ruins, p. 91.So the Spanish traveller and author Saturnino Ximenez observed in 1925 – writing amid turbulent times in the region. The Hellespont, as he calls it, is the ancient Greek name for the passage of water that is now usually known in English as the ‘Dardanelles’ and in Turkish as ‘Çanakkale Boğazı’. There can be few more important passages of water (plate 1.1). It both connects and divides. It connects the Mediterranean and Black Seas – ultimately linking Eurasia and the Caucasus in the north and east with Spain and North Africa in the west. And it separates Europe from Asia, and has therefore featured throughout time as a kind of natural border of ethnic difference. The Greek writers of antiquity saw the Persian crossing of the Hellespont into Europe in 480 BCE as a kind of breaking of natural law, and some of their narratives about it were constructed to make this point. These days, the passage from Asia to Europe, or vice versa, is rather more seamless. Çanakkale and Eceabat are a kind of ‘twin towns’ on either side of the strait – places that become quite well known to visitors to the Gallipoli battlefields. Modern Turkey embraces its identity both within Europe and within Asia, and this dual profile has tended to dominate its recent history.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DARDANELLES IN ANTIQUITY
For many people today the Gallipoli Peninsula is inextricably associated with one event: the attempt by the European Allies in 1915 to push through the heavily mined straits of the Dardanelles to support Russia. Of the campaigns fought in that battle, which took the lives of more than 125 000 Turkish and Allied soldiers, three are deeply embedded in the psyche of the contemporary nation states of Turkey, Australia and New Zealand: 18 March, when the Ottoman fortresses and batteries successfully fought off the second attempt by the British Royal Navy and the French Navy to break through the Straits; 25 April, the dawn landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), which launched the land offensive; and 10 August, when the Ottoman forces drove the Allied soldiers back down the slopes of Chunuk Bair, thus effectively thwarting their August offensive.
Zeus and Mount Ida in Homer’s Iliad
- C.J. Mackie
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- Journal:
- Antichthon / Volume 48 / 2014
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 13 November 2015, pp. 1-13
- Print publication:
- 2014
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This article explores the part played by Mount Ida in the Iliad. It begins with some consideration of Ida in the early ‘history’ of Troy – the stories of Dardanus and the early line of Trojan kings. The city of Troy (Ilios) has its origins on Mount Ida, and the mountain remains very dear to the Trojans in many different ways. The rivers at Troy have their source on the mountain, and the Trojans acquire their water and wood from there. Moreover, the mountain is a central part of Trojan religious life, including the peak at Gargarus, where Zeus resides for a significant part of the poem. This article considers the two journeys of Zeus to Mount Ida from Olympus in the Iliad, and the ways that these are dealt with in the text. It raises questions about the rationale for and the effect of his visits there. It is argued that the poet uses Zeus’s absence from Olympus to ‘open up’ the cosmos, and permit new kinds of divine conduct and intervention. The article concludes with some consideration of the fact that the text offers no reference to the return of Zeus from Ida to Olympus prior to the council of the gods and Theomachy in Book 20.
ILIAD 24 AND THE JUDGEMENT OF PARIS1
- C.J. Mackie
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- Journal:
- The Classical Quarterly / Volume 63 / Issue 1 / May 2013
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 24 April 2013, pp. 1-16
- Print publication:
- May 2013
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Despite the importance of the Judgement of Paris in the story of the Trojan War, the Iliad has only one explicit reference to it. This occurs, rather out of the blue, in the final book of the poem in a dispute among the gods about the treatment of Hector's body (24.25–30). Achilles keeps dragging the body around behind his chariot, but Apollo protects it with his golden aegis (24.18–21). Apollo then speaks among the gods and attacks the conduct of Achilles (24.33–54), claiming at the end that he offends the dumb earth (24.54). Other gods too have their concerns about what is going on, and they keep trying to get Hermes to snatch the body away (24.23–4). The three most powerful divine enemies of Troy, however, Hera, Poseidon and Athena, will have none of this. They remain as hostile to Troy and Priam and his people as they ever were, and it is in this context that the Judgement of Paris is mentioned:
ἔνθ' ἄλλοις μὲν πᾶσιν ἑήνδανɛν, οὐδέ πoθ' Ἥρῃ
οὐδὲ Ποσɛιδάων' οὐδὲ γλαυκώπιδι κούρῃ,
ἀλλ' ἔχον ὥς σϕιν πρῶτον ἀπήχθɛτο Ἴλιος ἱρὴ
καὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαὸς Ἀλɛξάνδρου ἕνɛκ' ἄτης,
ὃς νɛίκɛσσɛ θɛάς, ὅτɛ οἱ μέσσαυλον ἵκοντο,
τὴν δ' ᾔνησ' ἥ οἱ πόρɛ μαχλοσύνην ἀλɛγɛινήν.
(24.25–30)And this was pleasing to all the others, but never to Hera
nor to Poseidon, nor to the flashing-eyed maiden,
but they remained hostile to sacred Ilios as in the beginning,
and to Priam and to his people, because of Alexander's folly,
he who insulted the goddesses when they came to his inner courtyard
and praised her who provided his grievous lust.
Quisquis in arma vocas: Turnus and Jupiter in the Aeneid
- C.J. Mackie
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- Journal:
- Antichthon / Volume 24 / 1990
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 08 May 2015, pp. 79-85
- Print publication:
- 1990
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Book 12 of the Aeneid is in many ways Turnus’ book: it begins with his name (Turnus ut…, 12.1) and ends with his life passing to the shades below (vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras, 12.952). His death completes the remorseless victory of Aeneas: the latter’s barbed final comment, ‘Pallas…Pallas’ (12.948) echoes the boast of Turnus, ‘Pallanta…Pallas’ (10.442). The death of Pallas in Book 10 changes the whole pattern of the action in the poem: Aeneas is thereafter at his most ruthless (e.g. 10.510-605; 11.81-2) and Turnus is at his most vulnerable (e.g. 10.668-88). It is Jupiter who makes it clear (to Juno, 10.607-32) that the balance has shifted, and it is Jupiter who increasingly takes a personal and threatening interest in what happens to Turnus. The realisation by Turnus (12.894-5) that Jupiter is an active hostis is uttered with bitterness, resignation and terror. It is the utterance of a man who genuinely expected events to go his way, the utterance of a deluded man. Turnus is forced by his imminent defeat to believe what previously seemed unbelievable — that Jupiter, far from being a patron god, is actively hostile to him.