The World Behind The Odyssey

Mediterranean archaeologist Sarah Linn leads a special-access exploration of Homer’s Odyssey. In the galleries, she connects the epic’s oral traditions and Mycenaean memories with armor, weapons, statues, painted vessels, and the Late Bronze Age Uluburun shipwreck. The tour also considers how Greek travel shaped stories of monsters and unfamiliar lands and how the poem moved from spoken performance to manuscript and modern film.

Collections Study Room

Participants enter a study space normally reserved for students and researchers to examine seldom-displayed material, including a nearly 2,000-year-old papyrus fragment preserving part of the Odyssey in ancient Greek. Original and replica Bronze Age daggers, swords, cups, and masks further illuminate the poem’s material world.

Linn specializes in the Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age Aegean and has conducted fieldwork on Crete and at Mount Lykaion. This session is sold out; the Museum offers a waitlist in case space opens or new dates are added.