March 28, 2004
The historicity of the Trojan War
The truth about an epic tale of love, war and greed (The Telegraph 24/03/2004)
...
In 1988 work at Troy resumed under the leadership of Professor Manfred Korfmann of Tübingen University. He assembled a large, international team, drawing on a wide range of scientific disciplines.
...
When Korfmann arrived at Troy he was puzzled to discover that the city's great gateways appeared to have no means of being secured shut. "The gate is open, inviting everyone to come in. We walked up and down a hundred times and wondered how it was closed, how it was blocked. How could they defend themselves?"
...
He uncovered part of a wide ditch cut into the rock and has traced its path for 700 metres. It's from the late Bronze Age, the time of the legend. He believes it was designed to stop enemy chariots, and so marked the outer limit of the lower city.
He estimates the population of the city that lay behind the outer defences in the late Bronze Age as between 4,000 and 8,000. Troy was more than just a citadel of a few hundred people. "People who think there was a Homeric Troy - a city of substantial size and population - will be happy with this result," he says.
Dr Cline comments: "Korfmann may have just put the nail in the coffin of the doubters."
In the myth, Troy is razed by the army of Agamemnon. The early archaeologists believed the city might have been destroyed between 1200 and 1300 BC either by fighting or by an earthquake. Now, with access to the lost lower city, Prof Korfmann has discovered evidence that it suffered a catastrophe at around 1200 BC.
"There are skeletons. We found for example a girl, I think 16 years old, half buried. The feet were burnt by fire and half of the corpse was buried underground. This is strange, so rapid a burial within a public space within the city."
He also found arrowheads, which suggested close-quarter fighting. But a key clue to the fate of Troy came from collections of slingshots that he discovered. These were an important weapon of the time, used to keep enemy archers at bay. Korfmann believes that finding them in piles is significant. If the defenders had won the battle they would have taken the slingshots to be used elsewhere, for example by shepherds in the fields.
Hence, Korfmann believes, the Trojans must have lost the battle. "It was a city that was besieged. It was a city that defended itself. They lost the war and were obviously defeated."
In this way the archaeological record backs the claim of the legend that Troy was destroyed by an enemy army at the end of the Bronze Age. But was it a Greek army as the legend says?
"We do not know, because the attacker rarely leaves any remains if he's successful."
And what of the Trojan horse? In the 130 years that archaeologists have been working at Troy, no evidence has been uncovered for its existence. Perhaps that just shows that Homer was, above all, an amazing storyteller.
Posted by Dienekes at March 28, 2004 12:54 PM | PermaLinkJust a question from someone who doesn't know a lot about the subject: the inhabitants of Troy, were they greek colonists who established themselves on the coast of modern day Turkey?
In the Illiad there is no "visible" diference between the Trojans and the Greeks. They fight the same way, (same use of weaponry and strategies) wear the same clothing, worship the same gods, etc.
Was this "writing liberty" from Homer (who portraied them in a similar light so "readers" could better understand the facts) or a fact which indicates that the population was from greek origin?
Since There is no mention of translators but they all seem to be speaking the same language, the conclusiom is that they all were greeks in a general sense. Troy had barbarian allies.
Posted by: jaime at March 30, 2004 08:43 AMAccording to Richard Poe and his followers, Greeks are mulattos, the Trojan war was between the great Black Cities of Greece, ex-colonies of the Pitch Black Egyptians! HAhaha I was banned from his Forum, you believe? Poe distorted or erased my words, didn´t posted the Cavalli-Sforza studies I sent him and invented an excuse to ban me! American afrocetric pseudo-intelectuals should drown i their own ignorance... Why don´t you write a book, Dienekes? It would be wonderful!
Posted by: Octavivs at April 3, 2004 12:18 PMI do not know old Greek, but some people write Acheans as Arians. Not that this is important, but is it verosimile? Acheans, Hellenes, Daneans, whatever.
Posted by: jaim at April 15, 2004 09:48 AMWell the logical and most accepted conclusion is that the Trojans were of Greek ethnicity as well. After all Homer never refers to the Achaeans as 'Greeks' and there is not a single patriotic element in the epic. All the names of the Trojans are of Greek origin and as mythology suggests the founders or Troy (Dardanus and Teucer) had migrated from mainland Greece. In the Iliad the dispute is mainly amongst families rather than territories (e.g. Priam's doomed bloodline). However as previously stated the Trojans did have barbarian allies. The concept of Greeks VS Trojans was introduced by Vergil when he was instructed by August to come up with a decent literature document that would comprise the "glorious" history or Rome. Hence all the changes that contradicted Greek Mythology.
Posted by: Thunderbrand at July 6, 2004 07:48 PM