The Fabulous Four visited Troy together in June, on the same trip that took us to Gallipoli. So that's a while ago. Athough we were at first reluctant to visit Troy - what a bunch of old makarky we/I thought - it turned out to be a fascinating place. As we visited way back in May, I give you my account of some of the parts that I find intriguing, but it's certainly not a comprehensive account - you'd need a book the size of a trojan horse to cover that,
We all know about the myth of the Trojan horse, beware Greeks bringing gifts and all that. According to legends, notably The Iliad by Homer and Virgil's Aeneid, Helen, a very beautiful woman was married to the Greek King Menelaus of Sparta. Over the sea, the goddess Aphrodite stirred up trouble and encouraged Paris, a prince and son of King Priam of Troy, to visit Sparta, and while he was there abduct to Helen, which he did and took her back to Troy.
As an aside and there will be a few, as legends and history are retold by men, Helen is depicted as a floozy who betrayed her husband and ran away with Paris. Maybe Helen was not complicit but having been taken away, she could hardly catch a Pegusus Arline flight back, could she? After the war she reunited with Menelaus and they sailed away together.
Anyway, Menelaus's brother was Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae and a throughly nasty warlike man. Menelaus sought his brother's help and Agamemnon was incensed, rallied the heros and soldiers from far and wide, and sailed away to start a war which lasted 10 years, as Troy was impregnable, and the troops were beset with disease and tragedy.
Aside number 2 - while waiting for favourable winds, Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter, Iphigenia, to gain the attention of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. It worked and off he sailed. However, this thoroughly irked his wife, Clytemnestra. She started an affair with his cousin, Aegisthus, and she waited 10 years ... when Agememnon returned a hero (supposedly) after the war, with new mistress Cassandra, an abducted Trojan princess, Clytemnestra trapped him in a bath and killed him with an axe.
Good for her.
The killing of Agamemnon depicted on a mixing bowl, 460BC.
So, the war took years, and featured a few well known characters such as - Achilles of the heel, (killed by an arrow from Paris's bow), Odysseus, Ajax the Greater, and Ajax the Lesser (?!), Paris, his older brother Hector who was the Trojans' greatest fighter but was killed in a duel with Achilles after killing Achilles' lover Patroclus, Priam, Aeneas - more on him later. Confused yet?
So after 10 years, the Greeks decided to give up, as they hadn't found a way past the city walls. Unless..... ok, so they built a wooden horse, hid a few soliders inside, and seemingly sailed away. This was made to look like a homage to the Greek goddess, I'm now confused who - but the Trojans, celebrating their victory, said stuff that, let's take the horse, bring it inside so we can use it to honour our god. And we all know how that turned out. A city that was thousands of years old destroyed and a complete civilisation slaughtered and dispersed.
So what about the city. Surely the city of Troy was just a setting, a mythological place? For hundreds of years this was thought to be the case but the city has been referred to over the ages many times, under various names - Wilusa, Troia, Troja, Ilion and Ilium to name a few. It kept cropping up, with descriptions of where it might be in relation to to other landmarks or towns.
It wasn't until 1860 that Englishman and amateur archeologist Charles McLaren began work on a mound called Hislarlik, about 5 kilometres from the southern entrance to the Dardenelles. Although now silted up and is farmland as far as the eye can see, the area was once right next to the Agean sea. Other features of the area also matched the historical information about Troy. He eventually enrolled the help of a German with a similar interest, who had the money needed for this project, and as it turned out, a serious lack of morals: Mr Heinrich Schleimann, a complete scoundrel. Schleimann took credit for the all works and subsequent discoveries, which were revealed over 9 separate archeological digs between 1870 and 1890.
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| This was once a view over the sea, now farmland. The Cannakkale Strait/Dardenells in the distance. Farmers still are encouraged to hand on any artefacts they might find on their land... |
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| Staying in the shade! |
All in all, over time there have been 24 excavations, revealing 9 different levels, referred to as Troy 1, Troy 2 up to Troy 9, with Troy 1 being the oldest level. When each settlement was destroyed, by fire or earthquake, the population started again, building on top of the previous settlement, often reusing the materials available. There is evidence of habitation going back 8000 years. There is suggestion that recent digs have revealed artefacts going back 11,000 years. UNESCO now considers Troy as one of the most important archeological sites in the world.
A quote from the UNESCO World Heritage website:
"Throughout the centuries, Troy has acted as a cultural bridge between the Troas region and the Balkans, Anatolia, the Aegean and Black Sea regions through migration, occupation, trade and the transmission of knowledge.
24 excavation campaigns, spread over the past 140 years, have revealed many features from all the periods of occupation in the citadel and the lower town. These include 23 sections of the defensive walls around the citadel, eleven gates, a paved stone ramp, and the lower portions of five defensive bastions. Those archaeological remains date for the most part from Troy II and VI; however, a section of the earliest wall (Troy I) survives near the south gate of the first defences. In the last 15 years, it has become clear that a Lower City existed south of the mound in all prehistoric periods and extended to about 30 ha in the Late Bronze Age. Several monuments, including the temple of Athena and the recently excavated sanctuary, are part of the Greek and Roman city of Ilion, at the site of Troy. The Roman urban organization is reflected by two major public buildings on the edge of the agora (central market place), the odeion (concert hall) and the nearby bouleuterion (council house).
The surrounding landscape contains many important archaeological and historical sites, including prehistoric settlements and cemeteries, Hellenistic burial mounds, monumental tumuli, Greek and Roman settlements, Roman and Ottoman bridges and numerous monuments of the Battle of Gallipoli."
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| Main entrance/ramp from Roman times |
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| Covers over a very early section of Troy, protecting mudbrick walls. |
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| Walls of Troy. A wooden horse with soldiers inside would NOT fit in here |
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| Two eras of wall construction, the left side demonstrates the evolution of stonemasonary over the centuries |
For a professional, detailed explanation of the rise and fall and rise and fall of Troy through the ages, please click on this link.
Troy - information from Britannica
As for Schleimann, his sins were many. Apart from taking all the credit, in 1873 he announced he had found a stash of gold and jewellery, and claimed it was from era of the fall of Troy, and called it Priam's Treasure. Before embarking on his excavations of the area, Schleimann signed an agreement with the Turkish authorities which stated he had to declare anything he found of value or significance, and these were to be retained by Turkey. Schleimann publicly greatly underestimated the real quantity and quality of Priams's Treasure, and later told how his wife hid the artefacts in her clothing and smuggled them out past the on-site overseers charged with protecting Turkey's cultural history.
Priam's Treasure before it was broken up
Later, the collection was held in German musuems; most of this was subsequently appropriated by Russian troops at the end of WW2 and taken to Moscow, and it is kept in the Pushkin Museum. Turkey has made requests to Russia to return the collection, but the reply is no - the collection was taken from the Germans as compensation for the suffering of WW2 inflicted by the Nazis. Seriously. Very little of Turkish anitiquities lie in the museums of Turkey.
Some of the collection on display in Russia
Schleimann also destroyed several parts of the site in his quest for gold - he was indeed, very fortunate to have found the treasure at all, given the size of the site. He broke up and dumped 'soil' which was actually fortifications from the very early times, onto other areas, and the damage is irreparable. Oh, and Priam's Treasure, pre-dates the Homeric Troy, as it is referred, by several hundred years.
Aside - what about Aeneas? Legend has it he survived the Fall of Troy, and eventually ended up in Latinus, an area associated with Ancient Rome. Aeneas has his own myths and legends, including that his descendants included Romulus and Remus, the founders of the Roman civilisation. Pause for thought....
As for the Romans, who were yet another civilisation who called Troia/Ilium home. Troy was considered very important to Roman history, and was visited by Alexander the Great, and Emperors Hadrian and Augustus. Ah, Augustus... he was also known as Caracalla, one of the most bloody thirsty roman emperors of all time. Obsessed wih many things, he built the threatre which can be seen on the site. He was also fascinated by the love Achilles had for Patroclus, impressed by the depth of Achilles' grief when Hector killed Patroclus, which changed the direction of the war. So, wishing to emulate this, he had his own lover killed so he could see what it felt like. A little bit exreme me thinks.
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| Caracalla's contribution, the theatre |
But back to the whole horse thing. Archeological work has shown that the gates to Troy would have been too narrow for a wooden horse as described in The Iliad. The legend also doesn't account for the physical impossibility of a bunch of smelly, weary soliders staying quiet inside a rickety horse, then sneaking out to open the gates to allow their comrades in, who were actually hiding in their boats behind an island approximately 3-4 hours sail away...
There are theories that an earthquake occurred at the end of the 10 year war, weakening the walls, also precipating tidal waves or a tsunami, allowing the Greeks to enter and overcome the city. Certainly earthquakes were responsible for destruction of the city previously. According to Greek mythology, Poseidon is the god of the sea, earthquakes ... and horses. In the evolution of the story, horses became more than a symbol of Poseidon's assistance in the defeat of the Trojans, and hence the creation of the legend of the Trojan horse.
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| The God Poseidon |
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