TROY | The Ancient City Destroyed in the Trojan War

All roads begin at Troy. The Trojan horse there. I think that we will be seeing that, of course, a reconstruction. I think we will be seeing that once we get into the ancient city. I will be talking much more about the history in a little while. So the taxi there was 850 Turkish lira. That is $25 or 22 euros for about a 35-minute drive there. And then he offered to wait for an hour and take me back, and it would have been 1600 total, including the wait time. So a perfectly good deal there. But I didn't want to be limited to just one hour. I really don't know how long it will take to tour the city. Also I'm getting hungry for lunch, and I'm thinking of going and getting lunch now. I saw a restaurant right down there. So this is the ticket office. And so one thing that I want to figure out is if there are buses going back, because there aren't taxis sitting around here. And so I could end up in a little bit of a predicament getting back, but I'm sure I'll figure something out. But let's see about this bus, if they're going to Canakkale. And so that is it. The Trojan horse under construction. So I wonder if you can normally go inside it. That would have been really cool. So I'm inside the ancient city ruins, and I got some information about the bus. It only runs every two hours, so good thing that I didn't, you know, waste too much time trying to figure out when it was leaving Canakkale. So it is going at 3 and 5. It is now 2.15, which means either I have 45 minutes here, or if there's much more to see and I don't want to leave, then I will wait and catch the bus at 5 and go to the restaurant, which is down the road there. But I'm going to hold off on eating at the restaurant now and just kind of see how much there is to see here. So here we have the Pithos Garden. The large, tall, slender, and somewhat barrel-shaped storage vessels, known as pithoi, so I guess those there, represent one of the earliest shapes typical of Mediterranean and Near Eastern pottery. The pithos provided not only cool and safe storage for olive oil, wine, and grain, but served nautical transport as well. And then you have grinding stones and pestles. So, various remains of the ancient civilization. So let's get into it. Troy. One of the most historic cities in the world, especially this part of the world. So, this city has nine layers. It was destroyed and then rebuilt multiple times. And it was occupied by multiple different civilizations. The Hittites, the Greeks, the Romans. And so on that point, here we have an explanation. Why does Troy have so many superimposed strata? Its favorable position caused it to be reoccupied time and again over more than 3,000 years. Sun-dried mud brick was largely used for building the walls of the houses. Mud brick, scarcely known in Europe, are the normal building material in the Near East. And so here you have the various layers. So, 3,500 BC. And so that 3,500 isn't 3,500 years ago. That is 3,500 BC. So, 5,500 years ago is the earliest evidence of human inhabitation here. And then 3,000 is about when a city that you could refer to as Troy actually developed. And then here you have 2,000, 1,730, 1,500, 1,190, 1,000. Homer, 720 to 700. Xerxes, Alexander. So, Alexander the Great was here. Augustus, Roman Caesar. So, you have the northeast bastion, Troy VI. So, that refers to the sixth layer, starting from the bottom, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Troy VI again, the East Wall. The Temple of Athena, Troy VIII to IX. The South Gate, Troy VI again. The Odeon, Troy VIII to IX. So, I assume that most of you have heard of the Trojan War, made famous by the writer Homer in his books The Iliad and The Odyssey. Wow. Okay, here we go. Ilios, or Walusa, were other names for Troy. You are now standing on the remains of the outer wall of the Greek and Roman temple precinct, which was built in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. So, Troy VIII. In front of you lie the fortifications of Troy Ilios. You will recognize the East Tower, the East Wall, and behind them the palaces, all of the Troy VI period. So, 1700 to 1250 BC. On the fortification wall, you can see remains of Troy VII houses. The East Wall and Gate, Late Bronze Age. The East Tower, the palaces. So, Homer wrote of the Trojan War, and in his books describes the warriors coming back from the war, and gives very specific information about where the city of Troy was. So, the Trojan War is believed to have occurred in around 1200 BC. So, 3,200 years ago. Now, for a very long time, then, it was believed that Homer's account of this legendary war was fictitious. That it was just a story that he made up, I guess, and that it did not refer to a specific actual city that existed in history. And then, in the 19th century, then, a German explorer, archaeologist, got some information about where the ancient city of Troy might actually be, and came here, and the information was correct, and they started doing excavations in 1871. In the course of the excavations, and going through the evidence, then they finally concluded, okay, yes, this is the real city of Troy that was referred to in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. However, there is still no conclusive evidence that this Trojan War actually occurred. There's no evidence against it occurring, but it isn't able to be substantiated that, yes, this Trojan War, as described by Homer, did actually occur. But, considering that the city has been discovered, and that Homer was so specific about so many different details of the war, and the warriors, and the journey there, and back, and all that, then it certainly seems very likely that some sort of a war along those lines occurred. And so, of course, part of the legend is the Trojan horse. So, as the legend goes, the cause of the war was the stealing of Helen, the daughter of a Greek king, by the people of Troy, and they brought her back here. And then the king said to his Greek, you know, army, we're not going to let this stand. Let's go conquer Troy and regain his daughter Helen back. Now, incidentally, the Greek name for Greece is Hellas, and it is referred to in English as being Hellenic. And this name of Greece comes from Helen. However, from what I've learned online, then it is not the same Helen. The country name Greece, named after Helen, does not refer to Helen of Troy. It refers to another Helen who was a male. So that is just coincidental. The building in front of you is a megaron, a long narrow structure with a vestibule and main room that is a forerunner of the Greek temple plan. It is constructed of mud brick walls on stone foundations and came to light during the excavations of 1998-99. C14 analysis of carbonized grains of barley found inside the building provides a final date for the use of the building destroyed by fire between 2290 and 2200 BC. A central hearth measured 1.2 meters in diameter, white plaster covered the interior walls and the whitewashed floor bore the imprint and charred remnants of reed mats. The wealth of finds inside indicate at least some cult activity. Troy I fortification wall. Here you can see a section of the fortifications of early and middle Troy I. Together with a tower-like projection, Troy I was built around 2920 BC. And so continuing with the story of the Trojan War, most know the basic, you know, plot, but the Greeks decided to sail here across the Aegean and attack Troy and they laid siege to the city which took a very long time to eventually conquer. I think it was about a decade and they still weren't able to capture it and so then the Trojan horse comes into the story in which they decided who came up with this idea, you know, it was a sort of foolish genius concept of let's build this wooden horse and leave it outside the gates of the city and leave and act like we're leaving and leaving you this gift and yet they hid their soldiers inside the Trojan horse and so when the people of Troy saw this supposed gift outside and wheeled it in then in the night the soldiers came out of the Trojan horse and in reality then the army had not retreated they had just moved out of sight and then moved back closer in the night something like that and we're ready to go and so the soldiers inside the Trojan horse got out and then were able to open the gates of the city and allow the Greek army to then come inside and that is how they finally actually conquered the city of Troy and got Helen back. Troy the second palace within the total stratification of the Troy mound the sequence of layers that make up Troy two occupy roughly three meters. I guess they're referring to that being kind of just the leftovers of a palace wall something like that and so if the legend is true of the Trojan war that this actually occurred I guess that the evidence lacking to support it is that that time period corresponds with one of the many times that the city was destroyed maybe if there was between the first game over here maybe if there was evidence of the city being destroyed in that 1200 BC time frame then that would support the Trojan war story better but whether or not the Trojan war actually occurred then the city continued and so that time frame of the Trojan war 1200 BC was firmly in the middle of the history of the ancient city of Troy and so if this war did in fact occur then maybe it wasn't destroyed to the extent that this would have been noticed in the rock structure maybe it was you know burned wooden structures burned etc and then the residents rebuilt afterwards such that they didn't have to start from the ground up and begin a whole new layer of the city as has occurred nine times as I mentioned and so the Trojan war is just a millisecond in the very long history of this city for three to four millennia so Troy eight to nine and so here we're looking at the top layer of the city in Greek and Roman times Troy was an important religious center as we know from the ancient sources and from the excavation results the sanctuary in front of you was founded as early as the 8th century BC it was dug into the ruins of the lower town of Troy six and seven and was surrounded by a wall it remained in use throughout the Hellenistic period and long into Roman imperial times although with many modifications the course of the walls surrounding the sanctuary was also altered a number of times at the center of the upper part of the sanctuary is a limestone altar constructed in the late 7th or 6th century BC the sanctuary suffered severely in the destruction of Ilion by the Roman commander Fimbria in 85 BC as part of a later reconstruction probably begun during the reign of the emperor Vespasian AD 69 to 79 a new altar was built at a higher elevation the lower city of Wilios Wilusa late Troy 6 before you lies the lower city of late Troy 6 14th to 13th century BC located outside the citadel walls to the west following the earthquake that marked the end of Troy 6 so destroyed by an earthquake the citadel gate was closed off and the course of the streets altered reconstruction of the terrace house Roman bath the Odeon the south gate the bull terry on so i have 20 minutes left until uh the bus leaves at three and i'm thinking that i might just go ahead and go for that and not be sitting around at this restaurant for you know an hour and a half two hours or whatever also with this uh cold of mine dragging me down and the hot sun i'm thinking that uh it's better to get back to Canakkale and find a nice restaurant there to relax and know that i have the transportation situation dealt with the Odeon Troy 9 so the most recent layer of Troy before you is the Roman Odeon a small theater where concerts lectures and other events took place a statue of emperor Hadrian found in the Odeon of Roman Ilium amazing beyond it you see the fortification wall of Troy 6 and the single column surviving from the large pillar house of the same period behind you stand the partially excavated remains of baths from Roman imperial times the baths the Odeon and the nearby bulletarian council chamber all lay on the fringes of the Agora marketplace the semi-circular orchestra of the Odeon was tied to a stage building that included an over life-size representation of the emperor Hadrian AD 117 to 138 the seating capacity was somewhere between 1,700 and 2,100 spectators now that must mean the other one on the other side i guess because that's definitely not going to hold 2,000 people there so i guess that is the remains of the Roman baths so i wasn't sure what it was going to be like here as far as what was going to be left but i am quite impressed by what remains here i mean these structures are very much intact i'm not sure how much that might have been reconstructed but i mean a full theater still you know could be used today maybe it is sometime they built a platform there the Luwian seal a biconvex bronze age seal discovered in 1995 now represents the earliest securely dated evidence of writing at Troy it displays in an Anatolian hieroglyphic script commonly employed by the Hittites on seals on side one we see the incomplete name of a scribe on side two that of a woman it comes from a stratified context a house of Troy 7 around 1130 bc what is remarkable about the seal is the material it is bronze whereas most seals of this period were carved in stone side one carries a man's name it wishes the bearer of the seal good luck side two clearly bears the symbols for good and woman the south gate troy six to seven you are now directly in front of the south gate of troy six probably the principal entrance to the citadel of the gate only the roadway survives today it led in a straight line up into the citadel and was entirely paved with stone slabs in the middle of the road a drainage channel possibly a troy seventh date runs beneath the paving stone the south tower was added to the citadel only later in troy six the walls whose execution is like those of the east tower are built directly on bedrock and are preserved to a height of two meters so you can see a drawing of what the city walls and gate might have looked like and so i'm now back at the beginning so it is just this circular route here going around the ruins very very fascinating many places around the world have many layers of history but it isn't often the case that you can literally peel back the layers of civilizations that lived in the same spot and literally see this civilization was here the hittites and then boom earthquake or war or fire or whatever and you know destroyed leveled and then start the next layer and then the greeks the romans really really incredible here you can see some writing i think that might be greek okay let's catch the bus back to chanakale