Was Troy a Myth or a Real City?

The Ottoman Empire, 1870. A German adventurer was searching for a city that most scholars considered fictional. It was the British consul Frank Calvert who advised him to excavate here. Calvert had personally begun the search and had uncovered the ruins of a settlement dating to the 3rd century BC. Calvert, however, ran out of money, so the wealthy Heinrich Schliemann took over. Dynamite was used during the excavations. Schliemann discarded everything he considered unrelated to Troy. This led to a falling out with Calvert, who believed that Schliemann had destroyed the walls of Troy and was actually excavating much older settlements. Within three years, the remains of as many as nine cities lying in lairs one beneath another had been discovered. In one of them, now known as Troy II, nearly 9,000 artifacts were uncovered. Schliemann declared them to be the treasure of Priam, the last king of the mythical Troy. Since the Ottoman authorities had permitted the excavations only on the condition that all discoveries would remain in local museums, Schliemann smuggled most of the valuables to Greece. He did nonetheless leave the least valuable items to the Ottoman officials. Thus, the entire world learned that the story long regarded as a myth was in fact real. But did Schliemann truly find Troy? Did the Trojan War and the duel between Achilles and Hector really take place? And what happened to the ancient settlement excavated on the hill of Hysserlech? Let us compare myth and reality to answer these questions and see how history becomes myth and myth returns to history. The causes of the Trojan War are well known. Paris abducted Helen the Beautiful. Her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta, together with his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, gathered forces from all over Greece to bring his wife back. The most famous work about the Trojan War is the Iliad, a poem by the semi-mythical Greek poet Homer. It is a drama composed according to the same principles of dramaturgy that are still used today, in books and films. Though the Iliad covers only the final two months of the last year of the war. Much more about those events was told in the poem Cypria, also attributed to the semi-mythical poet Stasinus. It contained the prehistory of the war, its beginning, and nine of its ten years. The final year, in addition to the Iliad, was covered by three more poems, Aethiopis, Iliupersis, and the Little Iliad. However, like the Cypria, none of them has survived. The ancient Greeks left behind many myths about the city itself, from which the history of Troy can be pieced together. The Greeks called it Ilion, alternatively in another form of the name Ilios, in honor of its legendary founder, King Aelus II, a conqueror who expanded his dominion to both shores of the neighboring strait. The name Troy derived from the name of Aelus II's father, who ruled neighboring Dardania and originally referred to the country rather than the city. Over time, nonetheless, the two toponyms merged. Interestingly, according to the myths, the city had already been destroyed before the war. It was once sacked by Heracles, and among his spoils was the then king of Troy, a child named Podarces. Heracles sold him into slavery, but Podarces was later ransomed and became known as Priam. He became the man who rebuilt the walls of Troy. According to the myths, Priam also had 68 sons. The most famous of them was Alexander, better known as Paris. Paris set out on a diplomatic mission to Sparta, where King Menelaus of the Atreid dynasty ruled. In the myth, the Greek poets mentioned the name of a city similar to their contemporaries. Archaeology, however, indicates that Sparta emerged 200 to 400 years later than the Trojan War. For the ancient Greeks, the city had existed since the age of the gods, so they incorporated it into the ancient myth. Archaeological evidence shows that in the 12th century BC there was indeed a settlement in the area of Sparta, which researchers named Therapne, after the local district. What its inhabitants themselves called it, though, remains unknown. It was here that Paris abducted Menelaus' wife, Helen the Beautiful. Such acts were commonplace in Greek mythology. Zeus had once abducted Europa, and Jason had abducted Medea. In fact, this was not the first abduction for Helen herself. When she was only 10 years old, she had been abducted by the Athenian king Theseus. Upon learning of his wife's disappearance, Menelaus turned to his brother for help, the most powerful ruler of Greece at the time, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. Agamemnon summoned all the Achaean kings. In the Iliad, Homer even provides a catalogue of the army. In total, the forces of 29 Greek kingdoms under the command of 46 leaders. The 15-year-old Achilles was also destined to go to war, the son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidons and the sea goddess Thetis, whose wedding marked the beginning of this entire story. According to the myths, his mother bathed Achilles in the waters of the underground river Styx to make his body invulnerable. The only vulnerable spot that remained was his heel, by which she held her son. However, this famous image most likely appeared after Homer, since the Iliad contains references to Achilles being wounded. Knowing that her son was fated to die in this war, Thetis hid him on the island of Scyrus. Nevertheless, Odysseus cleverly tracked the hero down. As a result of a brief romance on the island, Achilles fathered a son, Neoptolemus, from whom, according to legend, the kings of Epirus traced their lineage. The Greeks assembled a great fleet. Homer even gave the exact number of ships that reached the shores of Troy. As for the size of the army, he was mostly silent, mentioning only occasionally either 50 oarsmen or the total complement of warriors. Later, Greek authors wrote that there were 120 warriors per ship. Thus, Agamemnon may have commanded between 60,000 and 140,000 men. Numbers that were unrealistic for that era. Nevertheless, such exaggeration is typical of myth. Even the authors of historical chronicles often inflated the size of armies. The first campaign proved unsuccessful. The Greeks did not know the way to Troy, so they sailed past it and landed in Mysia, which was ruled by Telephus, the son of Heracles and an ally of the Greeks. Failing to recognize who stood before them, the warriors rushed into battle. During the fighting, one of the Theban kings, Thursander, was killed, while Telephus himself was wounded by Achilles. Realizing whom they had attacked, the Achaeans sailed back home. According to the myth, the siege of Troy dragged on sluggishly. The Greeks did not have enough troops to completely surround the city. As a result, the Trojans repeatedly launched nighttime sorties against the enemy. Meanwhile, reinforcements from allied forces continued to arrive in the city throughout the ten years of the war. Homer lists eleven neighboring cities among these allies. The most famous were of course the Dardanians, led by Aeneas, the nephew of King Priam, the very same Aeneas to whom Virgil would later dedicate the Aeneid. In addition, according to Homer, ten peoples from the nearest European lands and Asia Minor also fought on Troy's side. There were also thoroughly mythical episodes. Toward the end of the war, the Amazons came to Troy's aid, followed later by an Ethiopian army. The latter should not be identified with the modern state, since the ancient Greeks used the name Ethiopia to refer to the entirety of sub-Saharan Africa known to them. The Trojans had no problems with supplies during the siege because the Greeks were unable to block the routes, allowing everything they needed to be delivered to the city continuously. Yet the Greeks themselves constantly suffered from shortages of provisions. Matters even escalated into a mutiny, which Achilles and his Myrmidons suppressed. Eventually, the Greeks split up. Some warriors, unable to endure the hunger, simply fled. Others were resettled in Thrace to engage in agriculture and provide food for the army. Still others set out to plunder the surrounding coasts in search of supplies. Thus the forces of Ajax, king of Salamis, ravaged the European coastline. The famous Achilles, meanwhile, plundered the coasts of Asia. According to Apollodorus, he conquered more than a hundred cities at that time, as well as the island of Lesbos. However, the most important conquest was the capture of Hypoplatian Thebes in the ninth year of the war. There, Achilles took captive Chryseis, the daughter of the local priest of the Temple of Apollo. It is precisely at this point that the Iliad, the best-known work of the Trojan cycle, begins. Achilles quarreled with Agamemnon and left the camp. Taking advantage of this, the Trojans, led by Prince Hector, launched a night-time attack on the Achaeans. During the battle, Hector killed Patroclus, who had returned to the camp with the Myrmidons. In general, the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is a rather complex subject. In Homer, they are primarily friends, but later ancient authors portray them as lovers. The death of his friend filled Achilles with rage. Consumed by vengeance, the hero returned to battle and unleashed a massacre, killing every Trojan in his path. Even the local river god Scamander fell victim to his fury. In the end, Achilles caught up with and killed Hector. It is with the funeral of the Trojan prince that the Iliad concludes. The subsequent events are known from three poems that have not survived, After defeating the Amazons and the Ethiopians, Achilles stormed into Troy, where Paris killed him with an arrow. According to the myth, the gods raised an island from the sea to serve as Achilles' tomb. The ancient Greeks called it Leuke. Today, this island is known as Snake Island. Achilles was succeeded by his son Neoptolemus. Soon afterward, the Greeks resorted to trickery. They entered the city hidden inside the famous Trojan horse, opened the gates to the main army, and burned Troy to the ground. The surviving Trojans, led by Aeneas, abandoned the city and set sail in search of a new homeland. Menelaus took back Helen, over whom the war had begun. As for the Achaeans, they did not return home without adventures. Two poems tell that story, one of which has survived, while the other has been lost. How closely the myth reflects real events is a question historians have long debated. After excavating the ruins on the hill of Hiserlech, Heinrich Schliemann believed he discovered the mythical Troy and that the treasures he uncovered were evidence of its legendary wealth. Yet even Schliemann's contemporaries doubted the origin of the finds, believing that he had commissioned the valuables from local jewelers and planted them at the excavation site himself. The subsequent fate of the treasure was far from straightforward. Since Schliemann had smuggled it out of the country, no museum was willing to accept the artifacts. Only in 1881 was Priam's treasure accepted by the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. In 1945, after the city was captured by the Red Army, the treasure ended up in Moscow, although for many years the Soviet authorities denied that it had ever been removed. It was not until 1996 that part of the gold jewelry was put on display at the Pushkin Museum, another 414 less valuable artifacts are kept in the Hermitage. Around 20 objects that Schliemann had handed over to the Ottoman authorities have remained in museums in Turkey. Modern research has shown that some of the artifacts that have survived to the present day were made around 2500 BC, that is, some 1300 years earlier than mythical Troy. Thus, Frank Calvert proved to have been right when he argued that Schliemann had been digging far too deep. At Hisarlik Hill, Schliemann uncovered traces of 9 settlements that succeeded one another over the course of 3000 years. Modern research, on the other hand, has established that there were in fact as many as 14 settlements over nearly 5000 years. The earliest of them, known as Troy 0, consisted of several small settlements with wooden buildings dating to the second half of the 4th millennium BC. What their inhabitants called themselves is unknown, but the corresponding archaeological culture is known as the Maritime Trojan culture. Around 3000 BC, these settlements merged into a single city, Troy 1. It already possessed limestone walls, although it covered an area of only 1 hectare. After about 5 centuries of existence, the city was destroyed by fire. Soon afterward, Troy 2 arose on the same site. It was the city that Schliemann mistook for the mythical Troy. The settlement was indeed highly developed, and the artifacts discovered there testify to its thriving trade. The city most likely paid the price for its wealth, as about 200 years after its foundation, it was conquered and plundered. The new inhabitants, bearers of the Anatolian Trojan culture, built more modest settlements on the site, both considerably smaller than Troy 2. Construction materials consisted of debris from the buildings of the destroyed city. Even Troy 5, which emerged around 1820 BC, was still only half the size of Troy 2. Yet after 70 years of existence, several earthquakes followed by a fire destroyed this settlement as well. The site did not remain abandoned for long. Almost immediately, new people arrived, the bearers of the highly developed Trojan culture. There, Troy 6 is indeed impressive. The city covered an area of 35 hectares, of which 2 hectares were occupied by the citadel, the residence of the city's elite. Such a city could have accommodated up to 10,000 inhabitants. The citadel itself was surrounded by strong walls reaching up to 9 meters in height in places. At the beginning of Troy 6's existence, these walls were 1.5 meters thick, but over time they were widened to as much as 5 meters. To strengthen the defenses, a ditch 4 meters wide and 2 meters deep ran in front of the walls. The city prospered through trade and had 5 gates, just like Homer's mythical Troy. It is precisely the number of gates that gives grounds to believe that Troy 6 is the very Ilion described by the poet. The walls were built of cut stone and inclined at an angle of 80 degrees to provide greater stability during earthquakes. Even this engineering solution still did not save the city. Around 1300 BC, a powerful earthquake destroyed it. A new settlement, Troy 7a, arose upon the ruins. The inhabitants remained the same, but their material culture became poorer. After the devastating earthquake, the city was never able to regain its former power. Around 1180 BC, the city underwent a siege as evidenced by hidden food stores. Afterward, it was plundered, its inhabitants massacred, and its buildings burned. The rebuilt settlement, Troy 7b1, was even more modest. Nevertheless, an important artifact was preserved here, a seal bearing an inscription in the Luwian language. This provides grounds to suggest that the inhabitants of the mythical Troy were Luwians. Supporting this are several Trojan names that have Luwian equivalents. In the 11th century BC, the Anatolian population was gradually displaced by migrants from Europe. They are believed to have been the Phrygians. Their settlement is classified separately as Troy 7b2. It too was destroyed by an earthquake, 1050 BC. The following settlement survived for another hundred years before being destroyed by fire. Later, the Greeks built a temple complex on this site, what we know as Troy 8. Ancient Greek historians mention a great temple of Athena here. It was later destroyed by the Romans, who constructed their own temple complex, known in the sources as New Ilium, and to archaeologists as Troy 9. In the Middle Ages, a Byzantine settlement existed here, disappearing in the 13th century. An important question remains. Can we truly call this city Troy? Or is it possible that the myth became confused with a real settlement? Here the Hittites come to our aid. During the second millennium BC, they established a powerful empire in Asia Minor, and left behind a vast number of cuneiform texts. Among them is a reference to a city called Wilusa, located approximately on the Troad Peninsula. Most likely, this is the very city archaeologists excavated and identified as Troy 6. Linguists have also noted that when the word Wilusa passed into Greek, it became Ilusa, which resembles Ilium, or its alternative form, Ilios. Hittite sources also mention the city of Tarouisa, which archaeologists have yet to locate. Numerous theories exist regarding its location. Both settlements belong to the so-called Asua confederation, an alliance of 22 city-states in western Asia Minor inhabited predominantly by Luwians. The confederation was formed to resist the Hittites, but it lost the war, and the Hittites subjugated the Asuans. A century later, the Hittite vassal kingdom of Arzawa rebelled. The rulers of most of the cities of Asua supported the uprising, with the exception of Wilusa. Its ruler, Kukuni, remained loyal to the Hittites. As a result, the city was spared when the Hittite army marched in to suppress the rebellion. Several additional facts support the identification of Wilusa with Ilion. Around 1280 BC, Wilusa concluded an alliance treaty with the Hittite Empire. The city's ruler mentioned in the treaty is King Alexandu. This name is equated with the Greek name Alexander. The same treaty mentions the city's patron deity, Apollounas, who was identified with the Greek god Apollo. The city's subsequent history is complicated. The next episode comes to us from a neighboring kingdom. Sometime between 1280 and 1272 BC, its ruler wrote a letter to the Hittite king Muatali II, informing him that a Hittite army had passed through his territory on its way to Wilusa. Why the Hittites marched against their own ally remains unknown. Manapatarhunta also mentions that his lands were attacked by the band of Piamaradu. Who exactly Piamaradu was is uncertain. He may have been a minor king, a landless prince, or simply the leader of a local band. He raided neighboring kingdoms that were Hittite vassals. He troubled the Hittites to such an extent that the king's wife Puduhepa sacrificed a bull so that the gods would help capture this disturber of the peace. Interestingly, according to the Hittite cuneiform texts, Piamaradu attempted to become a vassal of the Hittite king. Even so, the king refused, considering such a man unworthy of being his subject. Around 1250 BC, Piamaradu then headed west, where he married his daughter to the local ruler Atpa. In the Hittite cuneiform texts, Atpa is described as the governor of Milawanda, a city identified with the Greek Miletus. Atpa himself belonged to the people called Akiyawa, whose name resembles the word Achaeans. The new Hittite king, Hatusili III, wrote a letter to the ruler of Akiyawa named Tawagalawa, a name identified with the Greek Ateocles. In the letter, Hatusili III requested that Piamaradu and the other rebellious military leaders be handed over to him. We do not know how the ruler of Akiyawa responded. Then, around 1240 BC, a third king, Tukalia IV, wrote a letter to one of his vassals. He did not mention the recipient by name, but it was most likely Tarkasnawa, ruler of Myra. In the letter, the Hittite king recounted a long war against Akiyawa, which he ultimately won, and reported that Milawanda had sworn allegiance to the Hittites. He also explained that Tarkasnawa's father had rebelled against Hittite rule, been defeated, and that Tarkasnawa was now to rule in his place. Piamaradu was also mentioned, but in the past tense. This indicates that he had died in the war. The letter then contained further instructions. Tarkasnawa was to return the prisoners of Akiyawa, while the Akiyawans in turn were to surrender the rebellious military commanders, whom the king of Myra was to deliver to the Hittite king. In addition, the Akiyawans were required to return King Wolmu, the ruler of Wilusa. He too was to be brought to the empire so that the Hittite king could restore the unfortunate ruler to his throne. By combining the Hittite cuneiform texts, archaeological excavations, and Greek myths, we can reconstruct the following version of events. Wilusa controlled the Dardanelles Strait, which made it a wealthy trading city. It was inhabited by Luwians. Most likely, Tarouissa was originally the principal city of the region, which is why the Greeks gave these lands the name Troy. Later, Wilusa joined the Asua Confederation in its war against the Hittites, but was defeated. From that time onward, the rulers of Wilusa aligned themselves with the Hittites and remained loyal to them even when the cities of Asua rebelled. Soon afterward, an earthquake destroyed the city, and it began to decline, although it remained an important center of Hittite influence in the region. Meanwhile, the local military leader Piamaradu continued fighting the Hittites and raiding their vassals, gradually assembling an army from among the Hittites' former subjects. In search of allies, he turned to the Greeks. The sources refer to them as Achaeans, although we assume that they were in fact Aeolians and Ionians, who at that time had begun settling the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. The Hittite king Hattusili III tried in vain to bring Piamaradu back. War broke out between the Hittites and the Achaeans, during which Piamaradu was killed. The conflict continued, and the Greeks decided to attack Wilusa, the ally of the Hittites. Yet, they were no longer sailing to plunder the wealthy Troy of Mith, but rather a settlement standing on the ruins of what had once been a great city. Even under those circumstances, the siege proved difficult for the Achaeans. It is unlikely that it lasted ten years. For ancient authors, that number most likely simply meant a very long time. Achilles' victory over the river god Scamander most likely refers to a real event. The Greeks dammed the river in order to cut the inhabitants of Wilusa off from their water supply. The Trojan horse is most often interpreted as a symbol. The horse was the emblem of the god Poseidon, who ruled not only the sea but also earthquakes, the very disasters from which Wilusa had suffered repeatedly. Thus, taking advantage of breaches that had opened in the city's walls during one of these earthquakes, the Greeks entered the city and captured the local king, Walmu. Nonetheless, the absence of evidence for the plundering of Wilusa during this period is difficult to explain. Perhaps such evidence was inadvertently destroyed during Schliemann's excavations. Or perhaps there was no siege at all, and the Greeks captured Walmu somewhere on the battlefield. If the wooden horse containing warriors was instead a symbol of a ship, then it is possible that Walmu was taken prisoner during a naval battle. If so, the siege that took place around 1180 BC has no connection with the myth of the Trojan War. Rather, it was one episode within the much larger events of the Bronze Age Collapse, when entire peoples migrated, cities burned, and states disappeared without a trace. Who attacked Wilusa at that time remains unknown. Perhaps the Greeks laid siege to it once again, and it was this event that became the basis of the myth. But in that case, we can say nothing about the real historical context of those events. Despite their victory over Wilusa, the Greeks ultimately lost the war against the Hittites during the reign of Thutkalea IV, and their coastal cities came under Hittite rule. Yet Thutkalea IV proved to be the last strong ruler of the empire. After his death, the Hittite state declined, and its authority was overthrown by the peoples it had subjugated. With the disappearance of their rival, the Greeks continued the colonization of Asia Minor. As for the inhabitants of Wilusa, like the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean world, they faced the far greater upheavals of the end of the Bronze Age followed by the Dark Ages. For the ancient Greeks, the Trojan War became a cultural legacy. It divided their history into two parts, the Mythical Age, with gods, heroes, and monsters, and the Real Age, inhabited by peoples, commanders, and city-states. For in that war, all the mythical demigods perished, and from that point onward, the inhabitants of Olympus no longer intervened in human affairs. The war became so iconic that the Greeks even wrote a parody of it, in which frogs and mice took the place of Achilles and Hector on the battlefield. For when an event begins to be mocked, it becomes part of a culture. So, did Schliemann find Troy? Yes, but he was mistaken by a thousand years. A city truly did stand on Hisarlek Hill, only it was called by another name. It was destroyed by an earthquake, not by a siege. And instead of the Trojan War, the site witnessed events that were larger and more significant for world history. The clash between a mighty empire, subjugated peoples, and foreign armies. Schliemann uncovered the traces of great civilizations, but attributed them to a Greek myth.