Bryce, Trevor R. the Trojan War, Is There Truth Behind the Legend.

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The Trojan War: Is There Truth behind the Legend? Author(s): Trevor R. Bryce Source: Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 182-195Published by: The American Schools of Oriental ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3210883Accessed: 24-09-2015 21:51 UTC

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ould this really have been the mighty citadel of Homeric epic? First-time visitors to His-

arhk who are unprepared for the experience may well be disappointed by what they see. Roman- tic visions of an imposing fortress towering above the surrounding plains must be set aside. Today the low- lying mound of Hisarlik, located near the Dardanelles in northwest Turkey and reputedly the site of Troy, is barely distinguishable from its surrounds. The citadel covers an area not much larger than a football field (it is about 200 meters in diameter) and presents to the modem traveler a confusion of bro- ken pavements, building foundations, and super- imposed, crisscrossing fragments ofwalls. Today Hisarlk's most dominant feature is an enormous wooden horse, of recent construction, arguably the site's most photogenic feature, and intended to assure us all that this was indeed the fabled Troy, city of King Priam, which harbored the Spartan queen Helen and finally succumbed to the besieging Greek forces assem- bled under the leadership of the mighty Agamemnon.

Aerial view of the mound at Hisarlik. The fabled city of King Priam today is barely distinguishable from the surrounding plain.

THE T R OJAN

WAR IS THERE TRUTH BEHIND

THE LEGEND? Trevor R. Br~ce

For here, we are to believe, was the setting of the ten-year conflict between Greeks and Trojans immortalized in the epic tale of the Trojan War, told by a blind

poet called Homer who lived on or close by Anatolia's western Ionian coast. The poetic narrative that he composed, and that we know as the Iliad, was first recited to audiences at

the very dawn of Greek literature. To the ancient Greek world it became what the Bible is to the Judaeo- Christian world. And from the time of its composition, some twenty-eight centuries ago, it has served as a major source of inspiration for successive generations of artists, poets and playwrights. Amongst the ancient Greeks themselves, episodes from Homer's account of the war provided themes for Greek tragedy, for poetry, for narrative tales, for painting and

sculpture. The tradition was kept alive by the Romans in their own art and literature. It was, most notably, the starting point

for Virgil's great literary masterpiece the Aeneid, written at the behest of the emperor Augustus. Even today the tradition constantly surfaces.

Many of us learnt as children the stories of Helen and Paris, of the great heroes Odysseus, Achilles, and Hektor, and above all of the Trojan horse. This last in particular has captured popular imagination, in contexts ranging from film epics and television documentaries to corny jokes (like the story of the Greek soldier

Today's version of the Trojan Horse, located next to the site at Hisarlik.

who fell ill while entombed in the creature's belly and asked his comrades if there was a doctor in the horse),' to code-names for prisoner- of-war escape plans and computer viruses.

Questions Posed by the Tradition Much of our fascination

with the tradition arises from a set of questions that have been asked ever since Homer first recited his tale of Troy. Did the Trojan War really happen? Was a woman the cause of it?

182 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 65:3 (2002)


A nineteenth century engraving inspired by Virgil's account of the fall of Troy. The Trojan prince Aeneas flees the burning city with his father Anchises on his back.

Were there other reasons for the conflict? Was there a long siege before Troy fell? Was there really a Trojan horse? Ancient Greek writers pondered upon such questions almost as much as scholars have done in more recent times. Amongst the ancient Greeks themselves only the most hardened skeptics doubted that a Trojan War as described by Homer actually took place. But some of the believers were far from convinced that Homer had provided a true and accurate record of the war or the events leading up to it. Notable amongst these was the fifth century Greek historian Herodotos. Following a version of the story told him by Egyptian priests, Herodotos (Histories 2. 112-18) claimed that the ship in which Paris and Helen had fled from Greece was blown by violent winds onto the coast of Egypt. Here the Egyptian king Proteus detained Helen, until such time as her husband Menelaus could fetch her home. Thus the Trojan War was due to nothing more than a misunderstanding. Far from heroically defending the woman who had fled with their prince, the Trojans when challenged by the Greeks to hand Helen back declared, quite truthfully, that they could not do so-simply because she was not nor ever had been in Troy! This, Herodotos believed, was the true version of the tale, as Homer himself well knew. But it lacked dramatic potential. By using it, Homer would have deprived his story of its grand underlying romantic motive. And so he rejected it.

Yet few ancient commentators doubted that Helen really did exist, and that her abduction by the Trojan prince Paris was the fundamental cause of the war between the Greeks and the Trojans. Modern commentators are generally more skeptical. Some are prepared to allow the possibility of a historical Helen; but surely it took more than just a pretty face to launch a thousand ships and spark off a ten-year conflict! Far from the abduction of a beautiful Greek queen providing the casus belli, the war must have been fought over something much more practical and sensible, like disputed fishing rights in the Hellespont. But in fact our evidence shows that a Bronze Age king could-and indeed sometimes did-go to war in response to the abduction from his kingdom of any of his subjects, let alone members of his own family.

At all events, scholarly opinion is still much divided on the question of how much historical truth is embedded in Homeric tradition. On the one hand, there are those who have a deep

faith in the fundamental historical reliability of the tradition, to the point where the Iliad is used almost like a history textbook or archaeological manual for reconstructing both the history of the period and the material setting in which the events narrated by Homer took place. The view enunciated by Carl Blegen (1963: 20), who excavated at Hisarlik from 1932 to 1938, still attracts much support: "It can no longer be doubted, when one surveys the state of our knowledge today, that there really was an actual historical Trojan War, in which a coalition of Achaians, or Mycenaeans," under a king whose overlordship was recognized, fought against the people of Troy and their allies." On the other hand, Hiller (1991: 145) reminds us that "Our faith in a historical Trojan war is founded above all on Homer, but Homer is not a historian. First of all he is a poet; what he relates is not history but myth." A commonly held middle view is that Homeric tradition almost certainly developed out of a kernel of historical truth, though much of the detail of the tradition must be credited to the lively and fertile imagination of a great poet whose primary concern was to tell a good story.

Of course there is much in the story that must come directly from the poet's own imagination, or that incorporates standard features of a narrative tradition extending back well before Homer. The element of divine interaction with humanity, in this case with the gods lining up in support of either the Greeks or the Trojans, makes its first appearances in the epic genre, and narrative tradition in general in the Near Eastern world, long before the genesis of Homeric epic. The supernatural provided an essential dimension to stories told on a grand scale. By leaving it out, a story-teller would have left his audience sorely disappointed. So too a number of the rituals that Homer preserves in both the Iliad and its sequel the Odyssey, like that in which Odysseus summoned up the spirits of the dead, were clearly imported from other cultural contexts. Even some of the human figures in the stories could conceivably have been based on historical prototypes- though the fleshing out of their characters and situations was of the poet's own devising. To the narrator's imagination we can attribute the craftiness of Odysseus, the petulance and wrath of Achilles, the fierce belligerence of Sarpedon, and the poignancy of the noble Hektor's last farewell to his wife Andromache and baby son Astyanax.

But after filtering out all the elements attributable to the artist's creativity, to a standard repertoire of narrative formulae, or to cultural borrowings from other places and other times, are we then left with a core tradition based on historical fact? What is the actual essence of this tradition? In its barest form, it is an account of a protracted conflict between Greeks and Trojans, in the period we call the Late Bronze Age, which ended in the destruction and abandonment of a city called Troy in northwestern Anatolia. Do we have hard evidence for such a conflict? In attempting to answer this question, we must be sure that any evidence we do produce is entirely independent of the Homeric epic itself-for we cannot use Homer to prove that Homer's account of the Trojan War is based on fact.

NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 65:3 (2002) 183


The Trojan Horse in particular has captured the popular imagination from antiquity until today. On this fresco from Pompeii (first century CE), the horse is shown before the walls of Troy. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. Photo ? Erich Lessing, courtesy of Art Resource.

Establishing a Physical Setting for the War Our first task is to establish whether we

have a clearly identifiable physical setting for the conflict. That possibility was dismissed by many skeptics in the nineteenth century, and earlier, who saw the Iliad as purely literary fantasy. Even those who remained open-minded on the question could not agree on a precise location for the war. To be sure, the Classical Greeks and Romans were in no doubt that the abandoned settlement at Hisarlik was the site of Homeric Troy. Called Ilion by the Greeks of later times, and New Ilium by the Romans, it received homage from a number of famous persons-like the Persian king Xerxes, who sacrificed a thousand oxen on the site in preparation for his invasion of the Greek mainland, and the Macedonian king Alexander the Great who after landing his forces at Troy marked the beginning of his invasion of the Persian Empire by dedicating his armor to the goddess Trojan Athena and placing a wreath upon Achilles' tomb in the Trojan plain. Indeed the region in which Troy lay was called the Troad by Greek and Roman writers in the belief that it had once been subject to Troy's control. But Bronze Age Troy predated by some centuries the later first millennium settlement at Hisarlik (Troy VIII, founded in the mid eighth century), and there could be no certainty that the Classical Greeks' identification of it with the site of the Trojan War was correct. Indeed Heinrich Schliemann himself, the person whose name is most closely associated with the Hisarhk-Troy identification, apparently favored other locations before fixing upon Hisarlik at the prompting of the British expatriate Frank Calvert who had bought part of the site.

Even today a number of scholars remain skeptical. But though we cannot rule out other possible candidates for Troy, no alternative has been seriously proposed, consistently maintained, or at least generally accepted, since Schliemann began excavations at Hisarlik in 1871. Yet if the identification is correct, that still leaves the question of which of the Troys

on the site is Homer's Troy, the Troy of the Trojan War. There are nine major occupation levels on the mound, each of which is divided into a number of sub-levels. This explains the jumble of walls and levels confronting those who visit the site today. What they may not realize is that the mound that resulted from the numerous occupation layers did once rise loftily over the surrounding plains. In his eagerness to find the "Homeric" level, which he believed was one of the site's earliest, Schliemann had his workmen cut an enormous trench through the mound, and destroyed substantial portions of the site's later levels. Much has already been written about Schliemann's archaeological methods, discoveries, and conclusions. Suffice it here to say



that the level he identified as that of the Trojan War, designated as level II, belonged to the Early Bronze Age-a thousand years too early for any conceivable date for Homer's Trojan War. This in fact was what Schliemann's associate Wilhelm D6rpfeld concluded. He proposed Troy VI, sublevel h, as the most likely candidate. It was a conclusion that Schliemann himself came to accept not long before his death.

Subsequently Professor Carl Blegen argued that Homer's Troy was the first phase of the seventh major level at Troy- Troy Vlla. But we now know from ceramic evidence that this was too late to be associated with a major Greek assault in the Late Bronze Age. In any case, the encroachment of smaller,

humbler dwellings on the citadel at this time does not fit well with the imposing image of Troy in Homeric description. There is now general agreement with Ddrpfeld's identification of VIh as the city of Priam-if Hisarlik does in fact mark the site of Troy and there was in fact a Trojan War. Although much of what was left of the sixth settlement was destroyed in the course of Schliemann's excavations, enough of it survives to indicate that it represents the most flourishing phase of Troy's existence, extending over a period of several hundred years in the second millennium. The remains of the great northeast bastion from this level calls to mind Homer's imposing watchtower. The distinctive slope in Troy VI's walls lends credibility to the account in the Iliad of Patroklos' attempts to scale the fortifications simply by running up them.

But we must again stress that the Iliad is neither archaeological manual nor tourist's guide-book. Indeed detailed correspondences between the Homeric description of Troy and the site's actual remains are very slight. Other contemporary sites might be shown to be no less consistent with this description. Nonetheless, the location of Hisarlik, the topography of its surrounds, and the nature of the last phase of its sixth level are sufficient to provide us with a historically plausible setting for the conflict described by Homer. But this in itself is not evidence that such a conflict actually took place. We need to look elsewhere for such evidence.

Pottery found on the site indicates that Troy VIh came to an end some time during the first seventy years or so of the thirteenth century, probably around the middle of the century. Since Troy VIh is

the most likely candidate for Homer's Troy, then we should set our sights on a date around 1250 for a possible Trojan War. This would accord very closely with the date given by Herodotos (Histories 2.145), who wrote in the middle of the fifth century and informs us that the Trojan War took place some eight hundred years before his time.' Given that Homer lived in the late eighth or early seventh century, then he must have composed the Iliad half a millennium or more after the events on which it is allegedly based. The intervening period spans the last decades of the Late Bronze Age and the succeeding period of several hundred years commonly (though increasingly less appropriately) referred to as the Dark Age.



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Heinrich Schliemann ca. 1870, around the time of his first season at Hisarlik.

Plan of Troy's nine excavated levels, showing the jumble of remains that date from 2900 BCE to 500 CE.

Early Bronze Age stratified levels at Troy. The trench cut by Schliemann's workmen through the mound of Hisarlik.

Relief from Schliemann's tomb in Athens, depicting himself and his wife Sophia at Troy.



How confident can we be that Homeric epic provides us with an authentic repository of material that dates back at least five hundred years before the poet's own time and could have been preserved only by word of mouth through at least twenty generations?

The Process of Oral Transmission

By its very nature, oral transmission is a dynamic process. While the actual essence of a tradition that is passed on in this manner may be faithfully preserved, much else may be changed, added to, or updated by each succeeding generation. So we must ask what can be found in Homer's epics that does in fact date back to the time when the traditions that he recorded began. To what extent do his poems, both the Iliad and the Odyssey, represent the end- product of a body of folklore and tradition that had been evolving over many centuries?

Undoubtedly some authentic, archaeologically-validated relics of a Mycenaean past do survive in the epics. A noteworthy example is the Iliad's description of a helmet made from slivers of boars' tusks fitted onto a felt cap. This description corresponds closely with a Mycenaean ivory relief of a warrior's head encased in a helmet featuring layers of slivered boars' tusks, as well as with the actual remains of such a helmet now displayed in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Protective headgear of this kind was totally unknown in Homer's own time, or indeed for many centuries before his time. In an architectural context, the layout and adornment of Late Bronze Age palaces at sites like Pylos and Mycenae bring to mind the sight that greeted Odysseus as he crossed the brazen threshold of King Alkinous' palace. The palace's dazzling opulence is graphically described by Homer in Book VII of his Odyssey.

But while some features of the Mycenaean world were preserved in oral tradition with little or no change in the centuries before Homer, others disappeared altogether, or were altered almost beyond recognition through constant modification and updating. This led to numerous inconsistencies and anachronisms. Thus the intensely bureaucratic palace societies of Mycenaean Greece as revealed by the Linear B tablets have no place in the apparently illiterate and largely laissez-faire kingdoms ruled by Homer's royal warlords. The primitive barn-like structure that in the Odyssey served as the palace of Odysseus is clearly of a different, later era than Alkinous' royal residence. In some passages in Homer, iron is treated as a rare and precious

The distinctive sloping walls of Troy VI lends credibility to the account in the Iliad of Patroklos' attempts to scale the fortifications simply by running up them.

metal, as it was in the Bronze Age; in other passages it appears to have been in common use, as it was in Homer's own time. The muster-roll of Greek ships in the Iliad preserves in its list of place names some vestiges of a Bronze Age past. But most of the place names belong to a later period and reflect more accurately a picture of the Greek world as it was in Homer's own day.

All this we must attribute to the

dynamic process of oral transmission,.a process that extended over a period of five or more centuries. What bearing does this have on the question of the historical authenticity of the Trojan War tradition? A commonly held view is that in spite of the many historical inconsistencies and anachronisms that arose in the handing down of the tale, the basis of the Iliad was indeed a conflict between Mycenaean Greeks and Trojans in northwest Anatolia towards the end of the Late Bronze Age. Episodes from the conflict, along with the exploits of individual combatants, were preserved initially in ballads and lays sung at the courts of Mycenaean kings and noblemen. These were orally transmitted through the succeeding Dark Age until, probably in the late eighth century, they were woven into an extended narrative poem, with coherent structure, theme, and characterization. And this we owe to the genius of a blind poet called Homer.

But how sure can we be that this genius was inspired by a specific event that actually took place? The war is set in a Late Bronze Age Anatolian context, and it is to this context that we must direct our search for an answer to our question.

Troy in its Anatolian Context We have noted that Hisarlik is the most likely candidate for

the citadel of Troy, and that the citadel besieged by the Greeks in Homeric tradition can most plausibly be identified with level VI, more precisely VIh, on the mound. This level represents the most impressive phase of Troy's existence; and the period of its destruction during the thirteenth century falls within the range of dates proposed for the Trojan War in Classical Greek sources.

We would greatly strengthen the case for identifying VIh with Homer's Troy if we could demonstrate that this level fell victim to enemy attack, in accordance with Homeric tradition. There is no doubt that it suffered violent destruction. But we have no clear indication as to whether this was due to human



or to environmental forces. Blegen believed that VIh was destroyed by earthquake, referring to cracks in the tower and wall of the citadel and evidence of floor subsidence. This prompted him to argue that Troy VIIa, the immediate successor of VIh, was the more likely candidate for Homer's Troy. VIIa too suffered violent destruction. But again the cause of its destruction is far from clear, and as we have noted, current dating of this level makes it too late to be a candidate for Homeric Troy. Further, while the cracks and subsidence observed by Blegen in VIh might well have been due to seismic activity, we cannot be sure whether this happened in the last phase of Troy VI or the first phase of Troy VII, or on a scale large enough to cause the destruction of the whole site (thus Easton 1985: 190-91). A compromise has been proposed, which allows for destruction of the site by both human and environmental forces. The proposal is that the citadel's fortifications were seriously weakened by earthquake to the point where they became vulnerable to enemy conquest; it was a combination of both factors that brought about the citadel's destruction (e.g., Easton 1985: 189).

This proposal has also been used to explain the wooden horse's introduction into the Trojan War tradition. The horse was a well-known symbol of the sea-god Poseidon. Frequently dubbed "the Earthshaker," Poseidon (the theory goes) inflicted a devastating earthquake upon the citadel, demolishing its walls to the point where it fell easy prey to its besiegers. It was thus Poseidon's intervention that provided the inspiration for the motif of the Trojan horse. Rather more prosaically, a number of ancient writers saw the Trojan horse as a reflection of a battering ram, or some other kind of siege engine (e.g., Pliny, Nat. Hist. VII 202, Pausanias 1.23.8).

Ingenious as such speculations are, they really add nothing of substance to our investigation. In fact the Trojan horse episode, though undoubtedly a very early element in the tradition, receives only a couple of scant mentions in Homer. The horse's prominence in the tradition in more recent times is due in large measure to the treatment that Virgil accorded it in Book II of his Aeneid, some seven centuries after the Homeric epics were composed. Henceforth it has served as an almost archetypal symbol of the Trojan War, in a manner out of all proportion to its place in the original tradition. Undoubtedly it was one of the most potent images of Troy at the time Schliemann first dug into the mound at Hisarlik. But more generally, the Homeric associations attached to Hisarlik since Schliemann's excavations have ensured that it continues to feature as one of the best known and most widely visited of all ancient sites. To what extent does this attention reflect its actual importance in its contemporary context?

The discovery and excavation of many Bronze Age sites throughout Anatolia in the decades following Schliemann's excavations, and the ongoing excavations on and around the mound of Hisarhlik itself, have contributed much to our understanding of Troy's role and importance within its contemporary context. There can be no doubt that for much of its existence through almost two millennia of Bronze Age history, covering levels I to VII, it was a prosperous and sometimes flourishing settlement. The second and sixth levels

represent peak periods in the settlement's existence. Undoubtedly its commercially valuable strategic location on what later Greeks called the Hellespont (modern Dardanelles) was to a very large extent responsible for its prosperity, the result of the widespread trading links that it enjoyed. Access to fishing grounds with abundant supplies of tuna and other marine animals has also been suggested as a contributing factor to its prosperity. Field surveys indicate that it lay amid a large expanse of rich arable soil, capable of sustaining a substantial population.

Where did the population live? The citadel itself could have accommodated no more than a few hundred people at most, in its flourishing periods, and we must assume that the spacious habitations on the citadel during these periods were the exclusive preserve of an elite class. The bulk of the population must have lived outside. This assumption has been put to the test, and verified. Excavations conducted on the site since 1988 have brought to light a substantial settlement lying adjacent to the citadel and extending to the south, the so-called "lower city." This has led to a tenfold increase in the area known to be covered by the site, from 20,000 to 200,000 square meters, during the period of levels VI and VII (ca. 1700-1100 BCE). Given the size and food-producing capacity of the region in which it lay, Troy could have supported a population of around six thousand people. We can thus revise our understanding of the famous site-from little more than a small citadel accommodating a population of a few hundred to a quite substantial and probably walled city.4 Its dominant feature was its fortified acropolis, first excavated by Schliemann, where for much of the Bronze Age an elite ruling class resided.

To what extent do the new excavations enhance our understanding of Troy's role and importance within the world of Late Bronze Age Anatolia, and the Near East in general? As we now know it, Troy was comparable in size to the city of Ugarit, capital of the prosperous kingdom of the same name on the Levantine coast. Mee comments that like Ugarit, Troy was evidently a major center and entrep6t (Mee 1998: 144-45). But Ugarit must have played a much more significant role within the complex of Near Eastern kingdoms, politically as well as commercially, given its position on the coast in the region that lay within the overlapping spheres of interest of four of the Great Kingdoms of the Late Bronze Age-Mitanni, Hatti, Egypt, and more indirectly Assyria. Apart from its abundant wealth in natural resources, Ugarit's valuable strategic location gave it far greater importance in the Near Eastern world than the remote kingdom of Troy, situated as the latter was on the very periphery of this world. Even so, ceramic evidence from various sites indicates that Troy had a wide range of trading contacts with Near Eastern coastal areas, though as we might expect, the preponderance of its commercial contacts were with the Mycenaean world.

Was Trojan Society Literate? The most marked difference between Troy and Ugarit is that

the latter has left us a substantial legacy of written records. The extensive archives of the Levantine kingdom provide us



with some of our most important sources of information on the history of the Syro-Palestinian region during the last two centuries of the Late Bronze Age. By contrast Troy has to this point left us, from its entire second millennium history, just one small, isolated piece of written material, and the provenance even of this item is not altogether certain. That is by no means an indication that writing was unknown, or as good as unknown, in the city. On the contrary, Troy like all other Near Eastern kingdoms of its size and status must have had a chancellery served by scribes either of local origin or imported from elsewhere. Writing materials are of a highly perishable nature, and when clay tablet archives do survive from other regions of the ancient world, this is often (though not always) due to the good fortune of the archive rooms being destroyed in an intense conflagration. While reducing much else to ash, a hearty fire bakes or re-bakes anything made of clay, including tablets, and thus preserves them for all time. However there must have been many ancient cities with literate members who have left little or no trace of their existence. Troy is almost certainly a case in point.

The one item discovered here with writing on it came to light during the course of excavations in 1995. It is a biconvex bronze seal bearing a brief inscription in Luwian hieroglyphs.5 It was found in the context of Troy VIIb, and thus dates to the second half of the twelfth century. This makes it one of the very last inscriptions of the Anatolian Bronze Age, and it post-dates the last known Hittite inscription by several decades. We cannot be altogether certain whether the seal actually originated in Troy or was imported there, though the former seems more likely, on the grounds that we have the actual original seal and not just an impression of it. One side of the seal gives the name of a man, and his profession as scribe, the other side gives the name of a woman. Both names are incomplete. The likelihood is that the pair are husband and wife.

If the seal did in fact originate in Troy, then the Luwian inscription on it has some interesting implications. In the first place the fact that the seal-owner was a scribe, as well as the fact of the seal itself, would provide our first tangible indication of possible scribal activity in the city during the second millennium-though in this case near the millennium's end- thus casting doubt on any notion that Trojan society remained illiterate throughout this period. And the language of the inscription would provide us with our first tangible indication of the ethnic group inhabiting Troy at this time.

The Luwian Inhabitants of Western Anatolia The Luwians were one of three groups of Indo-European-

speaking peoples who entered Anatolia probably some time during the course of the third millennium. Parts of central and eastern Anatolia were occupied by speakers of a language called Nesite (now more commonly known as Hittite), which subsequently became the official language of the Late Bronze Age Hittite kingdom whose homeland lay in central Anatolia. A second Indo- European group, the Palaians, were located to the northwest of the Hittite homeland, within the region later known as Paphlagonia.

Drawing of a Luwian seal found in a house in stratum Vllb. The fact that the seal owner was a scribe provides our first tangible indication of possible scribal activity in the city during the second millennium as well as our first tangible clue as to the ethnic identity of the inhabits of Troy. From Hawkins and Easton (1996: figs. 1 and 2).

In western and southern Anatolia, a third group of Indo- European peoples settled. We call them the Luwians. By the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, Luwian-speaking groups had occupied extensive areas in the western half of Anatolia. Collectively these areas constituted the region referred to in early Hittite records as Luwiya, an ethno-geographical designation covering a large part of western Anatolia. However, the name Luwiya seems soon to have dropped out of use, at least in Hittite texts, and was replaced by the name Arzawa, a general term used to cover a complex of territories collectively known as the Arzawa Lands. In its broadest sense Arzawa probably extended over much of the territory previously called Luwiya, and incorporated many of the same population groups. Given the wide spread of Luwian-speaking peoples in western Anatolia, it is a distinct possibility that the population of the sixth and seventh levels of Troy was predominantly a group of Luwian origin. Indeed it may well be that earlier levels of the city also had a Luwian population, or at least Luwian-speakers amongst its population.

Could Luwian groups have spread even further afield? It has been suggested that at the time of Luwian settlement in western Anatolia, some groups went further west, entering mainland and island Greece via Thrace or the Aegean Sea-a migration that marked the arrival, around the end of the third millennium, of "proto-Greeks" in the land that the Classical Greeks called Hellas (see e.g., Macqueen 1986: 33). This in turn has led some scholars to believe that there were ethnic links between the Indo-European-speaking populations of western Anatolia and contemporary Helladic Greece. But intriguing though the possibility is that Homer's Greeks and Trojans were closely related, they can at best have been no more than very distant cousins. The fact that the Trojans in Homer spoke Greek is of course purely an epic convention; and by the same token we should not attribute too much significance to the fact that a number of Greek social institutions also occur in a Trojan context (see Watkins 1986: 50-51). Nonetheless, the fairly widely held view that the Trojans of the sixth and seventh settlements were, or included, a Luwian-speaking population of Indo-European origin, gains



some further support from the recently discovered seal inscribed with Luwian hieroglyphs.6 This leads us to the next stage of our investigation.

Does Troy Appear in Hittite Texts? As yet we have almost no written records from the western

Luwians themselves. However we have many references to them, more particularly to the kingdoms that they formed, in the archives of the Great Kingdom that became their overlord-the kingdom of Hatti, the land of the Hittites. The Luwian-speaking Arzawan states were the most important vassal possessions of the Hittites in western Anatolia for at least the last half of the Late Bronze Age. Since it is now clear that, materially at least, Troy was a not insignificant western kingdom, comparable with cities like Ugarit, since it is increasingly likely that its population was of Luwian origin, and since there are extensive references in Hittite texts to the western Anatolian kingdoms, particularly those with Luwian populations, the probability is very high that Troy figures in Hittite historical records. If so, these records must give us the only genuine historical information we have so far about the kingdom of Troy. The search for Troy in Hittite texts thus takes on very considerable significance.

It was first undertaken over eighty years ago, not long after the Hittite language had been deciphered, by a Swiss philologist called Emil Forrer. Forrer carefully combed through Hittite sources for possible references to Troy, and while doing so he came across a list of countries in western Anatolia that had rebelled against a Hittite king called Tudhaliya, around 1400 BCE. The list, comprising twenty-two countries, which apparently formed a confederacy,' ended with the names Wilusiya and Taruisa. These, Forrer believed, were the Hittite way of writing the Greek names Troia (Troy) and (W)ilios (Ilios). In Homeric

tradition, Troy and (W)ilios were two names for the same place. Wilios was an early form of the name Ilios before the initial w, representing the archaic Greek digamma, was dropped. The similarity of both pairs of names seemed too close to be merely coincidental. And the fact that in the Hittite list the names appeared last would be consistent with a northwestern location for them if, as seems likely, the list proceeded in a rough geographical progression from south to north.

One slight problem with Forrer's conclusion was that while in Homeric tradition (W)ilios and Troia were interchangeable names, in the Hittite text Wilusiya and Taruisa appear as countries side by side. Is it possible that the names did in fact refer originally to two separate countries, but that subsequently one country absorbed the other? Alternatively, what we have in Homeric tradition may represent a conflation of two countries that were proximately located and closely associated in a conflict with Greek invaders in the northwestern region of Anatolia later called the Troad. The first possibility may gain some support from the fact that the name Taruisa makes no further appearance in the Hittite texts, with one possible exception. Wilusiya on the other hand, appears several more times, in its shorter form Wilusa, and it may be that its territory was expanded to include the former land of Taruisa, with both names being preserved in later Classical Greek tradition.

The one further possible reference to Taruisa appears not in a Hittite text but on a silver bowl of unknown origin, and now in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. The bowl bears two Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions, one of which refers to the conquest of a place called Tarwiza by a king Tudhaliya (see Hawkins 1997). Although no further details are given, it is very tempting to link this inscription with the rebellion against Tudhaliya that we have referred to above. Incidentally, if the link is correct, the inscription would then be by far the earliest of all

known Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions, apart from those appearing on seal impressions.'

Forrer's proposal to link the Hittite names Taruisa and Wilus(iy)a with Homeric Troy met with a good deal of skepticism. Yet he had made a prima facie case for the identification and other pieces of evidence have subsequently provided additional if not conclusive support for his proposal. In the first place, Wilusa is listed in one Hittite text as part of the complex of Arzawa lands. We have noted that these lands were inhabited largely, if not predominantly, by Luwian-speaking peoples. Wilus(iy)a is itself a Luwian formation.' And the seal inscription recently found in the seventh level of Troy may provide our first hard (though still very slight) evidence that the inhabitants of Troy spoke Luwian.

Yet if we are to show beyond reasonable doubt that Troy/Ilios and Wilusa are one and the same, we need to demonstrate that the Wilusa of Hittite texts did in fact lie in

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northwestern Anatolia. The Late Bronze Age political geography of western An- atolia has long proved a very elusive and frustrating field of study. The countries of western Anatolia in particular have been shifted around by various scholars with bewildering rapidity. But new discoveries are constantly helping us to fill some longstanding gaps and resolve some longstanding contro- versies. Wilusa is a case in point. Though scholars had no doubt that it lay somewhere in western Anatolia, they could not agree on precisely where. Fortunately, a text-join discovered in the 1980s has put the matter beyond doubt. A text-join occurs when two long- separated fragments of a tablet are finally matched up. Establishing links between fragments of tablet is an ongoing task, requiring the skills of specialist epigraphers and made necessary very largely by the haphazard way in which many tablets were unearthed and collected during the course of the first excavations in the Hittite capital a century ago. More than once, the discovery of a text-join has proved as valuable, in terms of the information that it has supplied, as the discovery of an entirely new text.

In this case, an additional fragment was found to a well-know letter written to the Hittite king Muwatalli II by a man called Manapa.Tarhunda, ruler of the Seha River Land, a kingdom belonging to the Arzawa complex. From other pieces of inforation, we know that this particular kingdom extended over one of the river valleys lying north of the city called Miletos in Classical times. Its Hittite name was Milawata, or Millawanda. The river in question was almost certainly either the (Classical) Caicos or the Hermos, if not the famous Maeander river (see, e.g., Gurney 1992: 220-21). From the text-join we learn that a Hittite expeditionary force on its way to Wilusa had to pass through the Seha River Land in order to reach it. Given the likely route taken by Hittite ares in their expeditions to western Anatolia, Wilusa must therefore have lain north of the Seha River Land-that is to say in the region called the Troad in Classical times. We learn further that close by Wilusa was one of its dependencies, a place called Lazpa. There can now be little doubt that this was the island that the Greeks called Lesbos, as first proposed in the 1920s by Emil Forrer, ying just off Anatolia's northwest coast. We can thus say with confidence that Wilusa lay in the same

region as Hisarlik, our most favored candidate for Homer's Troy/Ilios. The conclusion, first enunciated by Emil Forrer, now seems inescapable: Troy has indeed been found in the texts of the Hittites. It was the royal seat of the king of Wilusa, vassal of the Great King of the Hittites. We thus have not only a physical setting for the great city of the Iliad, but also actual references to it in contemporary historical records.

' ' The conclusion, first enunciated by Emil Forrer, now seems inescapable: Troy has indeed been found in the texts of the Hittites. It was the royal seat of the king of Wilusa, vassal of the Great King of the Hittites. I

But this still falls far short of proof for an actual Trojan War. Which brings us to the next stage of our search.

Do Greeks Appear in Hittite Texts? This question Forrer also

sought to answer. He hypothesized that if Troy could be found in Hittite texts, there ought also to be references to Greeks in these texts. In attempting to track down these references, he

began by asking what the Greeks called themselves at this time. He noted that in the Iliad and Odyssey, Homer regularly used the term "Achaian" of the Greeks as a whole. (The Classical Greeks referred to themselves as "Hellenes"; the word "Greek" is adapted from "Graeci," the Roman name for the peoples of the Greek world.) On the assumption that the Homeric term had a genuine Bronze Age pedigree, Forrer searched through the Hittite texts for a name that might have been the Hittite equivalent to "Achaia." Given that Hittite power extended to Anatolia's western coast, and that Late Bronze Age or Mycenaean Greeks had extensive trading contacts with this coast, it would be extremely surprising if Hittite texts contained no references at all to these Greeks- quite apart from their appearance in Homeric tradition. Again Forrer claimed success in his search. He noted that

the Hittite texts referred a number of times to a place called Ahhiyawa, or Ahhiya in a shorter, earlier form. In this he saw the Hittite way of representing the Greek name Achaia. As might be expected, Forrer's proposal provoked considerable debate, some of it quite heated and personal. Its strongest critic was the German scholar Ferdinand Sommer who in the 1930s led the ranks of skeptics who dismissed the Ahhiyawa- Achaia equation as no more than "kling-klang etymology." Since then the debate has continued. Some scholars argued that Ahhiyawa was no more than a local Anatolian kingdom, others that it was an island kingdom lying off the Anatolian mainland, like Cyprus or Rhodes. Others again declared that it must have been a Mycenaean kingdom of mainland Greece.

We cannot debate here all the pros and cons of the Ahhiyawa-Achaia identification. That has been done many times in the past. Suffice it to say that the great majority of scholars now believe that Ahhiyawa must indeed refer to the world of Late Bronze Age Greece, more popularly known as the Mycenaean world. The identification cannot be regarded as iron-clad, and some of its supporters caution that it is still no more than a matter of faith. But the circumstantial evidence in support of it, including discoveries made in recent years, must now be considered overwhelming. In some contexts the term Ahhiyawa is used to refer to the Mycenaean world in general; in other contexts, where a particular king of Ahhiyawa



makes his appearance, to a specific kingdom within this world. The identification has a number of important implications.

One of these is the additional dimension it gives to Mycenaean studies. Scholars had long believed that Mycenaean overseas enterprises were confined essentially to trading activities along the coastlands of the Mediterranean, with occasional enclaves of Mycenaean settler-traders being established in these regions, most notably on the western Anatolian coast. So we may conclude from the material evidence, especially pottery. However, the Ahhiyawan-Mycenaean equation takes us a step beyond this, for it provides us with written information-the only such information we have-about the history of the Mycenaean world. We know from Hittite texts that certain Mycenaean Greek kings became politically and militarily involved in western Anatolian affairs. Indeed Hattusili III, who ruled the Hittite world in the thirteenth century, wrote to one of these kings, addressing him both as "my brother," a form of address reserved exclusively for one's peers, and as a "Great King," a title otherwise used only of the elite group of Near Eastern Great Kings-the rulers of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and Hatti. From the same letter, commonly known as the Tawagalawa Letter,' we learn that its addressee was overlord of the territory of Milawata on the Anatolian coast, and that very likely he was using this territory as a base for the extension of Ahhiyawan/Mycenaean influence elsewhere in western Anatolia. If so, then inevitably his enterprises would have threatened Hittite interests, and more specifically Hittite subject territories, in the region.

Does this bring us any closer to determining whether the tradition of a Trojan War is based on fact?

Assessing the Historical Evidence for a Trojan War In broad terms, we have established a general scenario for

possible conflict between Mycenaean Greeks and Hittite forces, or Hittite-backed forces, in western Anatolia. We now need to narrow our focus. On the assumption that Wilusa is the Hittite name for Troy/Ilios, do our Hittite sources provide evidence for a specific conflict involving Ahhiyawan/ Mycenaean forces against the kingdom of Wilusa? It is clear from these sources that Wilusa had a fairly troubled history, particularly in the thirteenth century, the period in which the Trojan War was most likely to have taken place. We learn that early in the century its territory was attacked and occupied by a notorious local freebooter called Piyamaradu. This information is provided by the letter we have referred to above, written by Manapa-Tarhunda, king of the Seha River Land, to his Hittite overlord Muwatalli. On this occasion Piyamaradu was apparently driven from Wilusa by a Hittite expeditionary force, but remained at large and continued to threaten Hittite interests in the region.

No reference is made to Ahhiyawa in this context, but we know from another letter, the so-called Tawagalawa Letter, that Piyamaradu was a prot6g6 of the Ahhiyawan king (who afforded him protection in his own land when the Hittites began turning up the heat on him), and that he was the father-

in-law of a man called Atpa, who governed Milawata as the Ahhiyawan king's vassal. As we have noted, the letter was written by Hattusili III" to his Ahhiyawan counterpart. Unfortunately, the latter's name is not preserved. It would have appeared at the beginning of the first of the three tablets constituting the letter. Only the third tablet survives. But we know from this that one of the letter's main topics was Hittite concern over the activities of Piyamaradu, and the support he was receiving from the king of Ahhiyawa. The letter refers to Wilusa. It had been a cause of conflict between Hattusili and the Ahhiyawan king, but the conflict had been peacefully resolved: "Now as we have come to an agreement on Wilusa over which we went to war...." Even so, Hattusili was concerned that Piyamaradu might try to provoke a fresh conflict, and he urged his Ahhiyawan brother to keep the trouble-maker under control; the Ahhiyawan king should tell Piyamaradu: "Regarding the matter of Wilusa over which we, the King of Hatti and I, had become hostile, he (the King of Hatti) has won me over and we have made friends ... it would not be right for us to make war."

This is as far as we can go in our search for evidence of a conflict involving Wilusa and Ahhiyawa. If Troy and Wilusa were one and the same, then Troy was clearly a subject state of the Hittites at the time, and any aggression against it was likely to provoke military retaliation from Hatti. That is what Hattusili implies in his letter. His references to Piyamaradu make clear that he saw this local warrior as an agent, perhaps the principal agent, used by the Ahhiyawan king for the extension of his authority in western Anatolia. Indeed Piyamaradu may already have been acting in this capacity on the earlier occasion when for a time he actually occupied Wilusa.

We do not know how effective Hattusili's letter was in securing Wilusa against enemy action. But we learn from another letter that in the reign of his son Tudhaliya (IV) Wilusa was again attacked. On this occasion its king, a man called Walmu, was forced off his throne and fled into exile. This information is supplied by a another text-join-to a very fragmentary document commonly known as the Milawata Letter, so-called because it refers to events that had recently taken place in and around Milawata. Unfortunately, even with the join the letter is still far from complete. But the surviving portion contains a passage about Wilusa, and by fitting the join against the original fragment, we can deduce that Wilusa was once again restored to Hittite control, and that preparations were underway for putting its king back on his throne.

This episode is the last piece of information we have about the northwestern kingdom of Wilusa. If Wilusa was in fact the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Troy, then we can start building up a picture of Troy's history in this period. Its inhabitants were almost certainly one of the Luwian-speaking peoples of western Anatolia. It belonged to the ethno-political complex of Arzawa lands. For at least the last two centuries of the Late Bronze Age, it was not an independent kingdom but one of the vassal states of the Hittite Empire. It suffered several attacks by



enemy forces during the thirteenth century, attacks in which a Mycenaean Greek king may well have been implicated. During one of these attacks, the enemy invaded and occupied its land. On another occasion its king was deposed. On both occasions the country was liberated by the Hittites. The so-called Tawagalawa Letter, which associates the king of Ahhiyawa with a war involving Wilusa, dates to around the middle of the thirteenth century. This is the most widely accepted date for the destruction of Troy VIh. We do not know the name of the letter's addressee, which may well have appeared in the first tablet of the letter, now lost to us. But there are those who would like to see in this addressee, a Great King of the Ahhiyawan world, the prototype of Homer's Agamemnon.

According to Homer, Agamemnon led a confederation of Greeks into war against the Trojans. The essence of this war was a ten-year siege of Troy, culminating in the besieged city's conquest, destruction, and abandonment. These are the core events of the Homeric tradition. How close are we to proving that they actually took place? Let us review the evidence currently available to us.

1. We can with a high degree of probability identify the site now known as Hisarlik in northwestern Turkey with the ancient citadel of Troy, made famous by the epic poems of Homer. Level VIh of this site best fits Homer's description of Troy. This level was destroyed some time during the thirteenth century, probably around the middle of the century, within the period to which the Trojan War is dated in Classical Greek sources.

2. Unfortunately we have no clear evidence to indicate what caused Troy's destruction-human agency, natural forces, or a combination of both. Admittedly recent excavations in the lower city have produced signs of military conflict in the form of arrow-heads and human skeletons. But as yet the quantity of such remains is too small to constitute evidence for a sustained conflict over a period of many years and involving a large invading force.

3. It is highly likely that Troy or Ilios was the kingdom called Wilusa in Hittite texts. Wilusa was a vassal kingdom of the Hittite empire located in the far northwest of Anatolia, in the region that the Greeks of later times called the Troad.

4. We know that Mycenaean Greeks, whose land is called Ahhiyawa in Hittite texts, became involved in the political and military affairs of western Anatolia, from at least the fifteenth century and particularly in the thirteenth century when the land of Milawata on the western Anatolian coast was subject to an Ahhiyawan/Mycenaean king.

5. During this period Wilusa suffered a number of attacks in which Mycenaean Greeks may have been directly or indirectly involved. On one occasion, its territory was occupied by the enemy; on another occasion its king was deposed and driven into exile. Homer tells us that the city of Troy was attacked, occupied, and destroyed by the Greeks, and its royal family killed or driven into exile.,

How far, then, does this information take us towards proof of a Trojan War? The answer has to be not very far at all, if we are

attempting to come up with a specific historical conflict that occupied a relatively long period of time-ten years in Greek tradition. Far from providing material or written evidence for such a conflict, our Anatolian sources in fact cast considerable doubt on its historicity, at least in the form in which it appears in Homer. For example, while siege-warfare certainly featured in a number of Bronze Age military operations, and sometimes extended over several months, the notion of a siege lasting many years is quite out of the question. And the claim that the Greek forces arrived at Troy in a fleet of more than a thousand ships (1,186 to be precise) would make the Greek armada many times greater than the largest known fleet in any period of the ancient world. As far as there is any historical basis for Homeric tradition, it is to be found not in a single conflict that occupied a relatively long period of time, but rather in a series of conflicts that took place over a very much greater period of time. Our Anatolian written sources provide no evidence for a single, major, extended attack by invading Greeks on an Anatolian kingdom that led to the eventual destruction of that kingdom. Rather the pattern is one of a number of limited attacks carried out over several centuries, and perhaps an occasional temporary occupation of a beleaguered kingdom. Any one of these attacks might have provided the original core of the Homeric tradition, a tradition that was hundreds of years in the making.

A Tradition Evolves The genesis of the epic may go back 150 years or more

before the generally accepted date of the Trojan War. Already in the late fifteenth or early fourteenth century we learn from a well-known Hittite text (the so-called "Indictment of Madduwatta") of Ahhiyawan military enterprises on the Anatolian mainland, and subsequently on the island of Cyprus (Alasiya in Hittite texts). The leader of these enterprises was "a man of Ahhiya" called Attarsiya. Could the Trojan War tradition have begun with a military conflict between Mycenaean Greeks and Anatolians in the early fourteenth, or even the fifteenth century? Professor Vermeule has argued that there are linguistic as well as other elements in the Iliad that could well date to this period. From a study of a number of passages in the Iliad, she concludes that the deaths of "Homeric" heroes like Hektor and Patroklos were already sung in the fifteenth or fourteenth centuries." And the military adventures in Anatolia of an early Mycenaean Greek warrior like Attarsiya are precisely the stuff out of which legend is created. Indeed it is just possible that Attarsiya (Attarissiya) was the Hittite way of writing the Greek name Atreus, a name borne in Greek tradition by one of the first rulers of Mycenae.

It was perhaps in the earliest days of Mycenaean contact with western Anatolia that the tradition of a Greek-Anatolian conflict began its journey. In the course of this journey, the tradition constantly acquired new elements, many of which may well have been based on actual historical episodes or incidents. By the thirteenth century it had also acquired a specific physical setting, a northwestern Anatolian kingdom



that during the course of the century suffered a number of attacks either by the Greeks themselves or by their allies and proteges. Enemy occupation of its territory and the overthrow of its king became woven into the fabric of the ongoing tradition.

The tradition itself was kept alive by story-tellers, wan- dering bards and minstrels who, Homer tells us, entertained the courts of Mycenaean kings and noblemen. Stories of the exploits of great heroes of the distant past became intermingled with the deeds of Greek kings and warriors of more recent times. For oral tradition by its very nature enables almost limitless adaptations of and additions to an existing body of folklore. Very likely at the request of their patrons, the story-tellers were obliged to add new material constantly, as they forever updated their repertoire of tales. Even after the great Bronze Age kingdoms had fallen, the tradition of a great war continued. And it was perhaps in this later, post-Bronze period that the final essential component of the Homeric tradition came into being-the total destruction and abandonment of the citadel of Troy.

We must emphasize that no such dramatic end of Troy is attested during the Late Bronze Age in either the archaeological or the written record. In the archaeological record, Troy VIIa quickly replaced Troy VIh, and was occupied by the same population group, though the dwellings within the citadel were now humbler, and the conditions more crowded. In the written record, Wilusa was liberated from its invaders on at least two occasions in the thirteenth century, and the local ruler had his authority restored to him. But there did come a time when Troy was destroyed and apparently abandoned by its population. This occurred at the end of level VIIb, some time between 1100 and 1000, in the aftermath of the great upheavals throughout the Near East and Greece at the end of the Bronze Age. Its destruction was very likely due to marauders who featured in these upheavals and about whom we hear from Egyptian records-the so-called Sea Peoples. Almost certainly population groups from the last remnants of the Mycenaean world were included amongst the marauders.

Around 1000 BCE new waves of Greeks came to settle in western Anatolia. They knew of the great stories of their ancestors who did battle with the local Anatolian kingdoms. In particular they knew of the conquest of a kingdom called Troy or Ilios in Greek tradition. Many may well have visited the place where this conquest occurred. What in fact did they see there? The remains of a once great city that had been destroyed and was now totally abandoned. This provided the final element in the tradition-the closing episode to a tale of conflict, conquest, and destruction.

All this provided the raw material for the creative poet-a sequence of events that took at least five hundred years to

' ' towering over all his predecessors, there was in fact a great poet of the late eighth or early seventh century whose creative genius brought a long- evolving narrative tradition to its peak of artistic excellence.

unfold. From the vast body of legend and folklore that such events undoubtedly generated, a small number of episodes were selected, and those selected were woven into a continuous narrative, which was compressed into a period of ten years. But the poet went further. His story had to be peopled with colorful characters. And so we are

presented with the lordly Agamemnon, the brave Ajax of massive proportions, the noble Hektor, the sulking Achilles, the wily Odysseus. Other elements were added from the stock repertoire of epic tradition-intervention by gods and goddesses, performance of strange rituals, encounters with enchantresses and monsters, and consultations with the dead or the immortal. Was this the achievement of a single person? And if so, was it the achievement of an eighth century poet? Or were there a succession of poets extending back through the Dark Age mists? Was Homer merely the last of a series? Or was he himself an invention-not a person, but the personification of a process that began long before the late eighth century? There may have been one or more Dark Age poets to whom the bard's mantle should be assigned, or at least with whom it should be shared.Yet the likelihood remains that, towering over all his predecessors, there was in fact a great poet of the late eighth or early seventh century whose creative genius brought a long-evolving narrative tradition to its peak of artistic excellence.

Undoubtedly debate on whether or not Homer's account of the Trojan War is based on fact will continue, as scholars, film producers, and anyone else interested in the tale of Troy continue to probe for the truth behind the legend. Why have so many been obsessed with such a search for so long? Part of the reason may be the belief that the poet's reputation would be all the greater if we could prove beyond doubt that his tale of Troy is based on historical fact. But surely the opposite is true. Homer was a creative artist, not a historian, and that is how he would want to be judged. His epic composition has captured the imagination of one generation of listeners and readers after another, and a countless succession of visual and literary artists. Yet this is not all. So powerfully has he told his story that he has convinced almost all his listeners and readers, including some of the most astute scholars, that his characters are based on real people, and that these people were participants in events that really did happen.

Let us for a moment suppose that the Iliad was from beginning to end a work of fiction, that Homer made the whole thing up. What then would be the greatest favor we could do the poet? Assuredly to prove to the satisfaction of everyone that his story of Troy has no historical foundation whatsoever. That more than anything else would make clear to all the full extent of the blind lonian's creative genius.



Notes 1. In fact there was one (at least in Virgil's Aeneid)-the army surgeon Machaon, son of Asklepios. 2. The name "Mycenaean" is used today as a term of convenience for the whole of the Late Bronze Age (or Late Helladic) civilization of mainland Greece. It reflects Mycenae's prominence within this civilization, in the archaeological record as well as in Greek literary tradition. 3. Other ancient Greek writers give dates for the war ranging from the second half of the fourteenth to the second half of the twelfth centuries. 4. For a concise description of recent excavations, see Korfmann (1995). 5. See Hawkins and Easton (1996). The seal is further discussed by Starke (1997), Alp (2001). 6. Melchert (2003: 12) remains cautious on this matter, noting also the possibility that the inhabitants of Wilusa/Troy spoke a related, but distinct Indo-European language. 7. Now commonly referred to as the Assuwan Confederacy on the grounds that Assuwa figures in the text apparently as the region in which most of the countries were located. 8. The earliest of these, found in Tarsus and featuring a king of south- western Anatolia called Isputashu, dates back to the last decades of the sixteenth century. 9. According to Melchert (2003: 11-12). 10. Tawagalawa was the brother of the Ahhiyawan king. He had been sent to Milawata to arrange the transportation of large numbers of Hittite subjects back to the Greek mainland. The common tag "Tawagalawa Letter" is quite inappropriate since Tawagalawa receives no more than a brief mention in the document, or rather what survives of it. 11. The brother of Muwatalli and his second successor on the Hittite throne. 12. Vermeule (1986: 85-86). See also Hiller (1991: 145) regarding the tradition of an earlier Trojan War, and Muhly (1992: 16), Cline (1997: 197-98).

References Alp, S.

2001 Das Hieroglyphensiegel von Troja und seine Bedeutung fiir Westanatolien. Pp. 27-31 in Akten IV. Internationalen Kongresses fiir Hethitologie. Wiirzburg, 4.-8. Oktober 1999, edited by G. Wilhelm. Studien zu den Bogazk6y-Texten 45. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Blegen, C. 1963 Troy and the Trojans. London: Thames and Hudson.

Cline, E. H. 1997 Achilles in Anatolia: Myth, History, and the Assuwa

Rebellion. Pp. 189-210 in Crossing Boundaries and Linking Horizons: Studies in Honor of Michael Astour on his 80th Birthday, edited by G. D. Young, M. W. Chavalas, and R. E. Averbeck, Bethesda: CDL.

Easton, D. E 1985 Has the Trojan War Been Found? (review of M. Wood, In

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Gurney, O. R. 1992 Hittite Geography: Thirty Years On. Pp. 213-21 in Hittite

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1997 A Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscription on a Silver Bowl in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara. Anadolu Medeniyetleri Miisezi, Ankara, 1996 Yilligi: 7-24.

Hawkins, J. D. and Easton, D. E 1996 A Hieroglyphic Seal from Troy. Studia Troica 6: 111-18.

Hiller, S. 1991 Two Trojan Wars? On the Destructions of Troy VIh and VIIa.

Studia Troica 1: 145-54. Korfmann, M.

1995 A Residential and Trading City at the Dardanelles. Pp. 173-83 in Politeia. Society and State in the Aegean Bronze Age. (Proceedings of the 5th International Aegean Conference, Univ of Heidelberg, Archdiologisches Institut, 10-13 April 1994), edited by R. Laffineur and W.-D. Niemeier. Liege/Austin: University of Liege/University of Texas.

Macqueen, J. G. 1986 The Hittites and their Contemporaries in Asia Minor. London:

Thames and Hudson. Mee, C.

1998 Anatolia and the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age: The Aegean and the Orient in the Second Millennium. Pp. 137-48 in Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Symposium Cincinnati, 18-20 April 1997. Aegaeum 18. Liege: University of Liege.

Melchert, H. C. 2003 Prehistory. Pp. 11-12 in The Luwians, edited by H. C.

Melchert, Leiden: Brill. Muhly J. D.

1992 The Crisis Years in the Mediterranean World: Transition or Cultural Disintegration? Pp. 10-26 in The Crisis Years: the 12th Century B.C., edited by W. A. Ward and M. S. Joukowsky, Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt.

Starke, E 1997 Troia im Kontext des Historisch-Politischen und Sprachlichen

Umfeldes Kleinasiens im 2. Jahrtausend. Studia Troica 7: 447-87.

Vermeule, E. 1986 Priam's Castle Blazing. Pp. 77-92 in Troy and the Trojan War,

edited by M. J. Mellink. Bryn Mawr: Bryn Mawr College. Watkins, C.

1986 The Language of the Trojans. Pp. 45-62 in Troy and the Trojan War, edited by M. J. Mellink. Bryn Mawr: Bryn Mawr College.

AUTAT Originally trained as a classicist, Trevor

Bryce has lectured in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland, and subsequently at the University of New England (Australia), where he was appointed to the Chair of Classics and Ancient History. More recently he served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Lincoln University in New Zealand and currently is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Trevor Bryce the Humanities and Honorary Research Consultant at the University of Queensland, Australia. His recent publications include The Kingdom of the Hittites, Life and Society in the Hittite World and Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East.



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Issue Table of ContentsNear Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 2002) pp. 153-216Front Matter [pp. 153-155]"From Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean" [from the Editor] [pp. -]Communities in Conflict: Death and the Contest for Social Order in the Euphrates River Valley [pp. 156-173]Ethics and Archaeology: The Attempt at atalhyk[pp. 174-181]The Trojan War: Is There Truth behind the Legend? [pp. 182-195]Petrographic Investigation of the Amarna Tablets [pp. 196-205]Arti-FactsHidden Treasure from the Royal Cemetery at Ur: Technology Sheds New Light on the Ancient Near East [pp. 206-213]

ReviewReview: untitled [pp. 214-215]

Back Matter [pp. 216-216]

Bryce, Trevor R. the Trojan War, Is There Truth Behind the Legend.

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