Trojan Horse
The Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the subterfuge that the Greeks used to enter the independent city of Troy and win the war. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside.
Troy (Turkish: Truva or Troya) is an ancient city in what is now northwestern Turkey, made famous in Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad. According to Iliad, this is where the legendary Trojan War took place. Today it is an archaeological site popular with travellers from all over the world, and in addition to being a Turkish national park, it is on the World Heritage List of UNESCO.
Situated on Hisarlık Hill on the northwestern tip of Troad Peninsula, the site allows total control of Dardanelles, which, along with the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus, is today known as the Turkish Straits. In many periods of history, this was a key route connecting Mediterranean with the Black Sea, as well as being where European and Asian landmasses are almost just a stone's throw away from each other.
Hisarlık Hill has hosted major human settlements almost continuously since 3000 BC. The earliest city on the site was a small Neolithic settlement of which little remains. A successor to this settlement, now referred to Troy II, was also of modest size but built monumental buildings and amassed such astonishing treasure that early archaeologists initially associated it with a much later period. More famous, however, are the Late Bronze Age Troy VI and Troy VII archaeological layers, likely corresponding to the city known to the Hittites as Wilusa and possibly corresponding to the city known in later legends as Troy.
The abduction of Queen Helen of Sparta by Paris, a Trojan prince, sparked emnity between the Trojans and Achaeans from across the Aegean Sea, or so says the story. Having been unable to break into the defensive walls of the city for nine years, Achaeans decided to set up a trick—they offered a huge wooden horse as a gift to Trojans, as an amend for the bother they caused with their war galleys on the city's beach. Trojans accepted the offer sincerely, but this resulted in them losing their city, as inside of the horse was full of Achaean soldiers, ready to combat, and now right in the centre of the city.
Researchers still debate not only whether there was a Trojan War but also what it would mean to claim that there was a Trojan War. However, it is settled beyond a doubt that the site on Hisarlık Hill was the city which was regarded as the site of a Trojan War in later time. (For instance, numerous coins turn up in the topsoil at the site identifying it as such.) Moreover, we know from Hittite records that the city of Wilusa was involved in several military conflicts which also involved Greek people between the 15th and 12th centuries BC. (We can't be sure *how* these events involved the various parties-- it seems like some Greek people may have fought alongside the Trojans against the Hittites during one of these conflicts, and a later conflict may not have reached the city proper.) Thus, if the identification of Wilusa with Hisarlık Hill is correct, the site would have hosted events which could well have inspired the later myths.
Troy VII was largely abandoned at the end of the Bronze Age. However, after a few centuries, Greek colonists arrived and built a city known now as Troy VIII but at the time called Ilion. Residents of this city were very aware of the role their home played in mythology, going so far as worshipping parts of its ruins (though also demolishing other parts). This city was sacked during a rebellion against the Byzantines and subsequently rebuilt as Ilium, known archaeologically as Troy IX. Troy IX was abandoned as the Trojan bay silted up, nullifying its reason for existence. It eventually disappeared under laters of dirt in the late middle ages.
In antiquity, the Trojan War widely regarded as a historical event, but this view became less popular as the years rolled by. In 1868, Heinrich Schliemann, a German businessman and a self-proclaimed archaeologist, sought to prove that Troy was a real place, taking the hint that it might be buried under the Hisarlık Hill from Frank Calvert, a British archaeologist who visited the site three years earlier. As Schliemann's excavations were totally amateurish, it damaged the integrity of much of the remains, but Schliemann obtained what he yearned for anyway—his Greek spouse Sophia Schliemann is immortalized in a photo showing her wearing the treasures found at the Hisarlık Hill (part of the treasure was later taken by the Red Army from Berlin to Moscow at the end of World War II).
Although almost a century and a half passed since the days of Schliemann, Troy still hasn't been unearthed completely yet, and the excavation works still continue to this day.
Once a harbour city on the edge of a deep bay of Dardanelles, the site now lies 5 km inland from the coast due to the alluvial material carried by the River Scamander (modern Karamenderes), which filled the bay, turning it into the fertile, flat farmland stretching out to the sea that it is.
In modern Turkish, there is a tendency of shifting of the name of the site from Truva, which reflects the pronounciation of French name of the place (Troie) as that was the language of choice among the Turkish elites up to 1950s, to Troya, which is closer to the original Greek name, although both can still be heard interchangably.
Trojan Horse
The Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the subterfuge that the Greeks used to enter the independent city of Troy and win the war. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside.
Troy (Turkish: Truva or Troya) is an ancient city in what is now northwestern Turkey, made famous in Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad. According to Iliad, this is where the legendary Trojan War took place. Today it is an archaeological site popular with travellers from all over the world, and in addition to being a Turkish national park, it is on the World Heritage List of UNESCO.
Situated on Hisarlık Hill on the northwestern tip of Troad Peninsula, the site allows total control of Dardanelles, which, along with the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus, is today known as the Turkish Straits. In many periods of history, this was a key route connecting Mediterranean with the Black Sea, as well as being where European and Asian landmasses are almost just a stone's throw away from each other.
Hisarlık Hill has hosted major human settlements almost continuously since 3000 BC. The earliest city on the site was a small Neolithic settlement of which little remains. A successor to this settlement, now referred to Troy II, was also of modest size but built monumental buildings and amassed such astonishing treasure that early archaeologists initially associated it with a much later period. More famous, however, are the Late Bronze Age Troy VI and Troy VII archaeological layers, likely corresponding to the city known to the Hittites as Wilusa and possibly corresponding to the city known in later legends as Troy.
The abduction of Queen Helen of Sparta by Paris, a Trojan prince, sparked emnity between the Trojans and Achaeans from across the Aegean Sea, or so says the story. Having been unable to break into the defensive walls of the city for nine years, Achaeans decided to set up a trick—they offered a huge wooden horse as a gift to Trojans, as an amend for the bother they caused with their war galleys on the city's beach. Trojans accepted the offer sincerely, but this resulted in them losing their city, as inside of the horse was full of Achaean soldiers, ready to combat, and now right in the centre of the city.
Researchers still debate not only whether there was a Trojan War but also what it would mean to claim that there was a Trojan War. However, it is settled beyond a doubt that the site on Hisarlık Hill was the city which was regarded as the site of a Trojan War in later time. (For instance, numerous coins turn up in the topsoil at the site identifying it as such.) Moreover, we know from Hittite records that the city of Wilusa was involved in several military conflicts which also involved Greek people between the 15th and 12th centuries BC. (We can't be sure *how* these events involved the various parties-- it seems like some Greek people may have fought alongside the Trojans against the Hittites during one of these conflicts, and a later conflict may not have reached the city proper.) Thus, if the identification of Wilusa with Hisarlık Hill is correct, the site would have hosted events which could well have inspired the later myths.
Troy VII was largely abandoned at the end of the Bronze Age. However, after a few centuries, Greek colonists arrived and built a city known now as Troy VIII but at the time called Ilion. Residents of this city were very aware of the role their home played in mythology, going so far as worshipping parts of its ruins (though also demolishing other parts). This city was sacked during a rebellion against the Byzantines and subsequently rebuilt as Ilium, known archaeologically as Troy IX. Troy IX was abandoned as the Trojan bay silted up, nullifying its reason for existence. It eventually disappeared under laters of dirt in the late middle ages.
In antiquity, the Trojan War widely regarded as a historical event, but this view became less popular as the years rolled by. In 1868, Heinrich Schliemann, a German businessman and a self-proclaimed archaeologist, sought to prove that Troy was a real place, taking the hint that it might be buried under the Hisarlık Hill from Frank Calvert, a British archaeologist who visited the site three years earlier. As Schliemann's excavations were totally amateurish, it damaged the integrity of much of the remains, but Schliemann obtained what he yearned for anyway—his Greek spouse Sophia Schliemann is immortalized in a photo showing her wearing the treasures found at the Hisarlık Hill (part of the treasure was later taken by the Red Army from Berlin to Moscow at the end of World War II).
Although almost a century and a half passed since the days of Schliemann, Troy still hasn't been unearthed completely yet, and the excavation works still continue to this day.
Once a harbour city on the edge of a deep bay of Dardanelles, the site now lies 5 km inland from the coast due to the alluvial material carried by the River Scamander (modern Karamenderes), which filled the bay, turning it into the fertile, flat farmland stretching out to the sea that it is.
In modern Turkish, there is a tendency of shifting of the name of the site from Truva, which reflects the pronounciation of French name of the place (Troie) as that was the language of choice among the Turkish elites up to 1950s, to Troya, which is closer to the original Greek name, although both can still be heard interchangably.