Ellaine Aldridge

The Historicity of Homers Troy

In Ancient Greek times, the stories of the Trojan War where vital to childrens and civilians education. Passed orally from bard to bard, the stories werent documented until Homer - some 400 years later - decided to write the Iliad and the Epic Cycle stories. Of course the stories adapted over time, to fit in with the polytheistic religion of the Ancient Greeks. For a story that proceeded to be told after 400 years however; there must have been the significant event of the Trojan War. The location of Homers Troy lies at the entrance to the Dardanelles, at the hill of modern day Hissarlik. Written sources from Heinrich Schliemanns journal, and modern day archeologists and historians believe this site to be Homers Troy. For example, Schliemann discovered that Hissarlik was indeed the site of Homers Troy in 1870, due to the contributing fact that the troughs he found indicating springs matched to the Iliad where it says: two lovely streams troughs of stone where

the wives and lovely daughters of the Trojans used to wash their glossy clothes .
There are many mythological explanations for a war, but justifiable reasons for a war are evident. Source A, for example says: From what we can now understand from

Hittite sources, the Arzawa land Wilusa, identified with the archaeological site Troy, a point of conflict between the Hittites and the Ahhiawa (the Mycenaean Greeks).
The ancient historian Thucydides, in agreement of a more justifiable cause, wrote in a written source: Agamemnon it seems to me, must have been the most powerful of

the rulers of his day, and it was for this reason that he raised the force against troy.
In agreement with Thucydides, I think it was both Agamemnons yearn for increased power and also economic causes that started the was (as Troy had the strategic location of being situated near the river; Troy was thought to toll ships passing and trade a lot). In the Iliad, some of Homers descriptions match up with remnants found at Hissarlik excavations. Carl Blegan in the mid 1930s found evidence of a siege and fall in level 7A at Hissarlik. Today, this level is still thought to be Homers Troy. Archeological evidence in this level includes houses built in haste that are crowded together (suggesting that many of the outside workers/farmers had come inside the city walls for protection); large storage jars (suggesting that the civilians were saving and reserving food); unburied bodies in houses and on streets (conveying that there was no time to bury bodies and that a great number of people had died); and a burnt layer atop (suggesting a fire or an earthquake). Many sling bullets have been found in this level also, and because they

had not been retrieved from the ground suggests that, in this war that they were over taken. The evidence shows signs of the war pictured in Homers Iliad. Discoveries from an intensive and systematic pottery survey done in 2003, show that the whole of the city covered a little more than 30 hectares, 15 times bigger than previously thought. This matches the great descriptions in Homers Iliad about the mighty walls, towers and vastness of the city. The ancient site also shows signs of repairs to the citadel walls in efforts to strengthen and enlarge them. This evidently conveys that the Mycenaeans were attacked repeatedly, most probably because other city-states wanted to have the control of what passed to and from the Mediterranean and the black sea, as well as what passed between Asia Minor and the southeast of Europe; thus to become a rich a powerful conqueror and king. Manfred Korfmann, a German archaeologist wrote in the early 2000: According to

the archaeological and historical findings of the past decade especially, it is now more likely than not that there were several armed conflicts in and around Troy at the end of the Late Bronze Age. At present we do not know whether all or some of these conflicts were distilled in later memory into the "Trojan War" or whether among them there was an especially memorable, single "Trojan War." Although it is
possible that over time the Trojan War stories passed orally could have merged many wars into one big war; I think that it is more viable that it was indeed the one war of level 7A, because it would have had to be a big war that after so many finally conquered the great city-state of Troy; thus making it greatly significant to Ancient Greeks. There is much archaeological evidence that matches with Homers (and other ancient historians) beliefs and writings of the Trojan War. Much of Homers Iliad is fiction (with the incorporation of gods controlling humans), and it may be hard to distinguish between what really did happen and what is made up, or, what inputs are from Homers time (400 years after the event). However for a story to continue to be told for 400 years, there must have been an event in the Mycenaean history that was very significant and the fictional embellishments? To make the war story all the more entertaining and some-what educational. Ellaine Aldridge