TROY STORY
modern research has shown it contains memories of the heroic age around the time the war may have taken place. In the ancient world, it was believed that Troy lay by the Dardanelles but that tale came to be viewed as a fiction. In 1870, German businessman Heinrich Schliemann set out to prove it true. He hired gangs of Turkish workers who gouged their way into a hill by the Dardanelles called Hisarlik and within months had unearthed an ancient citadel. Soon, Schliemann had treasures to show, including a headdress of thousands of pieces of gold which he dubbed “the Jewels of Helen”. He thought he had discovered Troy. Schliemann never found the historical Troy but it was under his nose. Certain Homer’s city must lie deep in the mound, he smashed through layers when war may have taken place. Remains of the real place – if it existed – lay back in the upper layers. Luckily, though he had destroyed one side of the citadel, enough was left for those who followed to piece history together.
Further campaigns in the 1890s and the 1930s uncovered finely built walls and noble houses.
There was now no question this was a royal citadel of the late Bronze Age and one which had suffered at least two violent destructions.
But still there was no proof that the Trojan War had taken place.
This was so when I made the In Search of the Trojan War documentary series for the BBC in 1985.
Then, in the 90s, a new excavation began and among finds were cremations of Greek warriors by the seashore.
A lower town was traced, which could have housed several thousand people, much more like the city Homer imagined.
At the same time new interpretations of Bronze Age archives preserved on clay tablets in central Anatolia made it virtually certain Troy is named, and one letter is from a king of the Greeks, maybe Agamemnon.
There is broad consensus Troy was capital of a Bronze Age kingdom at the mouth of the Dardanelles and the Greeks attacked it in 13th century BC. Achilles, without the heel of legend, may have existed. His name, “Grief-bringer”, comes from the Bronze Age and stories of his deeds were told long before Homer.
In one clay tablet in Hittite archives, the King of Troy is named as Alaksandush, close to Homer’s other name for Helen’s lover Paris – Alexandros.
Some of the heroes were stock characters in epic storytelling.
Ajax, for example, was a much more ancient hero.
Odysseus, the trickster, was also surely an old favourite.
The Brad Pitt film, missed the tale’s heart when Paris and Helen ran off together into the sunset.
Let’s hope the BBC stay true to Homer. ● Troy: Fall of a City is on BBC1 on Saturday at 9.10pm. An updated version of Michael Wood’s bestseller In Search of the Trojan War is published by BBC books.
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