Homer's Illiad and Odyssey

3,000 years ago, the ancient Greek poet Homer told the story of the ill-fated city of Troy and the great Trojan War in his powerful epic, the Iliad. This mythical tale of love and war has  captured imaginations ever since. 

While some have argued that the myth of Troy was just that – a myth – the allure of the story has led many to search for the site that, according to Homer's poem, was one of the most important settlements of its time.

In mythology, Troy inspired the Greek epic poet Homer to conceive his two great works in (probably) the eighth century BC: the Iliad – set in the final year of the decade-long siege of Troy by a coalition of Greek states – and its “sequel”, the Odyssey.

In reality, it was said the city witnessed one of the greatest battles in Greek history. In his History of the Peloponnesian War, the fifth-century BC historian Thucydides describes the Trojan war as “notable beyond all previous wars”.

Breakthrough discovery

In the 19th century, a Scotsman and an Englishman, Charles Maclaren and Frank Calvert, were the first to link a hill containing ancient remains with the site of ancient Troy. 

But the real breakthrough came in 1870, when the German businessman and self-taught archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann travelled to Anatolia with the purpose of uncovering the city and proving the Iliad was based on fact. 

Since then, the site that Schliemann claimed was 'Troy' has been the subject of extensive excavation and study. Although the evidence can't prove that the Trojan War really happened, experts now agree that the settlement Schliemann excavated was the famous city…

The city of Troy

The site of Troy was first settled in the Early Bronze Age, from around 3000 BC. 

Over the four thousand years of its existence, countless generations have lived at Troy. Although they experienced periods of prosperity, life was not always easy for the Trojans – houses and fortifications fell to fire, earthquakes or battles and were built anew. The city sometimes grew, sometimes contracted as its people's fortunes changed.

It is this record of a people and their city that is preserved in archaeology. Each layer of occupation, one on top of the other, represents a phase in the city's history, which archaeologists over the last 150 years have been exploring. These layers have been labelled  Troy I to IX, with Troy I being the earliest settlement and Troy IX the most recent. Much remains to be discovered, but we now know enough today to get a good sense of the city's development over time.

Video about Priam's treasure

Controversial methods

In April 1870, Schliemann began to dig at Hisarlik. Soon he claimed to have found the “burnt city” of Homer’s Troy. In the process, however, “he threw away the thing he was going to look for,” says Cline.

PICKAXES AND DYNAMITE

Having acquired permission from the Turkish authorities to formally dig at Hissarlik, Schliemann and his team worked feverishly to unearth the ancient citadel from 1870 to 1873, bankrolling the excavations at his own personal expense. His heavy-handed tactics included employing dozens, sometimes hundreds of local laborers, each wielding pickaxes, shovels, and, in some instances, dynamite.

So focused was he on the finding evidence of Homeric Troy and the recovery of precious artifacts that Schliemann literally blasted his way through layers of settlement stratigraphy stretching back to the Early Bronze Age, c. 3000-26000 BC, as well as the remains of the later fortifications – a far cry from the gentle brushing and troweling of today’s archaeologists.

Schliemann dug through – and decimated – layers and layers of Bronze Age Troy (1700-1200 BC), until he reached what is now known as Troy II: a city more than 1,000 years older than the Troy of the Iliad.

Cline says. “He found Troy, but he also destroyed Troy.”

Their work has been criticized as rough and damaging — Kenneth W. Harl wrote that Schliemann's excavations were carried out with such rough methods that he did to Troy what the Greeks couldn't do in their times, destroying and levelling down the entire city walls to the ground.

New discoveries

Understanding of the site, its development over time and its place in the ancient world continues to grow. From an archaeological perspective, there is a rich history to be uncovered that stands quite apart from the myth of the Trojan War and is important in its own right. 

Yet the myth and the site remain inextricably linked. Few visitors can look out from the walls of 'windy Troy' across the Trojan plain without thinking of the massed Greek armies waiting to attack, or the women of Troy watching helplessly as battle rages below. 

The recent excavations leads by Manfred Korfmann had disclosed a possible existence of a lower town in the south-west area from the upper citadel excavated by the first archaeologists. With this lower town the total area of the city covered about 40 hectares, with an estimated population of 10,000 inhabitants.

By using new technique like geo-magnetic imaging (a form of X-ray photography which made it possible to obtain an extensive picture of the lower strata without disturbing the surface strata) it has been possible to determinate the position of two defensive ditches the first was about 400 meters south of the citadel, which probably enclosed the total area of Troy VI, the second a hundred meters beyond the first, at the very bottom of the hill. 

Additional evidences of the lower town and the defensive ditch have been found by the team of professor Ernst Pernicka. His team uncovered a trench 1.4 Km long, 4 meter wide and 2 meters deep. 

Furthermore trace of a southern gate, south-eastern gate and south-western gate have been also found. 

Parts of two ceramic "pithoi" were also found in the trench near the edge of the lower town, suggesting that houses in the lower town stretched to the trench, another indication that Troy's lower town was fully inhabited.