Troy: Epic excavations

by İlknur TAŞ

Who has not heard of Helen of Troy, whose face, as the playwright Marlowe wrote, “launched a thousand ships”? Popular interest in the myth of the ancient city – which is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List – peaked last year following the release of the movie, Troy, starring Brad Pitt. Behind the legends is another, equally compelling story of archaeological discovery.

As winter approaches, the Biga Peninsula is preparing to brave wind and rain as it has done throughout history, guardian not only of the Turkish straits, but also of many ancient secrets, only some of which it has started to divulge. The region washed by the waves of the Sea of Marmara, the Dardanelles and the Bay of Edremit is known to ancient historians as the Troad or Troas. It takes its name from the city of Troy, the most important of the various ancient settlements which archaeologists have unearthed there.

The ruins of Troy are located near Hisarlık, at a narrow point on the straits, just before they open out into the Aegean, some 30 kilometres from the provincial centre of Çanakkale. A curious legend surrounds the choice of the site. According to ‘The Iliad’, the epic poem attributed to Homer, the Troasian Ilus won a wrestling competition organized by the King of Phrygia. Among the prizes he took away was a black-spotted cow. Oracles told Ilus to follow this cow and found his new city wherever she lay down. The cow went and lay down at a place by the sea, between the Scamander (now the Karamenderes) and Simois (Dümrek) rivers.

The Trojan War

Initially named after Ilus, the city was later called Troya, in honour of Tros, one of the ancestors of the founder. The Troya or Troie of ancient Greek has come to be known in Turkish as Truva, a derivation from the French. All went well, it appears, until Paris, the son of King Priam, a descendent of Ilus, kidnapped the proverbially beautiful Helen, the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, and took her away to Ilion - his father’s castle in Troy. Before long, the King’s brother, Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, who dominated most of Peloponnese, had organized a major expedition against the city.

Menelaus was to seize and destroy the castle after 10 long years of siege, killing Priam and slaughtering the population. The Iliad tells in detail how Greek leaders from Achaea and Aiolis crossed the sea to Troy under the command of Agamemnon to do battle with Trojan heroes Hector and Aenaeus. There was much quarrelling within the Greek camp, and the long siege appeared to have been frustrated when Greek hero Achilles withdrew from the combat. It was then that Odysseus convinced the Greeks to build the famous wooden horse, with well-known consequences for the outcome -and for the whole saga of Western civilisation.

From Schliemann to Korfmann

The search for Troy began with the flamboyant German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who began excavations in 1878. Schliemann brought Troy to the attention of the world with such famous findings as “The Treasure of Priam”. At the same time, he skilfully smuggled many pieces of gold jewellery to Berlin. These unique, invaluable ornaments were to change hands as a result of a later European confrontation every bit as grim as the Trojan War itself, and of still greater proportions. Today the bracelets, necklaces and ear-rings are displayed in the Pushkin Museum, while the legal battle over restoring them to their rightful place continues.

Later excavations were conducted by teams headed by Wilhelm Dörpheld and Carl Blegen. However, it was the achievement of Professor Manfred Korfmann to demonstrate for the first time the importance of the ancient city of Troy as far back as the era of the Hittites. Korfmann resumed excavations in 1988, with contributions from Mercedes Benz, the Ministry of Culture, and local and foreign international research teams. Sadly, we lost him to cancer a few months ago.

The father of Troy

Troy had disappeared from the world agenda for about half a century when the man now known locally as “the father of Troy” arrived. Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Tübingen, Korfmann’s efforts were not limited to digging. In order for his team to work efficiently, he founded the village of Bademli and became its first headman.

Korfmann’s book and exhibition, both entitled: ‘The Troy Exhibition: Dream and Reality’, were a great source of pride to him. The 2002 exhibition was visited by 850,000 people. But it has been left to Korfmann’s successors to realise his own personal dream: to bring all the findings from the area, now scattered all over the world, under the roof of a single museum at Troy, and to turn this city, which has witnessed so many great wars, into a peace centre.

Reassessing the legend

The theme of the research led by Korfmann was ‘Troya and Troas – Archaeology of a Landscape’. Korfmann emphasised that the excavations were not designed to demonstrate the accuracy of the Homerian epic. “Around 700 BCE Troy, in its ruined condition, must have been an extremely impressive scene for Homer, or other story-tellers,” the archaeologist noted. At the same time, he remarked that the Iliad could not be ruled out completely as a possible historical source. Indeed, the Troy portrayed by Homer and the findings of excavation overlap in many ways.

It is now assumed that Homer shaped the Iliad under the influence of events which took place 500 years before him, and of the legends which issued from these events. This date coincides with the passage of Greek tribes to Anatolia during the years after 1200 BCE. One of Korfmann’s most important discoveries was that a lower city fifteen times more extensive than previously supposed existed in Troy between the 17th and 12th centuries BCE. Towards the end of the period in question, this city was surrounded by an impressive defence ditch. There are marks of repeated attacks and repairs. And evidence has been discovered suggesting that this era in the life of the city - and of the royal centre above it - came to an end in a war fought in about 1180 BCE.

Origins – and Hittites

But the war is only one episode in Korfmann’s understanding of Troy. According to the Professor, Bronze Age Troy’s geographical advantages made it the most powerful settlement in a border region between Europe and Asia. The superior quality of the settlement came to be emphasised by the size and strength of its castle walls, built of carefully-cut, perfectly rectangular stones.

As a transit point of the trade between Mesopotamia, Egypt and Anatolia, Troy was continuously threatened, and the Trojans were to respond by reinforcing their towers and castles with iron. Their ramparts were also built to resist earthquakes. They became great miners - but also great potters as they absorbed the cross-currents of the cultures around them.

Among the recent discoveries which interested Professor Korfmann and his team was the possibility that Troy is identical with the ‘(W)llios’, or ‘Wilusa,’ mentioned in Hittite texts of 2000 BCE. Moreover, the city, until recently treated as a part of Greek civilisation, was representative of a culture peculiar to Anatolia - most probably that of the ‘Lu-Wians’. There was, in other words, no piebald cow: Greek Achaeans crossed the Aegean to do battle not with a Mycenaean colony of Greeks like themselves, but with Luwians.

Progress of history

All the more reason to preserve and protect the remains of Troy as a cautionary tale for future generations! Yet in spite of the creation of a Troy Historical National Park in 1996 and UNESCO recognition in 1998 – not to mention the Brad Pitt movie – there has been no progress on the proposed museum building, the land for which was purchased many years ago. Unlike the image of Pallas Athena which Zeus sent to Ilus after the mythological foundation of the city - prompting him to build a famous temple to the goddess on the spot - the museum is unlikely to be delivered miraculously from the heavens.

Meanwhile, the work of discovery goes on. Participants in a symposium held on September 5-10 were informed of the latest developments in excavations under way not only at Troya (Hisarlık) and Troas (Dalyan village) but also at nearby Assos (Behramkale village, Ayvacık district), at the Apollon Smintheus Temple (Gülpınar municipality, Ezine district) and at the Yenibademli village tumulus on Gökçeeada. The symposium, entitled ‘Çanakkale – Troas Archaeology Meeting 4’, was organised in memory of Professor Korfmann by the Çanakkale Science, Art and Cultural Activities Organisation (ÇABISAK) in conjunction with Çanakkale Municipality. The region’s history awaits further twists and turns.

(DIPLOMAT  -  October 2005  -  Ankara)