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Was the Trojan War a Real Historical Event? - The Late Bronze Age Origins of the Trojan War | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

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Welcome to Sleepy Facts About History. The story
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of the Trojan War is one of the most famous in
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history, but how much of Homer's epic reflects
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actual historical events? This episode steps
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away from the familiar narrative of Helen, the
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wooden horse, and the decade -long siege to look
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at two separate streams of physical and documentary
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evidence unknown to the ancient Greek poets,
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by examining the archaeological ruins at Isarlik.
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and reading the diplomatic correspondence of
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the Hittite Empire, we can piece together a different
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picture of a real strategic city that stood at
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the edge of Anatolian and Aegean worlds. The
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ruins reveal a late Bronze Age citadel controlling
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the vital maritime chokepoint of the Dardanelles,
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a city that suffered violent destruction around
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1180 BCE. Meanwhile, Hittite clay tablets mention
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a contested vassal state called Walusa, and diplomatic
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tensions with a Greek -speaking power they called.
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These records do not describe a heroic siege
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or a wooden horse, but they do confirm that Greek
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powers were actively interfering in Western Anatolia
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during the exact period Troy was destroyed. I
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wanted to understand why this famous legend continues
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to resist both complete verification and total
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dismissal. Examining the gap between the physical
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ruins and the later epic tradition reveals how
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societies remember and transform their past.
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Join me to explore the real late Bronze Age geopolitics
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that may have provided the distant foundation
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for one of literature's greatest stories. The
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story you know, Helen, The Horse, The Burning
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City, was composed centuries after the Bronze
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Age had already ended. It was composed by poets
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who had never seen the world they claimed to
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describe. What remains when we set Homer aside
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and look instead at the ruined walls of Isarlik
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and the diplomatic tablets of the Hittite archives
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is something more interesting. What remains is
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a real city in a real place of real strategic
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importance, destroyed by violence around 1180
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BCE. in a region where Hittite documents confirm
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that Greek -speaking powers were making trouble.
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The gap between that evidence and the epic is
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the subject, not the obstacle. Most people who
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walk into a theatre to hear about the Trojan
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War already know the story. They know Helen,
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the face that launched a thousand ships. They
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know Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus, the
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Greek coalition, the Ten Year Siege, achilles
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sulking in his tent hector dragged around the
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walls the wooden horse left outside the gates
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the city burning in the night they have seen
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it in films read it in school heard it referenced
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in speeches and advertisements what they may
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not know is that this story as familiar as it
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feels was composed centuries after the events
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it claims to describe It was composed by poets
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working in a world that had already forgotten
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the Bronze Age civilization that preceded them.
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The question is not whether the story is magnificent.
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It is. The question is whether anything like
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it actually happened, and if so, what kind of
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thing? To investigate this properly, we need
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to set aside the Iliad and the Odyssey for a
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time. We need to look at two separate streams
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of evidence that were unknown to Homer. and unknown
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to each other. The first stream is the physical
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remains of a city in northwestern Anatolia. The
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second stream is the diplomatic correspondence
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of an empire centered hundreds of miles to the
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east. These two streams may converge on something
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real. They do not converge on the story you already
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know. The site in question is a low mound called
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Hisalik, near the mouth of the Dardanelles. The
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Dardanelles is the narrow strait that connects
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the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara, and beyond
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it, the Black Sea. This location matters enormously.
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Anyone sailing from the Aegean toward the grainlands
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of the Black Sea coast, or returning with cargo,
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must pass this point. The currents here are tricky,
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the winds unpredictable, the channel narrow enough
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that a city on the heights could watch and control
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the passage. A vessel running north with the
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wind behind it might find itself becalmed or
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pushed toward the shore, vulnerable to whoever
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held the land. The city that stood here controlled
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a choke point of maritime trade and movement.
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It was also positioned near the junction where
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Anatolian highlands meet coastal plains, where
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overland routes from the interior reach the sea.
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A city in this position could grow wealthy from
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tolls and trade. It would also inevitably become
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entangled in the conflicts of larger powers who
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wanted that control for themselves. Archaeologists
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have found not one city here, but many, built
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one atop another in a sequence that stretches
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back to the early Bronze Age and forward into
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the Roman period. The mound grew layer by layer,
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each settlement burying the one before it. When
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Heinrich Schliemann excavated here in the 1870s,
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he was convinced he had found Homer's Troy. He
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announced to the world that he had discovered
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Priam's treasure in a lair he identified as the
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city of the Trojan War. He was wrong about which
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lair. The gold and bronze objects he found belonged
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to a city that existed a thousand years before
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the period in question. His methods were destructive
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even by the standards of his time, and his certainty
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caused decades of confusion. but he had identified
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the right mound. Later excavators, working more
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carefully, would sort out the sequence he had
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mangled. The relevant phases for our question
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are Troy the Yes and Troy the Yes, and both belonging
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to the Late Bronze Age, roughly between 1700
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and 1180 BCE. Troy the Sixth was an impressive
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citadel, with massive limestone walls that dominate
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the site even in their ruined state. These walls
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were built of large stone blocks cut and fitted
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together without mortar, rising to heights that
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would have exceeded two stories in places. Their
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faces sloped outward from the base in a construction
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style known as a glacis. A person standing at
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the foot of such a wall would look up at a surface
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deliberately angled to deflect attack. The stone
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continued upward and outward so that ladders
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could not easily be placed against it, and battering
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rams would strike at an oblique angle. The top
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would have been wide enough for defenders to
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walk along, to see approaching ships or armies
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from a distance to signal or prepare. From the
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sea, these walls would have been visible as a
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pale line against the darker inland hills, a
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statement that this place was not to be taken
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lightly. The construction required organized
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labor, sustained resources, and the political
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will to command both. This was not a village
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fortifying itself against occasional raiders.
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This was a regional power announcing its capacity
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to resist and control. The settlement inside
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these walls was spacious, with large houses arranged
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on terraces. It seems to have been prosperous.
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connected to trade networks that reached across
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the Aegean and beyond. Around 1300 BCE, this
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phase ended in destruction. The evidence is ambiguous.
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Earthquake damage is visible in the walls, cracks
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and shifts in the stonework that suggest violent
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ground movement. Some archaeologists believe
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that natural disaster was the primary cause,
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perhaps followed by human attack or perhaps not.
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The distinction matters. An earthquake destroys
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a city without malice. An enemy destroys it with
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intent. The physical evidence can suggest both,
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confirm neither. The seventh was different. Built
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within the damaged walls of its predecessor,
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it was more crowded, its houses smaller and more
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tightly packed. Archaeologists found that larger
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rooms had been subdivided, new walls built across
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old courtyards. Spaces that once served one family
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now serving several. Storage vessels, large pithoi,
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were sunk into floors, suggesting stockpiling
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of grain and oil against hardship. The narrow
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passages between houses would have made movement
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difficult. The air close, the sense of a community
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huddled together for protection. This was a city
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under pressure, perhaps preparing for siege,
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perhaps sheltering refugees from the surrounding
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countryside. perhaps both the physical logic
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is clear when people expect attack they crowd
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inside defensible walls bring supplies and sacrifice
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comfort for security a person walking through
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this citadel would have seen walls built directly
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against walls doorways facing unexpected angles
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the orderly plan of troy vi replaced by improvisation
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and necessity around 1180 bce This settlement
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too was destroyed. Here the evidence points more
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clearly toward violence. There are ash layers,
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burned mud brick, collapsed roofing, and some
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finds that suggest conflict. Weapons, sling stones
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embedded in the destruction debris, human remains
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that may indicate casualties of attack. But even
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here, certainty is elusive. The sling stones
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could be weapons of war. or hunting tools caught
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in a general conflagration. The fire could be
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deliberate enemy action or accidental blaze in
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a crowded, tense city. The human remains could
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belong to defenders or to people already dead
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when the destruction came. And the destruction
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could be the work of Greek -speaking attackers,
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or of other enemies entirely, or of internal
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conflict, or of the broader collapse of order
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that characterized the eastern Mediterranean
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around this time. This is the archaeological
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stream. A real city, in a real strategic location,
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really destroyed at least twice during the Late
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Bronze Age, with evidence that suggests but does
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not prove violent attack in at least one of those
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destructions. Which of these destructions, if
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either, corresponds to the war remembered by
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Greek epic? The honest answer is that we do not
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know. Troy VI's destruction around 1300 BCE is
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too early for most reconstructions of a Trojan
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War, and its primary cause may have been seismic.
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Troy VII's destruction around 1180 BCE falls
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in the right general period, but comes near the
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end of the Bronze Age, when multiple civilizations
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were collapsing across the eastern Mediterranean.
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possess. To understand what might have happened
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here, we need the second stream of evidence,
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one that Schliemann could not have imagined because
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it had not yet been discovered. In central Anatolia,
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at a place called Hattusa, archaeologists uncovered
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the archives of the Hittite Empire. The Hittite
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Empire was a major power of the late Bronze Age,
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whose dominion stretched across much of what
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is now Turkey and beyond. The Hittites wrote
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on clay tablets, small enough to hold in one
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hand, made of clay pressed flat and inscribed
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with a wedge -shaped stylus, while the material
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was still wet, then baked or sun -dried to hardness.
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The signs they used, cuneiform, were pressed
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into the clay in patterns of wedges and lines.
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This was a technology of writing developed in
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Mesopotamia and adapted for their own language.
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These tablets were not books in our sense. They
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were working documents produced by scribes in
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the service of the Hittite king, stored in rooms
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that served as administrative offices rather
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than libraries. The wooden shelves that once
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held them have long since decayed, leaving the
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tablets in piles on the floors where they fell.
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They were preserved by chance, and by the fire
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that destroyed Hattusa itself around 1180 BCE.
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baking some tablets to a hardness that has survived
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three millennia. The Hittite archives preserve
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treaties, laws, administrative records, and diplomatic
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correspondence. Among these texts are references
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to places and peoples that sound familiar to
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anyone who knows the Trojan War story, though
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the names are not Greek. The Hittite name for
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the polity in northwestern Anatolia that's controlled
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the region of Hisalik was Wilusa. This identification
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is widely accepted among scholars, based on linguistic
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arguments and geographical correspondence, though
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it is not absolutely certain and has been questioned
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by some. Wilusa appears in Hittite texts as a
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vassal state, sometimes loyal to the Hittite
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king, sometimes troublesome. Located at the northwestern
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edge of Hittite influence, where Anatolian and
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Aegean worlds met. One text, a treaty between
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the Hittite king Muatali II and a king of Walusa
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named Alexandu, establishes Walusa as a Hittite
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dependency and names its ruler. The name Alexandu
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is striking. It resembles Alexandros, the Homeric
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name for Paris, the prince of Troy who abducted
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Helen. This resemblance has excited much scholarly
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discussion. It could indicate a genuine continuity
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of naming tradition across centuries, preserved
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in oral memory until it reached the Greek epic
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tradition. It could also be coincidence, or a
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name that was independently common in the region.
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The resemblance is suggestive, not probative.
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The treaty itself tells us something about how
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Hittite vassal relationships worked. Alak Sandu
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swore oaths of loyalty, promised to defend Hittite
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interests, agreed to certain military obligations,
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and invoked a long list of Hittite gods as witnesses
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to the agreement. Such treaties were not voluntary
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partnerships between equals. They were instruments
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of imperial control, backed by the threat of
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Hittite military intervention. That Walusa was
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treated this way tells us it mattered to Hittite
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strategy. Its location at the northwestern edge
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of the empire required management, even if direct
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control was difficult. The treaty does not mention
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Greeks or a Trojan War. It does establish that
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Wilusa was a real place with real political relationships,
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subject to the pressures of great power politics
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in the Late Bronze Age. More significant for
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our question is the Hittite term, Ahiyawa. This
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too is an interpretation rather than a direct
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equivalence. But most scholars identify Ahiyawa
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as a Mycenaean Greek power or powers located
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somewhere in the Aegean world. It may have been
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centered on mainland Greece, possibly on islands,
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possibly representing a broader Greek -speaking
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political entity whose precise organization remains
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unclear. The Hittite texts show Ahiyawa as a
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Western power involved in Anatolian affairs,
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sometimes in conflict with Hatti, sometimes in
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diplomatic contact. This is crucial. It means
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that when we look at the Bronze Age Aegean and
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Atenatolia, we find not isolated worlds, but
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interconnected ones. Greek -speaking powers were
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projecting influence or military activity into
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Western Anatolia, and Hittite powers were attempting
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to manage or resist that influence. The most
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important text for our purposes is known as the
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Tawagailawa letter. It survives as a clay tablet,
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or rather a set of tablets, covered in cuneiform
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signs with the standard opening formulas of Hittite
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diplomatic correspondence. The sender's titles
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and name, the recipient's titles, the invocation
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of past relations between the two powers. Parts
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of the tablet are broken away or illegible. damage
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typical of the Hatusa archive. Scholars must
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reconstruct meaning from partial text, debating
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exactly which signs are certain and which are
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inferred. The letter is addressed to an unnamed
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recipient, probably the king of Ahiyawa. It refers
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to a past dispute between Hati and Ahiyawa over
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Wilusa. It mentions the brother of the Ahiyawan
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king. suggesting that the Ahiyawan ruler's own
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family was involved in whatever had happened.
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The Hittite king writes in the language of diplomatic
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reminder rather than open threat, but the tension
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is palpable. Obligations have not been met, boundaries
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have been tested, and the great power of central
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Anatolia expects acknowledgement and redress.
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This is not a description of a ten -year siege.
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It is not a narrative of heroic combat. It is
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a diplomatic document, self -interested and selective,
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preserving only what the Hittite king wanted
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to emphasize. But it does suggest that real tension
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existed between Hittite and Ahayuan interests
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over Wolusa, and that this tension had involved
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some kind of military or political confrontation
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that required negotiation and reminder. The very
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fact that the Hittite king writes about it, rather
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than simply acting unilaterally, tells us that
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Ahayawa was a power to be reckoned with. Its
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interests in Western Anatolia had to be addressed
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through diplomacy as well as force. Other texts
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reinforce this picture. The Milawata letter mentions
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the boundaries of Wolusa and Hittite concerns
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about maintaining control in Western Anatolia.
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The Manapata Hunter letter. describes military
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activity in the region involving a figure named
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Piyamaradu, a western Anatolian warlord who challenged
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Hittite authority and may have had Ahirwan's
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support or connection. Piyamaradu appears in
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multiple Hittite documents as a persistent troublemaker,
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raiding, rebelling, shifting allegiances, operating
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in the grey zone between great powers. He seized
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territory, attacked Hittite dependencies, fled
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across borders when pursued, and seems to have
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played Hittite and Ahiawan interests against
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each other for his own advantage. His activities
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suggest that Western Anatolia in this period
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was not a stable Hittite province, but a contested
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frontier. Local strongmen, Hittite garrisons,
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and Aegean powers all maneuvered for advantage.
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This is the world in which Troy existed. Not
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a simple standoff. between Greeks and Trojans,
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but a complicated political landscape of shifting
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alliances, local ambitions, and imperial competition.
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What emerges from these texts is not the Trojan
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War as Homer tells it. There is no abduction
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of a queen, no coalition of Greek kings, no Achilles,
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no Hector, no wooden horse, no ten years of siege,
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no single decisive fall of a great city. What
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there is, Instead, is evidence of real political
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and military tension involving a place that was
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probably Troy, and a power that was probably
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Greek, in a period when the archaeological record
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shows that Troy was damaged or destroyed. The
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fit is suggestive, but imprecise, like two maps
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of the same region drawn at different scales
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and for different purposes. They overlap in places,
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but neither can be used to navigate the other.
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This is where we must be careful about what we
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claim. The convergence of evidence allows us
21:55
to say that conflict involving Bronze Age Troy
21:58
and Greek -speaking powers is plausible, even
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likely given the strategic importance of the
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site and the documented interests of both Hittite
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and Ahiawan powers in the region. It does not
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allow us to say that the specific narrative of
22:14
Homeric epic is historically verified. The gap
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between the Bronze Age events and Homer's composition
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is roughly four to five centuries. If the destruction
22:25
of Troy VII happened around 1180 BCE and Homer
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composed around 700 BCE, the gap is roughly the
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same as the distance between us and the reign
22:37
of Henry VIII. During that span, the Greek world
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experienced the collapse of Mycenaean palatial
22:43
civilization. The great palace centers, Mycenae,
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pylos thebes tyrians burned or were abandoned
22:52
writing disappeared from the greek world the
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elaborate administrative system that had produced
22:59
the linear b tablets vanished along with the
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palaces that sustained it population fell sharply
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trade networks contracted and the knowledge of
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how to build monumental stone structures was
23:12
lost the period that followed sometimes called
23:16
the greek dark ages was one of severe depopulation
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and cultural simplification. It was a world materially
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poorer and less connected than the one that had
23:27
preceded it. When Greek society gradually recovered
23:31
and writing returned, the oral poetic tradition
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was the only bridge to the Bronze Age past. And
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that bridge was not a stable structure. Whatever
23:41
memories survived this passage, they survived
23:44
through oral transmission in a society that had
23:47
lost writing. lost monumental architecture, lost
23:51
the administrative and diplomatic systems that
23:54
had connected it to the wider world. Oral tradition
23:57
is not a tape recorder. It preserves, transforms,
24:02
invents and forgets according to the needs of
24:05
the present. We can see this process at work
24:08
in other traditions whose history we know better.
24:11
The Serbian epic songs collected in the 19th
24:15
century, for instance, preserved genuine memories
24:18
of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, but they also
24:22
transformed that battle beyond historical recognition,
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compressing time, inventing dialogue, attributing
24:29
motives that served later political needs, and
24:32
folding earlier and later events into a single
24:35
narrative. The Iliad and Odyssey are the products
24:40
of a similar process, shaped by centuries of
24:44
performance and recomposition. by the poetic
24:47
conventions of heroic epic, by the political
24:50
and social concerns of the audiences who heard
24:53
them. To understand what Homer can and cannot
24:57
tell us, consider the nature of the poems themselves.
25:01
They are not naive recordings of Bronze Age warfare.
25:05
They are sophisticated literary compositions,
25:08
aware of their own artifice, full of anachronisms
25:12
that betray their later composition. Homer describes
25:16
fighting in terms of Iron Age military equipment
25:19
alongside Bronze Age survivals. His political
25:23
geography reflects the world of the 8th century
25:26
BCE, not the 13th. His heroes behave according
25:31
to the ethical codes of his own time, not necessarily
25:34
those of Mycenaean palace society. The very language
25:39
of the poems. a mixed artificial dialect formed
25:43
from centuries of formulaic oral composition,
25:46
is a palimpsest. It is a layered text, with older
25:51
and newer elements side by side, traces of different
25:56
periods visible in the same line. All of this
25:59
means that we cannot read Homer as a campaign
26:02
diary and extract historical events from his
26:05
narrative by simple subtraction of the miraculous.
26:08
The gods who intervene, The heroes who are semi
26:12
-divine, the wooden horse that is clearly a folk
26:15
motif of deceptive warfare, these are not corruptions
26:19
of a pure historical core. They are integral
26:22
to the poetry, and they tell us about the poetic
26:25
tradition, not about Bronze Age military operations.
26:30
Yet, it would be equally wrong to dismiss the
26:33
possibility that genuine memories of Bronze Age
26:36
conflict survive in the poems. transformed and
26:39
reframed but not wholly invented. The very existence
26:43
of the Ahiyawa texts shows that Greek -speaking
26:46
powers were involved in Anatolian affairs in
26:50
ways that could generate lasting memory. The
26:53
location of Troy, the name of its king, the general
26:58
pattern of Greek involvement in the region, these
27:02
are not arbitrary inventions. They may be the
27:05
distant echoes of real events. preserved because
27:09
they mattered to the identity and self -understanding
27:12
of the societies that transmitted them. We cannot
27:16
prove this. We cannot identify any specific Homeric
27:20
episode with any specific Bronze Age event. But
27:24
the plausibility of preserved memory, however
27:27
transformed, is real. It is more intellectually
27:30
honest to acknowledge this plausibility than
27:33
to insist on a skeptical dismissal that the evidence
27:36
does not require. What we can say with confidence
27:40
is that the historical city and the legendary
27:43
Troy are not identical. The Troy of Homer is
27:47
a Greek imagination of a non -Greek city, seen
27:50
from outside, filtered through centuries of poetic
27:53
development, shaped by the needs of Greek heroic
27:57
narrative. The Troy of archaeology is an Anatolian
28:01
city with its own culture, its own political
28:04
relationships, its own material life. its own
28:08
destructions and rebuildings. It was not a Greek
28:12
city. Its inhabitants did not speak Greek. They
28:17
were not the villains of a Greek epic in their
28:19
own understanding. The Hittite texts show them
28:23
as actors in Anatolian and Near Eastern diplomacy,
28:27
not as passive victims of Greek heroism. To recover
28:31
this perspective is not to diminish the poetry,
28:34
but to understand that history and legend occupy
28:37
different spaces, overlapping in places but never
28:40
coinciding. The measured synthesis, then, is
28:44
this. A strategically important Bronze Age city
28:48
stood at Hisarlik, controlling access to the
28:52
Dardanelles, connected to trade networks that
28:55
reached across the Aegean and beyond. This city
28:58
was destroyed or severely damaged multiple times
29:01
during the Late Bronze Age. including around
29:04
1180 BCE, in circumstances that suggest violence
29:08
and possible siege. Contemporary Hittite documents
29:12
show that the region was contested between Hittite
29:16
and Aegean powers. A polity called Walusa, probably
29:21
this same city, was involved in diplomatic and
29:24
military disputes with a power called Ahiyawa,
29:27
probably Mycenaean Greek. Later Greek epic preserves
29:32
the memory of a great war at Troy, composed centuries
29:35
after these events by poets who worked with oral
29:38
traditions that may have contained genuine Bronze
29:41
Age memories alongside much invention and transformation.
29:46
What we cannot say is that the Trojan War happened
29:49
as Homer describes it. We cannot confirm Achilles
29:53
or Hector as historical figures. We cannot verify
29:57
the ten -year siege. the wooden horse, the abduction
30:00
of Helen, the specific coalition of Greek kings.
30:03
These remain literary claims, products of a poetic
30:07
tradition that shaped and reshaped material over
30:10
centuries for its own purposes. We also cannot
30:14
say that nothing happened, that the entire tradition
30:17
is pure invention. The evidence supports neither
30:21
certainty. It supports a middle position of acknowledged
30:25
plausibility and acknowledged uncertainty. where
30:28
real Bronze Age conflict provides a context in
30:31
which later epic memory might have developed,
30:34
without allowing us to reconstruct that memory
30:37
in historical detail. This is how scholarship
30:40
works when evidence is partial and the questions
30:44
we ask are shaped by later tradition. We do not
30:47
get the satisfaction of definitive proof or definitive
30:50
refutation. We get the more difficult achievement
30:54
of understanding what the evidence can establish,
30:57
what it can suggest, and where it falls silent.
31:01
The city at Isarlink was real. Its destructions
31:06
were real. The Hittite documents are real. The
31:10
Homeric poems are real, but real as poetry, not
31:14
as history. The question, was there a real Trojan
31:18
War, cannot be answered with a simple yes or
31:21
no. It must be answered with a careful description
31:24
of what kind of reality we can find. and what
31:28
kind remains beyond our reach. Troy sits at the
31:32
intersection of these realities. The physical
31:35
city in its Anatolian landscape. The diplomatic
31:39
texts in their Hittite archives. The epic poems
31:44
in their Greek performance tradition. Each is
31:47
genuine in its own terms. None fully confirms
31:51
or fully contradicts the others. The fascination
31:55
lies not in solving the mystery. but in understanding
31:59
exactly why it remains unsolved and what that
32:03
unsolved status tells us about how history is
32:06
made, how memory works, and how we come to know
32:09
the distant past.