Troy, ‘Mother of All’ Heroic Cities
by
Kristina O'Donnelly
The late Louise H Forshaw and I shared a fascination for Troy as well as Anatolia. Louise was a novelist, a librarian, an expert on Troy, possessed a gallant and generous heart, and felt blessed that she was able to fulfill her lifelong dream of visiting the Troad.
Trojan Enchantment is for her. Have fun reading it in Paradise, Louise!
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The Trojan War depicted in Greek mythology, was the war between the Greeks and the people of Troy. The Trojan War probably reflected a real war (c.1200 B.C.) between the invading Greeks and the people of Troas, possibly over control of trade through the Dardanelles.
Troy is the ancient city made famous by Homer's account of the Trojan War. It is also called Ilion or, in Latin, Ilium. Its site is accepted as the mound now named Hissarlik, in the Asian part of Turkey, c.4 mi (6.4 km) from the mouth of the Dardanelles.
Based upon intuition as well as information he received from Frank Calvert, who was the American Consul at the Dardanelles, Heinrich Schliemann, a German amateur archaeologist, conducted excavations there beginning in 1871. Nine successive cities or villages have occupied the site, the earliest dating from the Neolithic period. Excavations conducted by Wilhelm Dörpfeld in the 1890s indicated that the sixth stratum, representing the sixth settlement of the city, was the Homeric Troy. Later discoveries by the Univ. of Cincinnati expedition under C. W. Blegen indicated that the seventh level was the Troy of Homer's period.
The Troy of the Trojan War-era was a Phrygian city and the center of a region known as Troas. In vase-paintings and other Greek art, the Phrygian cap serves to identify the Trojan hero Paris as non-Greek; Roman poets habitually use the epithet "Phrygian" to mean Trojan. The culture of the Trojans dates from the Bronze Age.
Persian king Xerxes, preparing to conquer the Greeks in 480 B.C., came to Troy to pay homage to its fallen heroes, and claimed that his reason for invading Greece was to right the wrongs inflicted upon the Trojans.
One hundred and fifty years after the Persian invasion, Alexander the Great paid homage to Troy, raising it to the status of a “polis” and made its cult of Athena fashionable. In time Ilium rose high enough to be considered an heir of Athens, if not superior to Athens.
Later, the Romans, believing that they themselves were descendants of Prince Aeneas and other Trojans, favored the city. Julius Caesar traced his own lineage back to Aeneas. And as far as the British were concerned, they came up with a Brutus, related to Aeneas, who fled Rome for Britain, leading the last of the Trojans to the island he called “Britain” after his own name. Yet another claim was made: Brutus, descendant of Ilius (founder of Troy), founded London as “Troyvonant” or New Troy.
Touring the area in the 4th Century, Emperor Constantine considered shifting his capital to Ilium. He tried to found his new capital at the mouth of the Hellespont on the western coast of the Sigeum (today, Yenishehir) ridge. But because it lacked a natural port, he later transferred it to Byzantium – Constantinopolis (Constantinople).
Balkan people also claimed ties with Troy; citing that at the time of the Trojan War, near 1,200 BC., Troy occupied the length of Yugoslavia’s Adriatic coast and off-shore islands, between Sibenik Bay in the north and Boka Kotorska in the south, and extended inland, along the valley of the Neretva river, perhaps as far as Sarajevo (what today are roughly, if you will, the republics of Croatia and Bosnia). Troy of the Iliad was but one of the three cities belonging to Troy, and that the names Illyria (historic name of Albania) and their hero Dardan, harkened to the Roman Dardanus and Ilium.
In the 15th Century, the Ottoman Turks took the Trojans to heart. Sultan Mehmet II, Conqueror of Constantinople, visited what he believed was the site of ancient Troy, in 1462, and paid his respects at the tombs of the heroes Achilles, Hector and Ajax. “It is to me,” he is quoted to have declared, “that Allah has given to avenge this city and its people.”
Also, according to some European scholars, the name Turk, Turkey, came from the Trojan general Turkus, who, after the end of the war fled to Asia. His descendants the Turks, returned later to avenge the fall of Troy, reconquered and then spread throughout Europe. (Source: James Harper, Rome vs. Istanbul: Competing Claims and the Moral Value of Trojan Heritage)
Flash-forward to the 20th Century, and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Founder of the modern Republic of Turkey, spoke of his affinity for Troy and its heroes, and believed that contemporary Turks were the descendants of Troy.
Ahhh, and let’s not forget Lord Byron! In 1810, Byron recreated Leander's swim across the Hellespont … today known as the Dardanelles. In Greek Mythology, Hero was a priestess of Aphrodite and lived in Sestos while Leander lived in Abydos on the other side of the Hellespont. Leander swam nightly to see Hero and she would hold a torch, from atop a tower, to light his way. One night, during a violent storm Leander drowned. After seeing his death, Hero threw herself from the tower into the sea. The same legend is repeated in a slightly different form, about a love-struck tragic pair and a light house called Maiden Tower, in the Sea of Marmara, overlooking the shores of Istanbul.
Oh yes the core of our universal human heart is so deeply romantic….
Until 1995, however, there was not enough evidence to ascertain or even speculate about the language of Troy. Then, the first linguistic clue about the identity of its inhabitants came to light: a seal dating anywhere from 1280-1175 B.C., a seal inscribed in the hieroglyphic script of the Hittites. This suggested that the cultural roots of the inhabitants of the citadel were Anatolian. According to linguists, this script was used for monumental stone inscriptions in the “Luvian” language of ancient Anatolia, harkening to the Hittite civilization.
It stands to reason that Ataturk was not wrong when he said the descendants of Troy can be found in contemporary Turkey. Especially when you consider the Cheddar Man in England.* More about that theory, in the novel!
ANDROMAKHE - AN EPIC NOVEL OF TROY AND A WOMAN'S TRIUMPHANT VALOR
For the Pictorial Journey through the Lands of the Morning, with Olivia and Berk, Click on the GALLERIES INDICATED BELOW
Trojan Enchantment Novel.com © 2005 by [Kristina O'Donnelly]. All rights reserved.
Revised: 12/09/06 16:36:50 -0500.
