I thought I'd put this out there:
Do you think the site of Troy at Hissarlik is the Troy written about by Homer in the Illiad?

These links offer some insight to how it isn't and how dodgy Heinrich Schliemann was in the excavations, not to mention his even dodgier son who tried to hoax the public with Atlantis items.

If the Illiad is just a myth how can Troy exist? At Hissarlik or anywhere else for that matter?

Oops, here's the links:

http://www.where-troy-once-stood.co.uk/

http://archaeology.about.com/od/ancientgreece/a/homeric1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schliemann

I've read the book mentioned in your first link and think the idea has a lot going for it without resorting to the place name etymology.
I'm currently reading about shillman and am shocked and how much he destroyed during his excavations let alone stories that he made up about where he found artifacts.

Yes, he was my first clue to how 'wrong' the whole story seemed.
I am actually reading part of the book, I just emailed for the free first chapter, and it is a really good read explaining each part with exact detail. Even reading a library book I got called The Ulysses Voyage by Tim Severin the places just did not seem right in the East Med. That's why I started looking this up in the first place.
I'm not sure where it is or even if it is but I'm pretty sure it's not at Hissarlik.

Here's another link from the same place, which is a great one page run down on the inconsistencies and parallels to England.
http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/trojan-ki...-of-england.htm

I thought you had read the book as you had linked to it. From what i remember, the author pointed towards the battle taking place somewhere on the south/east coast where thousands of bronze spear and arrow heads have been found as well as topography which matches that in the illiad.

No, I just read that page but found it interesting enough to use as an introduction but have now read a fair bit, the free part was quite a few pages, I'm near convinced that England is the place it happened. Yes and no bronze weaponry has been found near Hassarlik. The topography is exact, that's the clincher.

When I asked this question here, I am not saying I believed/believe it to be in England specifically, just not in Hissarlik, anyone got any other places apart from the one in my link?

Here's the link to the free chapter from the book Troy In England. Great read.
http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/trojan-war/trojan-war-0.htm

Perhaps for the rest of us, you could recapitulate the argument against the site at Hissarlik not being Troy, because it really does adhere to the description given in Homer.

There's further linguistic evidence that Troy and Wilusa, a documented Hittite confederation city, are the same, and participated in the historical conflict that was fictionalized as Trojan War.

--Jaylemurph

I had a looky at your links and found no solid evidence there.
Here's a piece from one of my above links:
Since classical antiquity, readers of Homer have been puzzled by the inconsistencies of the Greek geography as described in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Already Strabo and Eratosthenes had abandoned their efforts to make sense of Homer's geography in the Mediterranean. To mention only a few examples of the absurdities : when Odysseus had arrived in his native country Ithaca, which is supposed to be Thiaki near Greece's west coast, he at first made believe Athene that he had come as a passenger aboard a ship travelling from Crete to Sidon, present Saïda in Lebanon. But it is obvious to anyone that Thiaki is not on the way from Crete to Lebanon, but quite in the opposite direction.

As to Ithaca itself, it is described as the westernmost of a group of islands while it is also situated close to the mainland, with the tiny island of Asteris close by. As none of these descriptions and none of the other details mentioned by the poet correspond to the present island of Thiaki, or to any of the other islands in the region, the problem of identifying Homer's Ithaca has never been solved, despite the efforts of countless scholars. Most surprising is also the story where Agamemnon recounts that it took him a full month to sail from his kingdom Argos, taken to be in the northeastern Peloponnese, to Ithaca, when we know that in Greece the trip takes less than 24 hours. One may also wonder why the Achaeans built 1186 ships for their attack on Troy in Turkey as it would have been much cheaper, quicker and far more convenient to approach northwest Turkey overland via Thessaly.

What is more, they were clearly afraid to cross the sea, despite the fact that sailing in the Aegean is rather a question of 'island hopping' as one is seldom out of sight of the next island. But Iphigenia had to be offered to secure a fair wind and Menelaus even invoked the gods to show him the best course to sail from Lesbos to Euboea. But when he hears that his brother Agamemnon was assassinated by his wife, he apparently sees no particular difficulty in making the enormous detour to Egypt to build a burial mound for his dead brother in this country which, in fact, was ruled by the Pharaohs and certainly not by Agamemnon or any other Greek king.

If the Achaeans were afraid to cross the Aegean Sea, one also wonders why Paris, after the abduction of Helen, on his way from Greece to Turkey, would have made the enormous detour via Sidon in Lebanon to buy some embroidered cloth for her.

Another story that defies explanation is about a merchant sailing from Taphos with a cargo of iron to Temese, as it is impossible to identify these names with coastal cities or with any mining region in the Mediterranean, as many commentators have noticed.

We are also informed about a place with a very healthy climate called the island of Syria, situated about six days sailing north of Ortygia, which could not be identified either, apart from the fact that such a north-south distance is too great for the Mediterranean. One also wonders, for instance, how Menelaus' ship could drift from Cape Malea southwards to Crete in a storm blowing from the south !

The list of inconsistencies in Homer's geography is very long indeed and this is also true for the descriptions of the city of Troy and the Trojan plain. The ruins at Hissarlik in northwest Turkey, which Heinrich Schliemann took for those of Homer's Troy, despite the doubts expressed by the scientific community ever since, can hardly be those of the great capital 'with the wide streets' of Priam's kingdom, which, according to Homer, had a garrison of 50,000 warriors.

The ruins of Hissarlik are those of a very small village, about the size of the Place de la Concorde in Paris, but the layers VIIa and b, which correspond to the time of the Trojan War, are particularly poor hamlets. What is more, the so-called 'Treasure of Priam' was found in a layer that is about a millenium too old. The Trojan plain in Turkey is also far too small to contain all the rivers mentioned by Homer, or all the cities destroyed by Achilles. In fact this plain, which was even considerably smaller 3200 years ago, does not provide enough space for the installation of an invading army of about 100,000 men and still leave enough room for the long pursuits with the horse-drawn chariots. Since Homer speaks of the 'horse-taming Trojans' and of 'Troy rich in horses' one would expect archaeologists to have found many skeletons of horses, which is not the case. "



That's a start to the inconsistencies, it's bed time for me here but you should do yourself a favour and check out the links I supplied, I think you will find them interesting, especially if you think Schlieman is a good candidate for archaeologist of the millenium......did you know his son hoaxed the public with Atlantis items? All worth your time......

They certainly appear to be. I'll look into these with the time they deserve later; thanks for the above break-down.

--Jaylemurph

edit: grammar

how might this fit in with Alexander the great's visit to what he, the army, and the locals believed to be the site of Troy after the battle of the Granicus?

Ilium seems to have been the world's first 'theme park' tourist destination.

I'm thinking Troy......labyrinths......labyrinths that are found in different places around the world.

Re Troy (or one of them) in England....

I'm troying (toying ) around with Stonehenge and Avebury...re parts of possible BIG labyrinths.

And linking the 'Trojan horse' with the white horse/s that are on hills in that area. (cut away turf on
chalk)

But.....I'm being drawn to Glasonbury....and Glastonbury Tor....as a possible MAJOR contender.


http://www.glastonbury.co.uk/pages/site.php?pgid=241

before schlimeman literally dozens of people had read the story of troy and came to the conclusion that it should be here

....

based on the story. the larger they now make it the more divergent from the story it becomes.

Good man i can't see your pictures.

i distinctly remember leaving 2 pictures there. shut down again.

Still not working. What are pictures of?

maybe?

should be 2 oldish maps

Presumably the site at Hisarlik is the place that was believed to be Troy in ancient times, visited by, amongst many others, Alexander the Great ?

If Troy was elsewhere, why did people 2,500 years ago think it was in modern day Turkey?

from a greek perspective it was a great place for it to be. if someone came along wanting to avenge something to do with troy then it was good it was across the sea. it didn't really work however.

alexander was not overly enthusiastic about the troy event, its like he had already been there and this was just for the cameras imho.

Some here... http://www.forteantimes.com/features/forte...g_hills_uk.html

Yup as i said on the last page, he visited there after the battle of the Granicus,
whilst there he stripped off and ran around a bit, he swapped his armour for that of Achilles etc. got drunk, made a few sacrifices and had a great time.

Visiting Ilium, the site of Troy was important to Alexander who traced his lineage to Achilles amongst others. And he identified strongly with achilles, he also liked to think of Hephaestion as Patroclus.

...it seems like by his day it was a bit of a tourist trap, even more so in the Roman period, where you could buy lots of 'authentic' trinkets etc.

I don't have much time tonight but there is lots of great replies here, bee, that is out of this world! lol, I'll take it seriously and check it out some more.

But, we could say the same about Noah's ark or any Biblical place, I have no exact answer but I wonder how true the story is of him actually visiting Hassarlik or did he just visit the tomb of Achilles and now it is attributed to him visiting Troy?
I checked out some more on Alexander the Great's visit and could only find that he visited the site of Achilles and Patroclus' tomb, which was generally known to be on:
"He was represented in the lost Trojan War epic of Arctinus of Miletus as living after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the river Danube" - Wiki
I do think the Trojan War was believed and adapted to Greek mythology and possibly different places as based on known areas to Greeks because I think possibly the Trojan War is an Etruscan war. I sort of derailed by adding the England link because I thought it had so much evidence and I still agree it does but I'm not entirely convinced it isn't Etruscan based.

well the tomb of achilles is in the black sea area, quite a detour from the Granicus. whereas Ilium was just up the road.
His visit there is reported by just about every ancient historian on the subject. check out arrian, plutarch, QC Rufus etc.

Hi there.......I was just playing around with the idea that maybe Troy is a broader thing...and that
the site in Turkey might be just one of the many 'Troy' places around the earth. Then as the labyrinth
has an association with 'Troy'......ie 'Troy Town'....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Town ........




Then there is the Hopi native American Indian's labyrinth...and the Chartres Cathedral one,
Theseus and the Minotaur..... and lots lots more. The classical labyrinth is unicursal (one path)
and not to be confused with the 'maze'....It's a HUGE subject.....

If the labyrinth was a ceremonial and/or consciousness raising shape/experience....then it may have
been part of a world-wide civilization....maybe going back to the Goddess times....

I've always thought that the Trojan Horse story was a bit daft and hard to believe if it was supposed
to be an ACTUAL event....so perhaps it was a symbolic story....perhaps the horse represented or was
sacred to a people with the Goddess? as their main deity.....and their 'enemies' got into their midst by
pretending to be 'one of them'.....ie. pretending to be the 'horse' people....something like that.
Or perhaps the 'enemy' of the 'Trojans' just captured the women and mated with them...some of
the old labyrinth 'rituals' in England involve a young woman/virgin? sitting in the centre and young men
racing to the centre to claim her. I've also got a memory niggling at me that some labyrinths were so
big that horses would race around them.....?

Then...the shape of the labyrinth itself MIGHT even have links to Atlantis? Natural 'Richat' structures?
that occur around the earth?.....and were emulated/created and used ceremonially on special places....??

Just having a mini brain storm..........

I'm not convinced by any of the links I've checked out, but they do raise a fair number of points, the chiefest of which I have to agree -- Schliemann was heel and to be trusted, academically or (especially) with money.

My biggest trouble is that I just don't see specific enough evidence cited either in favour of a Celtic location or to contradict the geographic location as used by most other archaeologists since Schliemann and to contradict the historical linguistic data of the Milawata and related letters.

For me, though, in the end, the literal, historic truth of Homer's stories take a distant second to the role Homeric stories take within the corpus of our art and literature. Is Hissarlik the place where the Trojan War took place? I think so; lots of other historians think so, too. But in the end, The Iliad is fiction. So it The Odyssey. I'm not sure how finding the place where they are set has much bearing their value as literature.

--Jaylemurph

The reality behind the trojan horse?

the book by iman wilkens formed the basis for Clive Cussler's best seller "Trojan Odyssey".

Both good books in my opinion.

not you nor any one of your archaeologists could be blamed for coming to this conclusion. it is the product of a great deal of fine engineering and lotsa money. almost like a mercedes.

science felt pretty comfortable living by such concrete conclusions because they believed they had scoured the world and if something like the troy of homer existed they would know about it. worked well for quite a while but now science has realized that there was this part of the world to which they have never had access and booooom.... a miracle a disaster whatever.

granted some european news is quite dramtic in its tone but it seems quite clear that scientists from around the world are running there now. the un is making a list decision on somethhing they haven't even identified yet so maybe a general softening of opinion should be exercised maybe.

Can you tell me what the picture is specifically please, the pic is only really small and I can't really make anything out from it, thanks.

I think the Trojan Horse is tricky and could read it as the end of Troy in different ways, being an earthquake from Poseidon, a horse God as well as earthquake God. Personally I think it is all a moral story, the Judgement of Paris, being punished for picking Helen, the most beautiful but knowlingly taken. His impertinence at this is his downfall, he is judged accordingly and his whole family and kingdom is wiped out. It's not taken over, the (Greeks) just go home again. Achilles features heavily and the theme of unrestrained rage is underlying too. I'm still not sure whether it happened so black and white that their is an actual Troy to be found.

Does anyone have any opinion of it being an Etruscan based tale?

It's surely something to think about. It is comparable imo to looking for legendary Biblical places or even Atlantis....I think we need to strip the myth away from the actual story and then see if it is possible for it to be real....I can look for Atlantis all day but if it's just a myth then can it be found?

It's an assyrian siege engine roughly contemporary with the siege of troy in the aegean. I'll try and find a better picture.
There's a slightly better picture of the siege engine here.. http://search.live.com/images/results.aspx...sennacherib.jpg
..and here... http://search.live.com/images/results.aspx...Fbattering2.jpg

Bee, as usual your have come up with something extraordinary. I was really interested to read the link about TROY TOWN! I had never heard of this before and I found it quite amazing actually.
This bit particularly caught my eye:
"The name "Troy" has been associated with labyrinths from ancient times. An Etruscan terracotta wine-jar from Tragliatella, Italy, shows a seven-ring labyrinth marked with the word TRUIA (Troy). To its left, two armed soldiers appear to be riding out of the labyrinth on horseback, while on the right two couples are shown copulating. The vase dates from about 630 BC."

I mentioned the Etruscans in my previous post who I believe it points to them having ties or being in a war that may have been later interpretated by early Greeks in Etruscia and painted on the vases found there. That date above of 630BC is earlier than the vases showing the Greek version of the Trojan War on them. That could be an original version of it. There is a theory that Etruscans came down from the North from Scandinavia area which could easily put them in the area of Western Europe, Celts and England. Maybe they were the surviving Trojans.

I'm thinking the labyrinth structures like you say could definitely play a part, Plato states how Cleito is enclosed and no man can get into her through the rings. (virgin in centre, men trying to get in to claim her?) Also the Trojan horse, I agree, sounds like it is symbolic, I gave my own version of a moral symbolism but I like your idea too. The Minotaur, yes, maybe a link there, the bull god was interpretated earlier by me as Poseidon, he was a horse God, bull God and then the Greek god of sea and earthquakes too and I'm sure Poseidon brings down Troy just as he helped build it, funny enough Poseidon is also an Etruscan God. I'm also seeing some sort of religious war, possibly these early Mother Goddess religions being overthrown by the new man Gods, the Greek pantheon, as being the Cosmic War, Clash of the Titans. Apollo and the sybils, oracles feature heavily in early Etruscan culture. I won't even get into liver-divining, I have already in the Descendants of Gods topic...the Mother Goddess' reign was raging in Malta c.3000BC! Very near Italy and many places and descriptions in the Odyssey and Greek writings, even Plato's Atlantis are now pointing me to Italy.

before i go off on a big schpiele are there any interested parties who can see these pics?

pics

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/...60630095037.htm
"De Grummond is a leading scholar on the religious practices of the Etruscans, a people whose culture profoundly influenced the ancient Romans and Greeks. "

The Etruscans culture influenced the Greeks, not the other way around.

The real Trojan War?

"Scene from an alabaster cinerary urn from Chiusi (British Museum). The scene depicts an unknown Etruscan Legend. The significance of the up-rooted tree is unknown."
http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com/art/gallery.html

Yes, I see them loud and clear. Waiting for schpiele...
I was getting to your post too, which I was going to say was very illuminating...

Thanks Mr Nobody, will check it out.

if i was looking for a trojan horse i would think about attacking that city. as you might note the colesseum in rome can sit on one of its defensive structures.

you might then note that there is a problem with it which doesn't exist when it isn't at war but when they have to close the walls up then all the rain and that spring water builds up. might take years but eventually it will bust the fourth wall... maybe with a little help.

antenor variously went to italy or built sicambria on the ruins of troy. attila then rebuilt sicambria and we have a great description of that city. the other survivor of troy went on to found the etruscans? or took over the kingship because of a superior lineage?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/18/italy.johnhooper

Etruria:But the latest conclusions may add weight to a rival, apparently more fanciful, theory that links their name to Troy, the "city of towers" and a part of the Lydian empire. The most likely date for the fall of Troy, as described by Homer, is between 1250 and 1200 BC

For other uses, see Dardanus (disambiguation).
In Greek mythology, Dardanus (Greek: Δάρδανος, English translation: "burned up", from the verb δαρδάπτω (dardapto) to wear, to slay, to burn up)[1] was a son of Zeus and Electra, daughter of Atlas, and founder of the city of Dardania on Mount Ida in the Troad.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.61–62) states that Dardanus' original home was in Arcadia where Dardanus and his elder brother Iasus (elsewhere more commonly called Iasion) reigned as kings following Atlas. Dardanus married Chryse daughter of Pallas by whom he fathered two sons: Idaeus and Dymas. When a great flood occurred, the survivors, who were living on mountains that had now become islands, split into two groups: one group remained and took Deimas as king while the other sailed away, eventually settling in the island of Samothrace. There Iasus (Iasion) was slain by Zeus for lying with Demeter. Dardanus and his people found the land poor and so most of them set sail for Asia.

However another account by Virgil in his Aeneid (3.163f), has Aeneas in a dream learn from his ancestral Penates that "Dardanus and Father Iasius" and the Penates themselves originally came from Hesperia which was afterward renamed as Italy. This tradition holds that Dardanus was a Tyrrhenian prince, and that his mother Electra was married to Corythus, king of Tarquinia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanus

If we accept the bolded part we can see the Trojans originated in Etruria. Dardanus left for Anatolia where his ancestors founded Troy, so the Trojans were of Etruscan descent - then some of these ancestors returned later when the lots were cast to their original homeland, retaining stories of a 'Trojan War'. The end of the Trojan war could have been the famine and reason why the Lydians sent the half away with his son, back to Italy 'founding' the Etruscans but whose ancestors were already there.

so what it comes down to is you need a mount ida from where the borne universe was originally divided in 3 to explain all the jostling around.

the allies of priam pretty much all come from some place before the trojan war but end up somewhere else afterwards... but they stayed within their borne division..

it seems almost senseless to make a new gallery because noone would believe me yet. maybe after the 3 gentlemen from romania make their presentation at the milos conference

if you want it i can make it. i can keep going for atlantis and the garden of eden.


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.

4. Hitherto the injuries on either side had been mere acts of common violence; but in what followed the Persians consider that the Greeks were greatly to blame, since before any attack had been made on Europe, they led an army into Asia. Now as for the carrying off of women, it is the deed, they say, of a rogue: but to make a stir about such as are carried off, argues a man a fool. Men of sense care nothing for such women, since it is plain that without their own consent they would never be forced away. The Asiatics, when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troubled themselves about the matter; but the Greeks, for the sake of a single Lacedaemonian girl, collected a vast armament, invaded Asia, and destroyed the kingdom of Priam. Henceforth they ever looked upon the Greeks as their open enemies. For Asia, with all the various tribes of barbarians that inhabit it, is regarded by the Persians as their own; but Europe and the Greek race they look on as distinct and separate.

5. Such is the account which the Persians give of these matters. They trace to the attack upon Troy their ancient enmity towards the Greeks.
(Herodotus, The Histories 1.1-5.)

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)

Prince Eugene of Savoy after kicking the Turks out of the Banat named the portals of his city palace hercules, antenor and aeneas. he placed a great statue of atlas in his lobby. had he in his mind taken back troy?

So, I noticed Prince Eugene of Savoy and remembered another thread on him and saw that it was you who had made it, so I browsed it and checked out your Google maps and find it all very interesting.
So you think that Atlantis and then Troy was in this Banat area? That the Turks may have originally been from that area and fled to Anatolia/Asia after the Trojan war - Troy being a settlement of the Trojan ancestors? I'll have to think more on it tomorrow now, thanks.

Like I Said, I'm not going to lock myself into one position about where Troy is until really definitive proof shows up; in the meantime, what we have is enough for me to believe it's at the Hissarlik site, but I realise the same data might not sway everyone.

As I said before, it's not the literal existence of a historical Hittite city called Wilusa that interests me, or trying to force a work of literary fiction to fit into my expectations of reality (like the people who insist Agamemnon really sailed for thirty days, so his Achaea must be 30 days' sailing time away from Troy) that interests me. In fact, I'm almost certain that whatever it Homer actually composed -- he almost certainly didn't write his original down -- changed drastically over the decades it was sung by griots, before anyone though to write it down.

To answer your question, the myth will always exist, whether or not you find anything. That's the thing to learn from.

--Jaylemurph

well its really what those people all thought of themselves and others. i am just repeating someone elses words except for the eugene bit. he is one fascinating little gnome.

has anyone mentioned the societies based around centralised palace/temple complex yet?

I found this link that puts Troy and Jasons adventures smack bang in this area, the old Pannon Sea area.
http://fredfred.net/skriker/index.php/ques...r-the-lost-sea/

Good point. I have been researching alot into the passing around of Gods and where they originated and temple worship but putting the Palace into it would give a broader view and a more exact one considering both Troy and Atlantis had palaces and temples.
Do you have any examples you could cite?