TROY (CANAKKALE)
Troy (Turkish: Truva) is a legendary city and center of the
Trojan War, as described in the Epic Cycle, and especially in the Iliad, one of
the two epic poems attributed to Homer. Trojan refers to the inhabitants and
culture of Troy.Today it is the name of an archaeological site, the traditional
location of Homeric Troy, Turkish Truva, in Hisarlık in Anatolia, close to the
seacoast in what is now Çanakkale province in northwest Turkey, southwest of the
Dardanelles under Mount Ida. A new city of Ilium was founded on the site in the
reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. It flourished until the establishment of
Constantinople and declined gradually during Byzantine times.
In the 1870s a wealthy German business man
Heinrich Schliemann excavated the area. Later excavations revealed several
cities built in succession to each other. One of the earlier cities (Troy VII)
is often identified with Homeric Troy. While such an identity is disputed, the
site has been successfully identified with the city called Wilusa in Hittite
texts; Ilion (which goes back to earlier Wilion with a digamma) is thought to be
the Greek rendition of that name.
The archaeological site of Troy was added to the
UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998.
Details concerning Troy were transmitted to the
historical Greeks entirely through the written Epic Cycle, of which Homer's
Iliad is the familiar part. Other epic material, such as Cypria was known in
Antiquity but is lost to us. Further ancient material is only known to us in
much later literary recensions, such as the fourth century CE Posthomerica of
Quintus of Smyrna. Aside from this mass of material, modern philologists have
laboured to tease out the few discernible threads of the earlier legendary
material that preceded Homer, from which he worked.
According to Greek mythology Troy was an ancient
city in the Troad region of Anatolia. It is presented anachronistically in
legend as if it were part of the Greek culture of city-states. Since the entire
state comprised more than the city of Troy itself, anyone from its jurisdiction,
which was mainly the Troad, might be termed "Trojan" in ancient literature.[2]
An alternative classical Greek and Latin term was "Teucrians", a name taken from
an ethnicity of the south Troad. Troy was known for its riches gained from port
trade with east and west, fancy clothes, iron production, and massive defensive
walls. The major language spoken there and the derivative cultures remain
uncertain. Legend for the most part ignores language and makes the presumption
that Trojans were fluent in Greek.
The Trojan royal kinship, in Greek eyes, traced its
descent from the Pleiad Electra and Zeus, the parents of Dardanus. According to
Greek myths, Dardanus was originally from Arcadia but according to Roman myths,
he was originally from Italy, having crossed over to Asia Minor from the island
of Samothrace, where he met King Teucer. Teucer was himself also a coloniser
from Attica, and treated Dardanus with respect. Eventually Dardanus married
Teucer's daughters, and founded Dardania (later ruled by Aeneas). Upon Dardanus'
death, the Kingdom was passed to his grandson Tros, who called the people
Trojans and the land Troad, after himself. Ilus, son of Tros, founded the city
of Ilium (Troy) that he called after himself. Zeus gave Ilus the Palladium.
Poseidon and Apollo built the walls and fortifications around Troy for Laomedon,
son of Ilus the younger. When Laomedon refused to pay, Poseidon flooded the land
and demanded the sacrifice of Hesione to a sea monster. Pestilence came and the
sea monster snatched away the people of the plain.
In Sardis a self-identified Heracleid dynasty ruled
for 505 years until the time of Candaules. The dynasty's founding myth
legitimizes their rule by asserting that one generation before the Trojan War,
Heracles captured Troy and killed Laomedon and his sons, except for young Priam.
Priam later became king. During his reign, the Mycenaean Greeks invaded and
captured Troy in the Trojan War (traditionally dated to 1193–1183 BCE, most
recently dated to 1188 BCE).[3] The Ionians, Cimmerians, Phrygians, Milesians of
Sinope and Lydians moved into Asia Minor. The Persians invaded in 546 BCE.
Several far-flung tribes claimed descent from the
Trojans: the Paeonians[4], the Elymi of Egesta[5], and the west Libyan Maxyes[6].
The Trojan ships transformed into naiads, who rejoiced to see the wreckage of
Odysseus' ship.
Some famous Trojans are: Dardanus (founder of Troy),
Laomedon, Ganymede, Priam and his children (including Paris, Hector, Cassandra
and Troilus), Tithonus, Corythus, Aeneas and Brutus. Kapys, Boukolion and
Aisakos were Trojan princes who had naiad wives. Some of the Trojan allies were
the Lycians, the Ethiopians led by Memnon, and the Amazons, led by their Queen
Hippolyta. The Aisepid nymphs were the naiads of the Trojan River Aisepos.
Pegsis was the naiad of the River Granicus near Troy. "Helen of Troy" was born
not in Troy, but in Sparta, of which she was queen until she eloped with Paris
to Troy.
Mount Ida in Asia Minor is where Ganymede was
abducted by Zeus, where Anchises was seduced by Aphrodite, where Aphrodite gave
birth to Aeneas, where Paris lived as a shepherd, where the nymphs lived, where
the "Judgement of Paris" took place, where the Greek gods watched the Trojan War,
where Hera distracted Zeus with her seductions long enough to permit the
Achaeans, aided by Poseidon, to hold the Trojans off their ships, and where
Aeneas and his followers rested and waited until the Greeks set out for Greece.
Buthrotos (or Buthrotum) was a city in Epirus where Helenus, the Trojan seer,
built a replica of Troy. Aeneas landed there and Helenus foretold his future
Ancient Greek historians placed the Trojan War
variously in the 12th, 13th or 14th century BCE: Eratosthenes to 1184 BCE,
Herodotus to 1250 BCE, Douris to 1334 BCE.
In the Iliad, the Achaeans set up their camp near
the mouth of the river Scamander (presumably modern Karamenderes), where they
had beached their ships. The city of Troy itself stood on a hill, across the
plain of Scamander, where the battles of the Trojan War took place. The site of
the ancient city is some 5 kilometers from the coast today, but the ancient
mouths of alleged Scamander, some 3,000 years ago, were about that distance
inland,[7][8] pouring into a large bay which formed a natural harbour, but has
since been filled with alluvial material. Recent geological findings have
permitted the reconstruction of how the original Trojan coastline would have
looked, and the results largely confirm the accuracy of the Homeric geography of
Troy.[9]
Besides the Iliad, there are references to Troy in
the other major work attributed to Homer, the Odyssey, as well as in other
ancient Greek literature. The Homeric legend of Troy was elaborated by the Roman
poet Virgil in his work the Aeneid. The Greeks and Romans took for a fact the
historicity of the Trojan War, and in the identity of Homeric Troy with the site
in Anatolia. Alexander the Great, for example, visited the site in 334 BCE and
made sacrifices at the alleged tombs of the Homeric heroes Achilles and
Patroclus.
In November 2001, geologists John C. Kraft from the
University of Delaware and John V. Luce from Trinity College, Dublin presented
the results[10][11][12] of investigations, begun in 1977, into the geology of
the region. They compared the present geology with the landscapes and coastal
features described in the Iliad and other classical sources, notably Strabo's
Geographia, and concluded that there is a regular consistency between the
location of Schliemann's Troy and other locations such as the Greek camp, the
geological evidence, descriptions of the topography and accounts of the battle
in the Iliad. Further work by John Kraft and others was published in
2003.[13][14]
After the 1995 find of a Luwian biconvex seal at
Troy VII, there has been a heated discussion over the language that was spoken
in Homeric Troy. Frank Starke of the University of Tübingen recently
demonstrated that the name of Priam is connected to the Luwian compound Priimuua,
which means 'exceptionally courageous'.[15] 'The certainty is growing that
Wilusa/Troy belonged to the greater Luwian-speaking community', although it is
not entirely clear whether Luwian was primarily the official language or in
daily colloquial use.[16]
A small minority of contemporary writers argue that Homeric Troy was not in
Anatolia, but located elsewhere: England,[17] Croatia, and Scandinavia have been
proposed. These theories have not been accepted by mainstream scholars.
With the rise of modern critical history, Troy and
the Trojan War were consigned to the realms of legend. However, the true
location of ancient Troy had from classical times remained the subject of
interest and speculation, so when in 1822 the Scottish journalist Charles
Maclaren reviewed the available material and published A dissertation on the
topography of the plain of Troy he was able to identify with confidence the
position of the acropolis of Augustus's New Ilium in north-western Anatolia. In
1866 Frank Calvert, the brother of the United States' consular agent in the
region, made extensive surveys and published in scholarly journals his
identification of the hill of New Ilium (which was on farmland owned by his
family) as the site of ancient Troy. The hill, near the town of Chanak, was
known to the Turks as Hisarlik.[20]
Schliemann
In 1868 the German, self-taught archaeologist
Heinrich Schliemann visited Calvert and secured permission to excavate Hisarlık.
In the 1870s (in two campaigns, 1871–73 and 1878/9) he excavated the hill and
discovered the ruins of a series of ancient cities dating from the Bronze Age to
the Roman period. Schliemann declared one of these cities—at first Troy I, later
Troy II—to be the city of Troy, and this identification was widely accepted at
that time. Schliemann's finds at Hisarlik have become known as Priam's Treasure.
They were acquired from him by the Berlin museums, but significant doubts about
their authenticity persist.
Dörpfeld, Blegen
After Schliemann, the site was further excavated
under the direction of Wilhelm Dörpfeld (1893/4) and later Carl Blegen (1932-8).
These excavations have shown that there were at least nine cities built one on
top of each other at this site.
Korfmann
In 1988 excavations were resumed by a team of the
University of Tübingen and the University of Cincinnati under the direction of
Professor Manfred Korfmann. Possible evidence of a battle was found in the form
of arrowheads found in layers dated to the early 12th century BCE. The question
of Troy's status in the Bronze Age world has been the subject of a sometimes
acerbic debate between Korfmann and the Tübingen historian Frank Kolb in
2001/2002.
In August 2003 following a magnetic imaging survey
of the fields below the fort, a deep ditch was located and excavated among the
ruins of a later Greek and Roman city. Remains found in the ditch were dated to
the late Bronze Age, the alleged time of Homeric Troy. It is claimed by Korfmann
that the ditch may have once marked the outer defences of a much larger city
than had previously been suspected.
Pernicka
In summer 2006 the excavations continued under the
direction of Korfmann's colleague Ernst Pernicka, with a new digging permit.[21]
Hittite and Egyptian evidence
In the 1920s the Swiss scholar Emil Forrer claimed
that placenames found in Hittite texts — Wilusa and Taruisa — should be
identified with Ilium and Troia respectively. He further noted that the name of
Alaksandus, king of Wilusa, mentioned in one of the Hittite texts is quite
similar to the name of Prince Alexandros or Paris, of Troy.
An unnamed Hittite king wrote a letter to the king of the Ahhiyawa, treating him
as an equal and implying that Miletus (Millawanda) was controlled by the
Ahhiyawa, and also referring to an earlier "Wilusa episode" involving hostility
on the part of the Ahhiyawa. This people has been identified with the Homeric
Greeks (Achaeans). The Hittite king was long held to be Mursili II (ca
1321-1296), but since the 1980s his son Hattusili III(1265-1240) is commonly
preferred, although Mursili's other son Muwatalli (ca 1296-1272) is still
considered a possibility.
The nation T-R-S is mentioned as one of the "Peoples
of the Sea" in ancient Egyption inscriptions.
An Egyptian inscription at Deir al-Madinah records a victory of Ramesses III
over Sea Peoples, including some named Tursha (spelled [twrš3] in Egyptian
script). These are probably the same as the earlier Teresh (found written as [trš.w])
of the Merneptah Stele, commemorating Merneptah’s victory in a Libyan campaign
at about 1220 BCE. Although this may be too early for the Trojan War, some
scholars have connected the name to the city mentioned in Hittite records as
Taruisas, or Troy.[22]
These identifications were rejected by many scholars
as being improbable or at least unprovable. Trevor Bryce in 1998 championed them
in his book The Kingdom of the Hittites, citing a recovered piece of the so-called
Manapa-Tarhunda letter, which refers to the kingdom of Wilusa as beyond the land
of the Seha (known in classical times as the Caicus) river, and near the land of
Lazpa (Lesbos Island).
Recent evidence adds weight to the theory that
Wilusa is identical to archaeological Troy. Hittite texts mention a water tunnel
at Wilusa, and a water tunnel excavated by Korfmann, previously thought to be
Roman, has been dated to around 2600 BCE. The identifications of Wilusa with
archaeological Troy and of the Achaeans with the Ahhiyawa remain controversial,
but gained enough popularity during the 1990s to be considered a majority
opinion.
Trojan language and script
Main article: Trojan languageThe language of Trojans
is unknown, although several Trojan names may be identified as Luwian. The
status of the so-called Trojan script is still disputable.
Troy in later legend
See also: Trojan WarSuch was the fame of the Epic
Cycle in Roman and medieval times that it was built upon to provide a starting
point for various founding myths of national origins. The progenitor of all of
them is undoubtedly that promulgated by Virgil in the Aeneid, tracing the
ancestry of the founders of Rome, more specifically the Julio-Claudian dynasty,
to the Trojan prince Aeneas. The heroes of Troy, both those noted in the epic
texts or those purpose-invented, continued to perform the role of founder for
the nations of Early Medieval Europe.[23] Denys Hay noted the widespread
adoption of Trojan forebears as an authentication of national status, in Europe:
the Emergence of an Idea (Edinburgh 1957). The Roman de Troie was common
cultural ground for European governing classes,[24] for whom a Trojan pedigree
was gloriously ancient, and it established the successor-kingdoms of which they
were direct heirs as equals of the Romans. A Trojan pedigree justified the
occupation of parts of Rome's erstwhile territories (Huppert 1965).
The Franks filled the lacunae of their legendary
origins with Trojan and pseudo-Trojan names; in Fredegar's seventh-century
chronicle of Frankish history, Priam appears as the first king of the Franks.[25]
The Trojan origin of Franks and France was such an established article of faith
that in 1714 the learned Nicolas Fréret was Bastilled for showing through
historical criticism that the Franks had been Germanic, a sore point counter to
Valois and Bourbon propaganda.[26]
Similarly Geoffrey of Monmouth traces the legendary
Kings of the Britons to a supposed descendant of Aeneas called Brutus. Snorri
Sturluson, in the Prologue to his Prose Edda, converts several half-remembered
characters from Troy into characters from Norse mythology, and refers to them
having made a journey across Europe towards Scandinavia, setting up kingdoms as
they went.
Tourism
Today there is a Turkish town called Truva in the
vicinity of the archaeological site, but this town has grown up recently to
service the tourist trade. The archaeological site is officially called Troia by
the Turkish government and appears as such on many maps.
A large number of tourists visit the site each year, mostly coming from Istanbul
by bus or by ferry via Çanakkale, the nearest major town about 50 km to the
north-east. The visitor sees a highly commercialised site, with a large wooden
horse built as a playground for children, then shops and a museum. The
archaeological site itself is, as a recent writer said, "a ruin of a ruin,"[citation
needed] because the site has been frequently excavated, and because Schliemann's
archaeological methods were very destructive[citation needed]: in his conviction
that the city of Priam would be found in the earliest layers, he demolished many
interesting structures from later eras, including all of the house walls from
Troy II[citation needed]. For many years also the site was unguarded and was
thoroughly looted[citation needed]. However what remains, particularly if put
into context by one of the knowledgeable professional guides to the site, is an
illuminating insight into civilizations of the Bronze Age, if not to the legends.
TROY & GALLIPOLI TOUR ONE FULL DAY
 |
Type: Cultural
Troy Starts at: 08:45 a.m.
Troy Finishes at: 12:00 p.m.
Gallipoli Starts: 12:00 p.m.
Gallipoli Finishes: 04:00 p.m.
Duration: 1 Full Day
Starting point: Istanbul- Canakkale
Finishing point: Istanbul - Canakkale
Payment Types: Cash, Credit Cards
We speak: Turkish, English
-You can get this tour as part of your package tour or as a daily tour
in Canakkle. |
ITINERARY
Early start to the
ancient city for Troy, famaous with the legendary Trojan Horse
from the times of Beatiful Helen and Paris.
Take the ferry across Dardanelles visit Galipoli, the famaous
battle-field of Anzacs During orld War I. |
INCLUDES
-Transfer from/to Hotel
- Transfers Hotel to/from airport (optional - with package tour)
- Domestic flight tickets (optional - with package tour)
- 1 Days English speaking guided tours
- Museum entrance fees
- 1 lunches. (with Gallipoli Tour) |
EXTRA INFORMATIONS
This tour can be arranged by bus instead of flight for more
reasonable price.
Gallipoli Tour can be combined with Ephesus- Pergamum and Pamukkale
tours. |
has licences of
