Brandon Prince
Professor Joel Christensen
Classics 4973
8 May 2012
Abstract
Bryce, Trevor R., “The Trojan War: Is There Truth behind the Legend?”, Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 182-195, The American Schools of Oriental Research, Boston, MA
This was a fun article to read, Trevor Bryce does an excellent job of combining different attempts to delineate the historicity of the Trojan War into one well-organized narrative. Bryce states that in his attempt to prove the existence of a Trojan War he must do so independent of the Iliad and the Odyssey, however this does not preclude the use of those texts when comparing his findings to the details that Homer described.
Bryce starts from the beginning, focusing on whether Troy existed at all and if so where it’s located. He states that the ancients did not hesitate in identifying Hisarlik as the location of fabled Troy. And despite the shoddy track record that the ancients often displayed in regards to geography Trevor Bryce is convinced they are right in this case. He points out the archaeological facts of Troy VIh in comparison to certain scenes in the epic do strengthen his case.
After deciding upon Hisarlik as the site of the ancient city, Bryce then turned to a different city nearby, Ugarit on the Levantine coast. The reason he chose Ugarit as his city for comparison is because it has a much clearer and well-delineated archaeological record than Hisarlik does. He then compared the archaeological remains at Hisarlik to the remains of its ancient contemporary in order consider the question of whether the real Troy’s wealth and magnificence equaled that of the Troy Homer described. Based on the shared archaeological context and artifacts found at both sites Bryce concluded that Troy was indeed a large, wealthy city worthy of inclusion in the Homeric epic.
After this he turns his attention to the inhabitants of Troy itself, he postulates that they were Luwians, one of three Proto-Indo-European people to settle the Anatolian plateau. Thus, he believes the Trojans were distant, distant cousins of the Achaean Greeks that conquered them. He bases this theory on a discovery of a Luwian seal found on Troy VIIb. It is the only writing that has been recovered from the dig at Hisarlik and since it was found in the archaeological context of a later Troy he believes that evidence for this idea is far less conclusive than the other claims he has made.
Finally he turns to the work of Emil Forrer who examined ancient Hittite historical texts in order to find independent, third-party evidence that a great war between the Greeks and the Trojans did exist. Emil Forrer was more successful than he could have hoped, and Bryce believes that when the Hittite texts tell of a city called Wilusa they in fact refer undoubtedly to ancient Troy itself. And upon further analysis of the Hittite texts Forrer found even more text referring to conflicts that occurred between the Bronze Age Greeks and the Trojans.
By the end of this article Bryce is convinced that the city of Troy did once exist, it’s even in the exact spot where the ancients said it was. He is also convinced that the city of Troy was a city of consequence in the region much like Homer described it. And he believes that there was a Greco-Trojan War, probably not on the scale that Homer described but it did in fact exist.
The Trojan War 