Hi everyone,
I saw a recent documentary on the identification of the archeological site of Hisarlik to the city of Troy. The documentary (which involved professional archeologists) was pretty positive on the conclusion that Hisarlik was indeed the site of the homeric Troy. I'm wondering if they are not going a bit too far in their conclusions.
Yes a city which roughly correspond to the description of Homer has been found in the - rather large - area where it was supposed to be. But the Iliad has been written four centuries after the time the war is supposed to have happened. Is it not a bit far fetched to assume that Homer's description is accurate? In this perspective the site corresponding, or not corresponding, to the homeric description is not such a good criterion for the identification of Hisarlik. I'm also wondering, is there anything to show that the Iliad refers to a real place when it's talking about Troy? Can we know if Troy is indeed based on a single real historical city or could it not be just a fictional cities inspired by various places?
I'm especially looking for answers coming from bronze age archeologist and/or Iliad scholars.
Thank you in advance for your answer !
To Greeks of the time of Homer, and for a couple of millennia afterwards as well, it was unproblematic to call that hill 'Ilium' or 'Troy'.
That's because there was a sizeable city there at the time, and that's what the city was called. It was settled as a nominally Greek colony at some point in the 700s BCE (there were other ethnic groups there too). Among other things, the city got lots of tax breaks over the centuries because of its famous name.
In light of that, the question you're asking is very similar to the following ones: Is the real Athens the setting of the legend of Theseus? Is the real Nottingham the setting of the Robin Hood legend? Is the real Hamelin the setting of the Pied Piper story? Is the real New York the setting of King Kong and Spider-Man?
The relationship between the real Troy and the legendary one is the same kind of question. As far as classical-era Greeks were concerned, yes, it was the setting for the legend.
The confusion arises when legend and historical document are conflated. You rightly point out that the Iliad was composed in the 600s, not the 1200s. So right from the outset, the phrase 'Homeric Troy' is already ambiguous. Is it being used to mean the literary Troy depicted in the Iliad? the real Troy that existed when the Iliad was composed? or Troy as it was when it was a Hittite vassal city?
It can be used to mean any of those. But there's no reason to expect any two of them to be identical.
It's certainly possible that the literary Troy in the Iliad was inspired by other sites that existed at the time -- similar to how 42nd Street in The Avengers (2012) was actually filmed on a street in Cleveland. It's just that we don't know of any definite instances of that in Homer's case.
We do know there are elements of the literary Troy that are definitely based on the real Troy as it was when the Iliad was composed. The role of Athena in Trojan religion reflects the fact that Ilian Athena was the main civic cult in 7th century Troy. The cult-site of Thymbrian Apollo, outside the city, was a real one at the time too. (Though with Thymbre, it's at least possible there was continuity from the Late Bronze Age: a plague god Appaliuna/Appaluwa was linked to the city at that time, and those variants of the name are certainly etymologically linked to Greek Apollōn. It's open to question whether the Hittite/Luvian name came from Greek, or the other way round.)
The core of the answer to your question, though, is that Homer and his audience certainly regarded the Troy of their day as the same site as the one in the legend.
If you feel like tackling a hardcore academic book on this subject, I'll recommend Mary Bachvarova's From Hittite to Homer (2016). She tackles the subject in the right way: as a question about the literary traditions that connect Hurro-Hittite poetic traditions to early Greek ones, not as a question about a legendary war.