Did a coalition of Greek kings really sail across the Aegean sea to besiege the wealthy city of Troy?
Was Helen, wife of Menelaus, truly carried off by the Trojan prince Paris?
Did a 10 year war finally end when Greek warriors hid inside an enormous wooden horse and captured the city by deception?
These questions lie at the heart of Homer’s Iliad and the wider cycle of stories surrounding the Trojan War – including the Odyssey, which sees its central character Odysseus return from that conflict.
Archaeology can’t answer these questions. It can’t prove that Achilles fought Hector outside the city walls, that Helen stood on the battlements, or that Odysseus devised the Trojan Horse.
What it has shown, however, is remarkable on its own terms. Troy was a real settlement, occupied for thousands of years, strategically placed near the Dardanelles, heavily fortified, destroyed and rebuilt more than once. At least one phase of its history belongs to the world of the Late Bronze Age, the period in which any historical conflict behind the Trojan legend is most likely to have occurred.
As classicist Daisy Dunn explains, speaking on a four-part series about the Odyssey for the HistoryExtra podcast, the evidence for whether the Trojan War is myth or history is knotty and complex – like Odysseus himself.
The search for the real ancient Troy
Today, ancient Troy “is identified with the site at a place called Hisarlık, in the west of Turkey,” Dunn explains. This site is close to the Dardanelles – the narrow strait linking the Aegean Sea on toward the Black Sea.
Its location helps explain why the city may have played such a significant role in this ancient world. Anyone controlling this region could influence movement between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, making it strategically and economically important before the classical Greek world emerged.
The man most responsible for bringing Hisarlık to international fame was, a wealthy German businessman and amateur archaeologist.
“Heinrich Schliemann was the first great excavator of the site of Troy,” Dunn says. “He was tipped off as to its location. He was an incredibly rich man who had made his money through trade.”
Schliemann was convinced that Homer’s poems described real places and real events. Armed with money and determination, he travelled to Hisarlık determined to uncover the legendary city.
“He went over to where he was told Troy might be with his copy of Homer’s texts – the Iliad and the Odyssey – his digging equipment, and a little team of people, and he just began to dig.”
The man who found Troy – and almost destroyed it
Without Schliemann’s persistence, Troy might have taken far longer to excavate and identify. But modern archaeologists are highly critical of his methods.
“To modern archaeologists, he’s not really a hero,” Dunn says, “even though he’s the great excavator of the site. He made so many fundamental errors and caused so much destruction in the process of excavating Troy that he made the situation a lot muddier and murkier than it might have been.”
The problem was that Schliemann approached archaeology more like a treasure hunter than a modern field archaeologist. Today, archaeologists treat a site with immense care. Every layer of soil, every wall foundation, every broken object and every change in construction can reveal how a settlement developed. Destroying those layers destroys evidence.
At Troy, this was especially damaging because Troy was not one city, but many generations of cities, built one on top of another. Unlike Pompeii, which preserves a single catastrophe, Troy developed over several thousand years.
When one settlement was destroyed – by fire, earthquake, or war – later inhabitants often rebuilt directly on top of the ruins. The result is a deep archaeological mound made up of multiple phases of occupation.
“Troy itself is a really ancient site,” Dunn explains, “so you have distinct archaeological layers from different periods in time. Archaeologists have broken these up into roughly nine main layers, with sub-layers.”
Each layer represents a different version of Troy, from the Early Bronze Age, around 3000 BC, through to the Roman period, when the city was still visited because of its legendary association with Homer.
Modern excavation depends on carefully separating these layers to establish what was built, destroyed and rebuilt at different points in time, using established techniques, like the Harris Matrix. Schliemann had no patience for that.
Digging too deep
Convinced that Homer’s Troy must lie near the bottom of the mound, Schliemann dug rapidly downwards.
“Schliemann’s rationale was, ‘Well, the Trojan War was surely the oldest thing to have happened at Troy, so to get to any evidence of Troy I need to dig to the bottom, or as deep as possible.’ So that’s pretty much what he did.”
Unfortunately, the assumption was wrong.
“If you’re an archaeologist and you just keep going down, down, down, you’re going to disrupt all those neatly sedimented layers,” Dunn explains.
“You risk one spilling into another, and you really disturb what’s actually there.”
In places, Schliemann cut vast trenches through later settlements, destroying evidence that could never be recovered. Eventually he reached what archaeologists now call Troy II, where he uncovered spectacular finds.
“We still have a lot of what he discovered,” Dunn says. “We have plates, crockery, treasure, jewellery.”
Among these objects was an extraordinary collection of gold ornaments and precious items that Schliemann triumphantly identified as the treasure of King Priam, the ruler of Troy in Homer’s Iliad.
“He had this habit of connecting whatever he found to Homer’s poetry,” Dunn explains. “So [the jewellery he found] was the treasure of Helen. It’s a very nice idea, but it’s very fanciful.”
Other archaeologists soon recognised the problem.
“The fact is – and this was discovered pretty soon afterwards – that a lot of what he found was about 1,000 years older than it should have been if it had belonged to Homer’s Troy.”
“He dug too deep. That was his big error.”
By digging so deep, Schliemann reached an Early Bronze Age settlement, many centuries older than the world traditionally linked with Homer’s heroes. Today, archaeologists looking for a possible historical context for the Trojan War focus on later layers.
“Modern archaeologists, who are trying to find evidence of the Trojan War with a more scientific approach, identify the relevant layers as Troy VI and Troy VII, not Troy II.”
These phases date broadly to the Late Bronze Age, around the 13th and 12th centuries BC – the period in which any historical conflict behind the Trojan legend is most likely to belong.
An ancient city built for defence
“Troy VI and Troy VII are the grandest cities,” Dunn says.
“There’s really good evidence of monumental walls built from very thick limestone blocks, forming fortifications and lookout towers.”
These walls remain among the most striking features of the site. Built from massive limestone blocks, they enclosed an elevated citadel overlooking the surrounding plain. Their scale suggests a wealthy and strategically significant settlement able to command labour and resources.
Dunn says, “the kind of things we find in Homer’s poem when he’s describing what Troy looked like, those descriptions are really borne out by the evidence.”
“There are also signs of fires, and there may have been earthquakes that destroyed these layers.”
One phase of destruction was followed by rebuilding. Then came another episode of upheaval.
Preparing for danger
“One of the really interesting things is that between Troy VI and Troy VII, one of these cities is rebuilt after what might have been an earthquake.”
But it was rebuilt differently. “What had begun as quite a spread-out settlement now has much smaller houses built very close together. They also have these great big earthen pots sunk into the floors of buildings.”
Such jars could hold grain, wine, oil and other essential supplies. To archaeologists, their presence looks like preparation for insecurity rather than ordinary domestic routine; “like evidence of people trying to batten down the hatches in a time of threat.”
“They’re stockpiling. They’re putting produce underground. They’re gathering grain, wine, and whatever else they need to survive.”
Whether the inhabitants were preparing for siege, general instability, shortage or another danger cannot be proved. But Troy VII gives the impression of a city under pressure.
Is this Homer’s war?
“People who really want to find evidence of the Trojan War then say, ‘Well, look what else we’ve found. We found arrowheads. We found sling bullets. We found swords. We found bits of armour.’”
These finds show that the city certainly did experience violence and instability. But they don’t prove the scale or character of that conflict.
“They’re quite paltry remains,” Dunn notes. “You can’t look at them and say, ‘Oh, this is the material of a great big Greek army.’ There’s simply not enough there.”
A handful of weapons cannot demonstrate the decade-long siege of Homeric tradition. Nor can it identify the attackers as Greeks, or prove the involvement of figures such as Agamemnon, Achilles, Hector or Odysseus.
The destruction could have resulted from local warfare, regional instability, internal conflict or some broader Late Bronze Age upheaval.
“But there is something.”
Archaeology has shown that Troy was not an imaginary place, but a wealthy, fortified and strategically important city occupied for millennia. It flourished in the Late Bronze Age, possessed formidable walls, experienced repeated destruction and rebuilding, and at moments seems to have prepared for serious threat.
“So it’s very difficult to say exactly what happened,” Dunn says, “but certainly there was a destruction of a city, a rebuilding of a city, another destruction of a city, and another rebuilding.”
Beneath Homer’s myth and poetry is a real city with a history of wealth, danger and catastrophe. Whether one of those catastrophes was the Trojan War remains impossible to prove – for now.
Don’t miss our upcoming podcast series exploring the history of Homer’s Odyssey, featuring award-winning classicist and author Daisy Dunn. HistoryExtra members can listen to all four episodes from Sunday 19 July.
