Hisarlik
Encyclopedia
Hisarlik often spelled Hissarlik, is the modern name for the site of ancient Troy
, also known as Ilion, and is located in what is now Turkey
(historically Anatolia
). The unoccupied archaeological site lies approximately 6.5 km from the Aegean Sea
and equidistant from the Dardanelles
.
The archaeological site of Hisarlik is known in archaeological circles as a tell
. A tell is an artificial hill, built up over centuries and millennia of occupation from its original site on a bedrock knob. A site associated with Ilium was being shown to curious visitors as early as the 15th century, when Pedro Tafur
was guided from the Genoese port of Fojavecchia (Phocaea)
:
Pedro, like most early visitors, was distracted by the more prominent Hellenistic and Roman remains close to the modern shoreline. An alternative site, Hisarlik tell, a thirty-meter-high mound, was identified as a possible site of ancient Troy by a number of amateur archaeologists in the early to mid 19th century. The most dedicated of these was Frank Calvert
, whose early work was overshadowed by the now famous German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann
in the 1870s.
, Hisarlik was one of many successful pockets of human civilization which arose and prospered in Anatolia. Paleogeographic studies carried out around Hisarlik by John C. Kraft, head of the Geology Department of the University of Delaware
and Professors Ilhan Kayan and Oğuz Erol from Ankara University
indicate a favourable environment for settlement existed from around the eighth millennium BC, when receding seas left a fertile, well watered plain which over time became a shallow, but navigable estuary. Above this natural harbour, the hill was large enough to support extensive building, providing natural protection from invasion and a commanding view of the sea.
Elsewhere in Anatolia, there is abundant archaeological evidence of a thriving neolithic
culture at least as early as the seventh millennium B.C. What may have been the world's first urban settlement (dated ca. 6500 B.C.) has been uncovered at Çatalhüyük in the Konya Ovasi (Konya Basin). Evidence from a cave at Karain near Antalya shows human occupation in the region extending over an estimated 25,000 year period.
While the archaeological record
has much to say about the physical remains, it reveals little about the people who built and rebuilt the fabled city of Troy. The historical record for Troy is dominated by the epic poems of Homer and peopled with gods and heroes whose identities and histories formed part of the oral tradition of the area for centuries before the great Greek poet committed some of them to verse.
Homer was not, however, overly concerned with history. Not surprisingly, the historical context for the epic Iliad and Odyssey is not as clear as one would wish. Various attempts have been made over time to identify the origins of the inhabitants of Troy.
As early as 1946, American
historian Carpenter argued that the Trojan War
, far from being an historical event, was in fact a synthesis of many such events involving peoples whose mutual involvement stretched back centuries. In the Iliad, the word most commonly used for the city of the Trojans is not "Troy" but "Ilion". Carpenter saw this as evidence of the possibility that Troy was not the name of a town at all, but rather the name of an area or district inhabited by the Trojans. The Greeks clearly had a legend about a war against the Trojans, but may have disagreed about where these people lived. At least one group of Greeks put them at a place called Teuthrania in the area known as Mysia.
Carpenter suggests that the real "Troy" is located in neither the Troad nor Aeolis but rather that the memory of a pan-Achaean expedition elsewhere was located at two different points in Asia Minor by later poetic traditions: at Ilion by the Ionic poets, because they found in this area a local folk tradition about a strong citadel sacked near the end of the Bronze Age (Hisarlik); and at Teuthrania by the Aeolic poets, to correspond with Aeolic traditions connected with their own occupation of this area.
If one is willing to accept Carpenter's line of argument this far, one can place "Troy" virtually anywhere in the eastern Mediterranean where bands of Mycenaean Greeks may have undertaken joint piratic raids. Carpenter goes so far as to place "Troy" in Egypt and to connect the story of the Trojan War with the raids of the Sea Peoples mentioned in Egyptian sources at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 12th centuries B.C.
The tangled and fragile skein of inference in the historical record gives no certainty as to the origin of the inhabitants but the fact remains that for over two millennia a thriving civilisation existed at Hisarlik.
Homer's interest in Troy ends with the fall of the city. Glimpses are recorded of the fallen city, walls burning, looting and destruction and a fleeing populace including Aeneas, carrying his father Anchises away from the scene of devastation and unknowingly in to a new and glorious future on alien shores. Troy’s history does not end with the fall of Priam’s city. The history of Troy is inextricably linked with the Bronze Age and later cultures of Anatolia
, the name of which is from the Greek word for sunrise, anatole.
The inhabitants of Hisarlik lived among a number of vigorous, interactive and often warlike cultures. Apart from the mainland Greeks from whence they may have sprung, the Trojans counted such neighbours as the Hittites
, Phrygians and Lydians
.
The unbroken occupation of the region around Hisarlik continued with the arrival of the Romans, and later the Armenians and Kurds. Finally, after several centuries of trying, the Greeks gained control of the region once ruled by the Trojans. Around 1050-800 B.C., Ionian Greek refugees fled to Anatolia, to escape the Dorians. Many cities were founded along the Anatolian coast during the great period of Greek expansion after the eighth century B.C. One of these, Byzantium
, a distant colony established on the Bosporus by the city-state of Megara, grew to supplant Rome and ultimately proved the downfall of Troy as it dominated all maritime and overland trade for almost 22 centuries.
lies on both sides of the Dardanelles and touches both Europe
(Gelibolu
Peninsula) and Asia
(Biga Peninsula) and just as it was in the time immortalised by Homer, maritime traffic connects both sides of the straits. Today, passenger ferries ply the waters where once warring tribes of Greeks and Trojans fought a battle that attracted the attention of the gods and won forever a place in human history.
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
, also known as Ilion, and is located in what is now Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
(historically Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
). The unoccupied archaeological site lies approximately 6.5 km from the Aegean Sea
Aegean Sea
The Aegean Sea[p] is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...
and equidistant from the Dardanelles
Dardanelles
The Dardanelles , formerly known as the Hellespont, is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with its counterpart the Bosphorus. It is located at approximately...
.
The archaeological site of Hisarlik is known in archaeological circles as a tell
Tell
A tell or tel, is a type of archaeological mound created by human occupation and abandonment of a geographical site over many centuries. A classic tell looks like a low, truncated cone with a flat top and sloping sides.-Archaeology:A tell is a hill created by different civilizations living and...
. A tell is an artificial hill, built up over centuries and millennia of occupation from its original site on a bedrock knob. A site associated with Ilium was being shown to curious visitors as early as the 15th century, when Pedro Tafur
Pedro Tafur
Pedro Tafur was a Spanish traveler and writer. Born in Córdoba, to a branch of the noble house of Guzmán, Tafur traveled across three continents during the years 1436 to 1439. During the voyage, he participated in various battles, visited shrines, and rendered diplomatic services for Juan II of...
was guided from the Genoese port of Fojavecchia (Phocaea)
Phocaea
Phocaea, or Phokaia, was an ancient Ionian Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia. Greek colonists from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia in 600 BC, Emporion in 575 BC and Elea in 540 BC.-Geography:Phocaea was the northernmost...
:
I travelled by land for two days to that place which they say was Troy, but found no one who could give me any information concerning it, and we came to Ilium, as they call it. This place is situated on the sea opposite the harbour of TenedosTenedosTenedos or Bozcaada or Bozdja-Ada is a small island in the Aegean Sea, part of the Bozcaada district of Çanakkale province in Turkey. , Tenedos has a population of about 2,354. The main industries are tourism, wine production and fishing...
. The whole of this country is strewn with villages, and the Turks regard the ancient buildings as relics and do not destroy anything, but they build their houses adjoining. That which made me understand that this was, indeed, ancient Troy, was the sight of such great ruined buildings, and so many marbles and stones, and that shore, and the harbour of Tenedos over against it, and a great hill which seemed to have been made by the fall of some huge building.
Pedro, like most early visitors, was distracted by the more prominent Hellenistic and Roman remains close to the modern shoreline. An alternative site, Hisarlik tell, a thirty-meter-high mound, was identified as a possible site of ancient Troy by a number of amateur archaeologists in the early to mid 19th century. The most dedicated of these was Frank Calvert
Frank Calvert
Frank Calvert was an English expatriate who was a consular official in the eastern Mediterranean region and an amateur archaeologist...
, whose early work was overshadowed by the now famous German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann
Heinrich Schliemann
Heinrich Schliemann was a German businessman and amateur archaeologist, and an advocate of the historical reality of places mentioned in the works of Homer. Schliemann was an archaeological excavator of Troy, along with the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and Tiryns...
in the 1870s.
Geography
Located at the edge of a cape projecting into the Aegean between the Dardanelles and the Gulf of Edremit, which was known in antiquity as TroasTroas
The Troad, also known as Troas, is the historical name of the Biga peninsula in the northwestern part of Anatolia, Turkey. This region now is part of the Çanakkale province of Turkey...
, Hisarlik was one of many successful pockets of human civilization which arose and prospered in Anatolia. Paleogeographic studies carried out around Hisarlik by John C. Kraft, head of the Geology Department of the University of Delaware
University of Delaware
The university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...
and Professors Ilhan Kayan and Oğuz Erol from Ankara University
Ankara University
Ankara University is a public university in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. It was the first higher education institution founded in the Turkish Republic....
indicate a favourable environment for settlement existed from around the eighth millennium BC, when receding seas left a fertile, well watered plain which over time became a shallow, but navigable estuary. Above this natural harbour, the hill was large enough to support extensive building, providing natural protection from invasion and a commanding view of the sea.
Human settlement in the region
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
culture at least as early as the seventh millennium B.C. What may have been the world's first urban settlement (dated ca. 6500 B.C.) has been uncovered at Çatalhüyük in the Konya Ovasi (Konya Basin). Evidence from a cave at Karain near Antalya shows human occupation in the region extending over an estimated 25,000 year period.
While the archaeological record
Archaeological record
The archaeological record is the body of physical evidence about the past. It is one of the most basic concepts in archaeology, the academic discipline concerned with documenting and interpreting the archaeological record....
has much to say about the physical remains, it reveals little about the people who built and rebuilt the fabled city of Troy. The historical record for Troy is dominated by the epic poems of Homer and peopled with gods and heroes whose identities and histories formed part of the oral tradition of the area for centuries before the great Greek poet committed some of them to verse.
Homer was not, however, overly concerned with history. Not surprisingly, the historical context for the epic Iliad and Odyssey is not as clear as one would wish. Various attempts have been made over time to identify the origins of the inhabitants of Troy.
As early as 1946, American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
historian Carpenter argued that the Trojan War
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
, far from being an historical event, was in fact a synthesis of many such events involving peoples whose mutual involvement stretched back centuries. In the Iliad, the word most commonly used for the city of the Trojans is not "Troy" but "Ilion". Carpenter saw this as evidence of the possibility that Troy was not the name of a town at all, but rather the name of an area or district inhabited by the Trojans. The Greeks clearly had a legend about a war against the Trojans, but may have disagreed about where these people lived. At least one group of Greeks put them at a place called Teuthrania in the area known as Mysia.
Carpenter suggests that the real "Troy" is located in neither the Troad nor Aeolis but rather that the memory of a pan-Achaean expedition elsewhere was located at two different points in Asia Minor by later poetic traditions: at Ilion by the Ionic poets, because they found in this area a local folk tradition about a strong citadel sacked near the end of the Bronze Age (Hisarlik); and at Teuthrania by the Aeolic poets, to correspond with Aeolic traditions connected with their own occupation of this area.
If one is willing to accept Carpenter's line of argument this far, one can place "Troy" virtually anywhere in the eastern Mediterranean where bands of Mycenaean Greeks may have undertaken joint piratic raids. Carpenter goes so far as to place "Troy" in Egypt and to connect the story of the Trojan War with the raids of the Sea Peoples mentioned in Egyptian sources at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 12th centuries B.C.
The tangled and fragile skein of inference in the historical record gives no certainty as to the origin of the inhabitants but the fact remains that for over two millennia a thriving civilisation existed at Hisarlik.
Homer's interest in Troy ends with the fall of the city. Glimpses are recorded of the fallen city, walls burning, looting and destruction and a fleeing populace including Aeneas, carrying his father Anchises away from the scene of devastation and unknowingly in to a new and glorious future on alien shores. Troy’s history does not end with the fall of Priam’s city. The history of Troy is inextricably linked with the Bronze Age and later cultures of Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
, the name of which is from the Greek word for sunrise, anatole.
The inhabitants of Hisarlik lived among a number of vigorous, interactive and often warlike cultures. Apart from the mainland Greeks from whence they may have sprung, the Trojans counted such neighbours as the Hittites
Hittites
The Hittites were a Bronze Age people of Anatolia.They established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia c. the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height c...
, Phrygians and Lydians
Lydians
The Lydians were the inhabitants of Lydia, a region in western Anatolia, who spoke the distinctive Lydian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian group....
.
The unbroken occupation of the region around Hisarlik continued with the arrival of the Romans, and later the Armenians and Kurds. Finally, after several centuries of trying, the Greeks gained control of the region once ruled by the Trojans. Around 1050-800 B.C., Ionian Greek refugees fled to Anatolia, to escape the Dorians. Many cities were founded along the Anatolian coast during the great period of Greek expansion after the eighth century B.C. One of these, Byzantium
Byzantium
Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...
, a distant colony established on the Bosporus by the city-state of Megara, grew to supplant Rome and ultimately proved the downfall of Troy as it dominated all maritime and overland trade for almost 22 centuries.
Hisarlik today
The region around Hisarlik is still inhabited by the descendants of the many and varied peoples who laid claim to the shores and hillsides of Anatolia. Present day Çanakkale is a thriving settlement close to the ancient site of Hisarlik. ÇanakkaleÇanakkale
Çanakkale is a town and seaport in Turkey, in Çanakkale Province, on the southern coast of the Dardanelles at their narrowest point. The population of the town is 106,116 . The mayor is Ülgür Gökhan ....
lies on both sides of the Dardanelles and touches both Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
(Gelibolu
Gelibolu
Gelibolu, also known as Gallipoli , is the name of a town and a district in Çanakkale Province of the Marmara region, located in Eastern Thrace in the European part of Turkey on the southern shore of the peninsula named after it on the Dardanelles strait, two miles away from Lapseki on the other...
Peninsula) and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
(Biga Peninsula) and just as it was in the time immortalised by Homer, maritime traffic connects both sides of the straits. Today, passenger ferries ply the waters where once warring tribes of Greeks and Trojans fought a battle that attracted the attention of the gods and won forever a place in human history.