Trojan War

Published August 27, 2014

The Trojan War, at first sight, may appear to have little to do with the story of Atlantis except that some recent commentators have endeavoured to claim that the war with Atlantis was just a retelling of the Trojan War. The leading proponent of the idea is Eberhard Zangger in his 1992 book The Flood from Heaven ^[⁴⁸³^] and later in a paper^(l) published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology. He also argues that survivors of the War became the Sea Peoples, while Frank Joseph contends that the conflict between the Egyptians and the Sea Peoples was part of the Trojan War ^[¹⁰⁸^.11].

In an article on the Atlantisforschung website reviewing Zangger’s theory the following paragraph is offered – “What similarities did the Trojan War and the war between Greece and Atlantis have? In both cases, the individual kingdoms in Greece formed a unified army. According to Homer, Greek ships went to the Trojan War in 1186 – according to Plato, Atlantis ruled over 1200 ships. The contingents and weapons are identical (archer, javelin thrower, discus thrower, chariot, bronze weapon, shield). The decisive battle took place overseas on both occasions. In a long period of siege came plague and betrayal. (There is not a word in Plato about a siege or epidemics and treason, dV) In both cases, Greece won the victory. After the Greek forces withdrew, earthquakes and floods struck Greece.“^(t)

Steven Sora asserts that the Atlantean war recorded by Plato is a distortion of the Trojan War and contentiously claims that Troy was located on the Iberian Peninsula rather than the more generally accepted Hissarlik in Turkey. Another radical claim is that Troy had been located in Bosnia-Herzegovina or adjacent Croatia, the former by Roberto Salinas Price in 1985^[1544], while more recently the latter is promoted by Vedran Sinožic^[¹⁵⁴³^].

Others have located the War in the North Sea or the Baltic. Of these, Iman Wilkens is arguably the best-known advocate of an English location for Troy since 1990. In 2018, Gerard Janssen added further support for Wilkens’ theory^(k).

In Where Troy Once Stood ^[610.18] Wilkens briefly referred to the earliest doubts expressed regarding the location of the Trojan War, starting in 1790 with J.C. Wernsdorf and followed a few years later in 1804 by M. H. Vosz. Then in 1806, Charles deGrave opted for Western Europe. However, it was probably Théophile Cailleux, a Belgian lawyer, whose detailed study of Homeric geography made the greatest inroads into the conventionally accepted Turkish location for Troy. Andreas Pääbo, who contends that the Odyssey and the Iliad had been written by two different authors, proposed that the inspiration for much of the Trojan War came from ancient Lycia. His paper proposes“that Homer had been a military official in an invasion in his time of a location, also with a citadel, further south on the coast, at what is now southwest Turkey, which was ancient Lycia. Proof of this lies within the Iliad itself, in the author’s many references to Lycia, and in particular to using an alternative name for Scamander – Xanthos – which is the river in Lycia around which the original Lycian civilization developed. This paper^(u) studies the details given in the Iliad with geographical information about the location of ancient Lycia to prove this case.”

However. controversy has surrounded various aspects of the War since the earliest times. Strabo^(a) tells us that Aristotle dismissed the matter of the Achaean wall as an invention, a matter that is treated at length by Classics Professor Timothy W. Boyd^(b). In fact, the entire account has been the subject of continual criticism. A more nuanced approach to the reality or otherwise of the ‘War’ is offered by Petros Koutoupis^(j).

The reality of the Trojan War as related by Homer has been debated for well over a century. There is a view that much of what he wrote was fictional, but that the ancient Greeks accepted this, but at the same time, they possessed a historical account of the war that varied considerably from Homer’s account^(f).

Over 130 quotations from the Illiad and Odyssey have been identified in Plato’s writings, suggesting the possibility of him having adopted some of Homer’s nautical data, which may account for Plato’s Atlantean fleet having 1200 ships which might have been a rounding up of Homer’s 1186 ships in the Achaean fleet and an expression of the ultimate in sea power at that time!

Like so many other early historical events, the Trojan War has also generated its fair share of nutty ideas, such as Hans-Peny Hirmenech’s wild suggestion that the rows of standing stones at Carnac marked the tombs of Atlantean soldiers who fought in the Trojan War! Arthur Louis Joquel II proposed that the War was fought between two groups of refugees from the Gobi desert, while Jacques de Mahieu maintained that refugees from Troy fled to America after the War where they are now identified as the Olmecs! In November 2017, an Italian naval archaeologist, Francesco Tiboni, claimed^(h). that the Trojan Horse was in reality a ship. This is blamed on the mistranslation of one word in Homer.

In August 2021 it was claimed that remnants of the Trojan Horse had been found. While excavating at the Hisarlik site of Troy, Turkish archaeologists discovered dozens of planks as well as beams up to 15-metre-long.

“The two archaeologists leading the excavation, Boston University professors Christine Morris and Chris Wilson, say that they have a “high level of confidence” that the structure is indeed linked to the legendary horse. They say that all the tests performed up to now have only confirmed their theory.”^(o)

“The carbon dating tests and other analyses have all suggested that the wooden pieces and other artefacts date from the 12th or 11th centuries B.C.,” says Professor Morris. “This matches the dates cited for the Trojan War, by many ancient historians like Eratosthenes or Proclus. The assembly of the work also matches the description made by many sources. I don’t want to sound overconfident, but I’m pretty certain that we found the real thing!”

It was not a complete surprise when a few days later Jason Colavito revealed that the story was just a recycled 2014 hoax, which “seven years later, The Greek Reporter picked up the story from a Greek-language website. From there, the Jerusalem Post and International Business Times, both of which have large sections devoted to lightly rewritten clickbait, repeated the story nearly verbatim without checking the facts.”^(p)

Various attempts have been made to determine the exact date of the ten-year war, using astronomical dating relating to eclipses noted by Homer. In the 1920s, astronomers Carl Schoch and Paul Neugebauer put the sack of Troy at close to 1190 BC. According to Eratosthenes, the conflict lasted from 1193 to 1184 BC^(m).

In 1956, astronomer Michal Kamienski entered the fray with the suggestion that the Trojan War ended circa 1165 BC, suggesting that it may have coincided with the appearance of Halley’s Comet!⁽ⁿ⁾

An interesting side issue was recorded by Isocrates, who noted that “while they with the combined strength of Hellas found it difficult to take Troy after a siege which lasted ten years, he, on the other hand, in less than as many days, and with a small expedition, easily took the city by storm. After this, he put to death to a man all the princes of the tribes who dwelt along the shores of both continents; and these he could never have destroyed had he not first conquered their armies. When he had done these things, he set up the Pillars of Heracles, as they are called, to be a trophy of victory over the barbarians, a monument to his own valor and the perils he had surmounted, and to mark the bounds of the territory of the Hellenes.” (To Philip. 5.112) This reinforced the idea that there had been more than one location for the Pillars of Herakles^(w).

In the 1920s, astronomers Carl Schoch and Paul Neugebauer put the sack of Troy at close to 1190 BC.^(q)

In 2008, Constantino Baikouzis and Marcelo O. Magnasco proposed 1178 BC as the date of the eclipse that coincided with the return of Odysseus, ten years after the War^(a). Stuart L. Harris published a paper on the Migration & Diffusion website in 2017^(g), in which he endorsed the 1190 BC date for the end of the Trojan War.

Nikos Kokkinos, one of Peter James’ co-authors of Centuries of Darkness, published a paper in 2009 questioning the accepted date for the ending of the Trojan War of 1183 BC,^(r) put forward by Eratosthenes.

New dating of the end of the Trojan War has been presented by Stavros Papamarinopoulos et al. in a paper^(c) now available on the Academia.edu website. Working with astronomical data relating to eclipses in the 2^nd millennium BC, they have calculated the ending of the War to have taken place in 1218 BC and Odysseus’ return in 1207 BC.

A 2012 paper by Göran Henriksson also used eclipse data to date that war^(v).

What is noteworthy is that virtually all the recent studies of the eclipse data are in agreement that the Trojan War ended near the end of the 13^th century BC, which in turn can be linked to archaeological evidence at the Hissarlik site. Perhaps even more important is the 1218 BC date for the Trojan War recorded on the Parian Marble, reinforcing the Papamarinoupolos date.

A 2012 paper by Rodger C. Young & Andrew E. Steinmann added further support for the 1218 BC Trojan War date^(s),>>also coinciding with the chronology of the Parian Marble.<<

Eric Cline has suggested that an earlier date is a possibility, as “scholars are now agreed that even within Homer’s Iliad there are accounts of warriors and events from centuries predating the traditional setting of the Trojan War in 1250 BC” ^[1005.40]. Cline had previously published The Trojan War: A very Short Introduction ^[2074], which was enthusiastically reviewed by Petros Koutoupis, who ended with the comment that “It is difficult to believe that such a large amount of detail could be summarized into such a small volume, but Cline is successful in his efforts and provides the reader with a single and concise publication around Homer’s timeless epic.”^(x)

However, an even more radical redating has been strongly advocated by a number of commentators^(d)(e) and not without good reason.

^(a)Geographica XIII.1.36

^(b)https://journal.oraltradition.org/wp-content/uploads/files/articles/10i/12_boyd.pdf *

^(c) https://www.academia.edu/7806255/A_NEW_ASTRONOMICAL_DATING_OF_THE_TROJAN_WARS_END

^(d)Archive 2401

^(e)https://www.varchive.org/schorr/troy.htm

^(f) https://gatesofnineveh.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/the-trojan-war-in-greek-historical-sources/

^(g) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2017&id=509

^(h)https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/italian-archaeologist-claims-that-the-trojan-horse-was-really-the-trojan-boat

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3345362/Scientists-calculate-the-exact-date-of-the-Trojan-horse-using-eclipse-in-Homer.html

^(j) https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/was-there-ever-trojan-war-001737

^(k) https://www.homerusodyssee.nl/id12.htm