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Where was Wilusa???
Topic Started: Apr 26 2016, 05:53 AM (693 Views)
George Nicolaides
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Hi everyone,

I came across this interesting site listing articles relating to Ahhiyawa and Wilusa.
https://sites.google.com/site/clas213313/ar...-and-mycenaeans

Of particular interest are the articles by V Pantazi. (I’ve already noted this in a previous forum entry, http://z8.invisionfree.com/Bronze_Age_Cent...?showtopic=2119 and who identifies Wilusa with Beycesultan)

and G Steiner in his article “The case of Wilusa and Ahhiyawa” places Wilusa in Lycia.

Also of note is the latest idea by John Crowe, ‘The Troy Deception’,
http://thetroydeception.com/, who places Troy at Pergamon.

(For a forum with a lively debate on John Crowe’s hypothesis see;
http://www.worldhistoria.com/the-troy-dece...opic126938.html ).

So, is the Troy/Illion identification with Hissarlik still on firm ground, or are changes in the western Anatolian Bronze Age geopolitical map on the way?

On the one hand, the ancients seemed to firmly believe that the Hissarlik site was the Troy of their legends. They were much closer in time to the ‘historical’ Trojan War/s so their opinion must carry a lot of weight.

However, these new discussions throw up a lot of doubt.

What seems clear is that the references to Taruisa and Wilusiya (Troy and Illion?) in the Hittite texts appear as separate cities. To cite Pantazi;

“4. In the Assuwa Alliance, Taruisa and Wilusiya appear as two separate regions side by
side, yet not being the one part of the other, as it happens with Troy and Ilion”
V Pantazi, ‘Wilusa: Reconsidering the Evidence’, p293 and note 2 p291

So, Is there another undiscovered city near Hissarlik (and which one is Troy and which is Illion?)

Does Homer amalgamate a number of conflicts/wars into one poem? Are his descriptions an amalgamation of a number of conflicts and city sackings into the one city siege in his poem, hence the two interchangeable names for the one city?

Do the true locations of Troy and Illion lie elsewhere (Lycia or Pergamon?) and Homer (or others) has transplanted these to the site at Hissarlik?

If Hissarlik is not the Troy of legend, what is it??

Your thoughts, ladies and gentlemen…

Regards
George


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Todd Feinman
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Hi George, I saw those sites and read those theories too, some time ago. I think that the terms could be referring to regional divisions; Wilusa could be the historical fortified city of Troy, while "Taruisa" might be the region to the east. I know when the Hittite king was dealing with Piyamaradu that he traveled through many regions that have yet to be identified. Tribal divisions may also have some role. The situation of Hissarlik controlling the Dardanelles, makes me believe the current site is "Troy"; of course IIRC, the other options are buried deep under Greek and Roman ruins.
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Todd Feinman
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IMHO, the Iliad is a literary palimpsest amalgamating a series of piratical attacks on Troy, a strategically located semi-independent Hittite Royal seat. The list of Agamemnon's allies includes cities that were gone by the end of the Trojan wars; the oral transmission of knowledge caused various accounts to be unified into a single bardic poem. The final end of Troy was seen during the Troy VIIb period --when Tiryns was thriving. Characters like Achilles and Agamemnon could certainly have existed. Oh, and I ABSOLUTELY believe that some of the Sea Peoples were Homeric Mycenaeans; the depictions at Medinet Habu are the closest to the descriptions in the Iliad, and the description of the attack on Egypt in the Odyssey really cements it for me...
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Brock H
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I believe that the identification of Hissarlik as Troy is pretty solid. But I also believe that Homer stitched together various earlier poems or parts of them into his epic. So yes, The Iliad could "chronicle" more than one attack, not all of which might even have been made on Wilusa, but rather on other places.
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Matthew Amt
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It would be very interesting to see any of these other poems and stories that were supposedly collated by Homer. None of them seem to get any press. Do none survive at all? I find that curious...

Matthew
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Brock H
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Matthew Amt,Apr 27 2016
12:26 PM
It would be very interesting to see any of these other poems and stories that were supposedly collated by Homer. None of them seem to get any press. Do none survive at all? I find that curious...

Matthew

I don't find it very surprising. Bardic tradition is oral and around the time or just after Homer came up with his epic is when the Greeks developed their alphabet. So Homer was the one passed on orally and written down while ones considered lesser soon were not recited and since they were not written down they have not come down to us.

However, I believe scholars who have studied The Iliad, especially the earliest written fragments of it that we have, have detected fragments of several earlier poems included in it. I imagine they base that on the language used and perhaps the description of some of the equipment.
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Todd Feinman
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Interestingly, the Mykonos Vase (ca. 900 - 1100 BCE) shows the Trojan Horse(s) siege engine, before the story was set in writing; I kind of think of the Iliad like the bible --one grand story woven together. Meant a lot to the Jews, but not much to the Egyptians, and things got kinda inflated. Heck lookm at the evolution of "King Arthur". Though there are apocryphal books that were created and discarded in the Judeo-Christian tradition, in the Homeric oral tradition they weren't written down. The myths of the gods and the other stories must have survived orally. It's possible that in the changes at the end of the Bronze Age, that with the stories were lost.
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Sean Manning
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I think that most academics would agree that the whole Hittite Wilusa = Homeric Ilion/Troy = Classical Ilion/Troy thing is plausible but not certain ... can't comment on the Pergamon thing!

Matthew Amt,Apr 27 2016
12:26 PM
It would be very interesting to see any of these other poems and stories that were supposedly collated by Homer.  None of them seem to get any press.  Do none survive at all?  I find that curious...

Matthew

Some other versions tend to be preserved by writers who summarized or retold them. I seem to remember that Shanower talks about some of them in the preface to Age of Bronze, and some of the decisions he had to make: Late Bronze Age or Archaic? Helen as prisoner or instigator? Were Troilus and Cressyde in (lots of stories about them!) or out (they may have been invented in the middle ages)? And there are suspicious similarities between the description of Achilles weeping over Patroclus in the Iliad and the description of Gilgamesh weeping over Enkidu in the Standard Babylonian version of Gilgamesh ... if we had more Phoenician and Luwian stories it would be easier to understand what is going on.

Jona has a page on the Epic Cycle but Homer is too far from the areas of my expertise!
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Todd Feinman
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Sean Manning,Apr 27 2016
05:29 PM
I think that most academics would agree that the whole Hittite Wilusa = Homeric Ilion/Troy = Classical Ilion/Troy thing is plausible but not certain ... can't comment on the Pergamon thing!

Matthew Amt,Apr 27 2016
12:26 PM
It would be very interesting to see any of these other poems and stories that were supposedly collated by Homer.  None of them seem to get any press.  Do none survive at all?  I find that curious...

Matthew

Some other versions tend to be preserved by writers who summarized or retold them. I seem to remember that Shanower talks about some of them in the preface to Age of Bronze, and some of the decisions he had to make: Late Bronze Age or Archaic? Helen as prisoner or instigator? Were Troilus and Cressyde in (lots of stories about them!) or out (they may have been invented in the middle ages)? And there are suspicious similarities between the description of Achilles weeping over Patroclus in the Iliad and the description of Gilgamesh weeping over Enkidu in the Standard Babylonian version of Gilgamesh ... if we had more Phoenician and Luwian stories it would be easier to understand what is going on.

Jona has a page on the Epic Cycle but Homer is too far from the areas of my expertise!

Thanks for that great link, Sean!
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Brock H
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The problem with contending that Hissarlik isn't or may not be Wilusa/Troy is if it isn't Wilusa/Troy, then what settlement is it and where is Wilusa/Troy? There has to be both a reasonable alternative location for Wilusa/Troy and a reasonable alternative name for the settlement that was at Hissarlik.
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Todd Feinman
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I think that "Taruisa" might represent the entire Troad, while "Wilusa" might specifically refer to the citadel of Troy itself.
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Brock H
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Todd Feinman,May 10 2016
07:08 PM
I think that "Taruisa" might represent the entire Troad, while "Wilusa" might specifically refer to the citadel of Troy itself.

I think that's probably right, but I was referring to people who don't think Hissarlik is Wilusa/Troy.
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George Nicolaides
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Hi Brock and Todd,

To say that Taruisa represents the entire Troad while Wilusa refers specifically to the citadel of Troy sounds reasonable, except that the Hittite records clearly refer to them as TWO separate countries.

To quote from Vangelis's article 'Wilusa: Reconsidering the Evidence',

"In the Assuwa Alliance, Taruisa and Wilusiya appear as two separate regions side by side, yet not being part of the one part of the other, as it happens with Troy and Ilion" (p293)

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Brock H
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George Nicolaides,May 18 2016
12:44 AM
To say that Taruisa represents the entire Troad while Wilusa refers specifically to the citadel of Troy sounds reasonable, except that the Hittite records clearly refer to them as TWO separate countries.

That seems reasonable, especially if Taruisa and Wilusa were two city-states near (next to?) each other.
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George Nicolaides
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Hmmm, could we be looking at a situation similar to that of Budapest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Budapest

with two adjoining cities later merging into one???

Or were there two separate wars against two separate cities, which were later merged into one tale???
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Todd Feinman
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What if Lesbos was Taruisa? Homer apparently mentions that it was part of the Priam's kingdom; who knows what the Hittites might have called it! It certainly is the entrance to the Troad from the Aegean.... Also would provide a great base for a prolonged siege....
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George Nicolaides
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If Lesbos was part of Wilusa or Taruisa, are there any archaeological artifacts/remains found that can be attributed to an Anatolian civilisation???
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George Nicolaides
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Now THIS is what Troy should have looked like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AguZyijMbbs

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Todd Feinman
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George Nicolaides,May 23 2016
07:24 AM
Now THIS is what Troy should have looked like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AguZyijMbbs

I'm going to look around! Here's a bit:
https://books.google.com/books?id=a_B8VOPZl...0luwian&f=false
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Todd Feinman
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Okay, known as "Lazpa" to the Hittites. Tarusia might have just been the southern area of the Troad, as "Lazpa" is considered a "land". I suppose regional identities were pretty compressed, or something.
https://books.google.com/books?id=N5HDjtGwY...20lazpa&f=false
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