An ambitious project to create a visual 'translation' in embroidery of all 24 books of Homer's celebrated poem, the Iliad, is being undertaken by University of Bristol PhD student, Silvie Kilgallon. In this 'Stitched Iliad', each letter in the text is represented by an individual stitch, with different letters denoted by different shades of red in the first book. With each new book, one letter-colour will be substituted for a shade of blue instead, with the final book being entirely blue. Read more
Title: The Trojan war dated by two solar eclipses. Authors: Henriksson, Goran
The Trojan War was very significant for the ancient Greeks and they dated historical events according to the number of years after the fall of Troy. However, there was already in antiquity no consensus as to the exact date of the war when compared with different epochs. Even after the modern discovery of the ancient city, there has been disagreement among different excavators as to which layer corresponds to the city mentioned in the Iliad attributed to Homer. In this paper an attempt is made to identify the strange obscuration of the sun that occurred during the final battle of the Iliad as a total solar eclipse close to the southern border of the zone of totality. There exists only one solar eclipse that corresponds to the description in the text and this is the total solar eclipse of June 11, in 1312 BC. When I first presented this date in 1986, there was a difference of about 60 years compared with the most common archaeological dating at that time. My date is now fully supported by the latest results from the German-American excavation that identifies the fall of Homer's Troy with the destruction of the archaeological layer Troy VIh, dated to about 1300 BC. Further independent support is provided by another solar eclipse that dates the reign of the Hittite king Muwatalli II. This king wrote a letter to king Alaksandu in Wilusa, identified as the Hittite name for Ilios, the most frequently used name for Troy in the Iliad. Alexander was another name for Paris who abducted Helen, the crime that resulted in the war. Muwatalli II was king 1315-1297 BC, according to the chronology for the Hittite Kingdom based on a solar eclipse in 1335 BC, during the tenth year of King Mursili II (1345- 1315 BC), the father of Muwatalli II.
Troy pottery holds a key to the great Bronze Age collapse
The collapse of Hittite power in Anatolia is believed to be one of the triggers for this transition. However, the nature of the transition remains controversial. In Anatolia there are two competing perspectives; the first is that the transition was largely political with change the result of in-situ cultural transformations; the second scenario revolves around a power vacuum left in the wake of the Hittite collapse that was filled by incoming groups. The Bronze Age city at Hisarlik - Troy (phases VI, VIIa) - in north-west Turkey, now so closely associated with Homers Illiad, was destroyed by conflict about 3200 years ago and straddles this period of collapse, fitting into the new geo-political landscape. Read more
The ruins of ancient Troy will be examined by a cross-disciplinary team of scientists in an expedition led by UW-Madison classics professor William Aylward. Troy, the palatial city of prehistory, sacked by the Greeks through trickery and a fabled wooden horse, will be excavated anew beginning in 2013 by a cross-disciplinary team of archaeologists and other scientists, it was announced today (Monday, Oct. 15). Read more
UW-Madison archaeologists to mount new expedition to Troy
Troy, the palatial city of prehistory, sacked by the Greeks through trickery and a fabled wooden horse, will be excavated anew beginning in 2013 by a cross-disciplinary team of archaeologists and other scientists, it was announced today (Monday, Oct. 15). The new expedition will be led by University of Wisconsin-Madison classics Professor William Aylward, an archaeologist with long experience digging in the ruins of classical antiquity, including Troy itself. The new international project at Troy, to be conducted under the auspices of and in cooperation with Turkey's Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, will begin a series of summer-time expeditions beginning in 2013. Read more
Ancient Greek historians variously placed the Trojan War in the 12th, 13th, or 14th centuries BC: Eratosthenes to 1184 BC, Herodotus to 1250 BC, Duris of Samos to 1334 BC. Modern archaeologists associate Homeric Troy with archaeological Troy VII Read more
German archaeologists have made new discoveries at modern day Hisarlik, northwest Turkey - ancient Troy. The finds further confirm the area occupied during the Bronze Age was not limited to the citadel; Troy VI and VII were much larger than originally thought. Read more
Wilusa was a city of the late Bronze Age Assuwa confederation of western Anatolia. It is often identified with Troy VIIa in archaeology (destroyed in ca. 1190 BC), and with legendary Troy of the Greek Trojan War cycle. Read more
A group of archaeologists has unearthed the remains of a man and a woman believed to have died in 1,200 BCE in the ancient city of Troy. The skeletal remains were found near a defence line in the late Bronze Age city in northwestern Turkey. Source