Thousands of years after Homer’s Iliad described the events of the Trojan War, its dramatic resonance and memorable characters have preserved the conflict’s fame. Until relatively recently it was thought to be nothing more than an entertaining legend, however. But that all changed in 1868 with the discovery of a burned ancient city.
In the 150 years since, historians and archaeologists have been forced to conclude, for the most part, that something did happen at the site of Troy in the early 12th century BC, and even that the exact dates proposed by the Greek scholar Eratosthenes might be accurate. If so, that would place the fall of the city on 11 June 1184 BC.
The archaeological evidence
So what did happen at Troy – now Hisarlik in western Turkey – in the Bronze Age? The first thing we have to go on are archaeological finds. That a city existed on the site of the 1868 discovered – which was identified as the possible location of Troy as early as 1822 – is undeniable.
