The Trojan War in Homer and History - Recorded Books

LECTURE TEN
Lecture 10:
Wilhelm Dörpfeld and the City of Troy VI
The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Michael Wood’s In Search of
the Trojan War.
Wilhelm Dörpfeld was Heinrich Schliemann’s architect. Just before
Schliemann died in 1890, Dörpfeld persuaded him that he had been incorrect
about labeling Troy II as Priam’s Troy. After Schliemann’s death, Dörpfeld
took over as director of the excavations at Hisarlik, financed by Sophia
Schliemann, and promptly focused his attention on the sixth city.
It was the sixth city at Troy, Troy VI as it is known, that expanded during its
500-year lifetime to become a spectacular city, built on a par with Mycenae,
Tiryns, Pylos, and other palatial sites on Mainland Greece. First begun about
1700 BCE, Troy VI underwent many renovations, resulting in sub-phases
detectable by archaeologists and labeled a-h, before its destruction in
approximately 1250 BCE.
Although there is not much to see today, the final version of this city, Troy
VIh, was impressive, sporting high walls and towers of stone surrounding the
citadel and protecting the palace and massive buildings inside from potential
invaders. Elaborate gates provided guarded entryways into the city. These
gates were easy to protect, but hard to capture. Large houses graced the
interior areas of this city, high up on the citadel. The palace itself was situated
in the very center of the citadel, but by the time of Dörpfeld it was long
gone—destroyed by the earlier Greeks and Romans, who had leveled off the
center of the city in order to build temples to Athena and Jupiter respectively,
as well as by Schliemann and his workers, who dug straight down through
this area in his quest to find Priam’s Troy.
Although Schliemann had excavated much of the central part of the citadel
at Hisarlik, he had left the outer edges undug, and it was here that Dörpfeld
spent most of his time, money, and energy. His efforts paid off when he
uncovered tremendous walls and entryways, all built of stone and worthy of
Homer’s heroic epics. It is the remains of these fortification walls, large
houses, broad streets, and elaborate gates that can be seen today when
one visits Hisarlik/Troy. It is these remains that Homer seems to be describing,
and yet he could not possibly have seen them, for they would have
been buried under many feet of earth long before Homer was born, as we
have discussed previously.
This was a wealthy city, a desirable plum commanding the Hellespont—the
passageway from the Aegean to the Black Sea—and growing wealthy from a
combination of trade and taxation. The winds and the current in the
Hellespont frequently presented adverse conditions for ships wishing to sail
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