Troy From Homer's Iliad to Hollywood Epic - Amazon Web Services

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22 Manfred O. Korfmann like in the distant past. But films must show everything in detail. So a film like Troy in a way forces even archaeologists to wonder: What was Troy really like? This situation is all for the better. To professional archaeologists, ancient remains and artifacts are of chief interest as means to reconstruct the life and environment of earlier societies that emerge from an analysis and interpretation of these remains. Three general and important questions arise from this: Where do we come from, where are we today, and where are we likely to go? In this context the metaphor of the balancing scales is instructive about past, present, and future. The more knowledge we can put into the scale that represents the past, the more we are justified to deal with the other scale that represents the future. Of course we must also pay attention to the beam in the middle: the pivot representing our own present. But how can we reconstruct sites of ancient settlements and their geographic environs? How can we describe ancient peoples and their appearances, their daily occupations, tools, households, workshops, palaces? To answer such questions, or at least to strive for an answer, is the archaeologists’ duty, all too often neglected. A film can remind them of this duty, even if it puts partially wrong images into the one scale. A book recently published in German and Turkish addresses this topic. Its title translates as follows: “Troy – How It Really Looked.” 2 We would dearly love to know how Troy really looked. The book’s authors are experts in their field, and in their introduction they acknowledge that the title more accurately should have been something like “Troy – How It Most Likely Looked According to the Best Knowledge of the Scientists Working There.” That is as close as we can get. So Petersen’s Troy can increase interest in and study of the Bronze Age and can even stimulate an archaeologist to deal with the film, as this essay shows. Both sides can fruitfully interact with each other, especially now that classical education is no longer the basis of our school curriculum. In the future, just as in the past and in the present, Troy and the Homeric landscape will be subjects of fiction and objects of research. The one question that Troy has raised again and again and that is most often addressed to me as the director of excavations at Hisarlık is 2 Birgit Brandau, Hartmut Schickert, and Peter Jablonka, Troia – Wie es wirklich aussah (Munich: Piper, 2004). Cf. in general the internet sites of the Troia Projekt at http:// www.uni-tuebingen.de/troia and specifically Troia Virtual Reality (Troia VR) at http:// www.uni-tuebingen.de/troia/vr/index_html (in English).
Was There a Trojan War? 23 this: “Do you think that there ever was a Trojan War, and, if so, why did it take place?” I will answer this question in some detail. 3 Myths and legends practically demand to be connected to the specific places in which they are set. In our case this is, and has been since antiquity, an area of ancient ruins that in Greco-Roman times had been built on and expanded under the name of Ilion or Ilium. (Coins showing this name were struck there.) Today this place is called Hisarlık. Its connection with myth, the world of imagination and illusion, is the very origin of archaeology as a scientific discipline. But in the course of the past decade major archaeological discoveries have significantly changed our knowledge of Troy. Archaeological research includes the entire history of Troy from its two millennia in the Bronze Age to its Hellenistic- Roman era. This means that archaeology at Troy has never aimed at contributing answers to questions about the Iliad or the Trojan War, although many people hold that assumption. As a matter of principle it is best to keep these two areas separate. On the other hand, Homer studies, too, have greatly advanced in recent years, and archaeologists are justified to consider or use those pieces or “splinters” of information contained in the Iliad which modern scholarship is debating as deriving from the past: the late Bronze Age. Such information primarily concerns the place in which the story of the Iliad is set; that is to say, it concerns the ruins of Troy VI–VIIa, which at the time of Homer and for centuries after must have been highly impressive in their appearance. This is true for the fortified citadel and for the area of the settlement below it. That the Trojan War did take place is something Homer assumed his audience to have known. His main topic was the anger of Achilles and its consequences. Homer used Troy and the war only as poetic background for a tale about the conflict between and among humans and gods. But for archaeologists the Iliad provides a different kind of background. Homer and those from whom he may have derived some of his information are witnesses of what the topographical setting and life in the late eighth century b.c. were like. On the whole, his descriptions of the place and its surroundings must have been accurate for the time around 700 b.c., when the Iliad was by and large composed. This means that what Homer said about Troy and its environs could not openly 3 A brief answer from the perspectives of different disciplines (archaeology, Homeric studies, Hittitology) appeared in Manfred Korfmann, Joachim Latacz, and David Hawkins, “Was There a Trojan War?” Archaeology, 57 no. 3 (May–June, 2004), 36–41.
Page 1: Troy From Homer’s Iliad to Hollyw
Page 4 and 5: © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Page 6 and 7: vi Contents 7 From Greek Myth to Ho
Page 8 and 9: viii List of Plates 11 Maria Corda
Page 10 and 11: x Notes on Contributors (South Slav
Page 13 and 14: Editor’s Introduction Editor’s
Page 15 and 16: Editor’s Introduction 3 stress di
Page 17 and 18: Editor’s Introduction 5 expected
Page 19 and 20: Editor’s Introduction 7 Das Boot
Page 21 and 22: Editor’s Introduction 9 Geschicht
Page 23 and 24: Editor’s Introduction 11 The grea
Page 25 and 26: Editor’s Introduction 13 are also
Page 27 and 28: Editor’s Introduction 15 The most
Page 29 and 30: Editor’s Introduction 17 regina d
Page 31 and 32: Editor’s Introduction 19 Zewadski
Page 33: Was There a Trojan War? 21 And we d
Page 37 and 38: Was There a Trojan War? 25 Geograph
Page 39 and 40: chapter two From Homer’s Troy to
Page 41 and 42: From Homer’s Troy to Petersen’s
Page 55 and 56: chapter three The Iliad and the Cin
Page 57 and 58: The Iliad and the Cinema 45 ignore
Page 59 and 60: The Iliad and the Cinema 47 memorab
Page 61 and 62: The Iliad and the Cinema 49 spectac
Page 63 and 64: The Iliad and the Cinema 51 Ancient
Page 65 and 66: The Iliad and the Cinema 53 And the
Page 67 and 68: The Iliad and the Cinema 55 to smas
Page 69 and 70: The Iliad and the Cinema 57 chariot
Page 71 and 72: The Iliad and the Cinema 59 ends as
Page 73 and 74: The Iliad and the Cinema 61 shot mi
Page 75 and 76: The Iliad and the Cinema 63 Roman p
Page 77 and 78: The Iliad and the Cinema 65 is also
Page 79 and 80: The Iliad and the Cinema 67 Trojan
Page 81 and 82: The Story of Troy Through the Centu
Page 83 and 84: The Story of Troy Through the Centu
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The Story of Troy Through the Centu
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chapter five Viewing Troy: Authenti
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Viewing Troy: Authenticity, Critici
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chapter six Troy and the Role of th
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Troy and the Role of the Historical
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Troy and the Role of the Historical
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3. Troy and the British Museum Troy
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chapter seven From Greek Myth to Ho
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From Greek Myth to Hollywood Story
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chapter eight The Fate of Troy Step
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The Fate of Troy 121 she can relate
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The Fate of Troy 123 It hardly seem
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The Fate of Troy 125 Not like you w
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The Fate of Troy 127 son, / will ta
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The Fate of Troy 129 Petersen does
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chapter nine Helen of Troy Monica S
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Helen of Troy 133 awarded the golde
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Helen of Troy 135 literary traditio
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Helen of Troy 137 mane of the Spart
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Helen of Troy 139 people of the fut
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Helen of Troy 141 well versed in gi
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Helen of Troy 143 epic, Hector goes
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Helen of Troy 145 demands that its
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Helen of Troy 147 portrays Agamemno
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Briseis in Homer, Ovid, and Troy 14
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chapter eleven Troy and Memorials o
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Troy and Memorials of War 165 him.
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Troy and Memorials of War 167 invad
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Troy and Memorials of War 169 every
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Troy and Memorials of War 171 ing t
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Troy and Memorials of War 173 Peter
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Troy and Memorials of War 175 Peter
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Troy and Memorials of War 177 every
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Troy and Memorials of War 179 Troy
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Troy and Memorials of War 181 paral
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Troy and Memorials of War 183 Congr
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Troy and Memorials of War 185 movin
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The Realist Politics of Troy 187 Gr
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The Realist Politics of Troy 189 In
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The Realist Politics of Troy 191 of
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The Realist Politics of Troy 193 Ag
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The Realist Politics of Troy 195 th
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The Realist Politics of Troy 197 of
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The Realist Politics of Troy 199 Sp
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The Realist Politics of Troy 201 th
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The Trojan War on the Screen 203 th
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1927 The Trojan War on the Screen 2
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The Trojan War on the Screen 207 th
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The Trojan War on the Screen 209 of
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The Trojan War on the Screen 211 pr
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The Trojan War on the Screen 213 La
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1996 The Trojan War on the Screen 2
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Bibliography 217 Bazin, André. Wha
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Bibliography 219 Fagles, Robert (tr
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Bibliography 221 Lauring, Palle. A
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Bibliography 223 Quintus of Smyrna.
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Bibliography 225 West, M. L. (ed. a
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Batrachomyomachia 88 Battle of Brit
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Jones, Terry 91 n. 11 Joyce, James
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Thucydides 73, 89, 187, 192, 198 Ti
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Allie
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Allie
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Plate 1 The ruins of Troy today (vi
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Plate 3 Computer reconstruction of
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Plate 6 Achilles tending the wound
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Plate 8 The duel of Achilles and He
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Plate 10 Priam begging Achilles for
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Plate 12 The Bronze-Age palace of K
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Plate 14 The model set of Troy, “
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Plate 16 The wooden horse approache
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Plate 18 A tiny Achilles before the
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Plate 20 Which is the face that sho
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