At Homer's Troy
Trip Start
Feb 08, 2008
1
81
125
Trip End
Sep 11, 2009
Canakkale,
Turkish Aegean Coast,
Turkey
Monday, November 24, 2008
I suppose (had I thought ahead and planned) I could have come here next year and made it a 50-year anniversary since I first read Homer's Iliad in the fall of my senior year in high school. As it was, it was some ten years after, as a capstone to a four-year hitchhiking trip around the world, that I finally got to Troy; and in three miserably chilly early spring days of 1970, I read through the Iliad in such a frenzied haste that I only remember that I did it. I slept the nights in a three-sided, covered bus stop shelter.
Well, the weather is by fits and starts a little better this time around, as I seek to again read Homer's Iliad on the "Trojan Plain," beneath the now more exposed walls of Troy
Remnants and Vegitables
. I'm not off to a great start weatherwise. The afternoon that I arrived I merely went for a liesurely walk around the fenced perimeter of the World Heritage park site. There are now cultivated farm fields. It is not hyperbole, it is not an exaggeration, it is the literal truth that every step of the way one treads on potsherds. In the path of the road skirting the base of the mound of Hisarlik, however, I found the most articulated piece of ceramic that I have come across in Turkey. I laid it aside to photograph. Later, in the site museum I read this passage in a statement:
Troiya VII (ca. 1250-ca. 1000 B.C.
=Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age, "Troia/Ilios"
(Phases VIIb1 and VIIb2)
It is unclear how Troy VIIb1 came to an end, but since it was not through destruction,
some foreign takeover may have occurred. New elements ... the appearance of handmade
ceramics after some 1000 year's use of the potter's wheel. Among the ceramic types
is a strikingly crude ware decorated with ridges and knobs (=Buckelkeramik") for which
analogies can be found in southwestern Europe.
Well, some archaeologist I would make. I left the piece there against the fence post, thinking, I'll retrieve it later when I have a plastic bag
Potsherds Under Every Step
. And in the meanwhile not many will be coming along this road, and those that might won't be looking insightfully about. How wrong I was! Four days later it was gone. I'm crushed, not being able to take it and follow up on what it is about. I now have only the photograph.On the other hand, I do have a couple of very small glazed shards. Both have a very similar cream yellow glaze with differing style of brown lines inscribed. I assume they are of dishes as the glazing is on a concave side. It would be nice to know about them also.
On the following Saturday I went to the Canakkale Archaeological Museum hoping to find ceramics matching the styles of what I have come across. But the museum is disappointingly spare, except for two remarkable sarcophagai (not clear of the plural there).
In the first four days here, two of the days I've needed to go into Canakkale for one thing or another, the weather was good. That is, pretty sunny and where there is still warmth to the sunlight. The two days I have gone to the area of Troy have been overcast and chilly. The first of those two I took my time ambling about the exposed ruins. The second day, when I went to find a place below the mound of Hisarlik to read, as soon as I sat down under a tree to read, it started to rain
Road Along North of Fenced Archaeological Site
. (If you're interested, and able to navigate Google Earth, the tree is at: 39º57'31.45N 26º14'03.93E). I went back on the fifth day, starting under a clear sky. But the wind came on constantly, and out there in the field I couldn't shelter from it. Still, I could read. But it took something out of me, for after a large dinner I was feeling really tired and so went to bed at 7:45. And this time not because it was chilly. The wind actually brought some warmth to the area.Near the entrance to the gate to the archaeological site is the Hisarlik Hotel. That's where, so far, I have gone mostly for my meals. And, they have wireless! That's what the say here; we say wi-fi. So, after a meal on the rainy day, I went for a walk across the plain to the village of Kumkale. The plain, now silted up, is a fertile farming region. Harvesting of the crops (corn and tomatoes are what I have identified) is nearly finished. From the tented area of some migrant farm laborers a couple of puppies--sisters--came out to check me out on the road. They followed me for a spell, but fell behind, as doggies do, in their sniffing enquiries. And then a passing cement truck sent them scurrying back home.
I am staying in a pension (pansiyon) in the village of Tevfikiye. Tevfikiye is the village with the World Heritage site of Troy joined at its hip
The Most Articulated Ceramic I've Come Across
. My hosts are very sweet people (as are Turks in general, as a matter of fact. Except when manipulating a vehicle). I have a whole apartment in this off-season. But there is no heat in my quarters, and it's sometimes been pretty chilly many a night, so I'm pretty much staying in the one room, hoping my body heat will sort of make it a little better. But, if I don't find myself in the hosts' livingroom to read in the evenings, it's making for an early to bed--I'm talking 7:30 to 8-ish--evening.I didn't actually preplan this, but I'm trying to shoot for reading the Iliad out and around the site of ancient Troy, and in the evenings read various ancillary histories pertaining to Troy. The current history is Finding the Walls of Troy: Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schlieman at Hisarlik by Susan Heuck Allen. Most of the world knows of Heinrich Schlieman as "the discoverer of Troy." That's the way it was presented to me in my high school English class when we were reading the Iliad. That's when I got hooked. This author's thesis--and that of others, now in the more recent past--is that Schlieman was a scoundral who stole the thunder from the Englishman Frank Calvert, who was the owner of a portion of the Hisarlik mound, and was in fact the actual discoverer of the site to be confirmed as Troy. (And Jim, I hope this acknowledgement makes up for my 1968 ignorant attribution of Ping Pong as "an American game.")
One last note for today
A More Modern Find Along the Road
. I got all excited about an article in Tuesday's on-line New York Times about a recent archaeological find in southeastern Turkey (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18soul.html). What excited me especially was a graphic of the projected image of the site of the recent find. Just two days before I had photographed a graphic of the hypothetical visions of the nine cities of Troy, and especially the VIth city, that thought to be the "Troy of Homer." These days it is well established that Troy was not a Greek city, but an Anatolian city. There are affinities to the Hittites of central Anatolia. The same goes for the site of the recent finding in southeastern Turkey. And so, the architecture of the two sites are projected in similar visions. It is not the look of the superstructures; it's the plan view layout of the structures that is the similarity to note. Okay, I'm easily amused. 
Comments
Hey, I feel like that sometimes too!!
I have had the most difficult time finding someone here at home to share in the little pleasures (and big ones too) I garner from archaeological finds. My sister feigns sleeping, my mother tunes me out, and my kids look at me as if I am speaking Luwian or something. It truly does not take much to entertain me! Your excursion appeared to be a relaxing one, exactly the trip I hope to someday take; to the very same place. I appreciate your kindness in sharing your own!