All places

Troy (Ilios)

Accepted12/12HighThe TroadHomeric name(s): Ἴλιος · Τροίη · Ἴλιον

The city the Iliad besieges, identified since 1822 with the mound of Hisarlık in north-western Türkiye and excavated continuously since 1870. The identification of the place is settled; what happened there is not.

Troy is the one location in this atlas where text, excavation and independent archives converge. The Iliad describes a walled city on a plain crossed by rivers, within sight of the Hellespont and reachable from a beach where ships can be drawn up. Hisarlık is such a place, and it was a real Late Bronze Age fortress: Troy VI and VIIa show massive walls, a lower town, and destruction layers in roughly the right centuries.

The site's history of identification is itself instructive. For a hundred years the favoured location was Pınarbaşı, argued from a detail of the text; Maclaren proposed Hisarlık in 1822 on topographical grounds and was ignored until Schliemann dug there. Later excavators — Dörpfeld, Blegen, Korfmann — replaced Schliemann's conclusions almost entirely while confirming his site.

Hittite documents refer to a place called Wilusa in this region, and to a king Alaksandu of Wilusa. Most scholars accept the equation Wilusa = Ἴλιος (Ilios); it makes Troy the only Homeric city attested in a contemporary foreign archive.

Identifications proposed

  • Hisarlık (Troy VI / VIIa)

    Proposed by: Charles Maclaren (1822); Schliemann, Dörpfeld, Blegen, Korfmann

    Accepted12/12High

    A mound occupied for some 3,000 years, with a fortified Late Bronze Age citadel and — since Korfmann — a substantial lower city around it. It sits where the Iliad needs a city to sit: on the Scamander plain, in sight of the Hellespont, under Mount Ida, with Tenedos and Imbros offshore. Hittite archives independently name a Wilusa in this region, which most scholars equate with Ἴλιος.

    39.9576, 26.2389· Site

    • ScholarshipCharles Maclaren, A Dissertation on the Topography of the Plain of Troy (1822)
    • ArchaeologyHeinrich Schliemann, Ilios: The City and Country of the Trojans (1881)
    • ArchaeologyCarl W. Blegen et al., Troy: Excavations Conducted by the University of Cincinnati 1932–1938 (Princeton, 1950–1958)
    • ArchaeologyManfred Korfmann, Troia/Wilusa excavation reports, Studia Troica (1988–2005)
    • ScholarshipJoachim Latacz, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (Oxford University Press, 2004)
    • Primary textStrabo, Geography 13.1
    Confidence
    12/12 · High confidence
    Textual
    3
    Archaeological
    3
    Scholarly
    3
    Geographic
    3

  • Pınarbaşı (abandoned identification)

    Proposed by: Jean-Baptiste Lechevalier (1791)

    Speculative3/12Low

    The identification that dominated European scholarship for a century, argued from the springs where Hector and Achilles run (Iliad 22.147–156). Excavation found no Bronze Age city of the required scale here, and the site is too far from the sea for the Iliad's beached ships. It is kept in the atlas because being wrong in public is how the Troy question was settled. Coordinates are approximate to the village.

    39.8500, 26.2300· Area

    • ScholarshipJean-Baptiste Lechevalier, Description of the Plain of Troy (Edinburgh, 1791)
    • Primary textHomer, Iliad (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1924)
    • ScholarshipCharles Maclaren, A Dissertation on the Topography of the Plain of Troy (1822)
    Confidence
    3/12 · Low confidence
    Textual
    2
    Archaeological
    0
    Scholarly
    0
    Geographic
    1

Why this class

Accepted: a real site with both archaeological and scholarly consensus. The rubric scores 12/12 because all four criteria are satisfied independently — the text is specific, the excavation is deep, the consensus is mainstream, and the surrounding geography matches without special pleading.

What is disputed

What is settled is the place, not the war. Whether Troy VIIa's destruction was caused by an Achaean coalition, whether any siege resembling the Iliad's occurred, and how much of the poem's world is 8th-century rather than 13th-century, all remain open. Korfmann's claims about the size and importance of the lower city drew sharp criticism from colleagues in 2001–2002. This atlas locates the city with high confidence and takes no position on the historicity of the war.

Sources

  • Primary textHomer, Iliad (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1924)
  • Primary textHomer, Odyssey 8.499–520
  • Primary textStrabo, Geography 13.1
  • ScholarshipJean-Baptiste Lechevalier, Description of the Plain of Troy (Edinburgh, 1791)
  • ScholarshipCharles Maclaren, A Dissertation on the Topography of the Plain of Troy (1822)
  • ArchaeologyHeinrich Schliemann, Ilios: The City and Country of the Trojans (1881)
  • ArchaeologyCarl W. Blegen et al., Troy: Excavations Conducted by the University of Cincinnati 1932–1938 (Princeton, 1950–1958)
  • ArchaeologyManfred Korfmann, Troia/Wilusa excavation reports, Studia Troica (1988–2005)
  • ScholarshipJoachim Latacz, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (Oxford University Press, 2004)