| | All About Troy / TURKEY Troy (Turkish: Truva ) was a city, both factual and legendary, located in what is now northwest Turkey. It is best known for being the focus of the Trojan War, as described in the Epic Cycle and especially in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer. Trojan refers to the inhabitants and culture of Troy.
Metrical evidence from the Iliad and the Odyssey seems to show that the name Ἴλιον formerly began with a digamma (Ϝίλιον): this was later proved by the Hittite form Wilusa.
Today it is the name of an archaeological site, the traditional location of Homeric Troy, Turkish Truva, in Hisarlık, Anatolia, close to the seacoast in what is now Çanakkale province in northwest Turkey, southwest of the Dardanelles under Mount Ida.
A new city of Ilium was founded on the site in the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. It flourished until the establishment of Constantinople and declined gradually during the Byzantine era.
In 1865 an English archaeologist, Frank Calvert, excavated trial trenches in a field he had bought from a local farmer at Hisarlık, near Truva and in 1868 a wealthy German businessman, Heinrich Schliemann, after a chance meeting between the two men in Çanakkale town, also began excavating in this area.[2][3] Later excavations revealed several cities built in succession to each other. One of the earlier cities (Troy VII) is generally identified with Homeric Troy. While such an identity is disputed, the site has been successfully identified with the city called Wilusa in Hittite texts; Ilion (which goes back to earlier Wilion with a digamma) is thought to be the Greek rendition of that name.
The archaeological site of Troy was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998. | |