Troy the myth….

15th January 2020

I went to a really interesting exhibition on Troy at the British Museum. It was beautifully laid out. Troy is such an amazing myth. I say myth as people are still searching for whether it exists or not. The exhibits seemed to indicate that there was a place called Troy as part of Greece and that it was built up many times on the same spot because as they dug through the earth they found layers of building remnants related to these different time periods. I think Troy 6 (as they named one of the layers) is meant to be the period in which Troy was attacked but unfortunately no evidence was found for the horse! 

I’d listened to a podcast not so long ago about a self made millionaire who was obsessed with Troy and so funded his own expedition to the area. Whilst there he dug down erratically and in some ways without care. He transferred so much mud and sand from his digging into the surrounding areas that it is believed he destroyed much and we don’t have the technology to put it back together. In addition there is too much mud in the surrounding areas that it would be too costly and time consuming to remove to even search in those parts of the site. Although at the time he claimed he had found Troy (in one of the layers), Archaeologists have now proven he had actually dug down past the period to the wrong layer. 

Troy covers so many topics. Women were treated as objects essentially and the inter weaving of stories about the Gods and the worship of the Gods also brings in some brutal practices such as sacrifice. Even as we don’t believe Troy was true it is amazing imagining a society so deferential to the Gods without much evidence given we (particularly in the West) have swung completely the other way and I believe have much less blind faith.

Ovid – the translation by Ted Hughes is a wonderful book that very easily takes you through many of the stories of the Greek Gods though again the way women are treated (captured and raped; punished for not being submissive) is quite shocking. So you read it fascinated by the creativity and understanding that it was a translation of a book from in theory several hundred years ago even though the stories are quite disconcerting.  

I didn’t realise that one of the sons of Troy escaped and fled to Italy and it was his descendants who founded Rome. There is a book by Virgil called the Aeneid which supposedly covers this and is oft quoted.