The Mysian War: Rhys Carpenter revisited. P J Crowe 241224
Part 1 Finding Troy at Bergama – Study Background
(a) My studies confirm the suggestion, made by Rhys Carpenter in 1946, that the first Trojan
War took place across the great Kaikos plain below Pergamon in ancient Mysia, as told in the
Cypria, one of the minor Trojan Epics. The text of today’s Iliad is generally accepted as
having been largely written or composed by a poet whom the ancients called Homer. This
shows, both in his descriptions of the landscape features in the Trojan Plain, and in the
military actions described as the fighting proceeds, that this war cannot have taken place
around Hisarlik. There, on an elevated bluff beside the river Menderes, once stood an ancient
fort, dating back to the Early Bronze Age, overlooking the southern end of the straits of the
Dardanelles. This site was discovered and excavated in the early 1880’s by H Schliemann,
and soon became generally accepted as that of Homer’s Troy, also called Ilios. Before this
discovery, Troy had been moved at least once before. For some 80 years previously, Troy had
generally been regarded as being a few km. further upstream, at place with hot springs – not
found at Hisarlik – called Bunarbashi.
(b) With Troy at Hisarlik, the Achaeans’ ships were assumed to have anchored some 3 to
4km north at the mouth of the Menderes. Here they would have built a camp by their ships,
protected by a defensive wall. The almost flat meadow land between Troy and the ships
would then have been Homer’s Trojan plain, across which many battles were fought.
However, a century later all these assumptions changed when, in the early 1980’s, it was
discovered that a large wide estuary existed at the river mouth in the Late Bronze Age (LBA),
the presently assumed era in which the Trojan War took place. This discovery proved that, in
Trojan times, Hisarlik stood on a low hill immediately overlooking the estuary. There was,
therefore, no room for Homer’s great Trojan plain between Hisarlik and the coast, upon
which so much of the action of the Iliad took place. Homer’s Trojan War could not have
taken place here.
(c) Despite this setback, and in the apparent absence of an acceptable alternative, the
paradigm of Troy at Hisarlik was too strong to be allowed to die. The archaeologist M
Korfmann was brought in to help, and he soon found some LBA remains at Besika Bay on
the Aegean coast, some 10km SW of Hisarlik. This then became the newly accepted site of
Troy bay and the Achaean army’s camp. Prof. JV Luce leant further support in his well-
illustrated and popular book ‘Celebrating Homer’s Landscapes’ (1998). Luce argued, with a
little flexibility in translation and considerable imagination, how some of Homer’s best
known features of the Trojan plain might be identified between Besika Bay and Hisarlik.
Today, any discrepancies between Homer’s landscape descriptions, and the landscape around
Hisarlik, are usually explained as being examples of poetic license, where Homer used his
poetic imagination to embellish his story. The phrase ‘After all, Homer was a poet, not an
historian’ is sometimes heard. In their day, both Thucydides and Strabo, who greatly
respected the historical information within the Epics, would have strongly disagreed.
(d) A further major problem for Troy at Hisarlik, beyond those in text of the Iliad, is found
within the ‘Cypria’, one of the minor Epics within the Epic Cycle, of which only a brief
summary has survived. Here we find the story of the Mysian War. Mysia, in NW Anatolia
directly east of Lesbos, includes the great plain of the river Kaikos, now the Bakir Cayi. The
Cypria tells us that, when the army of Achaeans first sailed for Troy from Aulis, they got lost
and landed by mistake in Mysia. There they fought the locals and destroyed Teuthrania,
thinking they were at Troy. They realized their error when they found themselves opposed by
an army led by Telephus son of Heracles, king of Teuthrania. During the war, Telephus killed
the Greek hero Thersander, and was wounded in return by Achilles. After retreating and
reaching their ships, the Achaeans set sail for home. The fleet was scattered by a storm as
they left Mysia, but most of the Achaean army eventually reached home safely. Achilles ‘first
puts in at Scyros’, where he married Deidameia. He also healed Telephus, who according to
an oracle, would then, in due course, guide the Achaeans back to Ilium. Sometime later, they
mustered for a second time at Aulis. Here, Agamemnon offended Artemis, who sent a storm
to prevent them from sailing. On advice from Calchas, in order to calm the winds, they
attempted to sacrifice Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia to Artemis. At the last minute
Artemis ‘…snatched her away… putting a stag in place of the girl upon the altar.’ The
confederate army was then able to sail successfully to Troy. After a ten year war, the Trojans
were defeated, and Helen was brought back home to Sparta.
(e) Another minor Epic, the Little Iliad, also tells us, albeit indirectly, that Achilles had
fought a war in Mysia, the kingdom of Telephus. In the Loeb edition of the Epic Cycle
(p513), in section 5 we read ‘The author of the Little Iliad says that Achilles, after putting out
to sea from the country of Telephus came to land there. ‘The storm carried Achilles the son of
Peleus to Scyros, and he came into an uneasy harbor there in that same night.”
(f) If, as the Minor Epics tell us, such a war did take place in Mysia, this would have been the
first Trojan War, while the one said to have taken place around Hisarlik would have been the
second. Today, with Troy and Ilium rooted at Hisarlik, the Mysian War story is dismissed as
a myth. Indeed, from our Iliad and Odyssey, Homer seems to know nothing of an earlier war
in Mysia. In the Odyssey, there is no suspicion that Odysseus made two separate returns
home to his ever-faithful wife Penelope, after going to war against the Trojans.
(g) Rhys Carpenter, a brilliant American classical scholar, made an in-depth study the Mysian
war. In his book, (Folk tale, Fiction, and Saga in the Homeric Epics. UCLA. 1946) he studied
this story from ‘…other fragmentary accounts and illusions, ranging from Pindar to
Pausanias, Quintus Smyrneaus, and scholia on the Iliad…’ From these he pieced together
‘…something more of the lost tradition about this wretchedly mistaken expedition against
Troy.’ From Hecateus, Pausanias, in his day, found a shrine of Andromache at Pergamon.
The tomb of Thersander son of Polyneices, the Achaean hero killed by Telephus, was also
found at Elaia, Pergamon’s harbor. There he was still honoured as a local hero. After noting
other ‘far-reaching’ duplications, Carpenter wrote (p56) ‘…it is obvious that there were not
two stories but one – the same story told of two different places…For some story-tellers,
Teuthrania may in truth have been Troy.’
(h) In further support for this hypothesis, Carpenter mentioned ‘…the Oxyrhynchus papyrus
(xi.1359), which preserves a fragment of some epic of the Hesiodic School, setting the birth
of Telephus at Troy; but as Telephus cannot be uprooted from Teuthranian Pergamon, then
Pergamon for this poet from must have been Troy.’
(i) Carpenter further noted that ‘This same Pergamon may be an intruder into Homer’s Troy,
where it designates the highest quarter of the town where temples stand, whereas in
Teuthrania it is a place name in its own right…’, some 15 miles from the Kaikos mouth; and
‘…well suited to play the role of Troy for this broad river valley above the Aegean beaches.’
(j) After more perceptive comments, Carpenter concluded that the earlier of the two war
stories was the Aeolian story of the Mysian War. This, sometime later, had been transferred
to Hisarlik, which he called ‘the true Troy of Homer.’ He also suggested that, if this were the
case, the only realistic candidate capable of carrying out such a transfer was the Athenian
tyrant Pisistratus.
(k) Carpenter did not pursue this line of reasoning. No doubt, the famous view from Hisarlik
of the summit of Samothrace, seen in the distance over the intervening low lying island of
Imbros, acted for some as the ultimate deterrent against moving Homer’s Troy away from
Hisarlik. The Iliad tells us that from ‘the topmost peak’ of ‘Samos-well-wooded-of-Thrace’,
Poseidon watched the war taking place around the Greek camp, while waiting for his chance
to go there, behind Zeus’ back, to help the Achaeans. Many have assumed that this view was
included in the Iliad because Homer must have seen it for himself. Yet while Samos is
famous for being well-wooded, and for ship-building, Samothrace is not.
(l) Another reason why Carpenter apparently discounted Homer’s Troy at Pergamon, may
have been the lack, in his day, of evidence that the acropolis was occupied in the LBA.
Pergamon’s fame arose from the wealth of Attalid and Roman buildings being found, and
part reconstructed, on the beautiful hilltop. There were no historical sources suggesting it was
occupied before the Persian era. Hence the possibility that Ilios had once stood here did not
arise. The fact the Dorpfeld, when he moved to Pergamon after working for many years at
Hisarlik, found there a short section of a very ancient wall on the hillside which he saw was
very similar to those of Hisarlik’s LBA level Troy VI, appears to have gone unnoticed.
(m) Convinced that ‘the true Troy of Homer’ was at Hisarlik, Carpenter did not, apparently,
make a detailed comparison of Homer’s Trojan landscape with the landscape features visible
on what he called the ‘broad river valley’ below Pergamon. He also did not explore the
evidence from the Iliad showing that Troy and Ilios were nearby but separate walled cities.
(n) My studies confirm, with strong support from Homer’s text, that the Trojan War he
described was staged in ancient Mysia. Following an earlier study by J Lascelles, I have
shown in Vol.1, ‘Finding the plain of Troy’, (2011) that, contrary to what we find at Hisarlik,
all Homer’s landscape features can be seen, as and where described in the Iliad, in the plain
of the Bakir Cayi, below Pergamon. These include the beautiful hill Kallikolone with its
distinctive brow, the site of Priam’s ford by the tomb of Ilus, the Wall of Heracles, and the
famous mound in the plain before Ilios, around which the armies first assembled to do battle.
The river layouts of both Homer’s Scamander and Simois can also be reconstructed from
Homer’s text. This reconstruction broadly matches the routes of the two main rivers in the
plain below Pergamon, as they are likely to have existed in Homer’s time. The towering
natural acropolis of Ilios, the hot and cold springs as in Bergama, and Homer’s landscape
features, cannot be found, with any confidence, in the region between Hisarlik and the Greek
camp, whether this is located within the estuary or at Besika Bay.
(o) My Vol.1 was mainly concerned with finding Homer’s Trojan plain. At that time, and
without supporting archaeological evidence, I had followed Lascelles’ suggestion that the
probable site of Homer’s Troy was the relatively low mound of Musalla Mezarlik (cemetery
hill), just to the north west of the acropolis. Subsequently, I prepared a preliminary
unpublished report in 2019, based on a more detailed study of the archaeological evidence.
This confirmed that Musalla Mezarlik was a natural hill, not a build-up of many centuries of
previous occupation layers, as is found at Hisarlik. Instead, a much more probable site for
Troy lies on the low-lying area beside the natural springs of the ancient Bergama Asklepion.
This is close to an existing military camp, which may cover quite a large area of what
remains of ancient Troy. Its presence may help preserve the site from illegal excavation.
Blegen (1963) reported that a type of Anatolian Grey pottery was found at Hisarlik, there
called Grey Minyan Ware, in Troy VIh, VIIa, and VIIb. These are the settlement levels
thought most likely to represent Troy of the Iliad. This same pottery, now called ‘Anatolian
Grey Ware’, was shown by Dr. Hertel to have been found at the Asklepion and on Pergamon.
(p) Archaeological evidence for prehistoric occupation in the Kaikos valley is given by both
Prof. W Radt and Prof. B Horejs, in a splendidly illustrated volume, ‘Pergamon’ (2014),
edited by F Pirson and A Scholl. In his second chapter, Prof. Radt gives much evidence
which supports my study findings. He wrote ‘That the acropolis was inhabited as early as the
Bronze Age is highly probable…’ Also ‘Prehistoric pottery finds from 2M BC, painted proto-
Geometric sherds and other pottery of 10 th to 7C BC suggest that Pergamon was inhabited in
that period too.’ He further noted that there is good evidence of Bronze Age settlements in
the area of the hot and cold springs of the Asklepion.
(q) Prof. Horejs, in her chapter, (p106-119), also commented on the pre-historic material
found on Pergamon. Some finds also suggested a Hittite origin. ‘…Prehistoric finds kept
coming to light in the course of excavations in progress since the 19 th century, for example,
polished axes and adzes, which indicate at least temporary use of, or presence on, the
mountain in prehistory…’ As evidence of 2M BC occupation, ceramic fragments found
adjacent to the oldest walls included a beak-spouted jug. She wrote that Dr Hertel had carried
out a long detailed study of these ceramics, including much laboratory analysis. These were
‘…discussed at length in a recent article (Hertel 2011). Hertel postulates a Bronze Age date
of origin for the fortification walls, which were used continuously into antiquity.’ (Hertel
2011.34). Horejs added that ‘The further reaching conclusions of a central site larger than
Troy VI, with an affluent social elite, well organized power structures, and at least one
sanctuary’ (Hertel 2011.37-39) are unfortunately scarcely verifiable.’ Perhaps Hertel may
have had in mind the possibility that here once stood the ancient Hittite capital, described in
Luwian by C Watkins in his translation, as ‘steep Wilusa’.
(r) To summarise some of my study findings so far, we have found support for Homer’s
Trojan War being staged in Mysia from:
(i) the absence of the Iliad’s Trojan landscape at Hisarlik,
(ii) finding almost all Homer’s landscape features in the broad Kaikos plain below Pergamon,
(iii) evidence that the Achaeans did fight a war in Mysia, including destroying Teuthrania, as
told in two of the minor Trojan Epics, and in several other early literary sources; and
(iv) from archaeological evidence found on Pergamon and at the Bergama Asklepion.
Concluding Comments
All these findings support Rhys Carpenter’s suggestion, in 1946, that the Mysian War of the
minor Epics, and the Trojan War of the Iliad, were stories of the same war set in different
places. He also suggested that the most likely person to be able to move the stage setting of
this war from Mysia to Hisarlik, was the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus. My further studies
support, and build upon, these suggestions.
P J Crowe. 241224
Email: troyatbergama@gmail.com
Web site: thetroydeception.com