The Troy Deception

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The way to solve a difficult problem, such as finding Troy, is to find the best way to approach it. Remember the old joke about the man lost in the Norfolk countryside. He finds a local and asks the way to Norwich. The local rubs his chin, thinks for a long time, then says ‘If I wanted to go to Norwich I wouldn’t be starting from here.’

And that, for the last 2,500 years, was the problem with finding Troy. The approach was wrong. Everyone looking for Troy looked directly for an ancient ruined city in what they thought was a likely place. But when they found one, the plain of Troy as described in the Iliad was nowhere to be seen. So the whole story was dismissed as a myth.

Today’s Troy at Hisarlik is the worst example of all. Here, not only was the Trojan battlefield nowhere to be seen, it never even existed! By 1982, soil studies in what was thought to be the plain of Troy had shown that this plain, in Trojan times, was actually a large bay at the mouth of the river. To put it bluntly, 3,200 years ago Hisarlik was a coastal fortress. Here there was no great battlefield between Troy and the sea, upon which Homer’s heroes fought the Trojan War. If the story is not to be condemned as a fairytale we must try a different approach.

Now, more lines in the Iliad describe various parts of the plain of Troy than describe Troy and Ilios. The Iliad gives us a much better picture of the plain of Troy than of Troy itself. So logically the best way to find Troy is to start by looking for the Trojan plain. Once the plain of Troy is found, it will lead us to Ilios and Troy. Volume 1 of my book, called ‘Finding the plain of Troy’, does exactly that.

Volume 1 shows that the Plain of Troy really does exist. It is not a myth, as many people have previously believed. The battlefield of the Trojan War, as described in the Iliad, has now been found at Pergamon / Bergama. As John shows in Volume 2, this means Homer’s Ilios must have been on Pergamon and Troy was at Bergama.

This discovery is beyond reasonable doubt. Homer’s Trojan landscape is there for all to see. It lies where Homer tells us it should, between Lesbos and Phrygia ‘in the uplands’, due east of the island of Lesbos. All the features of the Trojan landscape are there, exactly where and as described in the Iliad. All the famous features of the Trojan plain, such as Kallikolone and the Wall of Herakles, the seats of the gods as they watched the war, are still there for us to see and enjoy. We now can appreciate that a story which has captured the imagination of the world for over 2,500 years was set in a real landscape that has changed very little over the millennia.

John’s discoveries add a new and unexpected degree of integrity to Homer’s descriptions of the Trojan landscape. He presents knowledge that has been hidden from the world for over 2,500 years, giving Homeric scholars the opportunity to reappraise the historicity of both the Trojan War and Homer, perhaps the world’s greatest epic poet. John, who hopes his findings will enhance the credibility of Homer as a witness of ancient history, was inspired by John Lascelles, who wrote Troy: The World Deceived – Homer’s Guide to Pergamum. The Troy Deception will appeal to all those interested in the origins of western culture and ancient Greek history, and to anyone who enjoys a good detective story.

Errata:
1. p.163 Under Figure 13.1, replace ‘Perganon’ with “Pergamon”
2. p.282 Notes to Chapter 16, Note 5, replace “Achillies” with “Achilles’ son Neoptolemus”
3. p.284 In Glossary under Agamemnon, replace ‘in Laconia’ with ‘and Argos’
4. p.250 In Note, insert after ‘Homer’s reference here ‘if by him’, is to Jason, etc…
This later part of Chapter 7 may not be by Homer