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   CONTROVERSY 2001
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Fictitious debate in : Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - English Edition, July 26, 2001, p.7 by Uwe Walter.

FRANKFURT. Two books about Troy have just been published that illustrate the results of the much-noted excavations on the Hisarlik mound carried out by Manfred Korfmann, a Tübingen archaeologist. Appearing at an opportune moment when an exhibition about "TROIA: Dream and Reality" can be seen in Braunschweig until Oct. 14, these books also discuss the conclusions that can be drawn from the findings.
Joachim Latacz, classical scholar and Homer researcher, compellingly combines archaeological evidence with hypotheses from various disciplines and attempts to prove that Homer's "Iliad" was not the product of one man's poetic imagination, inspired in the eighth century B.C. by a few mysterious ruins from the dim and distant past, but rather the first written record of an unbroken chain of oral tradition passed down in hexameters, preserving the memory of a historical Trojan war that occurred during the Bronze Age. Latacz believes this ancient Troy to have been an important hub in the power complex of Asia Minor.
In his much smaller book, archaeologist Dieter Hertel focuses largely on the archaeological remains of the different Troys and argues the opinion that prevailed before Korfmann did his work, namely that Homer's epics cannot be used to reconstruct events that occurred during the second millennium B.C.
What certainly stands out is that both authors speak with a proselytizing voice. All the more necessary then for these authors to engage in dialogue, even if it is fictitious.FAZ.

   Walter: Mr. Latacz, your interest in Troy and Homer is not only more than an intellectual pastime, but also a way to understand our origins and to create light where "dark disorder " once prevailed. Mr. Hertel, you also feel obliged to instruct and inform while warning against the creation of new myths. Why have you written this manifesto of opposition?

   Hertel: Korfmann's suggestive computer reconstruction of Troy VI, the layer from about 1700 to 1300 B.C., shows it to be an ancient oriental capital functioning as a center of Bronze Age world trade with as many as 10,000 inhabitants; this idea was even picked up by the tabloids. But it is pure fantasy. High costs were involved and the media focused on positive "presentable" discoveries. There was the expectation, first raised by Heinrich Schliemann, that we could unearth the story of a great war, if not THE great war over Troy - all these things led to the extrapolation of theories from minimal and uncertain findings.

   Latacz:  As an archaeologist, why are you so sceptical about the possible insights your discipline can offer? It's not just evidence of the large city underneath and its impressive fortifications, admittedly cleared away in Hellenistic-Roman times, that shift Troy VI into the circle of Anatolian capital and trade cities ...

   Hertel:  Which I contest entirely!

   Latacz: .....but also a bronze seal found in 1995. Ist inscription and language put it in the context of Hittite-Luwian nation building, with Hattusa as the center. What the Greeks later named "Wilios," then "Ilios," was called "Wilusa" in Hittite times. The existence of this long-lived, quite independent realm has been verified in state treaties, in which, by the way, the reigning prince is called Alaksandu; in slightly modified form, this name found its place in the Greek epic and Homer (*) called him Alexandros, or Paris, Helena's abductor. The bronze seal is, probably from a Wilusian prince's chancellery.

   Hertel:  From the point of view of historical' linguistics, equating Wilusa with (W)Ilios/Troy is as unverified as equating Alaksandu and Alexandros. What's more important is that the bronze seal is a completely isolated find. There is no other indication that the inhabitants of Troy VI and VIIa (1300 to 1200 B.C.) could write, and there are hardly any Hittite, Mycenaean or even Egyptian findings there, either - altogether poor evidence for maintaining there was a "position of supremacy in a kind of Hanseatic system on the borderline between Europe and the Orient.

   Latacz: You always use the gaps for your arguments and ignore the continuously growing islands of knowledge that are beginning to link ever more clearly. Even if conventional linguistic evidence doesn't (yet) seem to match existing facts, the integration of archaeological and philological circumstantial evidence retrospectively corroberates a hypothesis that may have seemed dubious initially. It just doesn´t get us anywhere if archaeologists interpret only their wall fragments and pottery shards, philologists see their Homeric epics as the purely imaginative creations of an original genius, and historians refuse to acknowledge documents because they are not written in Greek. We simple can't afford specialized isolation and Eurocentrism any more! It should have been accepted long ago that the "Achaeans" or "Danaeans", Homer's names for those who attacked Troy, also appeared in Hittite and Egyptian texts , as the "Achiyava" or "Danaya". And, by the way, the Greeks always believed there was an old connection between the Greek region of Argos and Egypt, It could be that the Danaides myth actually has a historical root

   Walter: So Martin Bernal is right in talking about a "black Athena"?

   Latacz:  Please stick to the point! The question is, whether we can link a Greek epic, the Homeric text and Mycenaean people on the Peloponnese through verifiable non-Greek documents, and whether putting these together might suddenly make sense. Homer's plot is historical; the Iliad can be and has to be read as a history book. As we've known ever since the Linear B slabs were deciphered in 1956, the inhabitants of Mycenaean palaces spoke an early form of Greek and so were Greek, and ...

   Walter: Is equating language and ethnicity at all permissible?

   Latacz: Well, if you question that, then everything breaks down. There is a continuous line from the Greeks of the second millennium to those in the eight century B.C. There were farreaching changes in settlement patterns, as there were in economic, social and political relationships during the "dark centuries". But the human community that bore these changes stayed the same.

   Walter: I believe your last sentence is untenable because you are assuming that ethnic groups are entities that remain separate from their surroundings and resist change.

   Latacz: The facts are clear, In the second part of my book, my textual interpretation of the Iliad shows that the story of Troy, with all its names and exact geographical information - just remember the catalogue of ships! - was just a backdrop for Homer to develop a story in which the issues belonged to his and his audience's era, the eighth century B.C. But many of the background details were no longer understood at the time because the relevant places had long since disappeared. Homer couldn't have made it up, it would have been far too much effort for a work that tells the story of only 51 days in the Trojan War, centering on four people. Together with a lot of other circumstantial evidence, this proves that the Troy story was made into hexameters in Mycenaean times and passed on orally, with changes of course , course but basically authentic. That was what Homer was referring to. Mycenaean Grecks under Theban leadership in the 13th century B.C. probably really dealt Troy a great military blow. That was part of a historical struggle among three verv powerful circles shortly before two of them, the Mycenaean realm and Hattusa, broke down.

   Hertel:  But your grand scenario of a war or many wars falls through because Troy VI was not destroyed by external forces of human violence but by an earthquake and was then resettled immediately afterward. Around 1200 B.C., Troy VIIa then fell victim to an even greater disaster, but not necessarily a military attack. The same is true for Troy VIIb. After about 1000 B.C., when the Iron Age began, Greeks started to trickle into a sparsely populated Troy VIII. lf anything at all, this phased occupation and settlement of land by Aeolian Greeks is what provided a historical basis for the Iliad.

   Latacz: Your arguments are much too narrow and they are quite offhand in the "epic" part of your book. In the meantime, the cumulative probability that there was a historical Mycenaean event behind the Troy story shifts the burden of proof to the sceptics. Working on a strictly objective level researchers in all relevant disciplines make attempts daily to solve the puzzle. We should await their results with apprehensive excitement.

Dieter Hertel, Troia. Archäologie, Geschichte. Mythos (Troy: Archeology, History. Myth). Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2001. 128 pp., paperback. DM 14.80 ($7)
Joachim Latacz, Troia und Homer. Der Weg zur Lösung eines alten Rätsels (Troy and Homer: The Way to Solving an Old Puzzle). Munich/Berlin: Verlag Koehler & Amelang, 2001. 384 pp.. hardcover. DM 49.80 ($22).

© Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2001 

The debate was reprinted with kind permission by Verlag der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung. 

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Date Last Modified: 12/Dec/01
By: HGJ