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To: SunkenCiv
I've been following some of the links in this thread backwards to find out what the controversy is all about, and I admit I'm stumped. I'd appreciate if you would give me the scoop, in fifty words or less.

This has something to do with archaeologists trying to find historical references in other cultures concerning interaction with ancient Troy, yes?

12 posted on 05/05/2007 7:00:06 PM PDT by Ciexyz
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To: Ciexyz

Emil Forrer first identified the Achaeans (Homer’s usual identifier for the Greeks) in the Hittite archive. That was back circa 1930. The stench of Arthur Evans and his non-Greek Minoan thallosocracy still hung over everything, and in some places still does. There remains a sort of manic response to Schliemann — less than ten years ago there were a couple of (alleged) researchers who claimed that the so-called Mask of Agamemnon had been faked by Schliemann. That’s a form of mental illness, whatever his failings may have been.

Anyway, Forrer’s identification was rejected. It first started to revive for real thanks to the efforts of Michael Wood. In the DVD set, Wood said something interesting. He thought that Schliemann’s rubbish tips at Hissarlik would be a great place to sift through to see if any tablets were tossed. If there had been an archive of some sort (even a small one), it probably would have been in the citadel, which is something Schliemann mostly destroyed in his first excavation of the site.

There’s still debate obviously about whether the Trojan War was historical, but all the evidence points to its historicity. This doesn’t mean that Washington threw a coin across the Delaware, or chopped down the cherry tree, only that the documentary evidence that a war was fought by the Mycenaean Greeks in Troy.


13 posted on 05/06/2007 1:14:42 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (I last updated my profile on Thursday, May 3, 2007. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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