“In Search of the Trojan War”, by Michael Wood

272 pages, Facts on File, ISBN-13: 978-0816013555

I saw “In Search of the Trojan War” – that is, the BBC special upon which this companion book was based – ages ago on A&E…maybe in the early 90s? Anyway, the special was originally a 6-part documentary series written and presented by Michael Wood and broadcast in 1985 on BBC2 and examined the extent to which historical and archeological evidence matches the tale of the Trojan War as recounted by Homer in The Iliad. And man, did I think that was cool. The Iliad was real?! Achilles lived?! Helen rocked it?! Man, all of this was like honey to a bee for a young geeky historian wannabe who was still enamored of the past and was ever-eager to find out more more more about the past. As can be discerned from this blurb, for me the Trojan War held a grip on my imagination like few other events in mythology. Part of this interest in the myth is due to the startling confirmation over the past century that Troy was a real place, located exactly where the legend puts it with even minor details of topography from Homer’s text backed up by archaeological evidence. The book, In Search of the Trojan War, by Wood accompanies his series and outlines the discovery of the site of Troy – a hill in Turkey a few miles from the Dardanelles called Hisarlik – by the early archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the mid-19^th Century and the work by him and others in uncovering the site and other notable contemporary locations, including Mycenae.

Wood describes the problems associated with these digs, which tended to be rushed and even destructive – “Schliemann has left us with the ruin of a ruin”, he laments at one point – before later, proper archaeologists could work on the sites. Accompanied by illustrations and numerous photographs of the site (some modern, some from the recent past), Wood describes in clear detail the problems presented by the fact that Troy is divided into “layers”, with the city inhabited both before and after the time of the alleged Trojan War, and dating the war to the correct layer is problematic (both the Sixth and Seventh layers have been proposed as “Homer's Troy”, and both have issues fitting that conclusion). As would be expected from Wood, he describes the situation well, first exploring the archaeological unearthing of Troy and other important sites in the region, such as that of the Hittites, a mighty empire of the ancient world that had fallen so completely that evidence of its existence was only uncovered a century ago, and how they provided a missing link that explained the balance of power of the time. Sites contemporaneous with Troy are explored and shared pottery remnants and tablets written in the same languages are used to trace a network of trade and political relations between cities and nations. Pottery and pictures of the time depicting siege engines as stylized giant wooden horses smashing down city walls provide clues as to the origin of the Trojan Horse legend…but every time a conclusion seems to drift into view, it’s frustratingly snatched away by a gap in the records.

And so In Search of the Trojan War is a well-researched book that succinctly provides an overview of the archaeological history of the region and allows Wood to present the evidence for his broad conclusions about the period. Occasionally he gets drawn a little too far down the path of speculative musings rather than sticking strictly with the evidence, but these musings are well-signposted in advance. But I don’t think I would have enjoyed this book as much if I hadn’t seen the series it was written to accompany, so it may very well be that you, gentle reader, should watch the BBC series as well as read this book to get a full understanding of the topic.