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Notes on video lecture:
Was the Trojan War a Historical Event?
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on May 25, 2015 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
incorrect, Finley, politics, earliest, eradicated, others, dies, wife, vulnerable, dozen, Aegean, Mycenaean, Hittites, mindsets, embedded, destroyed, Greece, imploded, romantic, divide, memory, masonry, excavations, latest, Hisarlik, destruction, represents, businessman, ditch, Korfmann, poems, Schliemann, deliberately, burnt, antiquity, German, enthralled, Troy, disagreement
•
the Trojan War
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if it was fought, was the first great encounter between East and West
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the origin of the divide between us and the             
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a divide which continues to play itself out today in the context of Middle Eastern                 
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the Trojan War reminds us that the              has always been there
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its roots are so ancient that they may never be                     
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Homer tells us about the war as an                  reporter
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he has 100 different ways to describe how a man         
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invites us to enter into the                  of maniacal killers, heroes, cowards, common soldiers, officers and generals, husbands, wives, and parents, all those gathered up in the furious onslaught of war, all those whose lives are affected by it and all those whose lives are                    by it
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Heinrich                      (1822-1890)
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             businessman and a pioneer of field archaeology
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an archaeological excavator of                 , now presumed to be the site of Troy
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promoted the belief that the Iliad was based on history
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literally put Troy on the map
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an incurable                 
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a hard-headed                       
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made his fortune in the USA
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he had colossal energy and a phenomenal             
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he knew at least a            languages including Arabic and Greek
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it is said that he was given a history book at the age of seven and a picture of the capture of          deeply affected him
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at the age of fourteen he heard Ancient Greek being declaimed and the sound of the language utterly                      him
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he was also a first-rate fantasist, he couldn't stop making things up which includes his account of his                       
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he became utterly obsessed by Homer's legends and determined to prove that the Trojan War actually happened
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he lived the dream, he even divorced his first          to marry a Greek girl Sophia with whom he had two children who he named Agamemnon and Andromache
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he used his fortune to finance archeological digs when archeology was in its infancy
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he became, in effect, the father of the study of prehistoric             , the time before their were any written records
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we are still in the grip of Schliemann's vision, someone who we know to have misinterpreted his data, and in the view of many scholars, did so                         
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Hisarlik
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modern name for Troy
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four miles from              coast
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it would have been closer to the coast in                   
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but these settlements were not so close to the sea so they wouldn't be so                      to pirates
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problems
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1. which level of Troy                      the one belonging to the Trojan War?
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there are nine levels
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Troy 1
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the                 , the one at the bottom
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Troy 2
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Schliemann thought the legendary Troy was this one
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certainly                   
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Troy 6-8
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the most likely layer to be the legendary Troy
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Troy 9
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the latest, the one at the top
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the is no resolution yet
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Manfred                 
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             archeologist to do major work at the Troy archeological site
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excavated from 1988 to 2005, when he died
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discovered more than 50                    cremations south of Troy with grave goods
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might be evidence of the Greek camp
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found evidence of a defensive            around Troy
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similar to the one described by Homer
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no strong physical evidence of the huge city described by Homer
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but found Bronze Age pottery shards over 5 acres
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in his view was a large city
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shows evidence that Troy 6 came to an end due to                        caused by war
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what he couldn't say is whether the destruction was caused by the Mycenaeans Greeks
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if Troy was destroyed by the Mycenaeans, they didn't have long to bask in their victory
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Mycenaeans culture                  a half century later around 1200 BC for unclear reasons
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what was Troy like?
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houses made of mud brick
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circuit wall that enclosed the houses made of                was 4-5 meters thick
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stone on the lower courses, mud brick on the upper
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some scholars doubt the Trojan War
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there is not conclusive evidence
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there is good evidence that it was            but no evidence that it was burnt by the Greeks
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Sir Moses             
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Homer's war, the war of the           , and the war of the tradition, is a timeless event, floating in a timeless world
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there is some evidence that there was contact between the                  were in contact with peoples who might have been the Greeks
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whether the Trojan War happened will probably forever provoke                         

Vocabulary:

course, n. a continuous layer of building material, such as brick or tile, on a wall or roof of a building ⇒ "The circuit wall of Troy which enclosed the houses was built of masonry four to five meters thick and more than six meters high, the top part which was probably another three meters in height, was built of mud brick, that was the way the Ancients built circuit walls, stone at the lower courses, mud brick on the upper."

People:

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890)
German businessman, who, after making his fortune in America, became an archaeological excavator of Hisarlik, now presumed to be the site of Troy who promoted the belief that the Iliad was based on history
  • an incurable romantic and a hard-headed businessman
  • he had colossal energy and a phenomenal memory
  • he made his first fortune in Sacramento during the California Gold Rush and eventually acquired United States citizenship
  • he spoke and wrote in over a dozen languages, using them as in his career as a businessman in the importing trade
  • he claimed that it took him six weeks to learn a language and wrote his diary in the language of whatever country he happened to be in
  • by the end of his life, he could converse in English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Polish, Italian, Greek, Latin, Russian, Arabic, and Turkish as well as German
  • but he was also a first-rate fantasist, he couldn't stop making things up which includes the accounts of his excavations
  • he became utterly obsessed by Homer's legends and determined to prove that the Trojan War actually happened
  • he lived the dream and even divorced his first wife to marry a Greek girl Sophia with whom he had two children whom he named Agamemnon and Andromache
  • he used his amassed fortune to finance archeological digs at a time when archeology was in its infancy
  • he became, in effect, the father of the study of prehistoric Greece
  • today, regarding our historical knowledge of the Trojan War, we are still in the grip of Schliemann's obsessive and fanatical vision, someone who who both made important discoveries as well as misinterpreted much his data, and in the view of many scholars, did so deliberately

Spelling Corrections:

fantacist ⇒ fantasist
Mycenean ⇒ Mycenaean

Ideas and Concepts:

The Trojan War in perspective, via this morning's Greeks at War class: "The Trojan War, if it was ever fought, was the first great encounter between East and West, the origin of the divide between us and the others, a divide which continues to play itself out today in the context of Middle Eastern politics. The Trojan War reminds us that the divide has always been there, its roots so ancient that they may never be eradicated."
From the first-embedded-reporter department, via this morning's Greeks at War class: "Homer uses the story of the Iliad to tell us about war in all of its depth and breadth. He has one hundred different ways to describe how a man dies. He invites us to enter into the mindsets of maniacal killers, heroes, cowards, common soldiers, officers, generals, husbands, wives, and parents, all those gathered up in the furious onslaught of war, all those whose lives are affected by it, and all those whose lives are destroyed by it."
Background of the Trojan War
Was the Trojan War a Historical Event?
How Was the Iliad Poem Born?
The Homeric Question and the Trojan War
The Structure of the Iliad
Homer, the Heroic Code, and the Wastage of War
The Warrior's Experience of War