Troy and

Troy, Dardanelles and Pergamum

I forecast this was going to be the high point of the trip - I was finally going to see Troy. Having read the Iliad when I was a teenager and hearing the controversies over if there was an actual Troy, and if so where, I couldn't wait to see for myself. No, I would not be disappointed or surprised to see it yet in ruins. And that's as it should be, in my mind. I had seen enough of the site on television programs to know it would not resemble Egyptian or Roman sites. Yet I was surprised at what we saw. There were more complete sections than I thought there would be, while the site was more pristine than I expected.

While I thought Troy would be the best stop on the trip, I was proved to be wrong. Ephesus, which I was told would be more than spectacular, was - and I had never heard of Cappadocia. It went far beyond "Surprise!" The result was that Troy satisfied a life-long yearning, but other potions of Turkey proved to be much more memorable.

To get to Troy we had to cross the Dardanelles, and we were excited to do so. What a famous piece of water.

The Dardanelles

The Dardanelles or the Çanakkale Boğaz, which was known as the Hellespont (Sea of Helle), is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It is one of the Turkish straits, along with its counterpart the Bosporus. The strait is 38 miles long but only ¾ to 4 miles wide, averaging 180 feet deep with a maximum depth of 300 feet. Water flows in both directions along the strait, from the Sea of Marmara to the Aegean via a surface current and in the opposite direction via an undercurrent.

Like the Bosporus, it separates Europe at the Gallipoli peninsula from the mainland of Asia. The strait is an international waterway, and together with the Bosporus, the Dardanelles connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.

Hellespont

One of my favorite books is titled Gates of Fire, by Steven Pressfield, a novel about Thermopylae, where a small force of Greek warriors led by King Leonidas of Sparta held off Xerxes' army for three days before Leonidas and all his men were killed.

Xerxes arguably would not had the opportunity to fight Leonidas at Thermopylae had he not built a bridge across the Dardanelles at Hellespont.

Xerxes had two bridges built across the Hellespont. Soldiers of many nationalities served in the armies of Xerxes. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Xerxes’ first attempt to bridge the Hellespont ended in failure when a storm destroyed the flax and papyrus bridge; Xerxes ordered the Hellespont (the strait itself) whipped three hundred times and had fetters thrown into the water. Xerxes' second attempt to bridge the Hellespont was successful.

A note: My high point of our visit to Greece was to be Thermopylae. My sons, with a much broader background in history and having both read Gates of Fire, made me promise to take pictures of Thermopylae, the hot springs and the cliffs. Upon arrival I received the one of the greatest disappoints of my life – there is no Thermopylae. The cliffs are worn away. The two hot springs are rude ditches. A heavily traveled four lane divided highway runs through the remaining level ground where Leonidas would have stood, and the sea has receded at least five miles from this point. Don’t waste a moment on Thermopylae!

Crossing the Dardanelles

Europe left - Asia Right from Dardanelles

the Dardanelles

Looking towards the port of Gallipoli

The ferry

Dardanelles from port at Gallipoli

Gallipoli

Troy

Troy, or in Turkish "Truva" was a city, both factual and legendary, located in what is now northwest Turkey. It is best known for being the focus of the Trojan War, as described in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer. Trojan refers to the inhabitants and culture of Troy.

Today it is the name of an archaeological site, the traditional location of Homeric Troy, close to the seacoast in what is now Canakkale province in northwest Turkey, southwest of the Dardanelles under Mount Ida.

A new city of Ilium was founded on the site in the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. It flourished until the establishment of Constantinople and declined gradually during the Byzantine era.

In 1865 an English archaeologist, Frank Calvert, excavated trial trenches in a field he had bought from a local farmer at Hisarlik, near Truva and in 1868 a wealthy German businessman, Heinrich Schliemann, after a chance meeting between the two men in Canakkale, also began excavating in this area. Later excavations revealed several cities built in succession to each other. One of the earlier cities, Troy VII is generally identified with Homeric Troy.

The Horse, of course