In Search of the Trojan War (1985): Season 1, Episode 5 - The Empire of the Hittites - full transcript

Berlin: symbol of the political struggles
of the 20th century.

Focus of modern confrontations
between the superpowers of East and West.

To Berlin the search
for the Trojan War now returns,

and, for the first time, it leads
to documentary sources for Homer's story.

In our search for the Trojan War,

we now come to perhaps
the most sensational evidence of all.

A prehistoric foreign-office archive

in which, on the face of it, we could actually
have letters written to Agamemnon himself,

a treaty with Paris, the lover of Helen of Troy,

and even, in the most dramatic
of all recent finds,

a fragmentary diplomat's report
concerning the war itself.



(CRASH OF THUNDER)

According to Greek legend,
as told in Homer's epic poem, the "Iliad",

Agamemnon, king of Mycenae in Greece,

led a great expedition against Troy,
a city in Asia Minor.

The war was fought to punish the seizure
of a Greek queen, Helen,

by the Trojan prince, Paris.

Homer says Agamemnon was a Great King

and had allies from all over Greece
and the islands.

After 10 years' war, Troy fell,

and its royal family, including Paris,
was wiped out.

But is it possible that the love affair
of Paris and Helen

was really, as the ancients thought,
a pretext for a struggle

between ancient superpowers
of East and West?

And if it was, why has it apparently
left no trace in historical record?



The late Bronze Age, the 13th century BC,

was a time of great empires in the Near East.

Babylon, ancient but now declining.

Assyria, a rising militarist power
in what is now Iraq.

Egypt, ruled for most of the century
by the great builder, Ramses II.

And lastly, the Hittites, in what is now Turkey,

ruling from the Egyptian frontier
all the way to the Aegean Sea.

It Is the Hittites who are the key
to this stage of our search.

Boghazkoy, in the mountains
200 miles east of Ankara, Turkey.

In the Bronze Age, this was the capital
of the Hittite Empire, Hattusas.

In the 13th century BC, when legend says
Paris lived in Troy and Agamemnon in Greece,

this was one of the great cities of the world.

Then, these hills were covered
by temples, houses,

and a huge royal residence on the great fort,

where ambassadors were received
from Egypt and Babylon.

In a secluded rock cleft nearby

was the private chapel of the Hittite emperors
who lived at the time of the Trojan War.

Here, they prayed to the great gods of Hatti,

chief among them, fittingly in this wild place,
the storm god.

(THUNDER)

It was at Boghazkoy that a discovery was made

which has potentially sensational implications
for our search.

A diplomatic archive written on clay tablets.

This was just one of the archives here
at Boghazkoy. There were in fact several.

One temple archive has been discovered
as recently as 1983.

This was the key diplomatic archive.

It still bears the marks of the destruction,

the fire which swept Boghazkoy
in about 1180 BC.

You can see here the burned remains
reddened by that final fire.

It was here in 1906 that the Germans made

perhaps the single most significant
discovery in Anatolian archaeology.

The find of about 2,500 baked clay tablets

inscribed with cuneiform writing,

scattered all over this area
and in these rooms.

As luck had it the find included
Hittite foreign-office records

covering the very period of the Trojan War.

But at that moment, no one could read them.

After their discovery, the Boghazkoy tablets
were removed to Berlin,

which became the centre of research
into the Hittites.

There, at the end of the First War,
the Hittite language was deciphered.

Soon afterwards, in the Pergamon Museum
in what is now East Berlin,

a young Swiss scholar was working
on the translation of one group of tablets.

His name was Emil Forrer.

(HORSES' HOOVES CLATTER,
CHILDREN AT PLAY)

(A CLOCK TICKS)

What Forrer saw next,
in the little study room of the museum,

was one of the most remarkable
of all discoveries in the search for Troy.

Peering at the cuneiform writing,

he started to see strange versions of names
he knew all too well from Homer.

Here, apparently, were repeated references
to the land of the Achaeans,

Homer's word for the Greeks.

Here was Troy itself.
Atreus, the father of Agamemnon.

Even Alexandros of Ilios,

Homer's other name for Paris, the prince
who carried off Helen of Troy herself.

For Forrer, born a few years
after the death of Heinrich Schliemann,

it seemed likely that these tablets

should mention the Greeks
as an important state.

What more natural that alongside
the powers of the ancient Near East

should have been
Schliemann's Golden Mycenae?

Schliemann, after all, had shown that Mycenae

was the richest and most powerful
kingdom in Bronze Age Greece,

with its immense royal tombs

and the coat of arms of the house
of Agamemnon above its gate.

In a palace here, thought Forrer,
had ruled a Greek Great King,

a fringe member of the select diplomatic club
of the ancient Near East.

To him, the Hittite emperor wrote
as a brother and an equal.

The theory was daring and exciting.
Too exciting, perhaps.

By the 1930s, it had been thrown out by
the academic world as unproved speculation.

But are the Greeks in the Hittite texts?

In this stage of our search,
we shall try to show that they are

and that the legend of the Trojan War
could go back to real events towards 1260 BC,

recorded by the Hittite emperor, Hattusilis III.

We must remember that since the decipherment
in 1952 of the Greek Linear B texts,

we now know
what Emil Forrer's generation did not.

The Bronze Age rulers of Mycenae
were Achaean Greeks, as Homer says.

We also now know that the Greeks
had relations at ambassadorial level

with at least one of the superpowers, Egypt.

Here at Egyptian Thebes, now Karnak,

Cretan and Greek traders
had unloaded their wares for two centuries.

And an inscription found here recently

shows that Egyptian foreign relations experts
knew about the towns of Greece,

especially Mycenae.

But can the Egyptians tell us
what status the Greek kingdoms had

in this world of Near Eastern diplomacy?

An expert in Bronze Age international relations
at Liverpool University, Dr Ken Kitchen.

Is it possible to guess at what
the Egyptian attitude to Mycenaean Greeks was?

Foreigners on the edge of civilisation,
would be their view, quite simply!

The outer rim of the world they knew.

Egypt in the middle, the Nubians
and the peoples of Punts to the south.

The Libyans to the west,
the ancient Near East of Canaan

and the great powers of Assa and Babylon
out to the east and north, Hatti on the north,

and out on the northern edge
the Hau Nebu, these little islands of foreigners,

what we call the Greeks and others,
on the outer margins.

We talk about great powers of the day but was
there a grading of superpowers and lesser ones?

Very definitely.
You had to have certain achievements,

presumably warlike successes
or a certain level of empire,

to take the formal title of Great King.

There was a definite set of kings
who'd be recognised as superpowers.

There was Egypt, the Hittite kingdom,
Babylon traditionally had been one,

and Assyria claimed it from the Hittites
when she conquered a Hittite province,

which did not amuse the Hittites at all.

The Assyrian king said,
"I am Great King now, my brother."

And the Hittite king wrote back in fury,
"Don't you brother me!"

"Are we sons of the same mother?"
was his bitter remark.

So there's a very definite superpower status.

But according to Homer's "Iliad",
Agamemnon had just such status.

He was a Great King,
not only of mainland Greece,

but of many islands including Crete and Rhodes.

If this is true, was it recorded

by the diligent and expert diplomats
of the Hittite foreign office?

Homer insists the Bronze Age Greeks
called themselves Achaeans,

"Achawoi"...

But the Hittites speak of a powerful kingdom
to the west called Ahhiyawa.

Are they the Greeks?

Where was Ahhiyawa?

There are many theories. Was it perhaps
in Thrace, present-day Bulgaria?

Could it have been an Anatolian state,
based at Troy itself?

Was it an island kingdom, for example
Rhodes, which was colonised by Greeks?

Or could it be a mainland Achaean Greek power

perhaps centring on Mycenae itself,
as Homer's tale would suggest?

(SHIP'S HORN SOUNDS)

The Hittite archive gives us
several key facts about Ahhiyawa.

It was a seagoing state with wide contacts.

Relations with the Hittites
were at times friendly, at times hostile.

Most important,
the Hittite foreign office viewed Ahhiyawa

as a top-ranking power
around the time of the Trojan War,

for they addressed its ruler as a Great King.

That brings us to this fascinating document.
This is a rough draft of a solemn treaty

made out between the Hittites
and the Syrian state of Amuru.

It was drawn up for the Emperor Tudhalias IV,
probably around 1220 BC

and probably after the Trojan War.

In it are fascinating lines where Tudhalias

names the kings who were of the top rank,
the kings on the same rank as himself.

Lugal Uru Misri, the king of Egypt.

Lugal Kur Kardunias, the king of Babylon.

Lugal Kur Asur, the king of Assyria.

And Lugal Kur Ahhiyawa, the king of Ahhiyawa.

But, tantalisingly, the scribe

has crossed out the word Ahhiyawa
before the clay had even dried.

There are only two conclusions
we can draw from that.

One is that the king of Ahhiyawa was no longer
of the front rank in world politics.

The second, and simpler, is that...

the terms of this treaty, which is only
a rough draft, were not meant to apply to him.

But either way, it would seem
that this mysterious king

was a great figure
in eastern Mediterranean politics.

But was he a Greek king?

Some scholars totally reject
the Mycenaean connection.

James Mellaart of the University of London.

There's no evidence of what they called
themselves at all. We do not know.

- I think in this case, before we jump...
- We do know they were Greek, though.

We know they were Greek
because the texts are in Greek.

If I was going to argue for the Greeks
being the kingdom of Ahhiyawa,

I would say, well, here we have clearly

a major kingdom to the west
of the Hittites' sphere of influence.

A kingdom which interferes
militarily and diplomatically

with the Hittites on their western fringe.

It's a kingdom that sends ships
trading with Syria.

A kingdom which even has
exchanges of royal family, occasionally.

So they've got friendly relations.

All that seems to fit the Greeks very well.
It's quite a plausible model.

Why don't you think it's plausible?

- Plausible is the word you stress.
- (LAUGHTER)

I think what is becoming rather an irony

is that whereas Mycenaean archaeologists
have now almost reached the point

where they say there was no such thing
as a "Great" Mycenaean state,

but a lot of small ones, all fighting each other...

On the basis of one, literally one reference

in Hattusilis's letter to the King of Ahhiyawa,

where he calls him "My brother,"
and therefore Great King...

We've got a bit of a contradiction here!

All right, you can no doubt link this
to Agamemnon, et cetera

but I don't think anybody in recent years
has tried to...

You could easily argue it on the basis
of the archaeology.

Looking at Pylos, Mycenae, Knossos...

There's a good argument for the same culture,

down to the minutest details
of the Linear B form, isn't there?

Indeed, but hardly a united kingdom.

A whole series of kingdoms, quite clearly.

And that is not the sort of thing
one might expect from the Mycenaean side.

No overlord of the whole lot.

Not even in Homer's "Iliad".

Agamemnon plays very much
second fiddle to Achilles.

(WOOD) We're in the narrow seas between the
coast of Turkey and the Greek islands opposite.

A place which has been a cultural crossroads
for 3,000 years.

For longer than civilisation has existed,

ordinary people, men, women,
their belongings and children,

have crossed here to try and settle
and scratch a living.

In the time that legend assigns the Trojan War,

we know now that the islands
which we call Greek,

like Kos opposite us,
were already settled by Greeks

and that the Greeks had already got
their foothold on the shores of Asia Minor.

As in places like this one, Halicarnassus,

now Bodrum with its great Crusader castle.

This was a slave market in Mycenaean times.

From this place, raw materials and slaves
were exported to mainland Greece

by a rich colonial middle class
whose cemeteries have been discovered.

It was places like this
which were the potential flashpoints

in the late Bronze Age Aegean world
of the 13th century BC.

Recently, archaeology has given fresh clues

confirming the Greek presence
on the fringe of the Hittite world.

Their pottery has been found in 30 places.

In Greek Linear B tablets,

six place names have so far been identified
where the Greeks took Asian slave women.

Most important,
three places in south-west Turkey

have now revealed evidence
of Greeks actually living in Asia Minor.

Chief among them was Miletus.

Once the greatest of all Greek cities in Asia,

Miletus now lies abandoned,
its lifeblood drained away

when the Maeander River silted up its harbours.

In the late Bronze Age, around 1300 BC,

Miletus stood on a sea-girt promontory.

It was fortified with a circuit wall
enclosing an area larger than Mycenae.

Almost all the evidence is now obliterated

but a palatial building stood on a low hill
Inside the town.

Nearby are the remains
of typically Greek chamber tombs.

A well-to-do cemetery
where rich citizens of Miletus were buried

with Greek grave goods imported from Mycenae.

The question arises, exactly what kind of place
was Miletus in the late Bronze Age?

It would be tempting to call it a Mycenaean
colony, but it's not as simple as that.

It was obviously a place where many races met.

People of Anatolian, Carian origin,

people of Cretan origin, Greeks,
maybe even a sprinkling of Hittites.

A Hittite pilgrim flask has turned up here.

So it was a cosmopolitan place.

But there must've been a strong central authority.

Because only a strong authority,
and one with money and influence,

could've built that great circuit wall
around the low promontory

which was Mycenaean Miletus there.

And, presumably, that authority lived
in the palatial building on that hill.

But was that central authority Greek?

Was Miletus even ruled from mainland Greece?

Its name seems to appear
in Greek Linear B tablets

as a place from which the mainland
Greek rulers imported Asian slave women.

The Greeks called it Milatos.

Earlier, perhaps Milwatos.

But according to the Hittite foreign office,

there was a city
on the western coast of Asia Minor

controlled by the foreign power of Ahhiyawa.

A city they called Millawanda, later, Milawada.

And the Hittites and Ahhiyawa had
a major diplomatic crisis over this place.

Are Miletus and Millawanda the same?

If we can prove they are,
then Ahhiyawa can only be mainland Greece.

(ORDERS IN GERMAN)

(DRUMROLL)

And in the surviving tablets in East Berlin,

we begin to glimpse a story with a modern ring.

A story of political jostling between superpowers

who were willing to sacrifice lesser states
to political expediency.

(MARCHING MUSIC)

The hidden workings of such diplomacy
are difficult enough to fathom today,

the true meaning of the words themselves
often elusive.

But the Hittite tablet describing
the Millawanda affair

needs to be listened to carefully,
complicated though its story is,

for it is the turning point in our search.

This letter contains our crucial evidence
for this stage of the search.

It's the office copy of a letter
written by the Hittite emperor Hattusilis III

to an unnamed king of Ahhiyawa -
we think of Greece -

around the year 1250 BC,
about the time of the Trojan War.

It's known as the Tawakalewas Letter

but in fact, its subject
is a villain called Pijamaradus.

I'm afraid we'll have to put up
with a few unpronounceable names

at this point in our story.

It's worth remembering that in Hittite eyes,
Pijamaradus is quite simply the baddie.

Evidently, he was a powerful
dispossessed royal adventurer

operating somewhere off the coasts
of western Anatolia

in collusion with Ahhiyawa, we think the Greeks.

And in collusion with none other than
the brother of the king of the Greeks himself

whom the Hittites called Tawakalewas.

Pijamaradus had evidently
once been a Hittite subject

but now he's terrorising
their local allies in the west

and breaking up the network of alliances
built up by Hittite diplomacy,

by the men of Hattusilis's foreign office.

The centre of the trouble is a city the Hittites
called Millawanda, or Milawada,

somewhere on the western coast,
and it was controlled by Ahhiyawa - the Greeks.

Eventually, Hattusilis has to journey

all the way across from Boghazkoy
to sort these events out himself.

And this is the letter he wrote
to the Greek king explaining his actions.

In it, he gives the names of a number
of places he travelled through on his way west.

And these are they.

Most of them cannot be identified.

The only safe one is the first, the Hittite
capital Hattusas. The starting point.

But if we could only
pin the others down on the ground,

we'd have a marvellous chance of showing
that the Greeks really are in this archive,

and that would have incalculable effects
for our search for the Trojan War.

So finding Millawanda
is the next stage of the search.

The empire administered from Hattusas

depended on its ability
to protect its distant provinces.

And Hattusilis was not a man to refuse
the challenge of a villain like Pijamaradus.

Now around 60, brother of the late king,
Hattusilis had been a sickly child

but by great willpower
had become the Hittites' best general

And then, when he deposed
his unpopular nephew,

Great King himself, as he put it,
"With the blessing of the storm god."

(CRASH OF THUNDER)

Now in still powerful middle age,
politician and generalissimo,

Hattusilis was a shrewd if tetchy diplomat
and a dangerous enemy.

And with the outer provinces of his empire
threatened, he had to act.

One spring day in around 1250 BC,
he set out for the west.

(GALLOPING HORSES' HOOVES)

A week into the journey, the letter says
Hattusilis reached the road junction of Sallapa

probably modern Sivrihisar,
100 miles west of Ankara.

Here, he was met by his son,
who brought bad news.

A conciliatory offer to Pijamaradus
had been curtly snubbed.

(ORIENTAL MUSIC)

After Sallapa, the main western road ran,
as it still does,

to the modern town of Afyon,
the Hittite fortress of Hapanuwa.

Administrative centre
of the Roman and Ottoman empires,

Afyon still has great blocks
of prehistoric defences

under the medieval castle on its fairy-tale crag.

But which way do we go from here?

Hattusilis obviously knows
where he's going but we don't.

All we know is he's going westwards
towards the coast.

But the coast of Asia Minor is a very big place.

Really, this is our crunch, here in Afyon.
From here, we have to make the decision

as to whether we're going to go up towards
the sea of Marmara in the north-west,

near the region of Troy itself,
to look for Millawanda.

Are we going to go directly westwards
towards modern Ismir?

Or are we going to go down
into the south-western corner,

opposite the Greek islands of Kos and Rhodes?

To me, the evidence for the south-western
location is absolutely overwhelming.

The question centres on the people that
the Hittites and Hattusilis called the Lukka people,

who called in Hattusilis all the way
from Boghazkoy to help them.

Are they the people who later
lived in Licyia, today Lysia,

this south-western coastal area?

They also appear in the guise of pirates
raiding Cyprus down here,

which is really barely conceivable
if they lived up in the sea of Marmara.

But most interesting of all,
a number of the towns in Lysia

seem to have preserved their names
from Hittite times through to classical times.

1,000 years or more.

So I think the Lukka people are to be found
in this south-western area known later as Lysia

and that, I think, is where Hattusilis headed
and that's where we're going to go.

Easy to imagine the bustle
as Hattusilis gave the order to depart.

The troops singing their marching song.

The royal kinsmen, the wine master.

Sahurunwas, the master of the scribes on wood.

Kamailyas, the head cook.

And the rest of the king's immense retinue.

Drive the modern route
to the Aegean from Afyon

and you're on the line
of the Roman and Persian roads

and probably the Hittite before them.

It is one of the immemorial travel routes
through Anatolia.

400 miles into the journey,
the arid landscape of the Anatolian plateau

gives way to the fertile valley of the Maeander,
the greatest of the rivers of Asia Minor.

The place is now called Pamukkale.

Here, the ancient road
descended into the river plain

before heading west on the last leg towards
the Aegean Sea and the Greek world.

Pressing on to the sea,
which way did Hattusilis go now?

There are two choices today:
the modern main road, straight west to the coast.

The ancient road, which turns
abruptly southwards, away from the sea.

Take the southern route,
and you soon reach a fertile plain

and the ruins of a city called Alabanda.

The name matches the first place Hattusilis
came to in the Lukka lands.

Valivanda.

Hattusilis's letter now gives us another clue.

The next place he reached
was a fortress called Iyalanda

on a steep and waterless height.

If we're on the right track, then Iyalanda
lay somewhere in these hills

and Hattusilis soon found out
that it was dangerous country.

"I was attacked there in three places.

"Now, the hill of Iyalanda is very steep
and difficult to attack

"so I dismounted and went up on foot.

"I smashed the enemy there.

"| took many prisoners
and I devastated Iyalanda."

To find the site of Hattusilis's victory,

you have to leave the car,
Just as the emperor left his chariot,

and climb to the summit on foot.

Here, high above the ancient route
to the Aegean,

is a forbidding hill, precipitous and waterless.

The classical builders had to construct
an aqueduct to supply it.

This natural fortress was sieged
only with great difficulty

by Alexander the Great himself
1,000 years later.

Under its tremendous classical ruins
lie earlier defences.

It is called Alinda.

Again, the Hittite name
survived until later times.

So we are on Hattusilis's track
and somewhere not far ahead

lie the villainous Pijamaradus and his shadowy
foreign master, the king of Ahhiyawa.

Such thoughts were on Hattusilis's mind
as he camped nearby.

For now he had his scribe write again
to the Ahhiyawan king.

"My brother, I'll tell you exactly what happened.

"As we were short of water, I divided my forces
and left my 7,000 prisoners under light guard.

"But Pijamaradus seized them.

"I would've let bygones be bygones but for that.

"My brother, I wrote to him a last time,
asking him to come here to me,

"and I write to you, asking whether
you know of his attacks on me.

"I have done all this before I cross
into your territory around Millawanda."

Camped nearby,
Hattusilis waited for a reply from Ahhiyawa.

Time was running out,
the empire needed him elsewhere...

"But when my brother's envoy
arrived at my quarters,

"he brought me no friendly greeting from you
and no customary gift.

"But he did say that you had instructed
your governor in Millawanda

"to hand over Pijamaradus to me."

(MUZZHEDIN SINGS)

That was what Hattusilis wanted to hear.

He would go to Millawanda himself
and take Pijamaradus.

And that, let us remember,
involved crossing over a foreign frontier

recognised by treaty by his foreign office.

There is only one way Hattusilis
can have gone now.

North-west towards the sea.

The ancient road ran along
what is now a great salt lake, Bafa Gol.

Once sea, Lake Bafa has now been cut off from
the Aegean by the silting of the Maeander,

but in the Bronze Age, it formed a great gulf
around which the land route to the west

had to make its long detour
through the mountains.

Then, the Maeander flowed
into an immense bay.

And in that bay lay Hattusilis's goal,
the city of Millawanda.

Mycenaean Miletus.

Now lying low,
baking in the silt plain of the Maeander,

then washed by the sea with a magnificent
backdrop of the Greek islands behind.

What happened next
we have in Hattusilis's own words.

And after a week on the road in his company,
it was easy to put yourself in his shoes.

(SHOUTING AND JEERING)

"I entered your city, Millawanda,

"because I have a few things to say
to Pijamaradus

"that I think it would be good
the rest of your citizens here listened to.

"But my visit here has not gone very well.

"I ask to see your brother, Tawakalawas,
and I'm told he's away.

"I ask to see Pijamaradus and I'm told
he's taken a ship and gone overseas.

"Meanwhile, while all this is going on,

"I receive a letter from you, a letter
that can only be described as insolent,

"adopting a tone barely tolerable between equals.

"Forbidding me - forbidding me! -

"to remove Pijamaradus from Millawanda.

"You write to me, my brother, as a Great King.

"As my equal.

"But in your letter,
I do not hear the language of an equal..."

If I can just say something here -
this is very interesting.

Hattusilis throughout his life was very touchy

about the way he came to the throne -
he'd deposed his nephew.

Anybody who suggested he wasn't
a genuine Great King made him see red.

Ramses II of Egypt had to write to him saying,

"Look, my brother, of course you're a Great King,

"you've done wonderful things,
don't worry about it."

"Are you aware, or is it even with your blessing,

"that Pijamaradus is going around boasting
that he intends to leave his wife, children,

"and, incidentally, my 7,000 prisoners
under your protection

"while he continues his piratical tirades
against my territory?

"Look, we're friends, you and I.

"There's been no disagreement between us
since the affair over Wilusa,

"when, I'm sure, I was able to persuade you
that it was no cause for war between us.

"As for my armed occupation of your town,
Millawanda,

"look upon it as a friendly visit, hm?

"I'm sorry if I appeared impolite or aggressive.

"It's true, I was a little hot-headed in the past.

"From now on, let's live together
in perfect friendship."

- "Thank you."
- (APPLAUSE)

(RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE)

Tremendous, isn't it?

Can you imagine any modern government
being so... reasonable?

Reasonable, perhaps,
but Hattusilis had little choice.

His hold over his western protectorates
was now unsteady.

In the face of Ahhiyawan command of the sea,

he had to be conciliatory towards
the Great King of Achaea land.

For if we have read the Hittite archive right,

it was the mainland Greeks who held Miletus.

And in the eyes of the Hittite foreign office,
there was a Great King of Greece,

just as Homer's tale has it.

A king who interfered militarily
on the shores of Asia Minor,

exactly as the "Iliad" remembered.

And where is more likely for the seat
of that power in the 13th century BC

than Homer's Golden Mycenae?

On the face of it, Hattusilis's correspondent
could be Agamemnon himself.

So there is a new question to ask
of the Hittite foreign office.

Do they have records of Troy?

The mound of Troy called Hisarlik

stands on a ridge at the mouth
of the Dardanelles in north-west Turkey.

It has been excavated three times:

by the Germans Heinrich Schliemann
and Wilhelm Dörpfeld,

and the American Carl Blegen.

It was Dörpfeld who found the great royal
citadel now called Troy VI.

Its fine walls and towers suggest it was
the capital of a medium-sized kingdom.

Though an Anatolian city,
presumably Anatolian in speech,

it had long-time trading relations
across the Aegean

with Agamemnon's Mycenae.

This city was violently destroyed
in Hattusilis's day

but the excavators disagreed as to whether the
cause was an earthquake or the hand of man.

Blegen thought Homer's Troy
was the successor to Troy VI,

which he called Troy VIIa, a city a shanties
which fell a few decades later.

But was either of these cities
the Troy of the Trojan War

and can the Hittite texts
help us decide the question?

In the "Iliad", Homer calls the city
by two names,

Troia, and more often,
Ilios, originally pronounced "Wilios".

In this general area, an earlier Hittite tablet

names two places,
Taruisa and, next to it, Wilusia.

At the time of the Trojan War, they may have
come within an important state called Wilusa.

According to Emperor Hattusilis,
it was over this state

that the Hittites
actually came to blows with the Greeks.

Was Wilusa Troy?

In the British Museum, another fragment
of a Hittite tablet from Boghazkoy

gives further clues about
the historical kingdom in western Anatolia

which may lie behind the city in the "Iliad".

It is a treaty between the king of Wilusa
and Hattusilis's brother

which could put it into the period
of the Trojan War.

The Hittite emperor demands military aid
from his western ally in time of war.

"If I, the son, am called out on campaign,"

says the Hittite king, "these campaigns
are obligatory from Hattusas.

"If the king of Egypt or Assyria
marches against me,

"and I write to you for chariots and infantry,
you must come and help."

That treaty dates from about the time
of the great battle at Cardesh

in between the Hittites and the Egyptians
in which the Egyptian intelligence department

had information that among
the Hittite western allies

were a people known as Dardani,
the very name Homer gives to the people of Troy.

It really is a coincidence that can't be avoided.

And in that case, the next coincidence
is really quite extraordinary.

Because on this treaty, the name
of the prince of Wilusa is Alaxandus.

Strikingly recalling Homer's name
for the prince of Wilios,

Alexandros, Paris,
the lover of Helen of Troy himself.

Alexandros is the usual name
given by Homer to Paris

and a tradition survived
in the ancient world in Anatolia

that the Hittite ally was indeed Helen's lover.

If he was, then, ironically enough,
he would've been well into his 50s,

not the young Adonis of Greek tradition,
the girl-crazy playboy described by Homer.

Instead, a grizzled veteran of 30 years of battles
from Syria to the Aegean.

At that point, he vanishes
and his city is plunged into disaster.

What happened?

Is there, after all, a grain of historical truth

behind the tale
of the most famous seduction in history?

To find out, we must return
to the Hittite archive in Berlin for a last time.

And from these fragmentary
cold war messages, 3,000 years old,

a possible story can be reconstructed,

The story of a state
caught between two great powers

and eventually dismembered by their rivalry.

Putting together several tablet fragments,
the story could be this:

soon after Hattusilis seized the throne
in 1263 BC,

some of his western protectorates
were persuaded to renounce allegiance,

relying on the Great King of Greece
against the Hittites.

But Wilusa, which could be Troy,
was loyal to the Hittites.

It was attacked,
its royal family were killed or exiled.

A final clue is the most interesting of all,
and it's only been discovered in 1982

when a hitherto unassigned fragment
lying in the collection here in Berlin

was seen to make a perfect join

with a well-known letter
of Hattusilis's son, Tudhalias IV.

That would make it about 1220, 1230 BC,
probably not long after the Trojan War.

By then, we learn from the letter,
Alaxandus of Wilusa is dead.

The Hittites have put a puppet king
in his place, a man called Walmu.

And he, in his turn, has been deposed.

Tudhalias takes up the story.
Unfortunately, it's full of blanks.

"And further troops..." he says, blank.

"And somebody went and he..." blank,
"by night's down." Blank.

"And the land was not..." blank.

"And when its lord..." blank,
"heard the news..." blank, "he fled.

"And they put another lord over themselves,

"whom I did not recognise, the wicked one.

"But the letters of credential, the documents
which I made for Walmu, they kept.

"It was in my father's day
that these troubles began.

"Then war was declared
and the enemy relied on the king of Greece.

"The land of Wilusa was attacked
and Hittite troops were brought west

"and as they relied on the king of Greece,
the Great King of Hatti advanced

'and he subdued them
and brought great booty back to Hattusas."

Is the true fall of Troy, then,
to be found in the Hittite archive?

Taking the Hittite view, the disturbances
out here in western Anatolia

must've seemed uncannily like what we today
call the domino theory

in Central America or Eastern Europe.

The diplomatic fabric patiently built up by
their foreign-office experts over two centuries

was now being torn apart.

They could no longer guarantee the sovereignty
of their most far-flung protectorate.

As for Troy, if it was Wilusa,
it had been loyal to the Hittites for 400 years

and if our Hittite version of the Trojan War
is even something like the truth,

it is not hard to imagine how they felt.

This marvellous city of Troy VI maintained
its cultural separateness for 500 years.

And probably its political separateness, too.

They must've been very astute kings,
the men who built these wonderful walls.

But they looked westwards. Their main imports
seem to have been from Mycenae itself.

The Greeks, on the other side, looked this way.

They, as we've seen, were trying to catch
a foothold on the coast of Anatolia.

Looking for metals, raw materials, slaves,
perhaps even to carve out petty kingdoms.

And that, I'm sure, was why the Hittites
came in over to this side.

The Hittites were quite prepared to acknowledge

that the area of Miletus, Millawanda,
might be in the Greek area of influence.

But this part of the world, with the related
kingdoms of Wilusa and Arzawa,

was certainly, let there be no doubt about it,
in the Hittite diplomatic sphere.

And they came in for security reasons,

a good reason for intervention
that we understand well today.

So the crisis that had been brewing between
those two superpowers came to a head.

And I think we can imagine worried ambassadors
scurrying through this gate to report to their king.

In the course of a campaign in which perhaps
many cities were sacked, this citadel fell.

But whether it was Troy VI,
with its beautiful walls and fine houses,

or Troy VIIa, with its shanties and soup kitchen,
I'm no longer sure.

I'm not certain any more about the earthquake
that Carl Blegen thought levelled Troy VI.

Or the date, for that matter.

In fact, the questions still stand:
who sacked Troy?

The retreating Greeks? The Hittites?
Or someone else? And which Troy?