Trojan War

I heard Brad Pitt was there.

http://luwianstudies.org/

I_want_to_believe.tiff

>>1549344
I've actually been to Troy. It was a historical place that existed. It was a major city in the Late Bronze Age and existed in different stages for thousands of years. It is in north-west Anatolia near the entrance to the Dardanelles.

Around 1200 BC there was chaos, it is fairly likely that the city was attacked by a large organised group of Greeks and sacked. Over the following 500 years during the so called Greek Dark Age or Geometric Period the story of the conflict was embellished and elaborated on by successive generations of court bards who turned the story into an epic involving gods and divine rage, preserving very little of the original war itself. By the time of "Homer" (if he existed at all) Greeks had rediscovered the ability to write and the story that had previously been preserved orally (as examined by scholars like Parry who studied oral poetry in 20th century Yugoslavia) was properly written down, cementing it forever in the form that we see it today. The myth was then elaborated on further by dozens of others until an entire Trojan Cycle was formed around the Iliad.

It is unlikely that any of the shit that happens in the Iliad actually happened in whatever conflict occurred with Troy, but the world that the story depicts is not too far dissimilar from what could have existed in some ways. Warriors in bronze, tribal chieftains fighting in one on one combat, chariots to move them around, all of that is reasonable. There was a city of Troy (or Wilusa as it was known to the Hittite Empire) that was a major power in Anatolia that existed at the same time as various Mycenean Greek polities based at places like Mycenae and Tiryns and so war is not out of the question. A 10 year war involving gods and divine anger is unlikely though.

>>1549517
Also, you got the Tawagalawa (= Eteocles) letter and Hittite references to Piyamaradu (=Priam) and Alaksandu (=Alexander/Paris) w/r/t recent conflict

And Troy/Wilusa would have not only been an extremely lucratively placed city for trade, but if I'm recalling correctly they also would have had a huge corner on the tin market, which is what the legends of Troy's founding say.