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The first city on the site of Troy was Wilusa, founded in the 3rd millenium BC by the Hittites, who were the first indigenous Anatolian people to rise to form a state during the Bronze Age. Situated over the Hisarlık Hill on the northwestern tip of Troad Peninsula, it was clear that the reason for the city’s existence in the first place was a total control of Dardanelles, which, along with the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus, is today known as the Turkish Straits, a key route connecting Mediterranean with the Black Sea, as well as being where European and Asian landmasses are almost just a stone’s throw away from each other. The abduction of Helen, the daughter of the king of Sparta, by Paris, a Trojan prince, sparked enmity between the Trojans and Achaeans from across the Aegean Sea. Having been unable to break into the defensive walls of the city, Achaeans decided to set up a trick—they offered a huge wooden horse as a gift to Trojans, as an amend for the bother they caused with their war galleys on the city’s beach. Trojans accepted the offer sincerely, but this resulted in them losing their city, as inside of the horse was full of Achaean soldiers, ready to combat, and now right in the center of the city. For all its actuality, there was a Trojan War, which possibly took place in the 12th century BC, and it was around this time Hittite Wilusa was converted to Hellenic Illion, and later Troia. However, for some reason, all later invaders from all directions, with the notable exception of Alexander the Great (who founded the city of Alexandria Troas on the coast south of Troy), favoured Bosphorus to northeast instead of Dardanelles for their intercontinental crossings. The Roman emperor Constantine I (r. 306-337) agreed as well, founding a new capital for his empire, Constantinople (Istanbul today), on the banks of Bosphorus. As Constantinople flourished, its geographical rival Troy declined, eventually disappearing under layers of dirt.
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Since the days of Byzantine Empire, Troy was thought to be nothing but Homer’s pure imagination, but in 1868, Heinrich Schliemann, a German businessman and a self-proclaimed archaeologist, proved otherwise, after taking the hint that Troy might be a real place buried under the Hisarlık Hill from Frank Calvert, a British archaeologist who visited the site three years earlier. As Schliemann’s excavations were totally amateurish, it damaged the integrity of much of the remains,

but Schliemann obtained what he yearned for anyway—his Greek spouse Sophia Schliemann is immortalized in a photo showing her wearing the treasures found at the Hisarlık Hill (part of the treasure was later taken by the Red Army from Berlin to Moscow at the end of World War II). Although almost a century and a half passed since the days of Schliemann, Troy still hasn’t been unearthed completely yet, and the excavation works still continue to this day. Once a harbour city on the edge of a deep bay of Dardanelles, the site now lies 5 km inland from the coast due to the alluvial material carried by the River Scamander (modern Karamenderes), which filled the bay, turning it into the fertile, flat farmland stretching out to the sea that it is.
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