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For primary school students, some of the most colorful pages of their textbooks are the maps on which Turkey’s natural and historic endowments are illustrated city by city. For kids of "neighborhoods" who could not dip in the sea at Southern coasts during summer holidays, who did not set out to another city for a relative’s wedding and who could not realize how big their country of birth, let alone the world, is, finding Mount Ağrı, Pamukkale, Ephesos and Aspendos on the map is more like a game. In this game, the highest points go to the colossal wooden horse in Çanakkale. Two armies were fighting, when one of them realized that it wouldn’t work out with spears and clubs, they made a colossal, wooden horse and sent it to the stronghold of the others. Mistaking it for a gift, they took the horse in. Apparently, there was a battalion of soldiers hidden in the horse, so the winner was the side that cheated. What a fascinating story for the world of children?
In terms of the history of humanity, the significance of the Iliad, where Homer added many more enchanting tales next to the story of the Trojan horse, isn’t only that it is one of the oldest written literary documents. The Iliad and the Odyssey written by Homer-thought to have lived in 9th or 8th century B.C., we almost know nothing about his life- has been one of the basic sources of inspiration since the Ancient Ages for Western literature, with its language and narration. Besides, as what humanity knows about their own past increased with every layer of soil discovered, it was revealed that these epics told realities along with fiction.
The oldest "affair"
The Iliad opens with a war scene but the seeds of discord were planted at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. The goddess of discord, Eris, uninvited to the wedding thought of a way to cause trouble leaving a golden apple marked "for the fairest" under the table where Hera, Athena and Aphrodite sat. So who was the fairest? Zeus, not wanting to be a side to this, commanded shepherd Paris to decide. Hera tried to bribe Paris with wealth, Athena wisdom and valor and Aphrodite offered love. The love of Helen of Sparta, the wife of King Menelaus…But the king’s wife kidnapped by a Trojan was a serious "casus belli". Menelaus gathered a coalition power with as many supporters as he could muster. The team included demi-god Achilles, the hero to be of the war field. Countless battles, superiority shifting from one side to the other, games of power, shows of gallantry and friendship, disputes over booty…In the end, Achilles was shot from the only mortal spot in his body, his heel but due to the wooden horse ploy by the king of Ithaca from the coalition powers, Troy fell. We’re talking about an epic, a decade-long war, even summarizing it demands skill…
When we come from 9th century B.C. to AD 21st century, as we recall the heroes of the Iliad, Paris and Hector, there is another "hero" whom we must dwell on, Brad Pitt. In the world of cinema and literature when we look at sales figures for books and box office figures for movies, kids sail around Harry Potter, adults around the Lord of the Rings and the fantasy genre rules. So venturing on mythological ground was maybe a belated act. Finally, the blockbuster "Troy" followed by the world at every stage of the shooting is on screens. At the head of the team before whom Warner Brothers laid $ 200 million, is director Wolfgang Peterson, proven himself by "Das Boot" and "The Perfect Storm". Starring actors are Brad Pitt (Achilles), Eric Bana (Hector), Orlando Bloom (Paris) and Diane Kruger (Helen). For the movie 1200 stunts took part; 20,000 bows, 3,000 swords and spears, 4,000 shields were produced. A Trojan horse, 12 meters in height and weighing 11 tons, was made.
In such a polished production, in order not to cast a shadow over the glitter, on the island of Malta, a 10-acre city of Troy more glamorous and grandiose than its real version was built. A Trojan wall was built in Mexico, it collapsed and was re-constructed. As soon as it went into screening, the movie was met by interest all over the world. In the meantime, the real scene of the event, known by Turkish people as "the place with the wooden horse" heated up.
Rewards of excavation
With Homer’s epics in hand, lots of foreigners came to this region overlooking the Dardanelles, to search for a mountain or river described in the books. The one to dig the land first was Heinrich Schliemann from Germany in the 1870s. Part of the treasure he found became the personal jewelry of his Greek wife Sophia and some of it was smuggled to Athens among vegetable sacks. In 1874, the Ottoman government wanted the treasure back from Schliemann but the legal decision was against the Ottomans; they had to be satisfied with a small compensation. The story of the treasure afterwards is complicated but the place where you can now see it is at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
A very important name for Troy is Manfred Korfmann who came to the area in 1988 from Tübingen University. Working on the remains with a wider perspective and with the technological devices of the time, Korfmann is now a Turkish citizen bearing the name Osman. Korfmann’s team discovered that the area of Troy was wider than thought, there were ten layers of settlement on top of each other, brain surgery was tried in 1600 B.C. and the connection with Hittites. The area was made into a national park in 1996 and was included in the World Cultural Heritage list by UNESCO in 1998.
What multiplied the number of visitors- normally 500,000-of the Ancient City of Troy to over one million (estimated for 2004) is of course the magic of Hollywood and not all those years of effort. Local and foreign tourists and bus-loads of students brought by their schools, rush to get in the Trojan horse and have their photos taken as they pop down from the windows (the horse was built by a Turk in 1974, faithful to the original) and tour around the remains chirpily as if they could catch a glimpse of Brad Pitt at any moment. The Troy section in the Istanbul Archeological Museum, which had been closed because of lack of visitors, reopened its doors. Books on Troy were placed back on shelves of bookstores. Those who read the Iliad, know a little about mythology and manage not to be bedazzled by the gloss of Hollywood production find the movie flat, faulty and lacking. They speak of merely an inspiration from the real work to produce a movie again working by Hollywood rules. Nevertheless, the box office success of the movie verifies our proverb that there’s some good in everything. Thanks to Brad Pitt, Troy’s ten-layered history and the labor of those who tried to bring it to light find the value they deserve.
http://www.turkishtime.org/29/en_60_2.asp
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