Where Troy Once Stood

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Where Troy Once Stood is a book by Iman Wilkens which argues that the city of Troy was located in England, and that Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are orally transmitted epic poems of Western European origin. Wilkens states that this would in no way detract from the prestige of ancient Greek culture, as it developed long after Homer.

Wilkens' work has had little impact among professional scholars. Anthony Snodgrass, Emeritus Professor in Classical Archaeology at Cambridge University, has named Wilkens as an example of an "infinitely less-serious" writer.[1] However, copies of his book are much sought after on the internet and rank high on a number of lists of most wanted out of print books.[2]

The title of his book comes from the Roman poet Ovid:

On top of the Gog Magog Downs
Enlarge
On top of the Gog Magog Downs
Now there are fields where Troy once stood (Ovid, Heroides 1.1.53)

Contents

[edit] Wilkens' arguments

Wilkens argues that Troy was located in England on the Gog Magog Downs in Cambridgeshire. He believes that (proto-)Celts living there were attacked around 1200 BC by fellow (proto-)Celts from the continent to battle over access to the tin mines in Cornwall as tin was a very important component for the production of bronze. The revised edition of 2005 contains a "reconstruction" of the Trojan battlefield in Cambridgeshire. Wilkens also argues that the Atlantic Ocean was the theatre for the Odyssey instead of the Mediterranean.

Wilkens further hypothesises that the (proto-)Celts were the Sea Peoples found in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean, who settled in Greece and the Aegean as the Achaeans and Pelasgians. They named new cities after the places they came from, (similar to the migration of many British place names to North America), and brought the oral poems that formed the basis of the Iliad and the Odyssey with them from western Europe.

Wilkens writes that, after being orally transmitted for about four centuries, the poems were translated and written down in Greek around 750 BC. The Greeks, who had forgotten about the origins of the poems, located the stories in the Mediterranean, where many Homeric place names could be found, but the poems' descriptions of towns, islands, sailing directions and distances were not altered to fit the reality of the Greek setting.

[edit] Sources

  • Ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who lived in the 5th century BC, argued that before his time nothing in Greece reached great proportions, the wars no more than anything else, because of little contact between different tribes as navigation and trade were poorly developed, and because people in Greece had travelled more by land than by sea because of widespread piracy. For these and other reasons Thucydides could not understand that his country had been able to start a great war against Troy.[3]
  • According to Herodotus the Pelasgians were a non-Greek people which had settled in Greece and had founded Athens, and, after several generations, adopted the Greek language. [4]
  • Plato (427-348 BC) had serious doubts about the Greek origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey. [5]
  • Strabo stated that some incidents of the Odyssey are clearly indicated as being placed in fancy in the Atlantic Ocean. [6]
  • J. H. Voss wrote that the Odyssey most probably described certain landscapes in the British Isles (1804). [7]
  • C.J. de Grave came to the general conclusion that the historical and mythical background of Homer’s works should be sought in Western Europe (1806).[8]
  • Th. Cailleux wrote that Odysseus sailed the Atlantic Ocean, starting from Troy, which he situated near the Wash in England (1879).[9] This idea was further developed by E. Gideon (1973).[10]

[edit] Reviews

  • A review intended to advise libraries on what books they should buy stated that this book "presents a compelling argument" and "makes for interesting reading." However, the reviewer notes that the book would not "be well received by serious classicists." Accordingly, the reviewer suggests that "only large libraries will want to consider adding" this book to their shelves. [11]
  • In a review in History and Chronology, an international scientific and popular-scientific internet magazine, it is stated that at the very least, this book should make you think twice about what you think you know about one of world history's largest and longest battles.[12]

[edit] The author

Iman Jacob Wilkens was born in the Netherlands in 1936, and educated in Economics at Amsterdam Municipal University. Since 1966 he has been living in France where for more than thirty years he has done research on Homer. On 26 May 1992 he gave a lecture, "The Trojan Kings of England", to the Herodoteans, a student classical society of the University of Cambridge.

[edit] Publication history

  • First published in Great Britain in 1990 by Rider / Century Hutchinson, London ISBN 0-7126-2463-5
  • Paperback published in Great Britain in 1991 by Rider / Random Century, London ISBN 0-7126-5105-5
  • Published in the USA in 1991 by St Martin's Press, New York ISBN 0-312-05994-9
  • Book-club edition in Great Britain in 1992 by BCA, London ISBN 0-7126-4094-0
  • Published in the Netherlands (in Dutch translation) in 1992 by Bigot & Van Rossum, Baarn ISBN 90-6134-381-X
  • Published in the Netherlands (Revised edition in Dutch translation) in 1999 by Bosch & Keuning (Tirion), Baarn ISBN 90-246-0461-3
  • Published in the Netherlands in 2005 (Revised edition in English) by Gopher Publishers, Groningen ISBN 90-5179-208-5

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Snodgrass, Anthony. "A Paradigm Shift in Classical Archaeology?" Cambridge Archaeological Journal 12 (2002), p. 190.
  2. ^ For example, [1]; [2].
  3. ^ Thucydides 1.1-13
  4. ^ Herodotus, 1.57
  5. ^ Plato, The Republic, Book 3
  6. ^ Strabo, Geography 1.2.18
  7. ^ (Voss 1804)
  8. ^ (de Grave 1806)
  9. ^ (Cailleux 1879)
  10. ^ (Gideon 1973)
  11. ^ MacKenzie, M.F. (1991). "Review of Where Troy Once Stood". Library Journal 116 (11): 78.
  12. ^ "Review of Where Troy Once Stood" by David Whitein History and Chronology

[edit] Bibliography

  • Cailleux, Théophile (1879), Pays atlantiques décrits par Homère, Ibérie, Gaule, Bretagne, Archipels, Amériques, Théorie nouvelle, Paris: Maisonneuve et cie; OCLC: 23413881
  • Gideon, Ernst (1973), Homerus Zanger der Kelten, Deventer: Ankh-Hermes, ISBN 90-202-2508-1
  • de Grave, Charles-Joseph (1806), République des Champs élysées, ou, Monde ancien : ouvrage dans lequel on démontre principalement : que les Champs élysées et l'Enfer des anciens sont le nom d'une ancienne république d'hommes justes et religieux, située a l'extrémité septentrionale de la Gaule, et surtout dans les îles du Bas-Rhin : que cet Enfer a été le premier sanctuaire de l'initiation aux mỳsteres, et qu'Ulysse y a été initié ... : que les poètes Homère et Hésiode sont originaires de la Belgique, &c., Gent: De l'imprimerie de P.-F. de Goesin-Verhaeghe; OCLC: 53145878
  • Voss, Johann Heinrich (1804), Alte Weltkunde, Stuttgart: Jena; OCLC: 57646628

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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