Helen went with Paris to Troy while was already married. Through legend, Paris had been asked to choose from a number of things offered to him by a number of goddesses. He had chosen Helen to be his bride and with the intervention of the gods Helen had fallen in love with Paris and they escaped together to the city of Troy where Paris had originally come from. Agamemnon (a leader of the Greeks) told the Tojans to return Helen to her husband, Menelaus. Agamemnon had a number of army men, some of which included Achilles.
The Trojans refused to return Helen to her people so as a result the Greeks held the city of Troy under siege for 10 years. They tried to starve the people of Troy but through legend it was told that neighbouring cities help feed the people of Troy. This allowed the people withing the city to live for 10 years. The first 9 years were uneventful and it looked as if the greeks were going to lose this battle and go home to Greece without their beloved Helen. The final capture of the city of Troy was caused by treachery. The Greeks hid in a massive horse and when inside the city burned and destroyed it.
The people of Troy believed that this was a peace offering from the people of Greece and so it was allowed within the city walls. In fact it had been filled with 100 of the Greeks strongest fighting men and because of the enormity of the horse structure it was said that part of a wall had to be removed for the horse to fit within the city. Legend says that there was woman who was given the gift of prophecy but through a crime that she had committed she had also been cursed with whatever she did prophecy, although true, could not be believed by the people she had told.
The woman had tried to tell the people not to let the horse within the city because it would bring about the down fall of the city of Troy, no one headed her words and so the horse was allowed within the city. In the middle of the night while everyone in Troy was sleeping the 100 men leaped out of the horse, slaughtered the people and burned the city to the ground. The Greek ships that were heading off were signalled and were brought back to rescue the army men. Homer- The Iliad and The Odyssey The Iliad was a book written by Homer around 700 BC about events that occurred in the mid 1200s BC.
The Odyssey was also written by Homer around 700 BC. In The Iliad Homer describes the Trojan battle and is the oldest surviving Greek poem in history. It describes certain events that happened in the tenth year of the Trojan War. For nearly 3000 years readers have found the Iliad a moving expression of the heroism, idealism and tragedy of war. It also describes the romance between Paris and Helen that had started the Trojan War. The Odyssey has become a model for many adventure stories it tells of the journey home from the Trojan War.
There are 24 books, or sections to The Odyssey and the story extends over 10 years. And tells of the story of the men coming back from their fight against Troy. Heinrich Schliemann Heinrich Schliemann was a German archaeologist who founded the study of ancient Greece and neighbouring cultures in and around the Aegean Sea. He and his wife founded the ancient city of Troy, which is now modern day Turkey, with his wife Sophie Engastromenos Schliemann. Heinrich schlimann was born in Neubukow, near Wismar, in east Germany on January 6, 1822 and died December 26, 1890.
He had earned a fortune as a business man in Russia during the Crimean War but when he reached the age of 41 he quit his business to travel widely. After studying archaeology in Paris for some years he moved to Greece where he spent the rest of his life studying ancient cultures. Schliemann started excavating at the site where he believed that Troy had been in 1870. Through centuries of civilisation 9 cities had been built on that site. Experts now believe that Troy had been the seventh layer of these cities, dating back around 3000 years.
Near the bottom level the Schliemanns had found a number of treasures. Some of which were bronze, gold and silver in the city which they believed to have been Troy. They also found gold earrings and a skeleton. Nine months later the archeology crew found 2 gates guarding a foundation. Later some spearheads, gold goblets, knives and jewelry in copper, silver and gold and about 8,750 gold rings and buttons. After they had excavated the city of Troy they also explored Mycenae which was another ancient Greek city. At Mycenae they uncovered royal graves full of jewels, weapons and other treasures.
Stratigraphy is the study of rock strata, especially the distribution, deposition, and the age of any sedimentary rocks . When Schliemann began excavating, no corpus of accepted practice existed for archaeological fieldwork. Stratigraphy had been observed and understood in the Danish peat bogs, the Jutland burrows and the prehistoric Swiss lake dwellings. It is not surprising that Schliemann was at first puzzled by what he had found, but, eventually, with the assistance of Dorpfeld, he was able to untangle the stratigraphy. There is wide variation in the assessment of his technique as an excavator.
He did extremely well for someone starting to dig in the 1870s, yet those who are excavating similar mounds in the Near East 100 years later often criticize him The Treasure Discovered Some of the treasure that was uncovered in August 1872 was gold earrings and a skeleton. Nine months later the archeology crew found 2 gates guarding a foundation. Later some spearheads, gold goblets, knives and jewelry in copper, silver and gold and about 8,750 gold rings and buttons. Heinrich Schliemann, the person in charge of archeology of the site, took some of the treasure from this site back to his home.
